Taking the decision to wear hijab after developing a sun allergy, Dennis Queen could not imagine the amount of racist attacks Muslim women face in their daily life.
“People immediately assume I’m Muslim. I don’t mind that but I find the racist comments just disgusting,” Queen told The Express newspaper. “I’ve been called a race traitor and it’s really opened my eyes to the kind of daily racism Muslims have to put up with.”
For those who question the links between the English Defence League and fascism, or indeed the clear parallels between Islamophobia and antisemitism, this is a cartoon recently posted on the EDL London Division’s Facebook page.
It is used to illustrate the conspiracy theory that graffiti featuring the letters EDL, which has proliferated on mosques and Islamic centres since the murder of Lee Rigby, is not the work of EDL supporters themselves but of Muslims intent on smearing the EDL.
Two men accused of spraying racist graffiti onto a wall of Maidenhead Mosque will face trial at Reading Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday, October 9.
Lee Hunt, 26, of Lincoln Road, and Gary Nuth, 22, of Kingfisher Drive, both in Maidenhead, appeared at Slough Magistrates’ Court on Friday after they were both charged with two counts of racially or religiously aggravated criminal damage, one count of criminal damage and one count of theft.
The charges relate to an incident in the early hours of Saturday, June 8, where graffiti was sprayed on the side wall of the mosque in Holmanleaze.
The pair have been granted conditional bail.
A man has avoided prison for posting an offensive comment on Facebook following the death of Fusilier Lee Rigby.
Adam Rogers, 28, pleaded guilty to sending an offensive, indecent, obscene, or menacing message by a public communication network in May.
Rogers, of Kingsman Street, Woolwich, was sentenced to 16 weeks in prison suspended for 24 months at Hastings Magistrates’ Court.
He was arrested in the town on 24 May after being identified from a Facebook entry made while in Hastings.
Update: See “Mosque fire threat man sentenced”, Hastings & St Leonards Observer, 19 July 2013
(Photo from Rogers’ Facebook page)
An elderly woman admitted hurling abuse at Muslims when they arrived at their mosque for their Friday prayers.
Audrey Rose, who is 85, was with her husband Ron waiting for a bus outside the mosque in Canterbury Street, Gillingham, when she started hurling abuse at a man trying to cross the road to get into the religious building.
If you take the view that no website could possibly be more viciously Islamophobic than Atlas Shrugs, you obviously haven’t paid to visit to Bare Naked Islam. The work of a demented New Yorker named Bonni Benstock-Intall, this site reaches such a pitch of anti-Muslim hysteria that it almost makes Pamela Geller appear as a voice of reason.
Last week Bare Naked Islam tried to exploit the case of a former soldier, David Ryding, who died following a violent incident at a taxi rank in Rugby on 7 July. The cause of the conflict and the ethnicity or religious affiliation of Ryding’s alleged attackers were unknown, nor was it obvious what possible knowledge anyone involved could have had of Ryding’s previous military service (he left the army in 2011). The anti-Muslim far right, however, immediately drew parallels between Ryding’s case and the murder of Lee Rigby in Woolwich.
English Defence League protesting at Downing Street in May
West Midlands Police and Birmingham City Council are working together to prepare for a protest due to take place in Birmingham City Centre on Saturday.
Supporters of the English Defence League (EDL) are planning to stage a static protest in Centenary Square on 20 July, whilst groups in opposition to the EDL, are holding a simultaneous counter demonstration in Chamberlain Square.
These distinct and central venues have been identified to assist with a carefully planned police and council operation.
A golfer who carried out a racially aggravated attack on an Asian taxi driver after wrongly linking him to the killing of Drummer Lee Rigby was jailed for seven months.
Drunk Kevin Dunne, 57, was on a golfing holiday with friends when the attack on Shabir Ahmed happened after the driver dropped them at Newport’s five-star Celtic Manor Resort around 12.15am on May 26.
Newport Crown Court heard Dunne said: “You know what happened last week in London? It was one of your brothers who done it. Where are you from?”
Mr Ahmed ignored the comment and asked for his £12 fare but Dunne gave him a handful of change and a 20 pence tip, saying: “That’s all you’re having. **** off out of here, you ******* Paki.”
Dunne then head butted him and punched him twice in the face, which loosened a tooth.
Security has been stepped up at mosques following the discovery of a second bomb in the Black Country within three weeks, it emerged today.
Investigations into the suspected nail bomb at Kanz-ul-Iman Muslim Welfare Association Central Jamia Mosque in Tipton on Friday and one found at the Aisha Mosque in Caldmore are running side by side, police said. And although they are not yet formally linking them, it has not been ruled out.
