It has been a crazy 2009, we began our little adventure here at Loonwatch about eight months ago to monitor and expose the comical and disgusting world of Islamophobia. In that time we have gathered a pretty formidable team: Emperor, Garibaldi, Mooneye, Danios, Zingel, Darter and the sporadic contributors American Sole and Barbel.

The year has been wacky and sad, we witnessed Islamophobic murders, violence, and incitement, the continuing repitition of the double standard of castigating all Islam for the crimes of a few Muslims in the media, we saw crazy conspiracy theories revolving around Barack Obama’s supposed “Mooslimness” increase, and much more and Loonwatch has been in the middle of it all, documenting and breaking it down.

We have taken on Robert Spencer and JihadWatch, for the past few years he had been either mostly ignored or left unscathed but through our exposes such as Zingel’s devastating revelation that Spencer’s site was connected to “F***Islam.com” and Danios’ thorough and explosive dissections of Spencer’s arguments he has been exposed for the hateful fraud that he is. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that Spencer is scared of Loonwatch, when there was an open challenge for him to rebut our refutations he slithered into silence.

We have documented the Blog Wars in the anti-Muslim blogosphere, the humiliation they had to deal with when we exposed how they had fallen for one conspiracy theory after another such as the insane Gaza mass wedding pedophilia conspiracy. From the Fathima Rifqa Bary case all the way to the Swiss minaret ban we have covered it all, and we can only promise that with the continued participation and support of our indefatigable readers we will keep bringing explosive exposes and incisive commentary on the loony world of Islamophobia!

Without further ado these are the top ten most popular pieces of 2009 from Loonwatch (we tallied this by posting those pieces that had the most traffic on the site):

1.)Pamela Geller: The Looniest Blogger Ever

Pam Geller is the looniest blogger ever. Quite a distinction, but she has earned it through her vigilant anti-Muslimism, constant Islamophobia and hatred of Obama.

2.)Fathima Rifqa Bary Needs to Read Her Bible; Final Word on Islam and Apostasy

Fathima Rifqa Bary’s pastor has convinced her that the Quran commands her to be killed for converting. In this expose we deal with the veracity of the claim.

3.)Anti-Muslim Blogosphere Runs Amuck: Forced to Eat Crow

The anti-Muslim, Islamophobic Blogosphere was riled up and accusing the world of turning a blind eye to Pedophilia but then they had to eat crow. See why.

4.)Geert Wilders Wants to Tax Women who Wear the Hijab

Geert Wilders, friend of Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller calls for a tax on Muslim women who wear the hijab. Where are the condemnations against this attack on the values of “Western Civilization?”

5.)Wafa Sultan is Better Known as Wafa Stalin

Wafa Sultan

Wafa Sultan advocates the nuking of Islamic countries whose religion she likens to Nazism. She also seconds Geert Wilders call to ban the Quran.

6.)The Church’s Doctrine of “Perpetual Servitude” was Worse than “Dhimmitude”

Robert Spencer next to his Perpetual Serf Pamela Geller

Robert Spencer can’t stop talking about “dhimmitude.” In this mini-book, we neutralize the argument by examining the Church’s doctrine of “Perpetual Servitude.”

7.)Temple University Rejects Geert Wilders

Temple University Rejects Geert Wilders

Temple University administrators allow Geert Wilders hate speech over the unanimous objection and rejection of the student body and faculty. (Updated)

8.)Muslim Americans Must Obey U.S. Laws; Nidal Hasan Disobeyed Islamic Doctrine

Major Nidal Malik Hasan

Islam enjoins believers to obey the laws of the land, which is why millions of Muslims seek to be upstanding and loyal Americans.

9.)Loonwatch Exclusive: Robert Spencer’s “f**kallah.com” & “f**kislam.com”

"Islam Scholar" Robert Spencer Exposed

A LoonWatch Exclusive takes a look at the latest scandal associated with the internet’s premiere anti-Muslim bigot.

10.)Debbie Schlussel and the Great Blog Wars

Debbie Schlussel

Debbie Schlussel has been described by the LATimes as a trigger happy anti-Muslim zealot, she is also a pioneer in the Great (Civil) Blog War.

