Category Archives: UK

Anti-terror plan to spy on toddlers ‘is heavy-handed’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Nursery school staff and registered childminders must report toddlers at risk of becoming terrorists, under counter-terrorism measures proposed by the Government.

The directive is contained in a 39-page consultation document issued by the Home Office in a bid to bolster its Prevent anti-terrorism plan. Critics said the idea was “unworkable” and “heavy-handed”, and accused the Government of treating teachers and carers as “spies”.

The document accompanies the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill, currently before parliament. It identifies nurseries and early years childcare providers, along with schools and universities, as having a duty “to prevent people being drawn into terrorism”.

The consultation paper adds: “Senior management and governors should make sure that staff have training that gives them the knowledge and confidence to identify children at risk of being drawn into terrorism and challenge extremist ideas which can be used to legitimise terrorism and are shared by terrorist groups. They should know where and how to refer children and young people for further help.”

But concern was raised over the practicalities of making it a legal requirement for staff to inform on toddlers.

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Twitter and Facebook ‘allowing Islamophobia to flourish’ as anti-Muslim comments proliferate

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Twitter and Facebook are refusing to take down hundreds of inflammatory Islamophobic postings from across their sites despite being alerted to the content by anti-racism groups, an investigation by The Independent has established.

The number of postings, some of which accuse Muslims of being rapists, paedophiles and comparable to cancer, has increased significantly in recent months in the aftermath of the Rotherham sex-abuse scandal and the murder of British hostages held by Isis.

The most extreme call for the execution of British Muslims – but in most cases those behind the abuse have not had their accounts suspended or the posts removed.

Facebook said it had to “strike the right balance” between freedom of expression and maintaining “a safe and trusted environment” but would remove any content reported to it that “directly attacks others based on their race”. Twitter said it reviews all content that is reported for breaking its rules which prohibit specific threats of violence.

Over the past four months Muslim groups have been attempting to compile details of online abuse and report it to Twitter and Facebook. They have brought dozens of accounts and hundreds of messages to the attention of the social-media companies.

But despite this most of the accounts reported are still easily accessible. On New Year’s Eve the author of one of the accounts reported wrote: “If whites had groomed only paki girls 1 It would be a race hate crime. 2 There would be riots from all Muslim dogs.”

Other examples of extremist postings on Twitter include:

*A user posted an image of a girl with a noose around her neck with the caption: “6 per cent of white British girls will become sex slaves to the Islamic slave trade in Britain”.

*A tweet which reads: “Should have lost World War Two. Your daughters would be getting impregnated by handsome blond Germans instead of Pakistani goat herders. Good job Britain.”

*On Facebook a posting in response to the beheading of Westerners in Syria is also still easily accessible despite being reported to the company weeks ago. It reads: “For every person beheaded by these sick savages we should drag 10 off the streets and behead them, film it and put it online. For every child they cut in half … we cut one of their children in half. An eye for an eye.”

When the comments were reported, Facebook said that they did not breach the organisation’s guidelines.

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Henry Jackson Society funded by the Islamophobia industry must be stripped of its charitable status

Posted on by Bob Pitt

HJS logo

In the aftermath of the anti-Islam Henry Jackson Society’s removal from its role as secretariat to two all-party parliamentary groups, because of its refusal to reveal the sources of its funding, Coolness of Hind urges the Muslim community and other interested parties to “complain to the Charity Commission with an aim to instantiate a statutory investigation into the HJS to verify it’s compliant with its charitable objects”.

Why halal meat leads to FGM

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Just look at how this legislative fear of offending religious sensibilities has shaded into a deeper cultural impotence when it comes to standing up to crimes such as female genital mutilation, ‘honour’ abuses and the more ludicrous aspects of Sharia. Look at how it has caused us to pull our punches on issues such as the burka.”

Writing in The Times, Matthew Syed explains why allowing allowing a legal exemption for ritual slaughter rots the foundations of western civilisation.

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Huge police presence in Luton greets handful of EDL protesters

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Police massively outnumbered English Defence League protesters their Luton demonstration this morning.

Small numbers of English Defence League supporters appeared at a demonstration against Luton Islamic Centre this morning, which was held at Crawley Road car park.

Despite the group’s announcement yesterday evening that the demonstration was “on hold”, a few supporters from Northern divisions came out.

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Luton Islamic Centre exposes EDL lies

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Return of Khilafah

A Message to EDL Supporters: “You’re being lied to!”

