BNP and Far-Right Demonstrate

The Rochdale grooming of minors for sexual exploitation case has devolved into an opportunity for some to Islam-bash.

Islam and the issue of exploiting minors

by Osman Mirghani (Al-Arabiyya)

Over the past few days, Britain has been preoccupied with the prosecution and imprisonment of nine Muslim men (eight Pakistanis and one Afghani) on charges of being part of a child sex exploitation ring. Much has been said about the religious and ethnic background of the defendants, not to mention their victims, who were all white minors suffering from social problems, to the point that all issues became tangled up and intertwined; criminal considerations, religious and ethnic backgrounds and racial sensitivities. The result was heated discussions that mostly inclined towards unfair generalization, the promotion of a stereotyped image of Islam and false accusations against it.

Islam is a religion that is embraced by over 1.5 billion Muslims around the globe, approximately 2.8 million of whom live in Britain. Islam is Britain’s second largest religion, and Muslims make up nearly 5 percent of the country’s population. Of course, there were some rational and balanced discussions of this case; however this all went out the window amidst the clamorous voices that highlighted the religious and racial features of a purely criminal case in which the defendants are a small handful of people who represent only themselves and their own deviant behavior.

This climate served as the perfect opportunity for racists to exploit, and so some movements staged anti-Muslim and anti-immigration demonstrations in which they raised slogans like ‘No to Islam’, ‘Protect our Children…Expel the Rapists’ and ‘Our Children are not Halal Meat’, in a reference to the sale of halal meat to Muslims. Such movements are now active in numerous Western states, and they are exploiting the financial and economic crises as well as the widespread negative image of Islam since the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent terrorist operations, including – of course – the 7 July, 2005 tube bombings in London. This image has contributed to feeding the negative climate which has produced laws banning the niqab and hijab, as well as the construction of minarets in some Western capitals, provoking extremist violence as was the case with the crimes of Anders Behring Breivik in Norway.

The grave problem is that this climate is being strengthened by the statements that are issued by some politicians or so-called specialists, not to mention the superficial articles which promote stereotypical, mistaken, ignorant or sometimes malicious images of Islam and Muslims. In addition to this, there are also some press reports that intend to provoke public opinion or controversy by publishing some defamatory images. For example, a television report screened during the trial session of the nine defendants who were prosecuted on charges of rape, sexual assault and trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation, amongst other crimes, showed the defendants standing in front of a mosque.

This represents a dangerous suggestion linking these terrible crimes with Islam, particularly as these defendants were not religious and their crimes were committed in Asian restaurants or empty houses and apartments, nowhere in the vicinity of a mosque! The comparison is truly scandalous when compared with the manner in which crimes involving the sexual abuse of children inside churches at the hands of priests are dealt with, for despite the noise and controversy surrounding such scandals, we have never heard anybody linking this to Christianity as a religion or to the priests’ ethnic background. It is true that there were discussions about deviations within the church, and there were calls for the Catholic Church and others to put an end this phenomenon and uncover its perpetrators, yet no one saw this as something implicating Christianity as a whole or as something that raises moral or ethical questions about all Christians.

The crime of sexual assaulting children deserves the strongest condemnation, regardless of the identity of the perpetrators, their ethnic background or religious affiliation, and this is something that is not confined to individuals of Pakistani or Muslim descent. Statistics and reports prepared by specialists stress that with the exception of Pakistani men being oversubscribed in such crimes, most sexual crimes against minors are committed by ‘white men’. This is how the majority of media outlets used this term in their reports, rather than saying ‘White Christians’, for example, in the same manner that the Pakistanis were described as ‘Asian Muslims.’

One of the striking examples of intentionally linking Islam with the issue of sexual exploitation of children can be seen in an article published by the British Times newspaper last Thursday entitled ‘Let’s be honest. There’s a clear link with Islam’. The title clearly demonstrates that there is an intention to target Islam, distort its image and use the crimes and deviation of a tiny minority to put forward a negative image of all Muslims.