Fort Hood, an army base in Texas was the scene of a terrible attack by a gunman that left 13 dead and countless injured. The gunman, Nidal Malik Hasan, is a member of the military, a psychiatrist who worked much of his professional life at Walter Reed Army Medical Centre. This despicable crime is a tragedy and we at LoonWatch mourn the victims alongside the rest of the nation and pray that they are given patience and comfort in this dark hour.

While we pause to remember them and question why such a random act of violence happened we also want to state that such aberrant and deranged actions should not provoke an emotional response that leads to or encourages violence. It is easy at this time,(already the anti-Muslim blogosphere is in a frenzy over this,) to project blame and innuendo on the whole American Muslim community. That would be a mistake, as thousands of Muslims serve proudly in the military with honor, and many have died in combat overseas.

We await to assess the motives of the gunman, information that will come out in the next few days, but preliminary reports show that there were signs indicating that the gunman was off his kilter and not in uniformity with his duties as a Major. He didn’t want to be deployed over seas, and told friends and family how he was distressed over what he heard from his patients who had been over seas; that and low marks on his performance charts should have been red flags warning his superiors that something was off base.

Again we first remember those who died in this senseless tragedy and we mourn and pray for them, we also pray that the hate that drove the shooter does not give birth to more hate.

Horror at Fort Hood Inspires Predictable Islamophobia

Thursday’s shootings at Fort Hood army base in Texas — which have left at least 11 people dead and 31 others wounded — were of course the “horrific outburst of violence” that President Obama bemoaned and condemned Thursday.

But, because a soldier identified as the gunman had a name that led to the presumption that he was Muslim, the incident inspired an all-too-predictable outbreak of Islamophobia.

News reports named the man who used two handguns in the assault on his fellow soldiers at a base that is a prime point of departure for troops headed to Iraq and Afghanistan as Major Malik Nidal Hasan. The major, who was wounded during the incident, was reportedly a psychiatrist who had served in the Department of Psychology at the Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress at the Bethesda Naval Facility in Bethesda, Maryland, before his transfer to Fort Hood. Hours after the incident, and hours after news anchors and politicians cited his religion as an explanation for the shootings, a family member told reporters Major Hasan was indeed a Muslim.

But that was hardly the only relevant detail about the major.

For instance, according to Texas Senator Bailey Hutchison, preparing to deploy to Iraq. However, the senator said, “I do know that he has been known to have told people that he was upset about going (to Iraq).” Several new reports suggested that the major saw a deployment to Iraq as his “worst nightmare” and recounted how he had treated victims of combat-related stress and was upset about the war.

Military officials at the base and in Washington refused to speculate about motivations or intents. And Paul Sullivan, executive director of the group Veterans for Common Sense, noted that the incident might well be the latest in a series of stress-related homicides and suicides involving soldiers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan or are being dispatched to those occupied lands.

No one knew on Thursday whether stress, fear, anger over mistreatment, mental illness or a warped understanding of his religion might have motivated Major Hasan. The point here is not to defend the soldier or his alleged actions. Rather, it is to question the rush to judgment regarding not just this one Muslim but all Muslims.

It should be understood that to assume a follower of Islam who engages in violence is a jihadist is every bit as absurd to assume that every follower of Christianity who attacks others is a crusader. The calculus makes no sense, and is rooted in a bigotry that everyone from George W. Bush to Pope Benedict XVI has condemned.

But that did not stop right-wing web sites from exploding with incendiary speculation about a “Jihad at Fort Hood?” and a “Terrorist Incident in Texas.”

Fox News host Shepard Smith asked Senator Hutchison on air: “The name tells us a lot, does it not, senator?”

Hutchinson’s response? “It does. It does, Shepard.”

Neither Smith nor Hutchison had any information to suggest that Major Hasan’s name offered even the slightest shred of information regarding the incident at Fort Hood.

What could Hutchinson have said that might have been more responsible response?

She could have emphasized that the investigation of the shooting spree has barely begun.

