Category Archives: Far right racists

Three sentenced over desecration of Mayotte mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Mayotte protest against mosque desecration

Last January a pig’s head was left outside a mosque in the French overseas department of Mayotte. This act of desecration caused outrage among a population 95% of whom are Muslim and large demonstrations were held in protest.

Sarah Leduc and her friend Malika Lenormand got drunk at a new year’s eve dinner party and decided it would be fun to deposit a pig’s head outside a mosque, for a bet. Leduc’s partner, police officer Sébastien Milin, drove them to the Labattoir mosque where they left the head just before morning prayer.

The following day a photo of the pig’s head and the comment “the package was delivered” were posted on Facebook. The court was told that the Facebook page, apparently belonging to Leduc, also featured far-right material.

The three have been convicted of “incitement to hatred, violence or discrimination because of religious affiliation”. Leduc and Lenormand were given prison sentences of nine months, six months of which were suspended, while Milin received a six-month suspended prison sentence. In addition they were given two years probation, fined €3,000 each and required to pay €16,000 in compensation to the mosque.

Continue reading →

Don’t let EDL racists divide us! Unite Against Fascism counter-demonstration – London, Saturday 20 September

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Don’t let EDL racists divide us London September 2014

Justice for the Rotherham abuse victims – don’t let the racists divide us!

Demonstrate: Saturday September 20th, Central London

The EDL are cynically trying to exploit the Rotherham child abuse horror, and British fascists are attempting to unify around this. In Rotherham and in London, the EDL are planning to hold demonstrations over the next two Saturdays. Far right and fascist groups are attempting to recover from set backs anti-fascists have inflicted on them and want to divide us.

The EDL have seized on the appalling child abuse to engender racism against Muslims. They want to “racialise” the issue. UAF will be holding a counter demonstration against the EDL next Saturday, 20th September from 11.30am, at Downing Street. UAF invites all who reject attempts to divide our communities to join us. Bring your friends, families and banners.

Continue reading →

Demonstration will protest against EDL’s anti-Muslim violence

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Markaz-ul-Uloom Al-Islamia vandalism

A mosque has been vandalised during a far-right protest march in Rotherham, south Yorkshire, as tension rises in the town after the grooming scandal. The glass front door of the Markaz-ul-Uloom Al-Islamia, a Deobandi mosque near the city centre, was broken on Saturday.

Muhbeen Hussain, a local Muslim community organiser, said that the English Defence League had paraded through the city with a banner reading “Muslim groomers”. He also claimed that demonstrators smashed the windows of a halal butcher and a corner shop owned by a Muslim.

Continue reading →

Yet more anti-Muslim scaremongering from the Mail

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Daily Mail Changing Face of Britain

This article from yesterday’s Daily Mail is the latest in the newspaper’s long-running series of “Islamification of Britain” scare stories. It begins:

“There are more Muslim children than Christian growing up in Birmingham, figures show. The latest statistics, extracted from the 2011 Census, give an insight into the fast pace of demographic change across Britain. They pinpoint several parts of the country where traditional religious beliefs are being eclipsed for the first time.”

(Quite why Christianity alone should fall into the category of “traditional religious beliefs” is unclear, given that Islam along with Judaism and other minority faiths have a long historical tradition in the UK.)

We are then offered the following table to show how Christianity is being “eclipsed”:

Daily Mail Changing Face of Britain (2)

The examples selectively chosen by the Mail to demonstrate the supposed eclipse of Christianity are of course all areas with untypically large Muslim communities.

The Daily Mirror has done some number crunching of its own and points out that there is in fact a grand total of 7 local authorities across England and Wales where there are more Muslim children than Christian, compared with 340 in which Christian children outnumber Muslims.

The Mirror also notes that there are 21 local authorities where children registered as having no religion outnumber those registered as Christian, although for some reason the Mail seems less concerned about the “eclipse” of Christianity by atheism.

Continue reading →

The untold cases of Islamophobia in schools

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Fourteen year olds resolutely defending hostility towards their Muslim neighbours.

When it was said that nothing justified the abuse of a woman just because she decided to dress differently, the response was that it was because “she probably has a bomb underneath her clothes”.

Muslims were openly derided as terrorists by a significant number of over zealous white students.

Students whom I later realised were themselves victims of a raucous media campaign to give them an enemy and distract them from the disfranchisement and misery faced by many of their families.

Perhaps our words and slides were just too high brow and academic for young minds to relate to.

So when a victim stood to speak honestly and emotionally of her harrowing experiences which included having dogs set upon her and her young children and having an unopened beer can thrown at her whilst she was driving, the unrelenting coldness amongst the audience remained.

Maybe the sight of a young classmate breaking down in tears after relating the incident of seeing his mother racially abused at a local supermarket over the weekend just gone would bring a modicum of sympathy. Again none was forthcoming.

Amongst the young faces and clearly in the minority young Muslim girls wearing hijabs, others without and their male compatriots sat glum faced seemingly unable to speak up or defend their rights to be treated as human beings.

Faisal Hanif recounts his experience of promoting human rights in a Rotherham secondary school.

Asian Image, 15 September 2014

Currumbin mosque proposal voted down by Gold Coast councillors

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Currumbin anti-mosque placards

A controversial proposal for a mosque in Currumbin has been rejected by Gold Coast City Council.

The proposal for an Islamic place of worship, which received 3,500 objections, has sparked protests, threats and insults against some councillors. Ten councillors, including area representative Chris Robbins, voted against the proposal. Five voted for the development application to be approved. The council cited issues involving community concerns, car parking and opening hours.