Read the Rest…

Turns out EDL leader Tommy Robinson likes to abuse young 15 year old Muslim on Twitter. What a hypocritical scumbag:

EDL Leader Tommy Robinson outed as child sex pest

(EDL News)

With the current obsession with paedophiles which seems to occupy the EDL’s every waking minute, you would think that English Defence League leader and deputy leader of the British Freedom Party, Tommy Robinson would try and avoid Tweeting fifteen year old girls and telling them they are ‘pretty fit for a Muslim’.

After realising that he had made a ‘mistake’ you would have thought that Tommy would apologise immediately instead of attacking the schoolgirl by calling her scum and setting his vile followers, the EDL casuals including EDL Twitter attack dog, Becky Marsh, on her.

Did Tommy’s need to make racist mysogynistic remarks to a Muslim cloud his judgement or is there something he is not telling us?

Maybe all that time spent with Richard Price has rubbed off on him but we at EDL News feel Tommy has some explaining to do to CEOPs.

What we can guarantee is EDL members will be extremely quiet about this and a stark contrast to how they would foam if a Muslim had Tweeted that.

We await a demo outside Tommy’s house but will not be holding our breath, because the average EDL member have proven time and time again that they have little interest in white paedophiles.

(We have obfuscated the girl’s name, photo and Twitter address because of her age)

Clearly panicking Robinson went on to claim the schoolgirl was not 15, even though her date of birth was on her profile. Robinson then went on to delete the Tweet.

Not content with shaming himself enough on one day and despite knowing her age, Robinson goes on to accuse the schoolgirl of flirting with him.  Being a ballsy young Asian women who is not going to put up with sex pests, she went on to kick him from one end of Twitter to the other and the #tommyisapaedo hashtag started trending.

Tommy’s response got more and more vile:

As did the response from many of his supporters including Becki Marsh, cheerleader for the EDL’s football hooligan division, The casuals.

These would be the people who would be calling for the hanging of Muslims if they make sexual advances towards a schoolgirl on Twitter.

Read the rest…

On the politics of “halal hysteria” in the UK and beyond:

by Mehdi Hasan (New Statesman)

I am sitting in one of London’s finest Indian restaurants, Benares, in the heart of Mayfair. I’ve just placed an order for the “Tandoori Ratan” mixed-grill appetiser – a trio of fennel lamb chop, chicken cutlet and king prawn.

I’ll be honest with you: I’m pretty excited. Most of the upmarket restaurants in London do not cater for the city’s burgeoning Muslim population. Benares is one of the few exceptions: all of the lamb and chicken dishes on its menu are halal.

The restaurant opened in 2003 and its owner, Atul Kochhar, is a Michelin-starred chef. “Right from day one, we’ve kept our lamb and chicken halal,” Kochhar says. “It was a very conscious decision because I grew up in India, a secular country, where I was taught to have respect for all religions.” Kochhar, who is a Hindu, says Muslims make up “easily between 10 and 20 per cent” of his regular diners. It isn’t just a taste for religious pluralism that has dictated the contents of his menu; serving halal meat makes commercial, as well as cultural, sense.

To other, perhaps less tolerant types, however, the rise of halal meat in the west and here in the UK, in particular, is a source of tension, controversy, fear and loathing. British Muslims are living through a period of halal hysteria, a moral panic over our meat. First there came 9/11, 7/7 and the “Islamic” terror threat; then there was the row over the niqab (face veil) and hijab (headscarf); now, astonishingly, it’s the frenzy over halal meat.

Last month, MPs in the Commons rejected a ten-minute-rule bill that would have made it mandatory for retailers to label all of the halal and kosher meat on sale and make it clear on the packaging that the animals were “killed without stunning”. The bill’s proponent, the Tory backbencher Philip Davies, claimed that the meat was being “forced upon” shoppers “without their knowledge”. It was defeated by the narrowest of margins – 73 votes to 70.