She might also have noted that thousands of Muslims serve honorably, indeed heroically, in the U.S. military; that American Muslim soldiers have died In Iraq and been buried at Arlington Cemetery; that some of the first condemnations of the slayings at Fort Hood came from Muslim veterans such as Robert Salaam.

“I’m sad for those killed and wounded by a traitor to both God and our country, and I regret that I even feel that I have to write something on the subject. Words cannot express my emotions and the instant headache I received when notified by my dear sister Sheila Musaji over at The American Muslim (TAM) concerning the alleged culprit,” wrote Salaam, who served in the Marine Corps, within minutes after learning the gunman’s name. “They have not yet released further details such as the motive but I will state for the record that no true Muslim could ever commit such a crime against humanity. As Muslims we are reminded that to take one innocent life is as if one killed all of mankind. Muslims are also commanded to keep their oaths when given.”

Salaam is not alone in regretting that, as a Muslim, he feels a need to respond to the incident with an explanation of his religion.

But the conversation between Fox’s Smith and Senator Hutchinson reminds us why it is necessary to respond.

And so Muslim groups have responded quickly and unequivocally.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy group, issued a statement that read: “We condemn this cowardly attack in the strongest terms possible and ask that the perpetrators be punished to the full extent of the law. No religious or political ideology could ever justify or excuse such wanton and indiscriminate violence. The attack was particularly heinous in that it targeted the all-volunteer army that protects our nation. American Muslims stand with our fellow citizens in offering both prayers for the victims and sincere condolences to the families of those killed or injured.”

Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, declared that, “Our entire organization extends its heartfelt condolences to the families of those killed as well as to those wounded and their loved ones. We stand in solidarity with law enforcement and the US military to maintain the safety and security of all Americans.”

Those are sentiments that are worth noting, especially by news anchors and senators who are in a position to inform the discussion of a horrific incident — rather than to inflame it.

English Defense League Protestor

When the anti-Muslim, pseudo-intellectual bloggers and their fellow travelers from America go to Europe they hob nob with groups such as this.

From the BBC,

Under the Skin of the English Defence League

One night in September I was invited along to a large disused warehouse in Luton for an English Defence League (EDL) “press conference”.

The windows of the warehouse had been boarded up. Fifteen men in balaclavas unfurled a swastika flag and proceeded to try to set it alight for the cameras.

The message – look we are not Nazis.

On Saturday members of EDL were on the streets of Manchester

The flag proved stubbornly, and embarrassingly, incombustible. While we waited for it to catch fire I spoke to the leader of the Luton division, a man calling himself Tommy Robinson – though that is not his real name.

The real Tommy Robinson was an infamous football hooligan with the MIGs, the Men In Gear firm associated with Luton Town Football Club.

According to this Tommy, EDL’s raison d’être is to take a stand against the rise of radical Islam on Britain’s streets. When you ask the rank and file though they will tell you they are just anti- Muslim.

Over the last five weeks I have got to know some of EDL’s main players.

So, who are they? Part of the problem with answering that question is they do not quite know themselves.

Youth wing

The organisation is about seven months old and only started gathering any kind of momentum after 10 Muslim extremists staged an anti-war demo at a Royal Anglian Regiment parade in Luton in March this year.

The big divisions are in Luton, Birmingham, Bristol and Cardiff. They are a rag tag group of about 400 self-styled English patriots, loosely affiliated with football hooligan firms.

They have a female division and a youth division. The leader of the youth division is Joel, an 18-year-old who lives with his grandparents.

His father is Irish, his mother Afro-Caribbean and Joel grew up in multi-cultural Harrow, North London.

Police say that EDL members are becoming much more organised

He did not worry about Muslim extremism until he happened upon EDL’s website in April. Now he organises the youth division and sells EDL merchandise – adapted hoodies with a mask you can pull down over your face for demonstrations.

Joel admitted to me that he finds the cut and thrust of street demonstrations “exciting”. He also acknowledged that when there is a face-off between EDL and Muslim youths on the street “it plays into our hands”.

Joel denies that there is any militant undertone behind the balaclavas and black shirts, but as he talks you get the feeling he enjoys the drama of it all.

There is, of course, a difference between looking scary and being dangerous and one of the key questions being asked in the wake of recent demonstrations is, are EDL dangerous?

