ThinkProgress draws our attention to a particularly atrocious example of Islamophobia from The Advance, a local newspaper in Georgia.
Category Archives: Right wing
Muslim graves in Newport cemetery desecrated by racist vandals
Muslim graves at a Newport cemetery have been desecrated with racist graffiti.
The vandals used white paint to write “Lee Rigby murder”, “white power” and drew swastikas on four gravestones at Christchurch Cemetery. They also wrote the initials of the British National Party (BNP), the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and the National Front (NF).
People visiting nearby graves spoke of their disgust and shock at seeing the painted messages, which were still wet this morning.
South Wales Argus, 30 June 2013
Update: See “Newport Muslim leader’s plea for calm after grave daubing”, South Wales Argus, 2 July 2013
Mad Mel not mad enough, Robert Spencer complains
The very welcome ban on hate-mongers Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer visiting the UK to join a disgusting publicity stunt planned by the English Defence League predictably had its critics. Equally predictably, one of them was Melanie Phillips.
“What on earth have we come to, after all, when the British Home Secretary is banning people on the basis that they criticise Islam and warn against jihadi violence?”, Phillips demanded indignantly. “Is this not exactly the menacing argument mounted by Islamic extremists, that any condemnation of Islamic extremism is to be banned as ‘Islamophobic’?”
Dog whistle politics in Tower Hamlets
This is a crosspost from Socialist Unity
Contrary to the right-wing myth that it is being transformed into “Britain’s Islamic Republic”, the east London borough of Tower Hamlets is in reality a highly diverse place. Residents of Bangladeshi heritage comprise 32% of the total population according to the 2011 census, only slightly more than those describing themselves as “White British”, who make up 31.2% of the borough’s population, while those in the third largest category, “White Other”, account for a further 12.4%. Muslims are the largest religious group, but at 35% of the population they are heavily outnumbered by people of other faiths and none.
Geller and Spencer banned from UK
Two of the people behind a campaign against the building of the “Ground Zero Mosque” in New York have been barred from entering Britain to speak at an English Defence League rally in London this weekend, it has been announced.
The Home Secretary Theresa May has told Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, both of the anti-Islamic group Stop Islamization of America, that their presence in the UK would “not be conducive to the public good”. The decision, which they cannot appeal, will stand for between three and five years.
According to the Home Office, Mr Spencer and Ms Geller set up organisations “described as anti-Muslim hate groups” and, consequently, they have been told not to travel to Britain.
The decision follows pressure from anti-racist groups and chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee Keith Vaz, who wrote to Ms May earlier this week asking her to consider a ban.
Shock revelation by Daily Mail: Obama administration held meeting with influential Muslim leader
The White House’s National Security Council has confirmed that staffers held a June 13 meeting with Shaykh Abdallah bin Bayyah, an Islamist cleric who shares leadership of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, where he is vice-president and the terror supporter Yusuf al-Qaradawi is president.
How Pamela Geller incites race hate in the UK
Over at Exposing the English Defence League, Julie Blackadder draws our attention to a recent post at Pamela Geller’s Atlas Shrugs blog, headlined “UK teen brutally beaten by 15 Muslims”.
A week ago Geller reproduced a report from the Dewsbury newspaper The Press, detailing an alleged attack by a group of youth of Asian heritage on a 14-year-old white boy, Joseph Haigh, in the West Yorkshire village of Thornhill, which was said to have taken place “on Friday night”. She told her readers: “The police did not classify this savage attack as ‘racially’ (Islamically) motivated, but the police arrested an 85-year-old woman after she yelled ‘go back to your own country’ outside Gillingham mosque in the wake of the Woolwich beheading.”
From which we can only conclude that Geller believes that yelling “go back to your own country” at Muslims is acceptable behaviour and that her co-thinkers in the UK should be free to shout such racist abuse without fear of arrest.
EDL: Theresa May considers banning US bloggers from UK
Home Secretary Theresa May is considering banning two US bloggers from entering the UK to speak at an English Defence League rally. Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer are due to join an EDL march in Woolwich, where Drummer Lee Rigby was killed. The pair are prominent “anti-Islamisation” campaigners in the US.
Home affairs committee chairman Keith Vaz claims their presence will fuel hatred and is calling for them to be denied visas. Mr Vaz said: “I am alarmed that the EDL is planning this type of march in Woolwich. It is clear that the location, motivation and attendees at this march will incite hatred. Adding incendiary speakers such as Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer just fuels the fire.
“Before we have to pay the costs for the extra policing required for this demonstration, the Home Secretary should consider using her discretion to ban these two speakers from entering the country. A ban should be enforced properly and physically stop people entering our borders.”
The Home Office said it did not routinely comment on individual cases but the home secretary was aware of Mr Vaz’s letter and would be responding in due course. Mrs May has the power to exclude non-British citizens from the UK if she considers their presence to be “not conducive to the public good” but she must act in a “reasonable, proportionate and consistent” way.
Florida professor’s terrorism class: Muslims taught to hate ‘from the cradle’
Jonathan Matusitz (second from right) and friends at The Awakening conference in Florida in April
A Florida professor who teaches a class on terrorism is facing a formal complaint after he claimed that Muslims are taught to hate “from the cradle.”
In a letter to the University of Central Florida, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) calls for the school to review terrorism courses taught by Professor Jonathan Matusitz, which the group says “includes inaccurate information, anti-Muslim bigotry and hostility in the form of hate speech toward Islam and Muslims.”
US company advertises pork-coated bullets
The right-wing US website BizPac Review reports on a new and particularly distasteful example of Islamophobia.
An Idaho company named Jihawg Ammo (company slogan “Peace through pork”) has begun producing bullets coated with “pork-infused paint”. It advertises this as “the only ammunition in the world that provides a peaceful and natural deterrent to radical Islam”.
BizPac Review explains: “The inclusion of pork in the paint makes the bullets haraam, or unclean. Under Islamic law, anyone who comes in contact with a haraam item is then unclean, and must engage in a cleansing ritual. No unclean person can be admitted into Paradise.”