As is so often the case, the right-wing press is behind much of the fear-mongering and misinformation. “Britain goes halal . . . but no one tells the public,” screamed the front-page headline in the Mail on Sunday on 19 September 2010. The paper claimed that supermarkets, restaurants, schools, hospitals, pubs and big sporting venues such as Wembley Stadium were “controversially serving up meat slaughtered in accordance with strict Islamic law to unwitting members of the public”.

The following week, readers were treated to two more stories suggesting a sinister plot to inflict halal meat on innocent, animal-loving, non-Muslim Britons. “How 70 per cent of New Zealand lamb imports to Britain are halal . . . but this is NOT put on the label”, said the Daily Mail on 25 September 2010. “Top supermarkets secretly sell halal: Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Waitrose and M&S don’t tell us meat is ritually slaughtered,” proclaimed the Mail on Sunday the next day.

With the threat from terrorism receding, Britain’s Islam-baiters have jumped on the anti-halal bandwagon, and not just the neo-fascists of the British National Party and the English Defence League, which has a page on its website devoted to its (anti-) “halal campaign”, but mainstream commentators, too. The Spectator’s Rod Liddle – who once wrote a column entitled “Islamophobia? Count me in” – has demanded that halal meat be banned and called for a boycott of Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury and the rest until they agree to stop stocking halal products. “I will buy no meat from supermarkets,” he wrote, rather melodramatically, back in 2010.

Read the rest here….

Former EDL extremists Roberta Moore and Joel Yossi Arrested

(EDL News)

Roberta Moore makes a long overdue reappearance on EDL News this week for getting arrested for racial abuse and making a fool of herself at a Nakba commemoration in London on Saturday.

Moore, the former head of the English Defence League’s Jewish Division and supporter of mass murderer, Anders Behring Breivik, posted a long rambling blog where she claims that she was handcuffed and managed to free herself and a bizarre rant about the weight of the police officers who arrested her.

Moore and her mob, which is thought to have included terrorist supporter Robert Bartholomeus ane Joel Yossi who was also reported as being arrested, went to great pains to explain ‘they were just walking past the demo’ on the way to somewhere else and claimed they were just trying to debate but her own blog post details them throwing abuse at the protesters by calling them ‘Kapos’.

Bartholomeus has previously featured on this website for threatening to rape a female EDL member who he had a fall out with. Last year after the horrific attacks in Norway, both of them were quick to applaud the actions of Breivik and blamed his victims, denouncing them as ‘scum’.

One witness at the event in London emailed us the following:

“First time I have seen Yossi in person, he was every much the vile piece of crap I imagined him to be, He argued with an man of Arab decent and said to the child he had with him something like ‘do not grow up to be a degenerate waste of air like your father kid’ he ran his finger across his throat at anybody who spoke to him, called women “whores, sluts and Leftist animals” shouted Islamophobic hatred and then hurled sickening abuse at the Orthodox Jews who never fail to show their support for our Palestine protest.

I put the video of the arrest on youtube (link below), Yossi is wearing a black cap and coat, obviously he had calmed down a little at that point due to be constantly warned by the police.

Last week the Jewish Division posted this on their Facebook wall.

Moore, a Brazilian immigrant who is not Jewish is believed to have been released without charge. You can read her bizarre rant here:

“The coward Sgt. Walker handcuffed me tightly, as if I was a dangerous criminal, and the handcuffs were hurting my wrists. I got really outraged at this, so I discreetly removed my handcuffs but the policemen did not see it, of course.  I kept my hands behind me as if I was still wearing them. When I got out of the car I told Sgt. Walker he was quite incompetent as he did not even realise I was not wearing my handcuffs anymore, and was actually holding it in my hand. If I had been a “dangerous” criminal none of them would have stood a chance!

Grinning and riding in comfort. The two good officers in this photo were outraged at my being arrested.

Once inside the office they started asking me for my details and all that palava, but still Sgt. Walker was unable to state to the officer behind the desk the real reason of my arrest and kept on mumbling that I was arrested for my own safety and for “disturbing the peace”, when I was in fact simply debating with them, and only for a few seconds at that.  A disgrace for our police force!! This is a time when people can no longer debate with protesters (Principally Muslims) if they have opposing views, as they get arrested ”for their own safety”, as they claim, simply because the police are far too scared of protecting us from these vermin in our streets.

