Category Archives: UK

Petition launched over claims Camden School For Girls told student not to wear a veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Camden School for GirlsMore than 300 people have signed an online petition calling for Camden School for Girls to “stop the Islamaphobia” after a student was allegedly banned from wearing a veil.

The anonymous petition says a 16-year-old GCSE pupil had been offered a place in the Sandall Road school’s sought-after sixth-form on condition she did not wear the niqab. The niqab is a cloth veil covers part of the face, only revealing the eyes, that is worn by some Muslim women.

In a statement, Camden School for Girls said: “We have an appearance policy and students at the school may wear what they wish subject to any requirement in the interests of teaching and learning, health and safety. Inappropriate dress which offends public decency or which does not allow teacher-student interactions will be challenged.”

But the Change.Org online petition said: “The student only started to wear the niqab this year, and even sat her GCSE exams wearing the veil. But this time, when the student returned to the school, wearing the niqab, a teacher claimed that she could not be allowed to study at the school.”

The petition said the student was told “communication”, “health and safety” and “security” were the main reasons for the decision.

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Islamophobia comes to Putson

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hereford Islamic Society centre

Although the Muslim population of Hereford is not large – according to the 2011 census there are only 360 Muslims in the whole of Herefordshire, well outnumbered by the county’s 560 Buddhists – the lack of a permanent centre for this small Muslim community has been a problem, as it has outgrown the rented premises it currently uses.

Unfortunately, the proposal to establish what would be Herefordshire’s first Muslim place of worship has faced extreme hostility from a section of the non-Muslim majority population. In 2012 the Hereford Masjid Fundraising Campaign’s Facebook page had to be taken down after being subjected to repeated abuse and threats from anti-Muslim bigots.

Despite this setback the necessary funds were raised and Hereford Islamic Society was able to purchase a vacant building on Holme Lacy Road in Putson with the aim of converting it into a small centre for the local Muslim community. In July the Hereford Times reported that a change of use planning application for the premises had been submitted. Again, this proposal was not universally well received.

Last week BBC News reported that some local residents had organised a public meeting to oppose the plan. One of them, Tracy Rock, was quoted as saying: “It’ll be overcrowded, it’s just not a suitable area for a day centre to be in.” Another opponent, Don Allan, said: “They’re going to be praying there from seven in the morning until 11 at night and we don’t really want that. It’s nothing to do with race or anything like that, just the volume of traffic.”

This objection ignores the very small numbers who would be attending the centre – a peak of around 50 at lunchtime on Friday, according to the applicants, with possibly 12 of them coming by car. There is a Tesco Express just across the road from the proposed centre which is open from 6am to 11pm every day of the week and undoubtedly generates far more traffic than the small-scale activities of Hereford Islamic Society ever could.

But let us concede that Mr Allan’s objections are not motivated by “race or anything like that”. The same cannot be said of Tracy Rock, the other opponent of the centre quoted by BBC News, who appears to have played a leading role in launching a campaign against the plan after it was announced back in July. When a Facebook friend declared “We dnt nd a bloody mosc were English not bloody islamic there takin ova slowly” and suggested stealing “the fuckin shoes they leave outside”, Rock’s reaction was to laugh and agree.

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Ministers urged to work with Muslim ‘extremist’ groups

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ministers have been urged to enlist the help of several controversial Muslim groups to stem the flow of British jihadists to Iraq and Syria.

Calls are growing for Whitehall to restore ties in particular with the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), one of the country’s largest Islamic organisations. The group, which once enjoyed a close relationship with the government, has been ostracised since 2009 when one of its officials signed a declaration supporting Hamas and calling on Muslims to destroy “foreign warships” preventing arms smuggling into Gaza.

Robert Lambert, a former head of the Metropolitan police Muslim contact unit who is now a lecturer in terrorism studies at the University of St Andrews, said that the MCB and other Muslim groups could be valuable partners in the struggle against home-grown jihad.

“Throughout the UK, but predominantly in parts of Greater London, there are Sunni Muslim organisations, groups and individuals with either good track records of challenging al-Qaeda or Isis-type radicalisation and recruitment or clear potential to do so,” he said.

“In many instances the government considers these groups to be unsuitable partners because, in the government’s view, they are extremist and do not subscribe to British values.”

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Gove’s former Spad reveals thinking behind ‘Trojan Horse’ witch-hunt

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Birmingham Mail jihadist plotFor anyone interested in the Islamophobic mind-set that inspired the “Trojan Horse” hysteria about an “Islamist takeover” of Birmingham schools, today’s Sunday Times is worth reading. It features a frothing-at-the-mouth anti-Islamist rant by one Jamie Martin, who worked as a special advisor to former education secretary Michael Gove during the period of the Birmingham witch-hunt.

Martin hails Gove’s “rare moral courage” in responding to the alleged Islamist threat there: “we acted to remove the individuals responsible from any involvement in education. We then moved to make sure Ofsted inspections took place without notice, and strengthened our powers to rapidly close schools that did not promote British values”. But then, it’s hardly surprising that Martin should take such a positive view of Gove’s actions – because, as he boastfully reveals, “it was my job to co-ordinate this response”.

Claiming that the UK is under threat from “an aggressive, anti-western belief system”, Martin enthusiastically endorses Tony Blair’s bonkers assertion that “the same ideology that drove the ‘Trojan Horse’ takeover of Birmingham’s schools, leaving children at risk of radicalisation, motivates Islamic extremists from Spain to Syria”. This ideology, Martin declares, “is Islamism, which rejects every tenet of our pluralistic society and will not compromise on its belief in a totalitarian theocracy”.

According to Martin, there has been an abject failure to confront this totalitarian Islamist threat: “Our governing elite, hamstrung by political correctness, has failed to understand or tackle it. Our Muslim communities have failed to confront it. Britain has been left as a weak link in the fight against global terror.”