Councillor Robbins said the planning committee had not properly considered the social impacts of the mosque. “Those residents who live near the site have had some very stringent concerns,” she said. “This was decided by the councillors on town planning grounds.”

Continue reading →

British Muslims fear backlash after David Haines murder

Posted on by Bob Pitt

British Muslims are bracing themselves for a backlash after the beheading of David Haines by Islamic State militants, leading community figures have said.

Harun Khan, deputy secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said a backlash was experienced virtually every time violence carried out by extremists who claimed to act in the name of religion received high-profile media coverage.

Anxiety among Muslim communities was already heightened this weekend before news of Haines’s murder, after a mosque in Rotherham was attacked in the wake of a protest by the extremist English Defence League.

Khan said: “Somebody somewhere is going to react, it’s been proven, it’s happened many times: after 9/11, after 7 July [2005 attacks on London] and after [the murder of] Lee Rigby.”

He said the greatest fear was of attacks on Islamic buildings such as mosques, and on vulnerable people, such as women wearing the hijab.

At the East London mosque in Tower Hamlets worshippers said the risk of reprisal attacks in the UK increased with each new report of violence. “Isis and the beheading is not something we recognise at all,” said Amir Younis, 42. “Everyone I’ve spoken to regards those people as complete lunatics. We don’t know who they are, they’ve come from nowhere, and all of a sudden they’re claiming to represent the whole of the Muslim community.

“But in terms of Islamophic reprisals, I don’t think things are going to get any worse than they already are. Islamophobia is something that the Islamic community needs to stop tolerating – we allow people to say the most ridiculous things.”

Two young women visiting the mosque, Aysha Islam and Shakila Hoque, said news of the beheading of Haines would spur on the EDL. “People talk about it a lot,” said Islam. “This area is more safe than places like Luton, but you never know what’s going to happen.”

Continue reading →

Queensland mosque targeted in anti-Muslim hate crimes

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Patriots Defence League leafletIslamic leaders in south-east Queensland say they are being targeted by an increase in hate crimes, following an increase in the terror threat level and the arrests of two people allegedly linked with fighting in Syria.

Logan mosque spokesman Ali Kabri said that overnight on Saturday, someone left pamphlets outside the mosque filled with abusive language and photographs, saying Australian Muslims were not welcome in the country.

In the past few days officials also discovered a photo of the Mecca and a photo of a pig’s head close by. It followed an incident two months ago when body parts of a pig were found outside the mosque.

“It’s appalling… there’s an emotional fear. There’s emotion of disgust,” Mr Kabri said. “There’s emotion of threat to the Muslim community. Because we’re afraid that for now there are pamphlets but it could lead to violence. We’re afraid for our families and afraid for our children.”

Mr Kabri said the “silly actions” of a few showed Australia to be an intolerant society to the rest of the world. “But I don’t believe we’re an intolerant society, we’re a tolerant society,” he said.

Continue reading →

Rape, death threats over mosque plan at Currumbin

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Chris RobbinsA Gold Coast City councillor says she’s been threatened with gang rape and death over a proposed mosque, and Facebook is protecting the identity of her tormentors.

Chris Robbins says she has spent several weeks trying to get the social media site to reveal the identity of the creators of the “Stop the Mosque at Currumbin” page after it used a photo of her as its profile picture, claiming she was receiving money from unspecified Islamic backers, a claim she denies.

Ms Robbins says she had to engage a lawyer to threaten the website with defamation before the picture was removed. The page remains live along with a host of anti-councillor comments from Facebook users.

Facebook has told AAP it has had no contact with any lawyers representing Ms Robbins and says the Gold Coast councillor has not begun its process for requesting data. “We respond to requests for data to police consistent with our law enforcement guidelines,” a Facebook spokesperson said.

“These guidelines also outline if and how civil litigants can make data requests.” The spokesperson said Facebook was contacting Queensland police to understand what, if any, requests for data relating to the incident had been made.

Ms Robbins says she was targeted by protesters after announcing the council had received an application to build a mosque at an industrial site in Currumbin on the southern end of the Gold Coast. “Horrific vilification, threatening all kinds of nastiness directed at me because I’d basically gone to the meeting and said council’s got an application for a mosque and we will be assessing it as we’re obliged to by law,” she told AAP.

Continue reading →

EDL supporters attack police during Rotherham sex abuse protest

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL Rotherham September 2014English Defence League (EDL) protesters have attacked police in Rotherham while demonstrating over the recent revelations about child sexual exploitation in the town.

Three men linked to the demonstration were arrested ahead of the march on suspicion of possessing an offensive weapon and remain in custody. A fourth man from Rotherham was also arrested on suspicion of committing a public order offence.

Police erected 10ft (3ft) barricades around the town centre, while extra officers were drafted in from around the country.

South Yorkshire police said officers had been “confronted with missiles and barriers” but said no injuries had so far been reported. Some 1,200 protesters were expected to descend on Rotherham, in what has been described as a political exploitation of the recent abuse findings.

The shock report last month said that although the majority of perpetrators were described as “Asian” by victims, some councillors were nervous about identifying the abusers’ ethnic origins “for fear of being thought racist”.

Weman Bennett of Unite Against Fascism said: “We want justice for the victims, but we don’t want racists exploiting it.” Speaking from the organisation’s small counter-demonstration, Bennett said most of the violence had been between EDL members themselves.

Continue reading →