Threat of hijack

About a fortnight ago I was invited along to a pub near the Barbican in London. The leadership of EDL were meeting some potential sponsors.

One of them was an IT consultant working in the City. They were offering technical expertise to EDL.

During the conversation it was also let slip that someone purporting to be from the Ulster Defence Association had been in contact, interested in starting a branch in Northern Ireland.

This could be just bluster, but it raises a serious question – are EDL becoming a sort of lightning rod for other groups of people that are altogether more clever, and altogether more sinister.

Prof Matthew Goodwin is an expert on far right groups and advises the Home Office. According to him the group is at a crossroads.

Four hundred people that can be quickly mobilised online and will travel to demonstrations is seen as very useful resource.

Within the organisation a debate is under way about whether it should stay as a street based protest movement or something more organised and political.

The direction EDL takes next largely depends on who decides to try to hijack it.

The Family of Fathima Rifqa Bary

This is another great article from Michael Kruse. He combines thoughtful and exhaustive research with insightful  research. It sheds more light on the Fathima Rifqa Bary case which will hopefully be resolved soon. Will the daft anti-Muslim bloggers who were pushing all sorts of wild conspiracy theories and slander about this family finally apologize? Don’t hold your breath!

The Life Rifqa Bary Ran Away From

WESTERVILLE, Ohio — Rifqa Bary saw a girl. She kept seeing her. She saw her in the bathroom and the lunch room and the locker room.

“And for some reason,” Rifqa said later in a video posted on YouTube, “I told her I was a Christian.”

Which she wasn’t. Not yet.

“Wanted to fit in, maybe,” she said.

Eventually she would run away from her home here and flee to Florida, believing her Muslim family had to kill her because of her conversion to Christianity. Eventually she would become for some a crucial character in a culture war. Eventually her story would fill TV airtime, stoke partisan blogs and spark dueling custody cases in courts in two states.

But this is where it started: Rifqa saw a girl. The girl asked her to go to church. So she went.

The Korean United Methodist Church is a brick building with a low roof on a busy road in Columbus. The sign outside says “Welcome.” Inside, on Nov. 18, 2005, people stood and sang, “with fire in their eyes,” Rifqa said, and so she did, too. The pastor talked about salvation and invited newcomers up to the altar.

“I felt nothing but love,” Rifqa said in the video.

She was 13 then. She is 17 now. The story of her life in between is the journey of a teenage girl, the only daughter in an immigrant family, a brown-skinned, lower-middle-class high school student in a mostly well-to-do, white suburb, looking for a place to belong.

What started as adolescent identity issues and predictable tensions with her parents ultimately became a plan to escape. In her mind, it was her role in an epic battle between God and the Devil, in which she was both a prize and a prophet.

• • •

Home for the Bary family is a second-floor apartment with a tan carpet and two bedrooms. The table in the dining room sits on unsteady legs. The living room couches are draped in blankets to cover the worn upholstery.

This is where Rifqa lived, with her father, Mohamed, her mother, Aysha, her 19-year-old brother, Rilvan and her 6-year-old brother, Rajaa. Her father sells jewelry at weekend trade shows around the South and Midwest. Rifqa shared a bedroom with Rilvan. Rent for the apartment: $850 a month.

They’re here because of her.

The Barys are from Galle on the southern coast of Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean. When Rifqa was 5 she fell on a toy airplane that pierced the cornea of her right eye. Scar tissue built up over the next couple of years. Doctors told the Barys they might have to remove the eye. So they went to New York in 2000 for medical treatment.

Four years later they moved here in large part because of the schools. The school district of suburban New Albany is considered one of Ohio’s best. It’s 80 percent white, 9 percent Asian, 6 percent black. The campus with its red-brick buildings and tall white columns feels almost collegiate. Average income in the district: $185,000 a year.

At New Albany High, where last year she was a sophomore, Rifqa was on the honor roll and the junior varsity cheerleading team. She was known as a diligent student in the classrooms, and as a friendly, even gregarious presence in the hallways.

