This is the headline to the Mail‘s report of the shocking murder of a young girl shot dead by her clearly mentally disturbed father in retribution for his failure to win custody and denial of access due to his earlier violent behaviour.
There is, needless to say, no evidence that religion played any part at all in the tragedy.
A senior Conservative has become embroiled in a row after suggesting a Muslim Labour councillor may have got preferential treatment because she was wearing a headscarf.
Tory education spokesman Coun James Hutchings (Edgbaston), who later apologised, made his comment at a watchdog committee discussing the fallout from the Trojan Horse scandal in inner-city schools.
He was annoyed the only committee member named in minutes of a previous meeting was Muslim Labour chairwoman Coun Mariam Khan (Washwood Heath), who wears a hijab, saying that all other members had been overlooked. Coun Hutchings said: “The only person mentioned by name is you, I don’t know why you were so privileged, perhaps it is because you are the only person wearing a headscarf.”
Coun Khan replied: “I assure you it is probably nothing to do with how I dress or whether or not I wear a headscarf.”
Other committee members immediately declared their shock at the statement. Cabinet member for children’s services Brigid Jones said: “Did you seriously suggest a woman got preferential treatment because of the way she dressed? I want to place on record my astonishment and absolute disgust.”
Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King is calling for the U.S. government to begin spying on American mosques to stop ISIS’ recruitment efforts, charging the militant organization is actively operating in mosques across the country.
Although there is no evidence that ISIS is running a nationwide recruitment effort or using mosques as centers to target would be jihadis, King insisted the Obama administration must target mosques for domestic surveillance activities.
“Here’s a thought that occurred to me,” King said speaking to the Deace Show Thursday. “I didn’t look at the population of Germany at the beginning of the Third Reich but it’s probably in the area of 70-80 million is my guess. And out of that Hitler in a few years build something that cost the lives of roughly 60 million people. The radical islamists have 1.3 or more billion muslims to work with. Now they aren’t all supporters. Daniel (inaudible) says 10-15% of them, but that is a huge population to draw from.”
King said ISIS recruiters were “certainly in the United States,” citing mosques in Virginia and Minneapolis to say mosques were the “communications centers” for ISIS.
Several social justice groups joined together Wednesday to denounce anti-Muslim comments made by a state legislator – and the leader of one advocacy organization called for the lawmaker’s immediate resignation.
However, state Rep. John Bennett, R-Sallisaw, said he has no intention of resigning. “I stand behind what I said, and I’m sure not going to resign,” Bennett said Wednesday in a phone interview with The Oklahoman.
Last week, the Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations criticized Bennett and asked him to apologize for his Facebook post saying people should be wary of those who say they are “Muslim American.”
“Be especially wary if you’re a Christian,” he said in the post, which links to a story about atrocities committed by the Islamic State group known as ISIS. “The Quran clearly states that non-Muslims should be killed.”
At a news conference hosted Wednesday by CAIR-OK, several representatives of local social justice groups and faith organizations also called for Bennett to apologize for his remarks.
Adam Soltani, executive director of CAIR-OK, also said they are asking the national GOP to repudiate Bennett’s remarks and those of state Republican Party Chairman David Weston, who weighed in on the controversy last week. “His track record is clear – he has an agenda of hate and a fear of Islam in our state,” Soltani said of Bennett.
However, Anthony Douglas, president of the Oklahoma chapter of the NAACP, said an apology from Bennett will not go far enough to rectify the matter. Wednesday, Douglas said Bennett should resign because he can no longer effectively represent all of his constituents because of his bigoted remarks.
“He took an oath of office and based on his oath of office, he is a representative 24 hours a day, not just when we go back into legislative session,” Douglas said. “How are you going to be a representative representing your district and yet you put fear in the hearts of your neighbors that live in the district? He can no longer effectively represent the people of his district, based on his statements against the Muslim community.”
Christian Democratic Party leader Fred Nile’s latest attempt to ban the burqa across NSW has been branded anti-Islamic and a political stunt.
Mr Nile’s private member’s bill, introduced in state parliament on Thursday, would prohibit the wearing of the burqa and other face coverings in public. It follows similar bans in Belgium and France, and comes after his failed attempt at blacklisting face coverings in 2010.
While Mr Nile stressed that his bill’s text did not include the words “burqa or Muslim”, much of his speech to parliament about the plan focused on the burqa.
He says the measures come at an “opportune” time after Wednesday’s arrest in Queensland of two men allegedly linked to terrorist groups in Syria. “We also face the new Islamic State (IS) terrorist threat, whose black uniforms for both men and women include face coverings to prevent identification,” he told the upper house.
Labor MP Amanda Fazio said the measures were “anti-Islamic” and had more to do with Mr Nile’s bid for re-election in March. “These measures are the opposite of everything we’re trying to achieve in Australia in terms of being inclusive and having a harmonious society where we respect difference,” she told AAP.
Gold Coast leaders say a radical anti-Islamic “redneck movement” is damaging the city’s reputation and putting its $4.2 billion tourism industry at risk.
