Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia

Fine and suspended prison sentence for Cassandra Belin

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Philippe Bataille at press conferenceA French court has convicted a woman for insulting police who ticketed her for wearing a face-covering Muslim veil, banned by French law. The confrontation between Cassandra Belin, her husband and police triggered riots in the Paris suburb of Trappes last year.

Her lawyer, Philippe Bataille, says Belin was fined 150 euros and given a one-month suspended sentence Wednesday. The lawyer also argued that the veil law is unconstitutional, and asked for it to be sent to the Constitutional Court. The lower Paris court Wednesday threw out that request.

Police sporadically ticket women who wear the veil, banned since 2011. The riots in Trappes reflected tensions between police upholding France’s strict policies of secularism and those who accuse authorities of discriminating against France’s No. 2 religion.

Associated Press, 8 January 2014

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Bridgewater loses bid to delay court order on mosque proposal

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A federal judge has denied Bridgewater’s request to delay a court order directing township officials to reconsider plans for a proposed mosque without applying an ordinance that Muslims said was used to undermine their project.

U.S. District Judge Michael Shipp on Monday rejected the township’s motion to stay his Sept. 30 order while officials appeal. In his latest ruling, Shipp said Bridgewater “has not sufficiently established that it has a likelihood of success on the merits of its appeal.”

The township is now planning to seek a stay of Shipp’s original order from a higher court, said Marc Haefner, an attorney representing the municipality.

That order instructed the Bridgewater Planning Board to resume consideration of the mosque proposed by the alFalah Center without the use of that controversial ordinance. Public hearings on the proposal are scheduled to begin Jan. 21.

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EDL outnumbered by counter-demonstrators in Bristol

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL Bristol anti-mosque protestCentral Bristol witnessed ugly scenes this evening as right wing protesters opposed to plans to open a mosque in Stokes Croft were confronted by counter-demonstrators.

About 30 supporters of the English Defence League turned out on College Green to stage what had been advertised as a “peaceful” protest against the former Jesters comedy club in Cheltenham Road being turned into a mosque. Bristol Unite Against Fascism held a counter-demonstration, attended by about 80 people, which led to a 40-minute stand-off near the entrance to Bristol Cathedral.

The two groups shouted slogans and abuse at each other, separated by a cordon of about 24 police officers in high-visibility jackets. At one stage there was a minor scuffle but a police inspector later said he knew of no arrests. The anti-Fascists shouted: “Nazi scum! Off our streets!” The right wingers responded: “UAF! Off our streets!”

EDL members began to disperse after about half-an-hour. They had gathered at a pub near the Arnolfini arts centre before being escorted to City Hall for the protest.

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Flowers cover swastikas after mosque attack

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Stockholm mosque flowers

Last Thursday morning, members of the Stockholm Muslim congregation arrived at the mosque on Södermalm to find the doors were covered in Nazi graffiti. By Monday morning, however, a much more positive display had taken their place: bouquets of pink and white flowers were taped over the black swastikas, and a note of solidarity was tied to the door. “For every hate crime there is a flower,” the sign read. “An attack on you is an attack on Sweden! We stand together!”

Flowers were also placed outside the mosque in Fittja, which had its windows smashed and pig feet tossed in back in November, as well as a Hagsätra church which had also been vandalized with swastikas last Friday.

“I thought society was moving the wrong direction. But now my view changed 180 degrees,” Omar Mustafa, chairman of the Swedish Islamic Association, told The Local. “Members of the congregation arrived for the morning prayer at 7am and called me saying there were flowers on the mosque. They sent me a picture and I felt strength and encouragement in a whole new way.”

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Demonstration against desecration of mosque in Mayotte

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Mayotte protest against mosque desecration

Le Figaro reported that on 1 January worshippers at a mosque in Mayotte, a French territory in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Southeast Africa, found that a pig’s head had been left outside the building the previous night. Mayotte 1ière adds that a large demonstration was held to protest at the desecration of the mosque.

