Category Archives: UK

Croydon’s Labour and Conservative groups join forces to condemn BNP’s anti-mosque campaign

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BNP stall New AddingtonBoth major political parties in Croydon have joined forces to condemn the British National Party’s ‘distorted’ campaign against a mosque being built in New Addington.

The estate’s four Labour ward councillors, Conservative Croydon Central MP Gavin Barwell and the Tory Greater London Assembly Member for Croydon and Sutton Steve O’Connell, have released a joint statement regarding a campaign they have attributed to the BNP.

It is in relation to a meeting called this Sunday (August 17) at the ACA [Addington Community Association] regarding the possibility of a mosque being built in New Addington, which they say is clearly being organised by the BNP.

In May, the Advertiser reported the Shirley branch of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community were considering New Addington for a new base but were also looking at Addington, Shirley and South Croydon.

The area’s councillors, Mr Barwell and Cllr O’Connell have today accused the BNP of running an “opportunistic hate-driven campaign”.

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Ed Husain: can’t he be persuaded to go back to New York?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Bad news. Ed Husain, formerly of the Quilliam Foundation, has returned to the UK. Predictably, one of his first public acts has been to whip up fear and prejudice against fellow Muslims who oppose Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza or even just peacefully follow their faith by wearing the hijab or niqab. In a comment piece for the Evening Standard, Husain writes:

I have just returned home to London after three years of living in New York. There, I met American Muslim leaders fully at home in the US and among the most patriotic Americans I know. They support their soldiers at home and abroad….

But what I see and hear among activist Muslims in London worries me. At mass demonstrations for “Free Palestine” at the weekend, some chanted, “Obama, what do you have to say? How many kids have you killed today?” on a day when the US government was trying to rescue Yazidis in Iraq. If Palestine is to be freed, it should be freed from Hamas.

Socially, there is the rise of children at primary schools across the capital wearing hijab, or headscarves. This is a sign of separatism, a desire to assert difference from other children decided by parents. I see niqabs or face-covers for women, and British Asian Muslim men wearing Arab clothes that our visitors from the Gulf readily discard. How did we become silent at this physical changing of our city’s face?

Politically, being visibly Muslim is fast becoming a statement of rebellion.

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Elswick racist jailed after family driven out of their new home as they try to move in

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Daniel McStayVile racist thugs drove an Asian family out of their new home as they tried to move in. The Ali family pulled up outside their new house in Elswick, Newcastle, only to be greeted by a seething gang of young yobs.

Boxer Daniel McStay [pictured] and five or six youths started punching and kicking their car, telling them to get off “their estate” and threatening to kill them.

Terrified Mr Ali, who had his wife and three daughters in the car, frantically began reversing to try to get away as the gang kicked his car. One of them threw a pint glass of beer at the back of his car, which smashed showering the car with alcohol and glass.

Fifteen minutes later McStay and two youths subjected another man to a racist attack as he waited in his car for his friend outside Elswick mosque.

As McStay, 22, was jailed for eight months, Mr Ali told how the incident had left him and his family scared to move in. He said: “We had been looking forward to moving in to the new house but now we do not wish to do so. My daughters and wife are extremely upset, we have not been involved in an incident like this before. My family have been racially targeted for no reason. The damage to my car can be repaired, however mentally we have all suffered.”

Newcastle Crown Court heard the family were taking furniture to the house on Brittania Place, Elswick, around 3pm on March 23, ahead of moving in. Just after Mr Ali, his wife and daughters, aged, 10, 18 and 19, pulled up, McStay and the others approached from behind, swigging alcohol.

Neil Pallister, prosecuting, said one of them shouted: “You better not be moving here or we will kill you, this is our estate.” There followed a tirade of vile racist abuse and a 17-year-old started punching the driver’s side window shouting “Get out of here or I will kill you.”

Mr Pallister said: “All of the males were involved in the racial abuse and McStay joined in. Clearly Mr Ali and his family were in great fear and he began reversing his car down the street and turned round to drive away. As he reversed his car the group began kicking his car and ran after him and his family. One of them threw a pint glass which hit the rear window of the car, smashing glass and showering the car with alcohol as they drove away.”

After getting clear of the attack and reporting it to police, the family saw their car had been dented, causing hundreds of pounds of damage. Mr Pallister said: “They were too scared and frightened to move into the address.”

Just fifteen minutes later McStay and two youths targeted an 18-year-old as he waited in his car outside Elswick mosque. He was racially abused and told to leave the area and also had his car kicked.

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Black flag at gates of east London council estate ‘was not an ISIS flag’ say police

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Young Muslims today defended the flying of a black flag above the gates of an east London council estate. Youths at the gates to the Will Crooks estate, in Poplar, branded objectors to the flag – which has been adopted by some jihadist groups – as “racist”.

