Is Van Doorn’s conversion sincere or a Far-Right political stunt? He claims it is sincere and confirmed the speculation regarding his conversion to AlJazeera.

The Dutch anti-hate site Krapuul.nl has also carried the story, (original Dutch, English translation).

This will really rattle the “counterjihadists,” no doubt Geert Wilders is shaken, as everything he stands for has been undermined by an individual who used to be a close confidante.

Far-right Dutch Politician Finds Islam

(OnIslam)

AMSTERDAM – A leading member in far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders’ party has reverted to Islam after an extensive study about the Islamic religion and Muslims.

“I can understand people are skeptic, especially that it is unexpected for many of them,” Arnoud Van Doorn told Al-Jazeera English satellite channel.

“This is a very big decision, which I have not taken lightly.”

The news about Doorn’s reversion first came to the surface last month when he tweeted “new beginning”.

He later posted a tweet in Arab pronouncing the Shahadah (proclamation of faith).

The politician later announced that he reverted to Islam, giving no more information about the reasons behind the decision.

“In my own close circle people have known that I have been actively researching the Qur’an, Hadith, Sunnah and other writings for almost a year now,” he said.

“In addition, I have had numerous conversations with Muslims about the religion.”

Driven by his party’s anti-Islam discourse, Doorn decided to dig in for the truth about the religion himself.

“I have heard so many negative stories about Islam, but I am not a person who follows opinions of others without doing my own research,” he said.

“Therefore, I have actually started to deepen my knowledge of the Islam out of curiosity.

“My colleague Aboe Khoulani from the City Council in The Hague has brought me further into contact with the as-Soennah mosque, which has guided me even further.”

A member of the Dutch parliament and The Hague city council, Doorn’s name has long been associated with Wilders’ anti-Islam, far-right PVV party.

A member of the Dutch parliament and The Hague city council, Doorn’s name has long been associated with anti-Islam rhetoric by Wilders’ PVV party.

Wilders himself is known for his rants against Islam, Muslims and the Noble Qur’an.

New Beginning

Doorn’s decision to embrace Islam has won mixed reactions in the Netherlands.

“According to some people I am a traitor, but according to most others I have actually made a very good decision,” he told Aljazeera.

“The reactions are generally positive and I also received quite some support via twitter.

“It feels good that people who do not know me personally have understanding of my situation and support me in my choice.”

For the Dutch politician, finding Islam was finally guiding him to the true path in his life.

“I have made mistakes in life as many others. From these mistakes I have learned a lot,” Doorn said.

“And by my conversion to Islam I have the feeling that I finally found my path.

“I realize that this is a new start and that I still have much to learn as well.”

Departing from his earlier life as a PVV member, Doorn expects much resistance in his political life.

“The expectation is that I will continue to face much resistance, also from certain government institutions,” he said.

“I have all faith in Allah to support me and to guide me through these moments.”

(via. Islamophobia-Watch)

Austrian Right-Wing Populists Lose Ground

(Spiegel.de)

The southern Austrian state of Carinthia was long a source of inspiration for right-wing populists across Europe. As early as 1989, the Freedom Party of Carinthia (FPK) briefly nabbed the governor’s mansion in the state. In 1999, the right-wingers — behind the charismatic leadership of Jörg Haider — emerged victorious in state elections once again, and have managed to hold onto the state since.

Until Sunday, that is. In a key state election seen as a bellwether for the Austrian general election approaching in September, Carinthian voters delivered a painful blow to the FPK, the state chapter of the national Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ). Sunday evening exit polls indicated that the FPK managed a mere 17.1 percent of the vote — a veritable collapse since their 45 percent result four years ago. It was the largest vote-on-vote disintegration ever seen in postwar Austria.

The Social Democratic party SPÖ won with 37.1 percent of the vote, while the center-right ÖVP landed in third place with 14.2 percent. Notably, the80-year-old billionaire businessman Frank Stronach managed to win 11.3 percent of the vote just a half year after bursting onto the Austrian political scene.