At home, her mother cooked traditional dishes, curries and rice with dahl, but Rifqa preferred chili from Wendy’s and soup from Panera.

On weekends, she shopped for clothes at stores like Hollister and Abercrombie & Fitch, spending money she made babysitting and waitressing at the Chinese restaurant in a nearby strip mall.

At home during dinner, over the past few years, she stopped speaking Tamil, her family’s native language. Her family spoke Tamil to her, and she spoke English to them. When her grandparents called from Sri Lanka, her mother says, she spoke only “small, small words.”

The Bary parents prayed five times a day. Rilvan did not. Neither did Rifqa.

In 2006, she made a baby­sitting flyer that said she was Christian; in 2007, her father found in her room Rick Warren’s Christian bestseller, The Purpose Driven Life.

This sometimes made her parents sad, but not mad, they say — their children were growing up in America, not Sri Lanka, so they understood.

Her father says he told her: “You know, Rifqa, you have a brain of your own, you do whatever is good for you, but you were born Muslim — it’s your responsibility to learn that, too.”

Rifqa was always well-behaved — she didn’t even have a curfew, her parents say, because there was no need. In the months before she ran, though, her behavior changed. She turned sullen and stopped spending as much time with her little brother. She started locking the door to her room.

Tensions crested in the spring.

Rifqa says her parents confronted her about her Christianity — her father angrily, her mother tearfully. They threatened to kill her, she says, or take her back to Sri Lanka.

Her parents say that’s not true. They both say the confrontations had to do with her overall behavior — late-night Facebooking with guys in their 20s and what seemed to be a new set of friends whom they didn’t know.

One night, they say, she stormed out of the apartment.

“It’s my life!” she said.

Her friends noticed a change, too: On Facebook, Rifqa Bary became Anna Michelle Matthew.

• • •

Rifqa was forced to live a secret life of sorts, she has said — to friends, in court files, to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement — praying and reading her Bible in the middle of the night in her room or the bathroom or the porch on the back of her family’s apartment.

Her parents say they knew.

At school, meanwhile, she did nothing to hide her faith.

“She’d read her Bible in class,” said Tony Hou, a junior at New Albany. “She brought her Bible with her just about everywhere.”

It became, he said, one of the things she was known for — her blue Bible, her name written on the front, in shiny silver letters.

Last fall, she listened to an online sermon given by Jamal Jivanjee, a local evangelical pastor who also was a Muslim who became a Christian. She e-mailed him. They met at Starbucks.

And at some point she started reading the Facebook writings of an Ohio State University student and an aspiring pastor named Brian Michael Williams.

In Williams’ writings, evolution is bunk, abortion is murder, Armageddon is near. He said he needed “an army of prayer warriors” for the end of days.

Rifqa grew to consider Williams a friend and a mentor. She started last spring proselytizing students at school. Her father scolded her for it, he said, because it was against school rules.

At home, when Rilvan had friends over, she started coming out of her room and telling them about the Bible, saying they were listening to “demonic” music.

“She was really aggressive about it,” said David Sharpe, who last year graduated with Rilvan.

Last spring was when Rifqa also started exchanging Facebook messages with Beverly Lorenz. She and her husband, Blake Lorenz, are the pastors at Orlando’s Global Revolution Church, an evangelical, end-times group that says it’s “about changing our culture.”

Brian Williams baptized Rifqa in June, in Big Walnut Creek at Hoover Dam park, not far from her parents’ apartment. She cried and laughed and kept falling over so Williams had to hold her up.

“After she was submerged in the water,” said Hou, her New Albany classmate, “she pretty much fainted, she pretty much passed out, literally, from joy.”

Rifqa wrote in her journal.

“I am called to the nations,” she said. “Send me to the deepest darkest places into the pagan land.”

“Lord is preparing me.”

“Enemy is after me.”

• • •

Some of her friends got a Facebook message from her in the middle of July.

“She basically said: ‘My bags are being packed,’ ” said Jivanjee, the pastor. “She said: ‘The day that I have dreaded is now upon me. Pray for me that I would not deny my faith.’ ”

Sunday, July 19, 2:30 a.m.: Her mother woke up and saw her out on the porch. Her mother begged her to come inside. Her father was out of town for work.

