That’s the headline to a story that appeared in the Daily Mail yesterday.
The report concerns a debate by Radstock Town Council in Somerset over which flag to fly on Armistice Day on the town’s newly restored flagpole. The council confirmed an earlier decision to purchase a Union flag rather than a St George’s flag. According to the Mail‘s version of events, this decision was motivated by a concern not to offend the town’s small Muslim population.
During the recent English Defence League protest in Leeds against a plan to convert a disused pub into a Muslim-run community centre, one of the demonstrators was reported to have thrown a pig’s head. It would appear that an EDL member has subsequently been charged with religiously aggravated intentional harassment as a result of this action.
This is the inflammatory post by English Defence League co-leader Kevin Carroll that appeared on his organisation’s Facebook page yesterday. Here are some examples of the responses it provoked among supporters of the “non-violent” EDL. They include calls for arson attacks on mosques and for Muslims to be stabbed, along with appeals to “burn them all” and “kill them all”.
East Midlands Anti-fascists report that an English Defence League splinter group called the East Anglian Patriots have announced they will be holding a protest in Lincoln next month against a plan to build a new mosque.
Appealing to their supporters to help “stop this muzzie infested building getting built”, the administrators of the “Stop the Lincoln Mosque” Facebook page state that although this will not be an official EDL demonstration they are “all edl on here pretty much”.
Far right group the English Defence League has announced plans to march through Tower Hamlets this summer. The group unveiled dates for a series marches on social networking site Facebook on Monday, with protestors planning to come to the East End on August 24. Demonstrators clashed with police during an EDL march in the area in 2011.
A new UKIP councillor in Worcestershire has sparked fury amid allegations he unleashed a series of racist abuse online. Eric Kitson, who won a seat in Stourport just 11 days ago, is facing the sack today over a whole raft of anti-Muslim, anti-Jewish Facebook posts.
Among the most shocking is a cartoon of a Muslim being spit-roasted on a fire fuelled by copies of the Koran. In one comment he said in reference to Muslim women: “Hang um all first then ask questions later.”
A Muslim group is accusing a Christian organization of defamation for publishing a book that accuses the Muslim collective of holding terrorist training in its enclaves.
The Christian Action Network refuses to back down, challenging Muslims of America Inc. to prove the allegations wrong in an upstate New York court.
The Muslim group has a community in Hancock, near Binghamton, N.Y., and others around the U.S. It calls the network’s accusations deliberate and damaging lies.
A teenager has been locked up for his role in a riot that saw demonstrators clash with police in Walsall town centre. The 16-year-old from Brownhills, who cannot be named for legal reasons, broke wooden pieces of pub garden furniture which thugs then hurled at police during a march by the English Defence League.
A horrified Dumfries couple yesterday slammed an anti-Islamic group which is using a story about them to promote a protest march.
Raymond and Eleanor Ingram opposed a neighbouring mosque’s planning application to transform a store into overnight accommodation. The Annan Road residents launched a petition against the move because they are fed up with people attending the mosque parking in their drive.
But they were “stunned” to find that their objections to the Dumfries Islamic Society plan were being used by the Scottish Defence League to rally support for a march in Dumfries on Saturday, May 18. The SDL copied a Standard story about the couple’s protest to its Facebook page.
Mr Ingram, 71, said: “We didn’t know who they were and we had no idea we were on this page until our neighbour told us to go online and look at it. We have absolutely nothing to do with this march and we don’t want to be associated to it. We want to make that clear to everyone.”
Four arrests were made at a Far Right demonstration in Leeds.
A huge police operation involving over 100 officers swung into action on Saturday (May 4) as the English Defence league marched through Leeds’ Lingfield estate – at the invitation of residents angered after the go ahead was given to plans to turn a derelict pub into a Muslim-run community centre.
A counter demonstration by Unite Against Fascism, which attracted around 120 people, was kept apart from the EDL by dozens more officers.