The right-wing populists’ poor showing comes afternumerous corruption allegations stemming from the time when Jörg Haider set the tone on the Austrian right. Members of the FPK and the Haider splinter party Alliance for Austria’s Future (BZÖ) — which received just 6.5 percent in Carinthia on Sunday– have been accused, investigated or indicted for just about every form of corruption imaginable in recent years.

‘Extremely Disappointing’

Among the most notable cases is the purchase of Eurofighter jets under the aegis of BZÖ member Herbert Scheibner during his stint as defense secretary. He is under investigation for money laundering as part of that deal. In addition, the FPK has been heavily implicated in irregularities surrounding the sale of the Hypo-Alpe-Adria-Bank.

While politicians from other parties were also allegedly involved in bribery related to the sale, the reputation of Jörg Haider, who initiated the sale, has taken the biggest hit, particularly given his party’s longstanding pledge to do away with the corruption endemic in the country’s more established political camps. Haider died in an accident while driving drunk in 2008.

Sunday’s result — combined with their meager 8.2 percent showing in the other Austrian state election on Sunday, in Lower Austria — does not bode well for the right-wing populists this autumn. “It was a clear rejection and a … clear demand for a restart,” said a visibly irate FPÖ head Hans-Christian Strache on Austrian television on Monday morning. “There is no way around it. A renewal is necessary. The result is extremely disappointing, but the voters are always right.”

As recently as last year, the populists under Strache’s leadership had been in pole position, briefly leading in public opinion surveys. Lately, nationwide surveys have indicated sliding support, though, with the FPÖ now in third place behind the center-left SPÖ and center-right ÖVP.

EVF anti-Islam protest Birmingham

The decline and break-up of the English Defence League has prompted a number of extremist groupings to try and establish a replacement anti-Islam street movement. While their stated aim is invariably to unite the far right, all they have succeeded in doing so far, thankfully, is contributing to its further fragmentation.

One of these groups is the English Volunteer Force, which was launched in July last year. It shares the EDL’s rabid Islamophobia along with its lightminded attitude to the English language. As the EVF’s mission statement explains: “We are convinced this country is currently being Islamified, This is apparant with recent immigration pattern’s over the past 20 years, Also our food chain is being exploited & overran by the flood of cheap Halal meat being covertly sold in most supermarket’s, In our opinion this need’s to be governed much stronger.”

Yesterday the EVF held its first public event, a demonstration in Birmingham “against the Islamification of Great Britain”, which featured Tony Curtis, formerly a leading figure in the EDL, as a guest speaker. Reports by far-right sympathisers claimed an attendance of 150-200, although photographic evidence suggests that the actual figure was much smaller. The police estimate was 50.

Nor did the demonstration last very long. The Birmingham Mail reported: “The group continued their protest for 30 minutes until a cry of ‘Let’s all go to the Brasshouse’ – a pub on Birmingham’s Broad Street – was heard, and the demonstrators dispersed.”

(h/t:Critical Dragon)

New West Point Study Highlights Threat Posed by Far Right-Wing Groups In U.S.

by Hayes Brown (Alternet)

A new study from a think tank connected to the West Point Military Academy highlights the threat of violent far-right movements in the United States, leading to the conclusion that, while diverse in in their causes, they are similar in their use of violence to achieve their aims.

West Point’s Combatting Terrorism Center was founded in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, and has primarily focused its research on international terrorist threats. Titled “ Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right,” this new report instead looks as the risk that domestic groups pose to the U.S. Breaking down these groups into three categories — the Racist/White Supremacy Movement, the Anti-Federalist Movement, and the Christian Fundamentalist Movement — allows the study to examine the background ideologies and methods of each subset thoroughly, opposed to lumping them all together as most studies have.