Rifqa came into the living room.

Pictures of her in her cheerleading uniform were on the top of the TV next to the trophy she won in 2003 in an oratorical contest. On the wall in a frame held together by tape was a poster with some verses from the Koran.

“In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. Say: O you that reject faith! I do not worship that which you worship, nor do you worship that which I worship. … To you be your way and to me mine.”

Rifqa shut her door.

Sometime between then and 8 a.m., she took her toothbrush and her travel pack, wrote a note to her parents, and left.

She took a right on Longrifle Road and a left on Mardela Drive and went to a small brown house a third of a mile away. The Hopsons live there. Their daughter is one of her friends. They knew she was coming. They knew where she was going.

Later that day Williams picked her up and drove her downtown to the Greyhound station. He knew where she was going.

So did people in Orlando. Global Revolution director of operations John Law bought her ticket, she later told FDLE, and the Lorenzes had decorated a room just for her in their home.

Her mother walked into her room Sunday morning. No Rifqa. She called her husband. He came home early from his trip. He called Rifqa’s cell phone. Straight to voice mail. He called some of her friends. Nobody knew where she was. He called the police.

In her room they found some books she had been reading. Did God Forsake Jesus? The Prayer of Jabez for Teens. Page 55: “Are you ready to ask God for something huge, something outrageous?”

They found the note she left.

“Jesus is my saviour, I cannot deny Him, nor will I ever. I pray that you find His mercy and forgiveness just as I have. Love you both dearly.”

No sign of her Monday. No sign of her Tuesday. On Wednesday, her father went to the Golden Valley Chinese restaurant, where she was scheduled to start work at 5. Maybe she would show. He sat at a table by the window. He looked out at a bank, at a gas station, at traffic on Sunbury Road.

It was 4:45.

It was 5.

It was 5:15.

Rifqa had been in Florida for almost two days.

Michael Kruse can be reached at mkruse@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8751.

What’s next?

The next hearing in the case is Tuesday in Orlando. A Florida judge is expected to talk in court with an Ohio judge to discuss the possibility of sending her back to her home state.

About the story

This story is based on court records, police reports, Brian Williams’ diary, reporting in Orlando and Ohio, interviews with Rifqa Bary’s friends and family, and her words — written on her laptop, said to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and spoken into video cameras and then disseminated on YouTube.

Muslim Graves Desecrated by Nazis

Muslim graves in Manchester have been desecrated, but of course Islamophobia doesn’t “exist.” No doubt the anti-Muslim blogosphere will say that this is just resistance to so-called “Islamization” and from Europe turning into a Eurabia.  Can we expect swift condemnations from the “preserver’s of European culture?” (hat tip: Islamophobia-Watch)

Muslim Graves Targeted in Hate Attacks

October 02, 2009

UP to 20 Muslim graves have been vandalised in a racially motivated attack at a south Manchester cemetery.

Vandals struck at the Southern Cemetery on Barlow Moor Road sometime overnight on Thursday.

Staff arrived at the cemetery to find up to 20 gravestones had been deliberately pushed over, and a number had broken.

The attack is being treated as racially motivated as only Muslim graves were targeted.

Det Con Rob Southern said: “This is the worst sort of vandalism imaginable. The graves of your loved ones should be a place where they can rest peacefully and that is absolutely sacrosanct.

“The families of those whose graves have been vandalised will be rightly traumatised and deeply upset. If we do catch the people who committed these atrocious acts, then they should be made to see the grief and pain they have caused.

“Sadly, we are treating this as a hate crime as only the Muslim section of gravestones were attacked. This sort of mindless, racist behaviour must be utterly condemned and I’m sure the whole community will be outraged.

“That is why it is so important we find the culprits. Please, if you do know who was responsible then call us because this is a very serious crime and the families who have suffered such indignity deserve justice.”

We have this on point commentary by Islamophobia-Watch,

Who Incites Hatred against Muslims in Manchester?
The impact of Saturday’s planned English Defence League demonstration in Manchester has rightly been highlighted in coverage of the desecration of Muslim graves in the city’s Southern Cemetery. But the role of the British National Party in inciting hatred against Manchester’s Muslim community should not be ignored.

