Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia

Croydon’s Labour and Conservative groups join forces to condemn BNP’s anti-mosque campaign

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BNP stall New AddingtonBoth major political parties in Croydon have joined forces to condemn the British National Party’s ‘distorted’ campaign against a mosque being built in New Addington.

The estate’s four Labour ward councillors, Conservative Croydon Central MP Gavin Barwell and the Tory Greater London Assembly Member for Croydon and Sutton Steve O’Connell, have released a joint statement regarding a campaign they have attributed to the BNP.

It is in relation to a meeting called this Sunday (August 17) at the ACA [Addington Community Association] regarding the possibility of a mosque being built in New Addington, which they say is clearly being organised by the BNP.

In May, the Advertiser reported the Shirley branch of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community were considering New Addington for a new base but were also looking at Addington, Shirley and South Croydon.

The area’s councillors, Mr Barwell and Cllr O’Connell have today accused the BNP of running an “opportunistic hate-driven campaign”.

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Manassas Mosque vandalized in possible hate crime

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Manassas Mosque vandalism (2)A Prince William County mosque was vandalized Monday night or early Tuesday, and Muslim leaders described the incident as a hate crime.

Abu Nahidian, the imam at Manassas Mosque, said he arrived Tuesday morning to find an expletive written twice in spray paint on the windows of the mosque that he helped found 20 years ago. Eight windows were defaced, and a glass door was shattered. Because the mosque has a double set of doors, the house of worship could not be entered, Nahidian said.

The mosque has been vandalized before when tensions in the United States ran high over violence in the Middle East, Nahidian said. The last previous incident was three years ago.

“We do not hurt anybody. If those with our names are doing something, why should I become the victim? You haven’t seen me doing anything,” he said. “We are a part of the whole earth, and we love the whole earth.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations issued a statement characterizing the vandalism as a possible hate crime and asking police to investigate.

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Mehdi Hasan tells Wilderness Festival the ‘hysterical’ British press is encouraging Islamophobia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Mehdi Hasan on Islamophobia in British press

Sections of the British press are encouraging Islamophobia and publishing “brazen lies” that exacerbate community tensions, one of the UK’s leading Muslim journalists has said.

In a controversial attack on his fellow journalists, Mehdi Hasan – The Huffington Post UK’s political director and a columnist for the New Statesman magazine – has claimed that the country’s leading newspapers publish stories about Muslims that they would not dare publish about any other minority group.

In the wake of terrorist attacks such as the 9/11 and 7/7 bombings, the UK press has been “given free rein to effectively target, distort, misrepresent and demonise the Islamic faith and its 2.7 million adherents in this country,” Hasan told a packed crowd at the Wilderness Festival in Oxfordshire on Saturday evening.

As a practicing Muslim and as a working journalist, Hasan said “I love my job… but I find myself awkwardly straddling the divide between British Islam and the British media.”

“I get pretty exhausted of having to constantly endure a barrage of lazy stereotypes, inflammatory headlines, disparaging generalisations and often inaccurate and baseless stories,” he said.

“We have seen in recent years, recent months and, even, recent weeks, a “hailstorm” of press stories that are “unbelievably negative about, hostile towards, distrustful of, Islam and Muslims,” he said.

British Muslims, Hasan pointed out, are singled out as ‘The Other’ by a series of inflammatory front page newspaper headlines. “Dangerous and counter-productive” coverage of Muslim issues, such as the Spectator‘s front page, pictured above, “basically stigmatises all Muslims,” Hasan said – and in particular Muslim children – as violent extremists.

Hasan isn’t alone in his view on the “hysterical” front page – the magazine’s imagery prompted a furious backlash, with critics, including former cabinet minister Baroness Warsi, branding it “appalling” for “stigmatising children and alienating communities.”

Nick Lowles, from the anti-racist campaign group Hope Not Hate, wrote that the front page was simply “unadulterated hatred… we wouldn’t put up with it against any other religion.”