Each of the groupings in the study represent competing ideological views, with none of them likely to cooperate in achieving their aims. The chances that each of these groups will use violence also varies. What they share, however, is a use of violence against their chosen targets — be it minority races or abortion clinics — to draw attention to and emphasize their given ideology. After charting out the various instances of violence carried out by each of the categories, the paper offers up several policy recommendations on responding to their actions:

From a theoretical perspective, this constitutes a further indication of the perception among some parts of the academic community that terrorism is an instrument of symbolic discourse which is shared by violent groups and their adversaries. Target selection is thus not based just on operational considerations, but is one component, among others, which allows violent groups to shape their message using violent practices—timing, weapons used and target locations, are only a small measure of the other components which contribute to the shape of the symbolic message conveyed via the attack.

In this context, policy implications are clear. If the numerous far right groups are driven by different ideological sentiments, and are thus also engaged in distinguishing tactics, then the response in terms of counterterrorism policies must be flexible and group/movement oriented.

The study is already  coming under attack by Republicans for not properly defining what constitutes a member of the “far right.”

A Republican congressional staffer who served in the military told The Washington Times: “If [the Defense Department] is looking for places to cut spending, this junk study is ground zero.

“Shouldn’t the Combating Terrorism Center be combating radical Islam around the globe instead of perpetuating the left’s myth that right-wingers are terrorists?” the staffer said. “The $64,000 dollar question is when will the Combating Terrorism Center publish their study on real left-wing terrorists like the Animal Liberation Front, Earth Liberation Front, and the Weather Underground?”

This pushback is unsurprising, given the  unwelcome response a 2009 report on the same topic received. Titled “ Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” the Department of Homeland Security-commissioned report drew attention to the fact that right-wing groups have proved  more of a threat than Islamic extremists during a similar period. Secretary Janet Napolitano withdrew that report under harsh criticism from conservatives at the time, but there is no sign that the CTC will pull this study any time soon.

Another French mosque suffers far-right graffiti attack

A mosque at Val-de-Reuil in Normandy in north-western France was sprayed with far-right graffiti last Wednesday night. Slogans included “Anti-Islam”, “Long live the FN” and “France, love it or leave it”. As the Collectif contre l’Islamophobie en France points out, these days every week brings new acts of Islamophobic vandalism.

Hate message in the form of one of the right-wing’s favorite “scare tactics”: Pig heads and pig body parts being left at mosques and Islamic community centers.

Do they understand that Muslims are not scared of pigs but rather their religion forbids them to eat it? (h/t: Mahmud)

Attack on Thurnby Lodge Mosque in Leicester; Pig’s Head Left Outside Mosque

(TellMamaUK)

This was sent to us by a worshipper at the Thurnby Lodge mosque in Leicester. The site has been the centre of activity by theFar Right, including the British National Party and a pigs head was placed outside the entrance to the mosque yesterday, (26/12/12). This is a truly shocking anti-Muslim attack. Here is the text we received.

This morning (Wed 26th Dec) brothers turned up to perform their Fajr salaah & this is what was found at the entrance. If you’re not sure what it is….it’s a pigs head. This did not deter the brothers at all who still went ahead & performed their Salaah, Alhamdulillah.

As you may or may not be aware the the Muslims especially as well as some non-Muslims have been facing intimidation from some very racist individuals on the Thurnby Lodge estate. So far 9 arrests have been made which just goes to show the kind of people we are dealing with.

There are protests almost daily around Isha time just to intimidate & harass brothers who come for salaah.

We are shocked and saddened by this development which is indeed a discriminating and hurtful act of religious intimidation. Indeed this was placed to cause serious offence to members & in the hope that we will go away from Thurnby Lodge.

Very sadly for those who tried to offend the Muslims, this has just increased our commitment to stay right here. If i may say so, to a certain extent it was only a matter of time before some individuals actually carried out what they have been talking about for a period of time!!