In recent weeks the BNP have conducted a hysterical campaign (“Genocide: how Islamic colonisation destroys your heritage”) against the conversion of a derelict church in Longsight into an Islamic Centre. The BNP made a particular issue of what they falsely claimed was the demolition of the (long disused) cemetery:

“The bloodless genocide and ethnic cleansing of the British people and culture continues apace with the latest example being the ripping up of a century old Christian cemetery to make way for a mosque in Manchester. The grave desecrations, being carried out with a large Komatsu earthmover in the graveyard of the St John the Apostle and Evangelist church at the corner of Holmfirth Street and St John’s Road, is part of the re-opening of this nineteenth century church as the Dar-ul-Ulum Qadria Jilania ‘Islamic Centre’….

“These Christian British graves – the only remnant of the now ethnically cleansed British people in the area – are obviously offensive to the Muslim colonisers, who have brought in the earthmoving machine to smash up the gravestones which are being literally crushed to rubble. St John the Apostle and Evangelist church is a real time history lesson of what will happen to Britain unless the insane multicultural Lib/Lab/Con genocidal policies of mass Third World immigration are not only brought to an end, but reversed.”

Of course, in line with their new respectable image, the lesson drawn by the BNP is that the “indigenous population” should cast a vote for their party in elections: “The British voters will soon be faced with a choice between their continued extermination at the hands of the Lib/Lab/Con ethnic cleansing party, or their survival as a free and independent indigenous people with the BNP.”

But it is hardly surprising that this sort of inflammatory language should have motivated some of the BNP’s supporters to take more direct action against the “Muslim colonisers”.

Muslim Women Protest for their Right to Wear Hijab

In Austria, two girls from the city of Graz have been expelled for setting one of their classmates’ Hijab (headscarf) on fire. (hat tip: Devon Moore)

The Croatian Times reports,

Two schoolgirls are to be expelled after setting a Muslim girl’s hijab headscarf on fire during a school trip.

The 15-year-old girls, from Graz, Austria, escaped race hate charges by claiming the attack was a prank and not related to the victim’s religion.

The Austria News website reports that this is one incident in a growing trend of attacks on Muslims and Muslim women in particular. In a somewhat sloppy translation from the German to English we read,

Austrias Broadcasting Corporation reports that girls and women with a religious preference to the Islam have massive problems in Austria. Few days ago a muslim schoolgirl was attacked by two schoolmates, which tried to set her on fire with a lighter.

Now Muslim associations in Austria claim that such kind of encroachments are no individual cases. Muslim women have to suffer sneer and discriminations day in, day out. Roswitha Al Hussein is the spokeswoman of the female Muslim club called “SOMM”. She said that the case of the Muslim schoolgirl in Styria is extraordinary savage, but also psychological violations, which Muslim women in Austria has to accept day by day, are also quite bad.

“Teachers think that such things are just a dalliance but it’s bullying”, said Mrs Al Hussein. The spokeswoman claims that there is not enough support for Muslim schoogirls from teachers. “Sometimes nasty boys pull on the headscarfs of the girls, and tell them that they should remove it”, said Al Hussein.

Especially in times of election campaigns the situation is becoming worser. People think that it’s socially acceptable to criticize Muslims in public, explains Roswitha Al Hussein. She hopes that there is more support for Muslims in the future.

The two girls who wanted to set their Muslim classmate on fire were sent off from school. They did not wanted to apologize for their offence.

Incidents such as these prove that the climate of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim sentiment is not abating, instead it verifies the findings of the Pew Global Studies Survey that Islamophobia is on the rise in Europe.  A worrying trend given the recent successes of far right and fascist parties in different European nations. How long until we see discriminatory and anti-Democratic laws being passed in most of the European parliaments?

The reactions of the anti-Muslim blogosphere to a story such as this has been one of support and happiness, with the crazy wing-nut Shekyermami proclaiming it as an instance of “Hijab Resistance,” while the curiously named Infidels United blamed the victim for her plight saying it was a reaction to the “Muslim Invasion of Austria.”