Queensland’s Muslim women targeted amid terrorism hysteria

Despite pleas for calm from the Queensland Premier and senior police, Muslims – particularly women – have been targeted in a series of hate attacks.

The Sunday Mail can reveal Muslim women are being singled out, including one victim who had coffee thrown in her face while she was stopped at traffic lights south of Brisbane. The woman said a man in a car pulled up beside her and callously doused her in coffee before driving off along Beenleigh Rd. “I was terrified,” she said. “I feel unsafe. I feel like a stranger in my own country.”

Other Muslim women have been abused and threatened, with one told to take off her headscarf – or hijab – at West End by a man who wanted to burn it. The women did not want to be identified, and all believe they are “collateral damage” from recent police anti-terrorism raids which have fuelled fear and suspicion across the nation.

Sarah, 30, said she’d been waiting outside a shop in Logan Rd at Underwood with a 12-year-old girl when insults were hurled at her by a man riding past on a pushbike. “He yelled f— jihad, f— off, go back home you c— and continued to verbally abuse us,” she said. In the next 20 minutes she was abused twice by other men. “It’s quite frightening to hear such vile language and hatred. I was fearful,” she said.

Stacey, 27, said she had copped offensive insults online. “I’m a seventh generation Australian,” she said. “My family are as Australian as you can get and I’m scared.”

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

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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PUP senator Jacqui Lambie says sharia law involves terrorism

Palmer United Party Senator Jacqui Lambie has struggled to explain her understanding of sharia law, as she reiterated her controversial calls for believers in the Islamic framework to leave Australia.

The Tasmanian Senator told ABC TV’s Insiders program she stood by her statement earlier this week that supporters of sharia law should “pack their bags and get out of here”. However, asked by host Barrie Cassidy to explain what she understood the concept to mean, Senator Lambie paused and appeared to stumble over her words.

“Well I think, um, when it comes to sharia law, um, you know, to me, it’s um, it’s uh, it obviously involves terrorism, it involves a power um that’s not a healthy power,” she said. “I just think sharia law you get it mixed up … if you’re going to be a supporter of sharia law, and you’re not going to support our constitution and an allegiance to our constitution and Australian law, then um …”

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The EDL goes to Downing Street

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

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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Geller’s latest anti-Islam hate campaign coming to New York buses, subway stations

Geller MTA anti-Islam ad (1)

An incendiary ad campaign that includes an image of American journalist James Foley just before his beheading in Syria is coming to 100 MTA buses and two subway stations.

The ads, paid for by flame-throwing blogger Pamela Geller, at a cost of $100,000, are intended as an “education campaign” to warn of the “problem with jihad” and Islamic sharia law, Geller said.

In one of the placard ads, Foley appears handcuffed, on his knees, next to the hooded, black-clad jihadist who is about to execute him — an image from the video released by the group Islamic State, which boasted of the execution.

The ad also contains a second photo, of the Briton suspected by some of being Foley’s killer. The Brit is shown in happier times, before he allegedly joined ISIS. “Yesterday’s moderate is today’s headline,” the placard says.

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Islamophobia gets stronger by the day

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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‘Evil’ painted on Queensland mosque

Mareeba mosque graffiti

Vandals have spray painted the word “Evil” across a far north Queensland mosque – an act the local mayor describes as deeply saddening. Worshippers arrived at the mosque in Mareeba, inland from Cairns, on Friday morning to find their place of worship defaced with the yellow paint.

Mayor Tom Gilmore told AAP the mosque had been part of the community since the 1950s.

“This is entirely unacceptable behaviour by anybody in this community,” he said soon after visiting the site on Friday. The thing that is deeply saddening is that it has been in this community since the mid-fifties. I don’t think it’s ever been defaced before in that time.”

Mr Gilmore said a large group of “highly respected” Muslims had lived in the community since the 1920s.

He said the graffiti was visible from the street.

Mr Gilmore said he understood a series of anti-terrorism raids in Queensland and NSW had left people frightened, but targeting innocent people was not the answer. He said Mareeba’s Muslim community was highly respected, honest and hard-working and didn’t deserve to be connected to extremist groups.

“I won’t tolerate that connection, it’s just unfair,” he said. “The events of the last six weeks internationally have been horrifying, it’s horrifying stuff, and I’m quite sure the Muslims in our community are equally as horrified.”

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Australian senator shares Britain First propaganda linking veil to violence

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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