But in the UK and in relation to Islam, Hasan said, we do put up with it. Muslims are expected to “suck it up” and put up with this “awful, discriminatory, hysterical press coverage,” he claimed.

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FBI targeted mentally disabled Muslim American citizens

Posted on by Bob Pitt

FBI-NYPD JTTFA Human Rights Watch report, documenting abuses in US terrorism investigations, has illuminated some incredibly dubious practices carried out by law enforcement.

The report looks at investigations that began shortly after 9/11 and have carried on until the present day.

One disturbing practice, which seems to pop up over and over in the report, is the targeting of those with mental disabilities to ‘create’ crimes. This occurs during ‘sting’ operations, when agents pose as members of the Muslim American community, infiltrating mosques.

In an average sting operation, an undercover agent finds a suspect who they think is, say, selling illegal arms. They approach them and gather information, waiting for a crime to unfold.

However, when it comes to counter-terrorism operations, law enforcement officers have been accused of breaching this time-honored system, using a subject’s mental disability to actually foster terrorism. You read that right, by the way – counter-terrorism efforts are being used to foster terrorism.

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Christine Tasin convicted of hate crime

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Christine Tasin l'islam est une saloperieChristine Tasin, president of the French far-right anti-Muslim organisation Résistance Républicaine, has been convicted of incitement to racial hatred for comments she made about Islam in October last year.

During an exchange with members of the Muslim community, a video of which was posted on Youtube, Tasin declared: “Yes I’m an Islamophobe, so what? Hatred of Islam is something I’m proud of. Islam is a piece of shit … it is a danger to France.”

As a result, the Coordination contre le racisme et l’islamophobie filed a complaint against her. The prosecution stated that Tasin’s words were “likely to provoke the rejection of Muslims by designating them as a threat to France”.

Tasin, who turned up in court dressed in the blue, white and red of the French national flag, received a three-month suspended prison sentence and a €3000 fine.

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EDL receive ‘lukewarm reception’ in Batley

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL Bately August 2014EDL protesters in Batley received a lukewarm reception today when they held their first national demonstration in the town.

Up to 350 people from across the country are believed to have taken part in the rally, which was held in Batley market place. But local campaigners and residents said that the far-right group were not welcome in the area and that the event had been a ‘huge waste of taxpayers money.’

Hundreds of police officers from Yorkshire, Humberside and beyond were drafted in to oversee the demo, which was called in protest at what the EDL say is the growing influence of Islam and English people “treated as second class citizens.” A group marched from the Wellington pub into the square, where they gathered for just over one hour from 1pm to hear speeches, whilst surrounded by police.

Considerably smaller than the national demonstration that took place in Dewsbury in 2012, they waved St Georges Cross and Israeli flags whilst chanting ‘Yorkshire’ and ‘EDL’. It is the first time a national EDL protest has been held in the region since joint founder Tommy Robinson left in 2013, when he sighted concerns of ‘dangers of far-right extremism’ and violence.

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North West Infidels’ anti-mosque protest ‘should not have been allowed in residential area’, says councillor

Posted on by Bob Pitt

NWI banner Astley Bridge Mosque protest August 2012The North West Infidels’ anti-mosque protest should not have been allowed in a residential area, a councillor claims.

Cllr Guy Harkin said he and his Crompton ward colleagues were “profoundly unhappy” that protesters from outside of Bolton were bussed in by coaches to the area for the demonstration on Saturday.

But police said they offered other locations to protesters – but they were adamant that they would protest close to the mosque.

Cllr Harkin said: “People have the right to a peaceful protest, but the lot on Saturday looked like the cast of Benefits Street. They are thugs. Why should a national protest be allowed to come into a small side street, in the middle of our ward?

“You have a demonstration attracting people from across the country, and it struck me it is just not acceptable to bring these people into a residential area. It wasn’t a peaceful protest. It was a violent protest that was contained by the police who stopped it becoming a major incident.”

