Muslim patrols could become terrorist threat, Quilliam warns

An interesting feature of the recent controversy over the so-called “Muslim patrol” in Tower Hamlets was that some of those you might have expected to seize on the case as an excuse for a bit of anti-Muslim scaremongering balked at resuming their campaign against the Islamist menace on the basis of such flimsy evidence.

Ted Jeory of the Sunday Express admitted that he had suffered the “uncomfortable experience” of agreeing with Islamophobia Watch that the issue had been “blown out of all proportion”, in a way that “would only serve to inflame the far right”. And nobody familiar with Jeory’s journalistic record could accuse him of failing to hype up the mythical threat of Islamism in east London. Even the Telegraph‘s Andrew Gilligan, of “Islamic Republic of Tower Hamlets” notoriety, claimed that he was offered the story but “didn’t use it because I wasn’t sure whether a few kids on YouTube had national importance”.

As a result the story was broken by The Commentator, a hardline right-wing blog linked to the neocon Henry Jackson Society, which has an established record of whipping up Islamophobia. It was immediately taken up by the mainstream right-wing press, including the Mail and the Sun. Trevor Kavanagh contributed a comment piece to the latter paper in which he denounced the supposedly widespread problem of “hooded gangs” who “roamed Muslim-populated suburbs ordering women to cover up and confiscating liquor”. Kavanagh went further, warning Sun readers that “thousands of young British-born Muslims have been radicalised – some of them trained in bomb-making and terror tactics in the badlands of Pakistan”, and he threw in a reference to Mali and Algeria for good measure. At Kavanagh’s hands, “a few kids on YouTube” had become part of the “global threat” of al-Qaeda-inspired terrorism.

Perhaps the Murdochs were so impressed by Kavanagh’s attempt to portray the “Muslim patrol” stunt as part of an international terrorist movement that they thought the same message should be conveyed to readers of one of their more upmarket publications. At any rate, yesterday the Times published an equally ludicrous article by Maajid Nawaz of the Quilliam Foundation under the heading “Muslim patrols are a sign of things to come”. Not content with describing the isolated actions of a few deluded Muslim youth in Tower Hamlets as comparable to ”Hitler’s Brownshirts”, Nawaz went on to claim, on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, that there was a real danger that their ranks might be augmented by Islamist fighters returning from Syria – “the Muslim patrols could become a lot more dangerous and, perhaps willing to maim or kill if they are joined by battle-hardened jihadis”. Faced with such idiocy in what purports to be a serious newspaper, you can only rub your eyes in disbelief.

Nawaz’s motive for promoting this nonsense isn’t difficult to identify – he makes a good living out of wildly exaggerating the role of marginal groups of Islamist extremists and then presenting Quilliam as the only organisation with the specialist knowledge required to counter them effectively. But here he surely runs the risk of reducing himself to an object of ridicule, even among those who share much of his anti-Islamist world-view.

However, this didn’t prevent the Telegraph from publishing a report based on the Times piece in which Nawaz’s fantasies were uncritically repeated (“Muslim patrols could become more prevalent and more violent, warns anti-extremist”), and this report was in turn reproduced at Harry’s Place. When even the likes of Andrew Gilligan and Ted Jeory have recognised that association with the “Muslim patrols” hysteria would further damage their own already limited credibility, you can only conclude that other sections of the Islamophobia industry have entirely taken leave of their senses.

Read the rest…

Isn’t the East End described by Islamophobes as an Islamic ghetto, a “no-go zone,” a “shariah zone” or some other type of nonsense?

Muslims in East End hold Xmas party—for their Christian neighbours

by Mike Brooke (EastLondonAdvertiser)

The local authority’s housing wing, Tower Hamlets Homes, asked families on housing estates in Bethnal Green and Wapping to help organise parties to improve interfaith understanding.

Groups run by non-Muslims organised three Eid parties earlier this year, with residents from all backgrounds joining in.

Muslim groups returned the invitation this week with Christmas celebrations, when the Dorset Community Association in Wapping held a joint event with Bethnal Green’s Columbia Tenants’ Association.

Youth worker Angela Brown, who held the shindig in Wapping, said: “We had 200 children and their families joining Santa which made it a Christmas to remember.”

Tower Hamlets Homes put up the cash for the Christmas beano as part of its Regeneration programme aimed at bringing different East End neighbourhood and ethnic communities together.

Advertising Islamophobia Hits London Railways

An estimated one billion passengers are carried on railway journeys each year. In the UK, despite spiralling costs, it’s an important part of everyday life for many people.

According to ONS figures, the Office of Rail Regulation states that total private investment in the railway industry has plummeted from £881m six years ago to £503m in 2011/12. Passenger journeys increased 7.8% in the last 12 months and by 27.5% over the last five years. In particular, London and South East services saw the highest increase last year of 8.3%. Rail audiences are affluent and influential with 75% ABC1 and 57% Business Decision Makers.

