The leader of far right group the English Defence League has pledged to return to the East London Mosque once bail conditions preventing him from entering Tower Hamlets are lifted.
Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia
Crayola crayons succumb to creeping Sharia
Anti-Shariah activists have a new target in their sights: Crayola. Late last week the Pickens County (Ga.) Republican party posted a call to action on its website about a new promotion from the world’s leading crayon manufacturer, which had begun offering free Islamic-themed coloring pages in honor of Ramadan. Zut alors! The images are pretty innocuous — one features a prayer rug; another features a young boy kneeling while reading from the Koran. But the Pickens GOP sees something more nefarious:
Recall that Muslims consider Ramadan the “month of jihad” and “month of victory” over infidels. Crayola should remind kids not to try and draw Muhammad lest their parents need to fend off Muslims and enter witness relocation – like the creator of Everyone Draw Muhammad Day – since the FBI nor anyone else will protect them.
Christmas trees and bunnies abound but a search for the Bible returned zero results.
contact Crayola:@CrayolaListening to Consumers and CustomersConsumer AffairsCrayola LLC1100 Church LaneEaston, PA 18044-0431-or-Click here to contact us electronically.About Our Products – in the U.S. or Canada:For Crayola®, Silly Putty®, Portfolio Series and Pop Art Pixies products, call 1-800-272-9652 1-800-CRAYOLA.
Both the Pickens County GOP and another anti-Shariah website, the appropriately named “Creeping Sharia,” both published the exact same text on the exact same day, so it’s not clear who plagiarized whom. Crayola is in good company. Other American institutions that have fallen under the spell of Shariah (according to anti-Shariah activists) include David Petraeus, the grocery store Wegman’s, and Nashville’s Hutton Hotel.
One Nation defends anti-halal stance, denies racism
The One Nation Party has invited opponents and supporters to have their questions about the party answered, when Pauline Hanson speaks on the Sunshine Coast next week.
Jim Savage, the party’s lead Senate candidate for Queensland, said the party had been wrongly labelled racists by Member for Noosa Glen Elmes and Greens candidate for Fairfax David Knobel. The issue arose after One Nation’s Fairfax candidate Mike Holt was last week linked to stickers claiming halal food certification funded terrorism. “I do not accept that 98% of non-Muslim Australians should pay a tax on the food they buy and goes to organisations like the Queensland Islamic Council,” Mr Savage said.
Mr Elmes, the Queensland Multicultural Affairs Minister, compared One Nation’s views to “the White Australia Policy”, which “was discredited” decades ago. “Queensland is home to 37,000 people of the Muslim faith and they should be free to practise their religious and cultural beliefs without attack from idiots like the One Nation candidate for Fairfax,” Mr Elmes said.
Meantime, the Greens said Mr Holt’s “campaign strategy” was designed to “incite unrestrained racial and religious hatred”. “The Greens condemn this behaviour and call on One Nation to take a strong stand against this unwelcome and offensive affront to Australian values of tolerance and freedom,” Mr Knobel said.
Muslims and neo-Nazis in Athens: Halting the descent into darkness
Frankie Martin reports on the experiences of Greek Muslims facing violent oppression at the hands of the far-right party Golden Dawn, often with the connivance of the police.
He sees hope in the stand many Greeks are taking in opposition to the racism and xenophobia of the neo-Nazis.
Searchable database of EDL criminality now online
A new improved version of the excellent EDL Criminals document, compiled by Hazel Zebulon, Dave Hunter and John Goldstein of Exposing Racism and Intolerance Online, is now available.
Reza Aslan’s book on Christ under fire from ignorant Islamophobes
Reza Aslan’s newly published biography of Jesus Christ has been viciously attacked by the Islamophobic right in the US.
See “Reza Aslan’s ‘Zealot’ has Islamophobes/Fox News outraged”, LoonWatch, 27 July 2013
And “Critics ignore content of book about Jesus, attack author for being a Muslim”, Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion, 28 July 2013
Also “Reza Aslan to Fox News: Yes I ‘happen to be a Muslim,’ but wrote ‘Zealot’ because I am an expert”, Huffington Post, 27 July 2013
EVF heavily outnumbered in Croydon
Demonstrators clashed in central Croydon today as the English Volunteer Force (EVF) held its planned rally.
The roughly 40 English Volunteer Force demonstrators were outnumbered at least three-to-one by counter demonstrators. Angry chants were traded between the groups rallying in opposing pens outside the UK Border Agency offices in Wellesley Road, including chants of “scum” and “Nazi scum”.
NC Muslims hope Gov. Pat McCrory vetoes anti-Shariah bill
North Carolina Muslims hope they can persuade Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican, to veto a bill that prohibits state judges from considering “foreign law.” “It’s going to be tough,” said Rose Hamid of Charlotte. “But I do believe there is a chance.”
Muslims across the state oppose the bill they think is motivated by intolerance and may potentially infringe on other religious groups. Bills against judicial consideration of “foreign laws” are believed to really be opposing Shariah, or Islamic law.
If McCrory signs the bill, North Carolina would become the seventh state to have an anti-Shariah law, joining Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana, South Dakota, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. In May, Alabama lawmakers approved a like-minded constitutional amendment that state voters will consider in 2014.
Jewish organisations issue statements of solidarity with Muslim community
The Board of Deputies, senior rabbis and the Joseph Interfaith Foundation have together released a statement on behalf of the Jewish community expressing their “sadness and concern” at a recent rise in Islamophobic attacks following the murder of soldier Lee Rigby.
The statement said that recent bombings of mosques such as those in Walsall and Wolverhampton were “truly shocking”. It continued: “We utterly condemn and abhor these hateful actions against the Muslim community. It is particularly distressing that these attacks are taking place during the holy month of Ramadan, the month of fasting, praying, acts of generosity and charity from Muslims.”
France needs to start facing up to Islamophobia
Valérie Amiraux and Marwan Mohammed on the prevalence of Islamophobia in France:
It shows up in multiple forms: attacks on mosques, desecration of religious sites, the ban on the headscarf in public schools, making it impossible for certain veiled women to access public services, to accompany their children on school outings, the rampant insults, harassment, humiliation, physical and verbal aggression they are subject to, racial and ethnic profiling and discrimination, sometimes culminating in physical attacks, such as the recent one on a veiled woman in Argenteuil, who lost her baby as a result. But the principal characteristic of Islamophobia is that it remains, at least in France, very rarely denounced. It is consistently perceived as an exaggeration, the result of victimised posturing invented by troublemaking Muslims, who are incapable of integrating and bending to the requirements of French citizenship.