‘Sweden’s Islamophobia is getting stronger’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Omar MustafaOmar Mustafa, President of Sweden’s Islamic Association, speaks to The Local about the recent spate of mosque attacks and the rise of Islamophobia across Sweden.

Sweden has made global headlines this week after unknown suspects torched three mosques in different parts of the country. Coupled with a growing anti-immigrant sentiment flowing from the increasingly popular nationalist Sweden Democrat party, the head of Sweden’s Islamic Association says things are getting worse.

“The climate in Sweden is very serious right now and Islamophobia is getting stronger. And it’s not just on the internet, this is happening in real life,” he tells The Local.

Over a seven-day period, fires broke out in Eslöv, Eskilstuna, and Uppsala, with someone scrawling the words “Go home Muslim shit” on the main door of Uppsala’s mosque on Thursday.

“We don’t know who has carried out this attack and the police can’t find a single suspect. We know the attacks were praised on Islamophobic sites, with many people leaving racist comments directly after the attacks.”

He said that there had been fourteen confirmed attacks on mosques over the past twelve months.

“There have been a lot of scary things happening lately, but it’s important to remember that there’s a lot more happening than the series of attacks this week. Muslim women on the streets of Sweden are getting harrassed almost daily,” he added.

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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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One in 8 Germans would join anti‑Muslim marches: poll

Posted on by Bob Pitt

PEGIDA Heimatschutz statt IslamisierungOne German in eight would join an anti-Muslim march if a rapidly-growing protest movement organized one in their home towns, according to an opinion poll published on Thursday.

The survey highlighted growing support in Germany, as in other European Union countries including Britain and Sweden, for parties and movements tapping into voter fears that mainstream politicians are too soft on immigration.

Some members of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc worry that they risk losing support to the euro-sceptic Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which has shifted its focus to immigration and includes many who also back the PEGIDA protest movement – Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West.

PEGIDA is holding weekly rallies in the eastern city of Dresden, and attracted more than 17,000 people to a Dec. 22 rally. A few small marches have taken place in other towns, and it plans to stage further rallies in other German cities.

In her New Year address, Merkel urged Germans to turn their backs on PEGIDA’s leaders, calling them racists full of hatred, and said Europe’s biggest economy must welcome people fleeing conflict and war.

A poll of 1,006 people by Forsa for Germany’s Stern magazine found 13 percent would attend an anti-Muslim march nearby. It also found 29 percent of people believed that Islam was having such an influence on life in Germany that the marches were justified.

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Sweden hit by third mosque arson attack in a week

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Uppsala mosque racist graffiti
Uppsala mosque and racist graffiti on door – ‘Go home Muslim shit’

Swedish police launched a manhunt Thursday after the third arson attack against a mosque in a week, amid growing tensions over the rise of a far right anti-immigration movement.

“People saw a man throwing something burning at the building,” police in Uppsala said in a statement, adding that the mosque in eastern Sweden did not catch fire and that the suspect had left behind “a text on the door expressing contempt for religion.”

A police spokesman told Swedish news agency TT that the burning object was a Molotov cocktail and that no one was in the building at the time. Sweden’s Islamic Association posted a photograph online of the main door of the mosque, which was emblazoned with the slogan “Go home Muslim shit”.

The police were alerted by passers-by, who reportedly witnessed the attack at around 0430 GMT. “The crime has been classed as attempted arson, vandalism and incitement to hatred,” the police said, appealing for witnesses to come forward.

Thursday’s attack in Sweden’s fourth-largest city came just three days after a late-night blaze at a mosque in Esloev in the south, which police suspect was also arson.

On Christmas Day, five people were injured when a petrol bomb was thrown through the window of a mosque in Eskilstuna, east of the capital Stockholm.

Sweden’s leftist Prime Minister Stefan Loefven led condemnation of the latest attack. “The most important thing now is that everyone distances themselves from this,” he told TT. “In Sweden no one should have to be afraid when they practice their religion,” he added, saying the government would increase funding for securing places of worship.

According to the anti-racism magazine Expo, there have been at least a dozen confirmed attacks on mosques in Sweden in the last year and a far larger number are believed to have gone unreported.

“People are afraid, they fear for their safety,” Mohammad Kharraki a spokesman for Sweden’s Islamic Association told AFP. “We’ve seen through history that people use violence as a way of polarising society against minorities.”

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Anti-Islam protest groups have hatred in their heart, warns Merkel

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Angela Merkel urged Germans yesterday to reject a growing anti-Islam protest movement, warning that its leaders had “hatred in their hearts”.

The chancellor showed the deep concern among Berlin’s political establishment at the weekly marches through Dresden organised by Pegida (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West). The movement is spreading to other German cities.

Her strongly worded address, broadcast on national television last night, criticised Russia for its actions in Ukraine and called for Germans to welcome refugees from the war in Syria.

The Pegida movement in the eastern city of Dresden began in October with a few hundred demonstrators, but 17,000 people turned out on ten days ago for the latest Monday night march. It has adopted a slogan used before the fall of the Iron Curtain against the repressive communist regime of East Germany.

“Today many people are again shouting on Mondays, ‘We are the people’. But in fact they mean, You do not belong – because of the colour of your skin or your religion,” Mrs Merkel said in her message. “So I say to everyone who goes to such demonstrations: do not follow those who are appealing to you. Because too often there is prejudice, coldness, even hatred in their hearts.”

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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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Islamophobia on the rise in Czech Republic

Posted on by Bob Pitt

IVCR Czech Controlled ZoneThe Czech Republic experienced a spike in Islamophobia in 2014 despite there being a very small number of Muslims in the country, Petr Zídek writes in the daily Lidové noviny (LN) today.

Although President Milos Zeman’s popularity plummeted in the past year, he is still highly respected by Islamophobes, Zídek writes.

In mid-December, the Islamophobes wrote a letter to Zeman in which they praised his open “objections to the Islamic theocratic and totalitarian ideology.” They highly appreciated Zeman for opposing “the efforts by influential groups in Czech and European society to pursue a policy of appeasement towards this old-new totalitarian threat.”

Leaders of the anti-Islam initiative, which has more than 93,000 supporters on Facebook, have asked Zeman to veto a planned bill that is to extend the powers of the ombudsman. They criticize the current ombudsman, Anna Šabatová, for having defended two female Muslim students whom a Czech secondary school did not permit to wear head scarves earlier this year, Zídek writes.

The Czech Islamophobes fail to understand that the core of the dispute was not Islam and its habits but the question of whether school rules may be at variance with the constitution, Zídek writes.

The Islamphobes say if the ombudsman’s powers were extended, Šabatová would use her new powers to “persecute the critics of Islam and thereby strengthen the presence of Islam in the Czech Republic,” Zídek quoting them as saying.

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Eslöv holds demonstration in solidarity with firebombed mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Eslöv solidarity demo (2)

Sydsvenskan and Skånska Dagbladet report that two hundred people attended last night’s rally organised by “Tillsammans för Eslöv” (Together for Eslöv) in solidarity with the local mosque, which suffered an arson attack on Monday.

The demonstration called for security, freedom of religion and a Eslöv without violence. Speakers included Rebecka Barjosef of Tillsammans för Eslöv, Adnan El-Tahan of the Eslöv Islamic Cultural Association and the vicar of Eslöv, Cerny Erikson.

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