Read the rest…

Fascists to hold another protest against Sunderland mosque

A Far Right group is to stage a further demonstration over the proposed opening of a new mosque.

The Northern Patriotic Front, formed in Newcastle by ex-members of the National Front in August, is to stage what it insists will be a peaceful hour-long protest in the Millfield area of Sunderland at noon on Saturday (November 17).

Police say they expect a counter demonstration by anti-fascist groups and have warned that anyone causing trouble will be dealt with.

Saturday’s demonstration will be the fourth this year staged by Far Right groups over plans by the Pakistan Islamic Centre to open a mosque in St Mark’s Road. The last, organised by the North-East Infidels, ended in violence and 13 arrests.

Earlier this year, Sunderland City Council has granted planning permission for the conversion of a former transport depot into a mosque.

Simon Biggs, spokesman for the Northern Patriotic Front, said he expected “30 to 40″ demonstrators and added: “We will be holding banners and placards and trying to get our message across – it will be a peaceful protest”.

Northern Echo, 14 November 2012

A very interesting article that discusses the under the radar cases of blasphemy that have gone unnoticed in Christian, European Greece, and the common cause that violent Neo-Nazis and reactionary religious groups are making.

I’m positive we’ll be hearing outrage from Spencer and Geller about the attack on freedom of speech (h/t: Daniel b.).

A delicate blasphemy case in Greece

by Matthaios Tsimitakis (AlJazeeraEnglish)

When Benghazi, Islamabad and capitals across the Muslim world were shaken by protests against an anti-Islam film last month, a case of blasphemy in a Christian European country went largely unnoticed.

In crisis-stricken Greece, a 27-year-old man from the island of Evia was recently arrested on charges of malicious blasphemy and insult of religious beliefs for allegedly hosting a satirical page on Facebook mocking a monk whom some believe to be a saint. Both charges are misdemeanors that could, combined, result in up to two years in prison.

Elder Paisios was a monk who lived an ascetic life on Mount Athos, a peninsula in northern Greece that has hosted monasteries and Orthodox Christian monks for more than 1,000 years. Elder Paisios became famous among the faithful for his gentleness, austere lifestyle, and for having visions and the gift of healing. He passed away in 1994 and since then, some have considered him to be a saint – although the Greek Orthodox Church hasn’t yet made such a decision.

Almost 20 years after his death, the Greek right-wing press often invokes Elder Paisios’ name to advance their cause. These publications frequently prophesise wars and confrontations between religions and ethnicities, such as between Muslim Turkey and Christian Greece.

In order to mock this type of rhetoric, the 27-year-old – whose name has not been made public – created a satirical Facebook page called “Elder Pastitsio the Pastafarian”, featuring a funny picture made with Photoshop, criticising this speech and its consequences. Pastitsio is a traditional Greek dish made out of baked pasta with ground beef and bechamel sauce.

The 27-year-old also supposedly wrote and spread a fictional story about a miracle Elder Paisios performed, in which a comatose young man was healed when his mother put dirt from the monk’s grave under his pillow. The story was published on several right-wing blogs as well as in a far-right newspaper.

Golden Dawn’s involvement

The rest of the story sounds ridiculous, but is revealing about the consequences of the financial and political crisis that has hit Greece. The neo-Nazi group Golden Dawn, whose MPs enjoy parliamentary immunity – despite having been repeatedly accused of involvement in crime – brought the issue to the Greek parliament. MP Christos Pappas condemned the Facebook page and asked the government whether it would tolerate such blasphemous expressions online, and also criticised other online media such as the website Athens Indymedia. Two days later, the Greek police arrested the creator of the page and confiscated his laptop on a controversial legal basis, after a district attorney asked Facebook to hand over to the Greek police the man’s personal data. The district attorney claimed the Facebook page could threaten lives by leading to a revolt of devoutly religious Greeks.

Greek social media users were shocked, and the hashtag #freegeronpastitsios became a global trend on Twitter for almost a day. Ten more Facebook pages satirising Elder Paisios were created shortly thereafter, and have been pretty successful.