On the 31 December-2 January 2015, Luton Islamic Centre are organising a conference entitled “Return of Khilafah and Jihaad, the correct understanding”. The purpose of this conference is to clarify to the Muslim community, the deviated beliefs of ISIS, Al-Qaida, and their followers. From the supporters of ISIS are the UK based group Al-Muhajaroon.

Luton Islamic Centre has been in the forefront of warning against violent extremism and its advocates. We have produced and distributed across the UK, tens of thousands of anti-extremism leaflets, including 50,000 leaflets entitled: “Al Muhajaroon, the extremist cult exposed”. We have also funded the publication of several books written to refute the ideology of Al Qaida. (pdf link: http://www.calltoislam.com/pdf/Al-Muhaajiroon%20-%20The%20Extremist%20Cult%20Exposed.pdf)

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Rightwing thinktank pulls funds for Commons groups after disclosure row

Posted on by Bob Pitt

HJS logoA rightwing thinktank, accused of pushing an anti-Muslim agenda, has pulled funding for two parliamentary groups which focused on homeland and international security after refusing to disclose its donors to the Commons’ standards watchdog.

In a ruling earlier this month the parliamentary commissioner for standards upheld complaints against the homeland security and transatlantic and international security parliamentary groups for taking secretariat support from a neoconservative thinktank where Tory chief whip Michael Gove was a former trustee, without getting assurances over its funding.

The Henry Jackson Society, a registered charity, had provided an office and staff to organise meetings for the two groups, chaired by Tory MP Bernard Jenkin and Labour MP Gisela Stuart. The arrangement also saw the society’s political director, Davis Lewin, and its events manager, Hanna Nomm, given Commons passes as part of this support.

The agreement was terminated after the standards’ commissioner, Kathryn Hudson, said the society should “make available on request a list citing any commercial company which had donated more than £5,000 either as a single sum or cumulatively in the last 12 months”. The society declined and pulled the funding. A spokesman said: “Our donors are entitled to privacy. We do not wish to expose them to unwarranted funding requests by publishing their details.”

The thinktank has attracted controversy in recent years – with key staff criticised in the past for allegedly anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant comments. Its associate director, Douglas Murray, complained last year that London had “become a foreign country” because white Britons were a minority in 23 of 33 London boroughs. Murray has also been pictured with Robert Spencer, the far-right US anti-Islam campaigner banned last year from Britain by the Home Office.

In 2012 its then director William Shawcross, who runs the Charity Commission, said “Europe and Islam is one of the greatest, most terrifying problems of our future”.

The complaint was lodged by Spinwatch, which campaigns for greater transparency in public and corporate life. It said it was concerned the society would not even “comply with Parliament’s modest new transparency rules”.

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19-year-old released on bail after alleged Koran-burning video

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A 19-year-old from Leeds, West Yorkshire, who was arrested in connection with an offensive video he posted on a social media website has been released on bail.

A video, which was shared to the Yorkshire Standard, showed a man ripping apart an English translation of the Koran with his teeth and putting it in the toilet before burning it.

The police arrested the suspect on 27 December after people raised concerns for the safety of the person who had posted the video up following a number of public comments made in response to it. People also called the police complaining about the offensive nature of the video.

The suspect was arrested from an address in Beeston, Leeds, on suspicion of a racially or religiously aggravated public order offence.

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Posted in UK

Government to withhold full UK Muslim Brotherhood report

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Supporters of Mursi and the Muslim Brotherhood wave Egyptian flags during a rally in protest against the recent violence in Egypt, outside of the Eminonu New mosque in IstanbulA controversial report into the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in Britain will not be published in full, the government has confirmed, with a summary likely to come out six months after it was originally meant to be released.

Downing Street has told the Financial Times that only the “principal findings” of the report will be made public, and those will not come out until January.

Number 10 insisted there was “no change” to the plans for publication. But when David Cameron announced the investigation in April, advisers said they expected it to be published in July and those close to the report had hoped it would be released in full.

Downing Street said: “The principal findings of the report will be published in the coming weeks.”

The report has been dogged by delays as officials and ministers tussle over its findings. Whitehall aides say it will not recommend proscribing the Brotherhood, an organisation that has prospered in the UK while being attacked for promoting extremism in certain Gulf states.

But ministers are concerned that this central finding could anger key commercial allies in the Gulf such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, who some ministers say pressurised Mr Cameron into commissioning an investigation of the Brotherhood’s activities in the first place.

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