The flag was removed yesterday for the second time following two visits from Met officers in as many days. It was hung there alongside the Palestinian flag as part of an “end the siege in Gaza” protest.

Today one youth outside the estate said: “It’s just racists complaining. If it was the St George’s flag, it would be alright. But this is our version and there’s this big reaction.” Another added: “I don’t understand why it has caused so much reaction. All it is is a declaration of the belief in Allah. It’s not the ISIS flag.”

The first flag was taken down by local nun, Sister Christine Frost, 77, on Friday, after she suspected it had been hoisted there by “naive young hot heads.” However, it reappeared before local community leaders decided to remove it yesterday afternoon after police visited the estate in Poplar High Street.

A Met spokesman said they first attended on Friday but the flag had been removed when they arrived.

They added: “Police were made aware of a flag displayed at the Will Crooks Estate again on Sunday, August 10. Officers attended the venue, spoke to residents and met local community leaders who removed the flag voluntarily. It was not an ISIS flag. There are no criminal offences arising from this incident.”

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Mehdi Hasan tells Wilderness Festival the ‘hysterical’ British press is encouraging Islamophobia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Mehdi Hasan on Islamophobia in British press

Sections of the British press are encouraging Islamophobia and publishing “brazen lies” that exacerbate community tensions, one of the UK’s leading Muslim journalists has said.

In a controversial attack on his fellow journalists, Mehdi Hasan – The Huffington Post UK’s political director and a columnist for the New Statesman magazine – has claimed that the country’s leading newspapers publish stories about Muslims that they would not dare publish about any other minority group.

In the wake of terrorist attacks such as the 9/11 and 7/7 bombings, the UK press has been “given free rein to effectively target, distort, misrepresent and demonise the Islamic faith and its 2.7 million adherents in this country,” Hasan told a packed crowd at the Wilderness Festival in Oxfordshire on Saturday evening.

As a practicing Muslim and as a working journalist, Hasan said “I love my job… but I find myself awkwardly straddling the divide between British Islam and the British media.”

“I get pretty exhausted of having to constantly endure a barrage of lazy stereotypes, inflammatory headlines, disparaging generalisations and often inaccurate and baseless stories,” he said.

“We have seen in recent years, recent months and, even, recent weeks, a “hailstorm” of press stories that are “unbelievably negative about, hostile towards, distrustful of, Islam and Muslims,” he said.

British Muslims, Hasan pointed out, are singled out as ‘The Other’ by a series of inflammatory front page newspaper headlines. “Dangerous and counter-productive” coverage of Muslim issues, such as the Spectator‘s front page, pictured above, “basically stigmatises all Muslims,” Hasan said – and in particular Muslim children – as violent extremists.

Hasan isn’t alone in his view on the “hysterical” front page – the magazine’s imagery prompted a furious backlash, with critics, including former cabinet minister Baroness Warsi, branding it “appalling” for “stigmatising children and alienating communities.”

Nick Lowles, from the anti-racist campaign group Hope Not Hate, wrote that the front page was simply “unadulterated hatred… we wouldn’t put up with it against any other religion.”

But in the UK and in relation to Islam, Hasan said, we do put up with it. Muslims are expected to “suck it up” and put up with this “awful, discriminatory, hysterical press coverage,” he claimed.

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EDL try to attack Gaza protestors in Portsmouth

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL Portsmouth Gaza protestA confrontation between anti-war demonstrators and members of the English Defence League (EDL) brought Portsmouth’s city centre to a standstill today.

About 200 protesters marching against Israel’s campaign in Gaza were confronted by around 15 men from the right-wing group about 1pm. The anti-war protesters were stopped at the roundabout between Guildhall Square and Commercial Road by police as more officers rushed to the scene.

The EDL men, most with shaven heads, stood on the opposite side of the road held back by police. One man wearing a skullcap and carrying the flag of Israel shouted: “You support Hamas, the terrorists!” Some EDL men came to push-and-shove with the police, as the anti-war group moved on down the pedestrian zone, chanting: “Free, free Palestine!”

Police continued to shepherd the protesters around the city centre as the EDL gang unsuccessfully tried to head off the group. A 38-year-old man, chanting “EDL! EDL!”, was arrested on suspicion of assault after a bottle was thrown in the direction of the protestors.

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EDL receive ‘lukewarm reception’ in Batley

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL Bately August 2014EDL protesters in Batley received a lukewarm reception today when they held their first national demonstration in the town.

Up to 350 people from across the country are believed to have taken part in the rally, which was held in Batley market place. But local campaigners and residents said that the far-right group were not welcome in the area and that the event had been a ‘huge waste of taxpayers money.’