Unfortunately, Greeks who are proud they live in a secular democracy protecting the freedom of speech discovered that not only is secularism limited in the country, but also learned that last March, during the governance of a three-party coalition lead by prime minister and former banker Lucas Papademos and the troika, the law against blasphemy was strengthened, widening possible prison sentences to six months. The irony in this case is that the very same day that the author of Elder Pastitsios was arrested, the Greek police brutally cracked down on some Muslim protestors’ attempt to demonstrate outside the American embassy in Athens.

Online speech in Greece is falsely believed to be free and unregulated. Speech on the internet is regulated by various authorities – beginning with the social networks themselves and extending to undemocratic power structures. Social and political rights activists know that they can be targeted, arrested and prosecuted.

Double standards

But neither Facebook nor the Greek justice system has ever attempted to arrest paramilitaries who promote their illegal actions online. Fascists, racists and neo-Nazis who clearly promote hate speech have nothing to fear.

Greek internet users and the public now know well that it might not be democratic consensus but parastate organisations that regulate certain rights in this country. The Greek police announced that it operated under the command of hundreds of claims it received from faithful citizens against the page but the concurrency of the arrest with Golden Dawn’s actions only adds to the feeling.

Golden Dawn may be a parliamentary force today, but it has been accused of operating as a parastate organisation. On many occasions, the Guardian has reported, police officers have referred Greek citizens to Golden Dawn, claiming they are unable to provide security. A few days after the arrest over the Facebook page, a group of antifascist protestors who tried to stop members of Golden Dawn from attacking immigrants and their properties was arrested and reportedlytortured by the Greek police.

The latest example of how Golden Dawn can be influencing the state came just a few days ago, when Golden Dawn MP Ilias Panayiotaros asked the ministry of interior affairs to inform him about the number of kindergarten students who are immigrants. The state is preparing to hand over these facts to Golden Dawn, despite the fact that the party has openly threatened to invade kindergartens and throw immigrant children out.

Cases like this redirect the public’s attention to issues of minor importance and away from the important ones. For example, many tax-evading Greeks have taken large amounts of money out of the country, while workers and pensioners have seen their salaries and pensions slashed. It was recently revealed the Christine Lagarde, the head of the IMF, handed a list of tax evaders to the previous minister of finance, Giorgos Papakonstantinou, but he did not use the list to raise additional revenue. But they also help construct the sense of fear and authoritarianism that is spreading rapidly now in the country.

Rage misdirected

As Mark LeVine recently wrote in an article for Al Jazeera, “it’s always been far too easy for those with power to misdirect the rage of others away from them and towards whatever social forces might challenge their control”.

This seems to be exactly the case in Greece today. While certain forces in the police and the political establishment were trying to reconstruct the old conservative front (based on religiosity, ethnicity and conservative values) along with reactionary formations like the Golden Dawn, new austerity measures were being decided upon that will make Greek workers and pensioners even more desperate.

Blasphemy, by introducing a divine entity into human affairs, serves only as an empty signifier aiming to create a boundary of “us” towards “them” and solidify questionable principles in stereotypes of religious and national identities. In the case of Paisios, the goal is to bring together the religious with the reactionaries, against progressives and the left.

The strategy has been successful: On Thursday, members of Orthodox Christian organisations along with Golden Dawn members – including MPs – attacked people outside a theatre in the centre of Athens while the police turned a blind eye. The play presents Jesus Christ from a homosexual point of view. One man said a Golden Dawn MP punched him twice in the face while police stood by. It’s been several days now since protestors and counter protestors met outside the theatre fighting over what used to be commonly accepted in this country: The freedom of artistic expression.