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Dutch Jewish group dumps Wilders over Islam comments

Posted on by Bob Pitt

geen excuus voor jodenhaatA Dutch Jewish group dropped the politician Geert Wilders from a petition against anti-Semitism.

The Center for Information and Documentation on Israel, or CIDI, had approached Wilders for his signature along with other well-known Dutchmen. But the group dropped Wilders’ name when the petition appeared on Thursday as a full-page ad in De Telegraaf daily.

“In the Netherlands, everyone must live safely, also Jews,” read the petition. The petition noted that it was not an “expression of solidarity with Israel’s government.” Rather, the 86 signatories said: “Criticism of Israel? Okay. Jew-hatred? No way.”

CIDI director Esther Voet told the Volkskrant daily that Wilders, the leader of the far-right Party for Freedom, was removed after he criticized a joint declaration earlier this week by Jewish community representatives and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.

In an open letter this week, Wilders accused Rutte of ignoring “the elephant in the room,” adding: “You fear Islam so you will not say what everybody knows: The more Islam grows in the Netherlands, the more anti-Semitism grows.”

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EDL rally: Bishop Tony Robinson condemns English Defence League for stirring up divisions in Kirklees

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A bishop has condemned the English Defence League for trying to divide communities in Kirklees. Bishop of Pontefract the Rt Rev Tony Robinson spoke out ahead of an EDL rally and counter demonstration in Batley tomorrow.

Up to 700 police officers from West Yorkshire and beyond are on standby as hundreds of EDL supporters descend on the town. The counter demonstration – called We are Batley – will be held at the same time, organised by Kirklees Unite Against Fascism and Huddersfield TUC.

In a statement Bishop Robinson, also interim Bishop of Huddersfield, said: “I condemn the action of all who seek to divide and sow the seeds of distrust between our communities. In particular we deplore, in the strongest terms, the activities of the English Defence League, directed against our Muslim brothers and sisters.

“I fully endorse the words spoken by Her Majesty the Queen: ‘Religions can never become vehicles of hatred, that never by invoking the name of God can evil and violence be justified. Today, in this country, we stand united in that conviction. We hold that freedom to worship is at the core of our tolerant and democratic society.’”

As many as 600 EDL supporters could turn up in Batley Market Place for a rally at 2pm. Kirklees police commander Chief Supt Tim Kingsman has already warned that his officers will deal with any disorder firmly.

The EDL, which held similar rallies in Dewsbury in 2011 and 2012, says it is protesting against the growing influence of Islam in the town and English people being treated as “second class citizens.”

The catalyst for the rally was said to be the opening of the Al Hashim Academy, a Muslim educational establishment, at the former Batley Art College building in Cambridge Street, Batley. According to its website, the academy aims to “prevent youth from terror and community vices.”

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Dearborn residents on terrorist watch list second only to New York, report says

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Among the U.S. cities that have the most residents on the government’s terrorist watch list is one that stands out because of its comparatively small population: Dearborn.

Dearborn, a suburb of Detroit, was described by The Intercept, an online news site that reports on issues of national security, as having the second-highest concentration of people designated by the government as “known or suspected terrorists.”

The Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, along with other civil rights organizations, will hold a press conference Aug. 8 at Dearborn City Hall to call for a congressional inquiry into how the government could label Dearborn as such.

The report said that Dearborn’s ranking, just behind New York City and ahead of Houston despite their significantly larger populations, has to do with its concentration of Arab and Muslim Americans.

“Given that there has not been a Dearborn resident who has ever committed an act of terrorism in the homeland, nor any significant pattern of residents being involved in international terrorism, we have serious concerns that federal law enforcement views Dearborn as a suspect community primarily based on its Arab and Muslim demographics,” said CAIR-MI Executive Director Dawud Walid in a news release.

Dearborn has the largest percentage of Arab Americans in the country, according to The Intercept report. “At 96,000 residents, Dearborn is much smaller than the other cities in the top five, suggesting that its significant Muslim population – 40 percent of its population is of Arab descent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau – has been disproportionately targeted for watchlisting,” the report said.

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