“Disturbing the peace” is just their pathetic excuse for not having to “work hard” protecting innocent members of the public from random and sudden violence from these communist and Islamofascist groups.

Logically this has once again proven that Muslims are violent scumbags and that the police is AFRAID of dealing with it. Perhaps because most of the police force is obese?  This is utterly shameful for the City of London.

While I was at the van I mentioned to Sgt. Walker that I was aware the police force was facing cuts and I hoped to see him and his corrupt comrades sacked as soon as this is implemented, for they are a very useless bunch.

When in custody I noticed and mentioned that many of the police officers were really fat.
We cannot have obese police officers, as they could not even run to catch real criminals. No wonder they were scared of the Muslims. Had it been a proper confrontation, these fat officers would probably faint breathless if they ran 10 meters! And I am not surprised because as soon as I got into the police station I saw at least 4 officers munching away on cakes and biscuits while sitting down on their desks. Lack of exercise while munching non stop causes obesity, didn’t they know that?

What a disgrace for the London police! I had to smirk when I pointed out to them that Brazilian cops are slim and carry guns. Much easier to deal with criminals, but that obviously these incompetent cops could not even be trusted with one, I wouldn’t trust them even with a 22!

Rio Police officers on the beat catching a drug dealer. Fit for the job and armed.

When I got to the station, without my handcuffs on, Sgt. Walker walked in front of me (Stupid moron!) and expected me to follow him inside. I then pointed out to him that I was still holding the handcuffs and that he should have ensured he was BEHIND me, as after all I was the one arrested, right? I was the “dangerous criminal”, right? What a joke they were!
Jokingly I told him, “Ladies first!”, so I volunteered to go in front of him, since he seems to have forgotten his manners in the toilets of his shack, and even his intelligence.

The moron took my phone and took the battery out for a bit, since I was getting calls from my friends. I pointed out to him that I was filming everything and that he had LIED to the officer behind the desk. He had told them I ‘swore’  when I didn’t. The dirty Arab who insulted me swore at me and my colleagues, made threats about raping me, and anti-Semite Sgt. Walker totally ignored it. So he lied and exposed himself as a man without honour or morals. He lied to justify his arrest. I made sure I told him 4 times he was a pathetic individual and understandably he did not argue with me of course.

After taking my belongings, Sgt Walker found some dog biscuits inside my bag. He asked me what was that for, so I told him that I thought he might be hungry and offered him a few. He said: “Very funny”. Well it was, as I could swear he was mouthwatering over those gravy meaty biscuits.

He also removed my camera (The one I used to film everything), my money, my bank cards, etc… and after taking two of my gold rings, one with encrusted diamonds, my gold magen David necklace, and my Michal Negrin’s earrings, oh yes and my belt, I was feeling quite bare. The only thing I did not allow them to take from me was my black and red African “juju” (candomble) bracelet, as it is a powerful magical talisman that was consecrated and given to me by a powerful medium many years ago. Unholy hands cannot touch it.

He had to register everything he took in the police computer to have me sign for it. He referred to my gold rings as ‘Yellow Metal’, instead of gold and after complaining that they were GOLD and not ‘yellow metal’ he refused to change it because according to him I could be telling him anything.
I then had to point out to the ignorant fool the goldmark of my belongings.
I told them I expected to have it all back intact, since these guys can steal your stuff and pretend it disappeared somewhere. Maybe this is why they don’t like to list the proper value of the things they temporarily confiscate.

I was then allocated a cell. Quite nice and clean by the way. I was impressed. Since I had never been arrested before, I was quite amused. The only complaint I have is that these perverts have cameras facing the toilet inside the cells. G-d knows what they do when they watch female prisoners going to the loo. It is creepy.