In the latest development of this case the Christian orthodox bishop of Siatista condemned Golden Dawn’s actions and whoever joins it’s MPs in actions of violence and provocation as being anti-christian and against the spirit of the church. But the very next day another Bishop, the one of the city of Piraeus filed a lawsuit against the director of the play, Laertis Vasileiou, escorted by five Golden Dawn MPs. The accusation again is malicious blasphemy. So now with God being claimed by fascists, the church has been forced to enter politics.

The best answers to both the anti-Islam film and the Elder Paisios incidents have been given by people from religious communities. In the case of the film, many Muslim scholars and religious leaders around the world condemned the attacks on embassies as having nothing to do with Islam. In the case of Paisios, a religious Greek blogger wrote: “Mocking someone’s belief is not only stupid but also disrespectful to the right of self-determination. Making fun of someone who has passed away is cheap and low. But using someone else’s faith in order to impose fascism is tragic and endlessly dangerous. Those who have a poor spirit are not always blessed – and no court has the right to judge opinions.”

Matthaios Tsimitakis is a freelance journalist based in Athens.

Related Articles:

-The Golden Dawn: A love of power and a hatred of difference on the rise in the cradle of democracy

-Greek Fascists beating police, people

After Anders Breivik’s conviction, Norway must confront Islamophobia

by Sindre Bangstad (The Guardian)

In the immediate aftermath of the terror attacks in Norway last summer, an overwhelming number of Norwegians assumed the country had been struck by radical Islamist terrorists. After all, that was what everyone – from experts on terror to the police intelligence service and the media – had told us to expect ever since September 11.

History speaks for itself: in Norway, terrorist attacks have overwhelmingly come from the extreme right. But the Norwegian authorities have mainly been looking elsewhere. After the attacks of 22 July last year, many of my Muslim friends would tell me that they, too, had first assumed that these were attacks perpetrated by radical Islamists.

On that day, a lot of Norwegian Muslims feared retaliatory attacks, to the extent that some kept themselves indoors. But despite this caution, a number of instances of harassment against Muslims on the streets of Oslo have been documented on that evening.

Among the 69 victims on the island of Utøya were a number of Norwegians of Muslim background. To them, as to so many other young Norwegian Muslims I meet as an anthropological researcher, being part of an increasingly multicultural Norwegian society means being an active, committed and engaged citizen. This assertive “politics of presence” stands in marked contrast to the politics of their parents’ generation. The erstwhile Muslim labour migrants from countries such as Pakistan, Turkey and Morocco who came to Norway in the late 1960s and 1970s more often than not “kept their heads down”, trying as best they could to ignore the racism many of them experienced, and remaining grateful for the opportunities that Norway had offered them and their offspring.

Norwegian Muslims, who represent some 3% of the Norwegian population, experienced a period of grace after it became clear that the worst terrorist and mass murderer in the country’s history was an extreme rightwing Islamophobe, rather than an Islamist radical Muslim.

These were days in which many Norwegian Muslims, for the first time in their lives, would feel that Norwegians stood shoulder to shoulder with them, and acknowledged them as equals. White Norwegian strangers greeted or even embraced them on the streets. The prime minister and Oslo’s mayor visited mosques. Across the country, government ministers attended the funerals of Muslim youth killed in the attack. At Nesodden, the funeral of an 18-year-old girl of Iraqi-Kurdish refugee background killed at Utøya, was presided over by the local parish priest and an imam. It served as a poignant reminder of the multicultural Norway that many of the social democratic youth activists at Utøya were committed to. In light of this, it mattered little that on various social media, the Muslim and Islam-bashing continued unabated.

But the first psychiatric report on Anders Breivik, which was released in November 2011, displayed a mind-numbing ignorance about extreme rightwing ideology. With it came more sustained attempts to de-politicise the attacks. Many Norwegians conveniently managed to convince themselves that Breivik came from Planet Wacko rather than Oslo West, and that his ideas and actions had nothing whatsoever to do with Norwegian discourses on Islam and Muslims in the past decade.