State Tourism Minister Jann Stuckey last night black-listed the public outpouring against the background of an application to build a mosque in Currumbin. “I am deeply disappointed by this because this [protest] does not represent the people of the Gold Coast or the people of my electorate and are is not helping anyone’s cause,” she said.
More than 100 people yesterday attended the heated protest at Evandale yesterday, where the city’s planning committee recommended approving the application to build the mosque. Placards from the protest decrying Sharia law and invoking images of the beheading of US journalists in Iraq by members of Islamic State were beamed worldwide. The banners included: “Super mosque today, Sharia Law and ISIS tomorrow, beheadings the next”; “Team Australia Vs Team Terror: Aussies rule” and “burqua (sic) or bikinis – you decide”.
Protesters heard former Whitlam era political cartoonist and Gold Coast resident Larry Pickering argue that the dispute was not about town planning issues. “It is not about carparks or proximity to houses. It is about what we don’t want to be a part of Australian culture and until those bastards in there are honest about it then we will not take a step forward,” Mr Pickering said. “Sharia is the most evil of all laws. This is Australia for Christ sake. Why are we allowing this?”
“Isis recruitment moves on from online networks to British mosques.” Seriously, that’s the title of a report in the Guardian, of all newspapers.
We know that right-wing tabloids have a disgraceful record of publishing inflammatory headlines about British Muslims that lack any factual basis, but you might have thought a progressive broadsheet which claims to uphold journalistic standards would feel obliged to come up with some solid evidence to justify such a damaging accusation. The Guardian article provides none.
The springboard for the allegations that British mosques are being used to facilitate recruitment to a terrorist organisation is an interview with a 19-year-old ISIS supporter named Abdullah, who uses the Twitter handle JihadWitness. He is reported as saying that he “believed active recruitment was now taking place in mosques and other centres across Europe following Isis successes and their announcement that they had established a theological state, or caliphate (khilafah) spanning Syria and Iraq”. He asserts that ISIS is particularly interested in the UK where there is “a large minority of Salafis”.
Evidently the Guardian thinks it’s appropriate to give credence to unsubstantiated claims about links between British mosques and terrorism, made by some obscure jihadi sympathiser whose Twitter feed consists of a stream of admiring comments about extremists around the world, from al-Shabab in Somalia to Abdullah el-Faisal in Jamaica. Did the Guardian‘s journalists make any effort to establish that “Abdullah” is in a position to give an informed account of ISIS’s recruitment techniques in the UK, rather than being just some deluded teenage fantasist?
A leading intelligence expert fears Islamic extremists are deliberately threatening to behead a Scots aid worker to break up the UK.
David Haines was paraded by Islamic State fighters this week following the second beheading of a US journalist. A macabre video makes it clear the 44-year-old faces a brutal death at the hands of an IS executioner.
Last night highly-placed intelligence sources revealed it is “extremely likely” ISIS terror chiefs believe beheading Haines will make Prime Minister David Cameron appear “weak”, fuelling anti-British sentiment among referendum voters.
One expert believes they are using the dad-of-two in a propaganda drive as the Scottish independence referendum approaches. Professor Anthony Glees, one of the UK’s most respected intelligence analysts, is convinced ISIS sense an opportunity to weaken the UK via their brutal campaign of terror.
Not content with their annual campaign to cancel Christmas, Muslims are demanding a ban on the popular children’s cartoon series Peppa Pig, because it is an “insult to Islam”. Or so you would conclude if you believed reports published yesterday by the Metro and Mirror.
According to this story, which quickly spread across the internet, a British Muslim named Zayn Sheikh had posted a Youtube video calling for a campaign to ban the children’s cartoon character after it inspired his young son to want to be a pig rather than a doctor. Instead, Sheikh argued, Muslims should be promoting an alternative cartoon of his own creation called Abdullah the Cat.
Pamela Geller was among those who swallowed the story whole. “On the day after a Muslim beheaded an elderly woman in broad daylight as she was gardening”, an indignant Geller wrote, “you would think that Muslims in the UK would be anxious to prove that they were a loyal, non-lethal population. No, instead they’re more demanding and supremacist than ever, now calling for a ban on a cartoon pig.”
Gary Cass, head of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission, argued in a post on his organization’s website that the Islamic militant group ISIS had revealed the intentions of all Muslims, reported Right Wing Watch.
“ISSI (sic) has done us all a favor,” Cass wrote. “The true face of Islam is on full display even as Mohammed is burning in hell. We will have to face the harsh truth that Islam has no place in civilized society. Muslims cannot live in a society based on Christian ideals of equality and liberty. They will always seek to harm us.”
Cass, a former Republican Party official in San Diego who has previously suggested “you can’t be a Christian if you don’t own a gun,” dismissed deportation or the forced conversion of Muslims as “possible solutions, but really there’s only one” – violence.
“The only thing that is biblical and that 1,400 years of history has shown to work is overwhelming Christian just war and overwhelming self defense,” Cass argued. “Christian Generals Charles Martel in 732 and Jon Sobieski in 1672 defeated Islamic Turks and their attempts to take the West. Who will God raise up to save us this time? Will God even intervene or turn us over to the Muslims for turning against Him?”