When inside the cell I started exploring my surroundings… not much of it but still, interesting. Frankly I was a bit tired because of a late night before, so I decided to sleep for a bit. I must have slept for 1 hour or so and when I woke up I started playing with a metal thing with a button on the wall.  I pressed it a few times while I was cleaning it with a paper tower. All of a sudden an officer appears at the door and lifts the window. So he says to me: “Hello”. I said hello back and continued to clean the button. He kept looking at me and I asked: “What can I do for you”? He said: “You called me”. I said, “I didn’t. How would I have called you?”  He said: “This button on the wall, when you press it, you call an officer.”
I said, “Oh, I didn’t know it! You can go now. I don’t need you”. So he left and I went to meditate in the cell for a bit.

I got disturbed some 20 mins later by someone offering me food. I refused it and told them I don’t eat Halal. And 5 minutes later another officer comes and tells me I am free to go.

I argued a bit because I was expecting them to interview me and charge me with whatever they had accused me of, so I made him call my solicitor. He got me out of the cell and told me the solicitor was on the phone. I spoke to him and the solicitor told me they could not charge me with anything so they had to let me go. Hmmmm….. disappointing really. But they did apologize though. They also apologized for making me late since I was hosting guests for dinner and just about made it in time.

Furthermore they noticed the injuries done on my wrist because of the handcuffs being so tight and offered for me to see a nurse, which I refused. They were just scratches and I did not need a nurse, principally since I did not keep the damn things on for long anyway, as I had removed them as soon as they put them on me.

During my time in custody, two nice officers started expressing their disgust with his colleague for arresting me, and started dishing out some real dirt about the police force. They were outraged that they had to bow to political correctness in several things, including not able to chase after a criminal (They said this when I mentioned that most of the officers I saw inside were obese) and they also mentioned that they are not allowed to stop a druggie from injecting himself with drugs, even in front of them. (The druggies from Antifa, UAF and others might be very excited to hear that.)

Among the few things they told me in confidence, they also mentioned that some of their colleagues were indeed scared of Muslim violence and rather take me away than face their wrath. And to make things worse, they were understaffed and facing huge cuts in the force.

So there you have it straight from the horse’s mouth. These officers just confirmed everything I suspected. It felt good to know that there are still some good guys with a conscience inside, and very sad to know that apart from some, the rest of the force is corrupted by political correctness and forced to bow down to Islamonazis due to fear of their aggressiveness, although it seems the cowards are found more often at the top of the chain.

I have to say, I enjoyed calling the Neturei Karta kapos as “traitors” and telling them in Hebrew: “Atem lo yehudim” (You are not Jewish). I don’t think they could understand Hebrew though. Either that or they were on heavy anti-depressant or other kinds of drugs, which is the norm among their community.

However the good news is that the tide is turning and that he made me aware that there are many disagreements in the force now. The people are waking up and officers are also turning against the political correct government. They are also afraid of Islamization and many of them are standing up against their peers on this matter. So expect some very welcome changes soon.”

What kind of man rips a veil off a woman’s face (via. Islamophobia-Watch):

Man arrested for attack on Muslim woman in Solihull

A Shirley man has been summoned to appear at Solihull Magistrates Court after he allegedly ripped a veil from a Muslim woman’s face in Touchwood.

Police reported that Ian Brazier, 26, had grabbed the victim, also 26, by her head and removed her face covering as she walked past the Disney store, on March 3. It’s alleged that he then threw the veil to the floor and left the shopping centre. A Solihull Police spokesman said the woman had not been physically harmed but was left severely shaken by the incident.

Officers tracked down Brazier following a CCTV image appeal. He will now appear at Solihull Magistrates on June 13.

Chief Inspector Kevin Doyle, from Solihull Police Station, said previously: “Reports of crimes like this are exceptionally rare both in Solihull and the wider West Midlands. We are treating this incident as a hate crime as we believe the woman was deliberately targeted because of her faith symbolised by her attire.”

Solihull News, 9 May 2012

Via ENGAGE

Is it a happy coincidence that both Geert Wilders and Robert Spencer are out hawking their books for sale?