The mainstream political rhetoric concerning Islam in Norway has undoubtedly changed for the better in the past year. The number of ordinary citizens willing to contest Islamophobic discourse publicly has risen. But popular attitudes often remain stubbornly unchanged. A 2012 survey indicates that Norwegians hold more negative attitudes towards Muslims than towards any other minority group, except the Roma. Such negative attitudes are more prevalent among Norwegians who profess adherence to rightwing political parties. It hardly seems coincidental that the one witness in the Breivik trial who received death threats on the day was Muslim. It is now little more than two weeks since a provincial leader of the Progress party in Norway declared on a party blog that he “hated Muslims”. The response was full and unconditional support from fellow provincial party colleagues, and only the mildest of rebukes from the party’s national leadership.

Following the 22/7 trial, it will no longer be possible for Norwegian extreme rightwing Islamophobes to deny that Breivik was in fact inspired and motivated by their ideals, fabrications and distortions. Nor will it be possible for the Progress party, Norway’s third most popular party, to deny that its political rhetoric on Islam and Muslims in Norway was part of the ideological formation of Breivik, who was one of their dedicated party members for about 10 years until 2006. After a national trauma, the verdict presents us with the opportunity to finally face and confront the hatred in our midst with the honesty, seriousness and commitment it requires of us all.

Europe’s xenophobia and Islamophobia rears its head in Spain where old fears of the return of the “Moors” is manifesting:

Spain: far right tries to exploit opposition to new mosque

The mosque in Torrejón de Ardoz doesn’t look much like a mosque. It occupies the ground floor of a drab block of flats near the main square in this town of 120,000 inhabitants just east of Madrid. But for the last decade and a half, it has been the only place of worship for Muslims here.

“This mosque is too small for us and we need a new site that is bigger and more apt for our needs,” says Farid Bahoudi, the spokesman for Torrejón’s Islamic community, pointing to the old building. He says there are now about 10,000 Muslims in the town, mostly from north Africa.

But local Muslims’ attempts to find a more suitable site for their mosque have sparked a dispute that has pitted politicians on the far right against activists from the radical left and highlighted the issue of race relations in crisis-ridden Spain.

“We’ve tried to overcome ignorance to show people the truth about who we are and show them the reality of Islam and the reality of coexistence,” says Bahoudi. “But instead of wanting to integrate with us, the locals here would rather we moved elsewhere.”

In February of this year, the municipality gave permission for the new, bigger mosque to be built on a site near the centre of town, where two empty houses stand in a small side street. The local Muslims immediately bought the land, for nearly €500,000, with donations from members of their community.

“How would you like it if two or three hundred ‘Moors’ came wandering in and out of your street to pray each day?” says one man who lives on the same street as the proposed site for the new mosque and who prefers not to give his name.

About 2,000 locals who feel a similar way have put their signatures to a petition against the new mosque project.

On June 27th, apparently prompted by this swell of resistance, the municipal authorities performed a U-turn, approving a proposal that changed the planned site for the new mosque to an industrial park outside Torrejón.

Farid Bahoudi and the Islamic community are deeply upset at the decision, which they feel will marginalise the town’s Muslims. Like many other Muslims here, Bahoudi is Spanish, having grown up in Ceuta in north Africa, a city that belongs to Spain.

Torrejón’s dispute has taken on a national tinge in recent days, with the intervention of a far-right politician from Catalonia, several hundred miles to the northeast. Josep Anglada, leader of the Platform for Catalonia anti-immigration party, visited Torrejón at the end of June, and staged a rally against the mosque and the “Islamisation” of Spain.

“We don’t want any mosques in Torrejón or anywhere else in Spain,” he said. “The mosque will bring degradation, violence, hate and fanaticism.”

According to Leandro Ortega, a young leftist activist who took part in a counter-rally against intolerance and Anglada’s meddling in Torrejón, the politician is a “fascist”.

Irish Times, 10 July 2012