Hundreds of police officers from Yorkshire, Humberside and beyond were drafted in to oversee the demo, which was called in protest at what the EDL say is the growing influence of Islam and English people “treated as second class citizens.” A group marched from the Wellington pub into the square, where they gathered for just over one hour from 1pm to hear speeches, whilst surrounded by police.

Considerably smaller than the national demonstration that took place in Dewsbury in 2012, they waved St Georges Cross and Israeli flags whilst chanting ‘Yorkshire’ and ‘EDL’. It is the first time a national EDL protest has been held in the region since joint founder Tommy Robinson left in 2013, when he sighted concerns of ‘dangers of far-right extremism’ and violence.

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North West Infidels’ anti-mosque protest ‘should not have been allowed in residential area’, says councillor

Posted on by Bob Pitt

NWI banner Astley Bridge Mosque protest August 2012The North West Infidels’ anti-mosque protest should not have been allowed in a residential area, a councillor claims.

Cllr Guy Harkin said he and his Crompton ward colleagues were “profoundly unhappy” that protesters from outside of Bolton were bussed in by coaches to the area for the demonstration on Saturday.

But police said they offered other locations to protesters – but they were adamant that they would protest close to the mosque.

Cllr Harkin said: “People have the right to a peaceful protest, but the lot on Saturday looked like the cast of Benefits Street. They are thugs. Why should a national protest be allowed to come into a small side street, in the middle of our ward?

“You have a demonstration attracting people from across the country, and it struck me it is just not acceptable to bring these people into a residential area. It wasn’t a peaceful protest. It was a violent protest that was contained by the police who stopped it becoming a major incident.”

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EDL rally: Bishop Tony Robinson condemns English Defence League for stirring up divisions in Kirklees

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A bishop has condemned the English Defence League for trying to divide communities in Kirklees. Bishop of Pontefract the Rt Rev Tony Robinson spoke out ahead of an EDL rally and counter demonstration in Batley tomorrow.

Up to 700 police officers from West Yorkshire and beyond are on standby as hundreds of EDL supporters descend on the town. The counter demonstration – called We are Batley – will be held at the same time, organised by Kirklees Unite Against Fascism and Huddersfield TUC.

In a statement Bishop Robinson, also interim Bishop of Huddersfield, said: “I condemn the action of all who seek to divide and sow the seeds of distrust between our communities. In particular we deplore, in the strongest terms, the activities of the English Defence League, directed against our Muslim brothers and sisters.

“I fully endorse the words spoken by Her Majesty the Queen: ‘Religions can never become vehicles of hatred, that never by invoking the name of God can evil and violence be justified. Today, in this country, we stand united in that conviction. We hold that freedom to worship is at the core of our tolerant and democratic society.’”

As many as 600 EDL supporters could turn up in Batley Market Place for a rally at 2pm. Kirklees police commander Chief Supt Tim Kingsman has already warned that his officers will deal with any disorder firmly.

The EDL, which held similar rallies in Dewsbury in 2011 and 2012, says it is protesting against the growing influence of Islam in the town and English people being treated as “second class citizens.”

The catalyst for the rally was said to be the opening of the Al Hashim Academy, a Muslim educational establishment, at the former Batley Art College building in Cambridge Street, Batley. According to its website, the academy aims to “prevent youth from terror and community vices.”

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Ellesmere Port ‘mosque’ subject to racist attack by alcoholic

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Martin Peter SallisA drunk who drew swastikas and KKK symbols on children’s bunting and hung it outside a proposed mosque in Ellesmere Port, claimed he was influenced by school and TV shows.

Martin Peter Sallis strung up a plastic England flag and garden bunting scrawled with racist slogans and symbols, with messages threatening to “burn down the mosque” with Muslims in it.

The 42-year-old alcoholic said he learned the hateful slogans while he was “at school” and from recent TV shows, before drawing them in red on the bunting which he had spotted hanging in his mum’s garden.

Unemployed Sallis said he carried out the crime because he wanted to “fit in” with the local community who he claimed were against proposals for an Islamic cultural centre in King Street, Ellesmere Port.

Sallis, of Sutton Way, Great Sutton, initially claimed he strung the bunting outside the religious building as a “joke” when he was drunk, but later told police he had wanted to “cause fear, alarm and distress to the Muslim community” following the hate crime between June 27-30 this year.

Chester magistrates today (August 8) imposed a restraining order forcing him to stay away from the proposed religious centre for 12 months. He was also sentenced to a 12 month supervision order, with a drug rehabilitation requirement, a three month curfew, and ordered to pay £145 – £85 of which was court costs.

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