All of this makes a great case for advertising on the railways which comes in various flavours; outdoor digital formats with Transvision (huge LED screens), posters and billboards. As you might expect, the value of this advertising space is significant. In 2009, Primesight purchased Titan Outdoor in a multi-million pound deal, which included half of its assets made up of its Network Rail contract – the largest stock of roadside billboards in the country. The interior advertising assets of the railway is another story altogether.

In 2010, Network Rail renewed its existing contract with JCDecaux for advertising on the interiors of its railway stations – a five year deal valued at £160m. That deal included all rail-facing ad sites across Network Rail and the 18 Network Rail-managed stations.

Who exactly is JCDecaux? Well, they are an extraordinarily large advertising organisation. JCDecaux is unashamedly the top global company in “street furniture” (what we might call advertising panels), transport advertising with 175 airports and 280 contracts in metros, buses, trains and tramways, European billboards and outdoor advertising in the Asia-Pacific region. To put this in to some kind of context, those areas alone amount to more than 1,000,000 advertising panels in more than 55 countries. With revenues in 2010 of almost €2.5bn, what austerity afflicted industry is this you may ask. Part of the reason is JCDecaux’s incredible ability to negotiatemassive advertising contracts - often 15 years long – in France, Hong Kong, Netherlands and many other places. In 2012, the OFT came down hard on JCDecaux for sharp practices in the UK and for lock-out clauses which resulted in a raft of measures to change their business practices. This year they managed to force LOCOG to remove their billboards and have their questionable Paddy Power billboards returned around the Olympic site.

In the UK, an organisation called the Quran Project planned to place posters in five major London Railway Stations – Waterloo, Victoria, Liverpool St, Marylebone and St Pancras International during 10 – 24 December 2012. The chairman of the UK registered charity, Dr Wleed Haq tells me the billboard campaign was designed to tackle the causes of Islamophobia in the UK by distributing 1,000 free copies of the English translation of the Quran to non-Muslims. To date, the charity has distributed 50,000 copies since its formation two years ago. A similar campaign called The Rail Dawah Campaign 2011 was run across across Midland Railway stations (also Network Rail) in December 2011 without objection or complaint.

The London railway posters went up at different times between Mon – Thurs last week. The campaign had been six months in the planning and the sites were reserved by JCDecaux who had approved the campaign, at a cost of £30,000, two thirds of which was raised online with JustGiving, a popular crowd funding platform.

On Monday, 17 December, these billboards advertising free Qurans, were taken down. I’ve seen an email from JCDecaux which states the following (my emphasis added):

“…rail companies have pointed out that this is not acceptable and we should not have done so. As a consequence, we began the process of removing your posters from the rail stations over the weekend…”

The fact remains that both JCDecaux and Network Rail have allowed similar campaigns for other religious groups over the last two years, in particular The Trinitarian Bible Society and the Alpha Course, who have advertised widely including at Marylebone station (operated by Chiltern Railways).

At Marylebone, the Quran Project poster was taken down after only one day. As it currently stands, the rail companies, Network Rail and JCDecaux cannot sustain any claim in relation to a policy of no religious advertisement on their assets.

The point of complaint may well be with JCDecaux, for whom business has been brisk with revenue for the first nine months of 2012 already totalling €1,876.2m. Like every user friendly, cut-throat global organisation, JCDecaux has an ‘ethics policy‘ and even a ‘Group Ethics Committee’. The policy states that the committee is chaired by Chairman of the Audit Committee, one Xavier de Sarrau. It may even be that the complaint from the Quran Project may reach Monsieur de Sarrau. Sadly, this may be difficult. Xavier de Sarrau is stable mate and closely allied to Sarkozy and the Fouquet powerbase, he has accompanied the former President on more than one occasion, is listed as a friend and even went to the White House dinner with him. It’s probably fairly safe to assume not only his political persuasion but also his view of multiculturalism, let alone the overt presence of Islam in society.

This in itself must raise questions about how we go about tackling pandemic Islamophobia, if policies and those who police them are not only beyond reproach but advocates of such prejudice. In the end we have the irony that an anti-Islamophobia campaign has been entirely derailed by precisely the potentially discriminatory policies of Network Rail, JCDecaux and the railway companies, which they are attempting to challenge in the first place.

At a time when 74% of the British public claim that they know ‘nothing or next to nothing about Islam’ and furthermore that 64% of the British public claim that what they do know is solely acquired through the media; I’m left to reflect on the words of Franklin D. Roosevelt on the power of advertising and the ability to raise the consciousness of a society:

“If I were starting life over again, I am inclined to think that I would go into the advertising business in preference to almost any other. The general raising of the standards of modern civilization among all groups of people during the past half century would have been impossible without the spreading of the knowledge of higher standards by means of advertising.”

EDL to screen anti-Islam film in East London

by Sunny Hundal

The English Defence League are planning to screen the ‘Innocence of Muslims’ film trailer in East London next month.

