Muslims harassed as they pray at Upton Park

Muslims praying at Upton ParkThis is the “disturbing” moment when West Ham fans turned on their own Muslim supporters as they prayed just before half-time at Saturday’s match against Manchester City.

The small group of Muslim supporters were kneeling eastwards and bowing their heads in the concourse of the Sir Trevor Brooking Stand at Upton Park, east London, when they were spotted by fellow fans.

They were conducting their Mahgrib prayers at about 6pm – the fourth of devout Muslims’ five prayers a day. It was about 10 minutes before half-time and the concourse was relatively quiet.

The supporters, who are understood not to have made any complaint, had been invited to the club as part of a highly commended initiative to forge closer links with local community groups. As such the sight of fans praying would have been unusual. They were met first by disbelief, then swearing and finally by increasingly loud chants of “Irons”, the club’s nickname, apparently intended to drown out the prayers.

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Diverse group protests against PQ’s values charter

Montreal anti-Charter protestSeveral hundred protesters took to Montreal streets again Sunday to express their opposition to the PQ’s proposed Charter of Quebec Values, legislation that would ban provincial workers from wearing certain symbols of religious adherence at work.

The march was organized by a group that called itself “Together against the Xenophobic Charter” and attracted demonstrators from a wide swathe of the political and demographic spectrum, including anarchists, devout Muslims, Jews and people of many other stripes.

“I’m here against the charter because it’s depriving people of their right to human expression,” said demonstrator Norman Simon. “It doesn’t matter if you’re an anarchist, a separatist, a Jew, a Muslim, a Canadian, a Communist, I don’t care. But what I do care about is deprivation of rights. There’s the right to choose in this world and the Marois government isn’t honouring that, so we have to insist on co-existence,” said Simon.

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Bournemouth EDL supporters make arson threats against Muslim shop

Bournemouth EDL anti-halal Facebook post

Dorset Police are investigating supporters of the far-right English Defence League (EDL) for allegedly threatening to “torch” a halal butcher shop in Bournemouth. The threats were made earlier this month on the Facebook page “EDL Bournemouth English Defence League”, under a photo of the shop, Maisha Cash and Carry, on Wimborne Road.

The page administrator states, “We will be sending them a msg that they are not welcome in Bournemouth,” and calls for “peaceful” opposition to the sale of halal meat. Comments below the post included apparent calls for arson. ‘Adrian Staff’ wrote, “Fuck this!!!! Need to torch it….” ‘Mark Fenton’ commented, “burn it out”. Both comments received ‘likes’ from other users.

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Politicians blamed for public hysteria over veil

A woman who wears the niqab has accused UK politicians of whipping up public hysteria against the Islamic face veil.

Sahar al Faifi says comments such as those by Tory MP Sarah Wollaston, Liberal Democrat MP Jeremy Browne and Labour MP Jack Straw are irresponsible and make women who cover their face a target of anti-Muslim sentiment.

The 28-year-old said: “We are the victims in the street because of these politicians who made it so normal and so ok to be anti-Muslim.”

When asked about the kind of abuse she had received, Ms al Faifi said: “They will call me funny stuff like ninja or even Batman, or say go back to your country. Sometimes it’s physical and they’ll try to take it off.”

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Joel Hayward on libel victory against Mail on Sunday

A professor at an Abu Dhabi university has won a libel claim against a British newspaper that called him the “Ayatollah of the RAF”.

Dr Joel Hayward, a defence and securities expert who teaches at Khalifa University, successfully sued the Mail on Sunday over the article from 2011. At the time, Prof Hayward – a Muslim convert – was the head of studies at the Royal Air Force (RAF) pilot training college in the UK.

The article, which has since been removed from the Mail Online website, claimed Prof Hayward encouraged students to take a “softly-softly line” when writing about Islamist terrorism, according to the New Zealand-born academic. He took legal action to set the record straight.

“I just felt like there was enough of this Islam-bashing,” he said. “Islam is a beautiful religion, it’s a wonderful thing. The characterisation by the Mail of my faith was just so inaccurate. It presented Islam as something so extreme and dark. I thought that if I let this pass, they’ll continue to attack everyone who embraces Islam.”

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Likud municipal campaigns ordered to drop racist ads

Likud anti-mosque posterThe Central Election Committee on Thursday banned campaign ads used by Likud candidates in the Carmiel and Tel Aviv municipal elections, saying they were racist and offensive.

Central Election Committee Chairman Supreme Court Justice Salim Joubran ordered the candidates to stop the campaigns immediately, deeming them “racist and almost certain to hurt the feelings of Arab Israelis and disrupt public order.”

Likud campaign ads in Jaffa [see illustration] said “Silence the Muezzin in Jaffa? Only the Likud can.” Another ad showed a picture of Jaffa with the slogan “Returning Jaffa to Israel.”

In Carmiel Likud ran a campaign against building a fictitious mosque. As part of the campaign, numerous residents received a phone call from a man with an Arab accent who introduced himself as “Nabil” and invited them to a cornerstone laying ceremony for a mosque in the town. The Likud’s campaign jingle played in the background.

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Polish Jews say mosque torching reminiscent of Kristallnacht

POLAND-CRIME-ARSON-ISLAM-FOOD-ANIMAL-EID-RELIGIONRepresentatives of the Jewish community of Gdansk, Poland, said the torching of a mosque had “frightening connotations” of the Nazi-inspired Kristallnacht pogroms against Jews.

The association was inescapable, three of the city’s Jewish leaders wrote in a statement Thursday. “On the eve of the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht, during which synagogues were burned in the Free City of Gdansk, the burning of the mosque must bear frightening connotations,” the statement said.

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Animal rights groups want Mufti punished for illegal halal slaughter

Tomasz Miskiewicz at BohonikiThree of Poland’s animal rights groups have filed complaints at a prosecutor’s office after the country’s Chief Mufti allegedly broke the law by slaughtering a lamb without prior stunning.

Chief Mufti Tomasz Miskiewicz has admitted to carrying out the “ritual slaughter” on Tuesday in the village of Bohoniki, north east Poland, in spite of a state-imposed ban on the practice. “I will not evade responsibility for this and I am at the disposal of prosecutors,” he has said. “I carried out [the slaughter] myself, maintaining the culture and heritage of the Polish Tatars and Muslims,” he added.

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CCIF takes on L’Express

Express front coverThis was the front of last week’s edition of the French weekly L’Express. The Collectif contre l’Islamophobie en France points out that it was just the latest in a series of shock covers about Islam, and not only in l’Express.

It shows a shop window with mannequins with headscarves, accompanied by the headline “Islam, the danger of communalism”, which as the CCIF points out suggests that the mere act of wearing the hijab represents a threat to social cohesion.

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Jacob Bender is first Jew to lead chapter of Muslim advocacy group CAIR

Jacob BenderJacob Bender is set to be the voice of Philadelphia-area Muslims, to take on discrimination they encounter in workplace and in the public sphere, and to fight expressions of hate. And his Jewish faith, Bender believes, can only help him do the job effectively.

“The Muslim community is under attack from Islamophobic forces, and it is the obligation and responsibility of people of good will to stand up and say this is a bigoted attack,” Bender said. “This is fully in keeping with my life goals.”

The Council on American Islamic Relations’ Philadelphia branch announced the appointment of Bender as its executive director October 15. Bender is the first Jew, and the first non-Muslim, to serve as director of a CAIR branch.

“The needs of the Muslim community are really the needs of any minority community in the United States,” said Iftekhar Hussein, chairman of CAIR-Philadelphia’s board of directors. “Jacob, being Jewish, understands that from his own background.”

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