As is usual in such diatribes, Martin makes no attempt to define Islamism, still less to analyse the very different tendencies that can be grouped under this broad heading. Organisations ranging from terrorists like ISIS to mass reformist movements like the Muslim Brotherhood – along with non-political groupings who adopt culturally conservative interpretations of Islam – are depicted as manifestations of a single ideology which aims at the imposition of a “totalitarian theocracy”.

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Photographer ‘horrified’ over claims Britain First used picture of first Afghan policewoman killed by Taliban for ‘ban the burka’ campaign

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Britain First misappropriates Lana Slezic's photoA photographer has described her horror after being alerted to a picture she said she took of Afghanistan’s first female police officer being used to promote banning the burka by Britain First.

Canadian Lana Slezic alleges that a picture she took of Lieutenant Colonel Malalai Kakar, who was shot dead by the Taliban in 2008, has been posted to Facebook without permission by Britain First.

She said she was alerted by various media outlets that the photo was being used in such a manner on Friday.

She claims that the image of Lt.Col Kakar in a burka and holding a gun has been edited with a caption that reads: “Terror attack level: severe – an attack is highly likely. For security reasons it’s now time to ban the burqa.”

Lt. Col. Kakar was a high profile policewoman who fought for women’s rights and against extremism and terrorism until she was assassinated on her way to work at a Kandahar police station.

Ms Slezic says her memory has been “desecrated” by Britain First and the Australian Palmer United senator Jacqui Lambie, who shared Britain First’s post on her Facebook wall.

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The EDL goes to Downing Street

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL Downing Street demonstration with Paul Weston

Today the English Defence League brought its alcohol-fuelled racist roadshow to London, “to demand the government take firm action urgently about the many Islamic threats to this country, its people, its culture, its heritage and its future”, as they put it. Coming only a week after the EDL’s Rotherham demonstration, it was always unlikely that the event would attract large numbers.

Still, this was a national mobilisation – banners from as far away as Bournemouth, Coventry, Doncaster and Clacton-on-Sea were in evidence – and the grandiose objective of the protest was “to make an EDL spectacle big enough and clear enough to echo through the media and into the hearts and minds and conversations of millions of people in this country”. By that measure it would have to be considered a flop.

Only around 250 EDL supporters gathered in Trafalgar Square – endearing themselves to the general public by lurching around drunkenly and setting off a smoke bomb – before staggering down Whitehall for a rally opposite Downing Street, where they were confronted by a counter-protest organised by Unite Against Fascism.

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Britain First leader Paul Golding in court to deny harassing woman in her home

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Paul Golding in uniformThe Swanley-based leader of a far right political group has appeared in court to deny harassing a woman in her home.

Paul Golding, 32, of Sprucedale Road, Swanley, appeared in the dock at Basildon Magistrates Court yesterday wearing a green polo-shirt and fleece bearing the Britain First badge. During the short hearing, he pleaded not guilty to harassment of a person in their home and wearing a uniform signifying association with a political organisation.

Prosecutor James Burnham said Golding was present outside the home of Munazza Munawar in Hepburn Close, Chafford Hundred, Essex, on April 3 this year. Golding told the court: “I wasn’t there that day to engage in harassment, I was there in the public interest to expose a well-known Al-Qaeda terrorist to his neighbours and the local community.”

District Judge John Woollard set a trial date for Golding at Southend Magistrates Court in January next year.

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Islamophobia gets stronger by the day

Posted on by Bob Pitt

All Muslims out of UKRemona Aly, whose brother Shaizir arrived at his home in south east London recently to find this notice sticky-taped to his front door, has a comment piece at the Guardian reflecting on the rising tide of Islamophobia in the UK.

Aly points out that, while spikes in anti-Muslim hate crime follow events such as Lee Rigby’s murder, the Rotherham abuse scandal and the killings by ISIS, there is “a low-level, simmering current of anti-Muslim hatred regardless”.

Aly relates the experiences of British Muslims she knows who have been spat at, had bottles thrown at them, been threatened by skinheads, accused of being terrorists, and told “you’re disgusting, go back to your own country”.

She writes: “Horrific crimes carried out in the name of religion are as much anathema to the average Muslim Briton as they are to any Briton. An additional burden for us, however, is the warped assumption that British Muslims are somehow to blame for the actions of murderers. The notion that Muslims should feel some form of collective guilt and be collectively punished is a reprehensible one, but it seems to be evident into an increasing number of people’s attitudes.”

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Australian senator shares Britain First propaganda linking veil to violence

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jacqui Lambie shares Britain First photoPUP senator Jacqui Lambie has posted online a provocative photo of a person wearing a burqua about to fire a gun, as Muslim leaders have warned “inflammatory” comments from her and Liberal senator Cory Bernardi are assisting Islamic State recruit potential terrorists.

The caption on the picture, created by far-right political group Britain First, states that “For security reasons it’s now time to ban the burqa”. Britain First’s mission statement describes it as a “street defence organisation” that wants “our people to come first, before foreigners, asylum seekers or migrants”.

Senator Lambie’s post had hundreds of likes and comments on Friday, 14 hours after it was first shared on her Facebook page, and represents a step up of her controversial campaign to ban the burqa.

Senator Bernardi on Thursday renewed his call to ban the burqa under the cover of the anti-terror raids, while Senator Lambie’s has, in addition to a burqa ban, called for adherents of sharia to “pack their bags “and get out of Australia. The Tasmanian Senator has also proposed stripping Muslims of welfare entitlements if they continue to support Sharia law.

Muslim elders have rebuked senators Lambie and Bernardi, claiming the pair had “hurt” both Muslim and non-Muslim communities.

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