Update:  Three people will appear in court on 26 February charged with incitement to religious hatred. Two of them are reportedly members of the French army and a third is the wife of one of the accused. They have admitted the offence and claim that they only did it for a bet while drunk on New Year’s Eve.

EDL faces counter-protest in Bristol

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Bristol UAF anti-EDL demonstration

In response to news that council officers have granted a planning application to convert a disused former comedy club (which has been lying empty for the past two years) into an Islamic centre comprising a mosque, community facilities, a café and a flat, the Bristol division of the English Defence League will be holding a demonstration tomorrow evening to protest against what they term a “hate preaching centre”. It will take place outside City Hall, where a meeting is being held at which those who expressed their objections to the development without descending into anti-Muslim bigotry and racism (i.e. very few EDL supporters) will have the opportunity to discuss their concerns with representatives of the Muslim community.

Unite Against Fascism are organising a counter-demonstration under the slogan “No EDL racists in Bristol”.

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EDL to protest against Islamification of small Lincolnshire town with tiny Muslim community

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL Sleaford demo adThe English Defence League is set to hold a protest rally in Sleaford close to a building that is set to be transformed into a Muslim prayer hall.

Lincolnshire Police have been contacted by the EDL who have expressed a wish to hold a protest in the town on January 11. The protest has been announced via Facebook and is planned to be held on the small North Kesteven District Council car park opposite the railway station on Station Road, starting at 1.30pm.

In November the district council decided to allow planning permission for Grantham and Sleaford Muslim Association to create a prayer hall in a redundant brick storage shed/workshop. Members of the EDL have not expressly stated the reason for January’s proposed action.

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Google drops Wilders’ anti-Islam Gmail account

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Wilders with anti-Islam sticker (2)Google has deactivated the islamsticker@gmail Gmail account politician Geert Wilders was using to spread his anti-Islam stickers. The deactivation was probably prompted by the many complaints Wilders’ umpteenth anti-Islam initiative had prompted.

It was the politician himself who reported via Twitter on Boxing Day that his account had been closed. “Unbelievable; Google just blocked the account. It seems Mohammed Rabbae’s complaint was successful,” he tweeted. Rabbae had complained at Google that Wilders was abusing its service.

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Haitham al-Haddad answers right-wing press witch-hunt

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Haitham al-Haddad MRDF

Last weekend the Sunday Telegraph (“‘Asbos’ to silence 25 hate clerics”) and the Daily Mail (“Dozens of hate clerics face being silenced by new anti-terror Asbos”) reported that “security officials” had drawn up a list of 25 Muslim preachers on whom it was intended to serve the “Terror and Extremist Behaviour Orders” (Tebos) proposed by the government as a result of the recent report by its Extremism Taskforce, which was set up in the aftermath of the murder of Lee Rigby.

As the Mail explained, the Tebos would “bar people from preaching messages of terror and hate, associating with named individuals thought vulnerable to radicalisation, and from entering specific venues, such as mosques or community halls – in a similar manner to the orders used to ban yobs from certain areas”. The Mail quoted David Cameron as justifying such repressive measures on the grounds that “there are just too many people who have been radicalised at Islamic centres, who have been in contact with extremist preachers” – although of course neither Cameron nor his taskforce provided any evidence at all that preachers at Islamic centres played any role in motivating Lee Rigby’s killers.

Both newspaper reports named Haitham al-Haddad of the Muslim Research and Development Foundation as one of the “extremist preachers” who faces a ban, with the Telegraph bizarrely suggesting that Dr al-Haddad is even more of a threat than Anjem Choudary (though Choudary, interestingly, is not on the list of individuals who are to receive Tebos). The paper claimed that Dr al-Haddad had been “banned from speaking at the London School of Economics after the university’s Jewish society requested that his event be cancelled because of his allegedly hostile view towards Jews”, while the Mail assured its readers that Dr al-Haddad had “heaped praise on Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, after his death”.

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