EDL head Tommy Robinson said on Twitter today that it would be screened on October 27th, in Walthamstow.

Given how awful the film is, it is more likely to bore the hell out of its audience than anything else.

Anti-racist group Hope Not Hate’s Nick Lowles says that if the screening goes ahead then “he should immediately be prosecuted for incitement”.

The Labour MP for Walthamstow Stella Creasy tweeted in response:

I don’t agree that screening the film should be cause for prosecution in itself. Under that logic, Liberal Conspiracy would also be liable as we also published the trailer.

However, the screening does give an enterprising group of British Muslims an opportunity for a good stunt to show their contempt for the EDL, without falling for his attempt at trolling.

Fencer With Headscarf Is a Cut Above the Rest

By AIMEE BERG

When Ibtihaj Muhammad fastens her headscarf, or hijab, around her chin, one of its purposes is to deflect unwanted attention.

But when she wears a hijab in a sporting arena, it often has the opposite effect.

The New Jersey native is currently ranked 11th in the world in women’s sabre, a discipline of fencing. Only one American ranks higher: Mariel Zagunis, the two-time Olympic and world champion.

Both women will compete this weekend at a World Cup fencing event at the New York Athletic Club to earn points toward qualifying for the 2012 London Olympics.

The International Olympic Committee and the U.S. Olympic Committee do not track athletes’ religion, but if Muhammad makes the Olympic team, she would likely be the first practicing Muslim woman to represent the U.S. at the Games.

When she competes, photographers often zoom in on the name Muhammad on the back of her fencing jacket. Her mother, Denise, recently saw such a photo and said, “I realized: my God, she’s representing all of us.

Three year old girl, traumatized from watching her grandfather's brutal murder

We usually like to keep our tone of voice on this site cheeky and lighthearted, mostly because the zany antics of the Islamophobic loonies are, quite frankly, amusing. But there is nothing funny about the very real consequences that occur due to the environment of xenophobia that they seek to engender.

On September 8th, it was reported that a “Devout Muslim dies after savage beating by ‘race-hate’ gang.” A sixty-seven year old Muslim man was mercilessly beaten to death by a motley group of racists. Worse yet, the gang did it in front of the man’s three year old granddaughter, who remains traumatized from the incident:

Ekram Haque, 67, lost his fight for life a week after he was battered to the ground in front of his three-year-old granddaughter, Marian….Mr Haque – described by friends as a ‘gentle giant’ – had suffered horrific head injuries.

His granddaughter has been left ‘very shaken and disturbed’, said her father, Mr Haque’s son Arfan. Graphic images of the attack were caught on CCTV.

This is not an isolated incident, but rather one in a “series of other attacks” aimed at Moozlim-looking elderly people, or “Pakis” as they are “lovingly” referred to by bigots in the UK:

Police are linking the assault on the retired care worker to a series of other attacks on elderly Asian people near the mosque.

Three of the earlier victims were also pensioners. As local community tensions grew, police stepped up patrols near the Idara E Jaaferiya mosque where Mr Haque was attacked last Monday.

Police say they are treating the attack on Mr Haque as racially motivated.

What is perhaps most disturbing is the age of the assailants, ranging from twelve to fifteen:

* Two youths aged 14 and 15 have appeared before Wimbledon Youth Court accused of committing grievous bodily harm with intent on Mr Haque.
* They and another boy, aged 12, are also accused of conspiracy to commit GBH and two counts of assault on victims in their 40s and 70s. Another 14-year-old has been charged over the attacks, but has yet to appear in court.

It is only natural to assume that such hatred can only be learnt from elders. All of this takes place not in a vacuum but rather in an atmosphere of hatred and fear-mongering.

On a positive note, Mr. Arfan–son of the deceased–advised Muslims of the area to react in a calm manner, asking them only to increase their prayers to God:

Arfan, 35, a consumer law adviser, described the incident as ‘mindless violence’ but urged people in the Muslim community to remain calm.

He said: ‘I would urge people in our community to remember that Islam is a peaceful religion and does not condone revenge attacks. If you want to do anything, just pray.

Both Islamophobes and Islamic extremists–two peas in the same pod–like to tally up all the insults and injuries upon their own community in order to ‘compete’ in who is being abused more by the other, in an effort to demonize the other.

This dichotomous view of the world is unhealthy and only fuels more of the same. It’s time to abandon this medieval view of the world–this senseless ‘us vs them’ mentality–and let the peace lovers from both sides work towards a harmonious existence free from such communal strife. Perhaps even this phraseology of ‘peace lovers from both sides‘ is to be abandoned, since we are not two sides any more but now part of the same community, and as one community–of all different faiths (or no faith at all)–we need to extinguish to irrelevancy the voices of the hatemongers whose destructive rhetoric culminates in such dastardly acts like the one we so painfully report herein.