(h/t: Haywood)

Sean Hannity Interview Geert Wilders About Radical Islam (FOX NEWS)

No surprise that the UKIP is parroting statements like those of Geert Wilders (h/t:githensmazer). I wonder is Julia Gasper like a UK version of Lou Ann Zelenik:

UKIP Candidate: “Koran is Worse than Adolph Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’”

(PoliticalScrapbook)

A candidate for UKIP has compared Islam’s holiest book to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, Political Scrapbook can reveal. Academic Julia Gasper — a former Westminster hopeful and current council candidate in Oxford – said the Koran was “fascist” and compared those who defend Islam to holocaust deniers.

In emails seen by Scrapbook, Gasper ranted:

“Why is it any more wrong to assert that the Koran is a fascist book than to assert that Mein Kampf is a fascist book? The Koran is a lot more explicit in advocating hate and murder than Mein Kampf is.”

Having dismissed comparisons between sections of the Koran and the Old Testament as “not valid”, Gasper responded to suggestions that her hateful bile was demonising Muslims:

“Words like “demonization” are just self-deception. They are being used to persuade you to keep your eyes shut. In fact, the apologists for Islam are really very similiar to Holocaust deniers.”

To compound matters, the rant comes to light as another UKIP candidate is suspended for expressing sympathies with Norwegian mass-murder Anders Breivik – and just days after Julia Gasper herself was slammed for saying gays should stop ‘complaining about persecution’ and start thanking straight people for giving birth to them.

Looks like they’ll be making that a double suspension then.

More intriguing info. on Stephen Lennon’s British “Freedom” Party:

BFP organiser claims party is ‘centre right’

Lynn News has published an update on the controversy over the proposed conversion of a disused King’s Lynn pub into an Islamic community centre.

They interview Stephen Tweed of the British Freedom Party who has been organising a campaign against the development. Tweed claims that his objections to the mosque are concerned only with noise and parking. He states that he is not a racist and that his party is “centre right”.

This from a man who describes King’s Lynn’s Muslim community as “bearded scum”, denounces ”complacent, wishy-washy liberal governments” for having “let Muslim immigrants flood in”, calls for “the banning of the Koran” and “an immediate stop to the building of mosques anywhere”, has a photo of a burning mosque as hisprofile picture on Facebook, and is the Norfolk organiser of a party launched by former prominent figures in the fascist British National Party, one of whom recently commented that he “couldn’t care less” about the young people killed by Anders Breivik because they were “leftist youths” who would “grow up to betray Norway”.

Tweed will be raising his concerns about “noise and parking” on Monday at a meeting of West Norfolk Council’s planning committee, which has been recommended to approve the application to convert the pub into a community centre. Hopefully the committee will take into consideration Tweed’s repulsive political beliefs and treat his arguments accordingly.

Stephen Lennon (aka. Tommy Robinson) set to join the BFP (Image credit to Hopenothate.uk)

(Readers, please welcome Haddock, a new contributor to LoonWatch.)

Co-founder of the English Defence League, Stephen Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) is to be appointed “deputy leader” of the British Freedom Party come May 5th, 2012, just a few short hours before an EDL demonstration in Luton, according to EDL News.

The BFP, which came about due to a split within the British National Party (which itself came about due to a split within the National Front organization), has increasingly focused their bigotry onto Muslims in an attempt to make racism more “acceptable” in the eyes of a segment of the public who may find some of the “old guard” racism (Blacks, Jews, etc.) problematic.

The two organizations decided to form an alliance in November, 2011 after agreeing that they had a better chance at “helping the Cause” if they worked together. The intended platform for the new alliance is typical fodder for anti-Muslim racists; calls to “ban the Burka,” forbid the establishment of new mosques, “madrassas” (by that they mean any Islamic schools) and “Sharia law” in “all forms”, including “Sharia finance.”

Another strategy they have decided on is to “Focus” on the “non-Islamic” population, in order to convince “useful idiots” of all colors and creeds to set themselves upon the Muslim population; all the while still holding onto their “regular” racist beliefs.

I find it hard, for example, to picture them hanging out with their fellow Black, Jewish, and Hindu Islamophobic cohorts as “buddies,” after everything is said and done.

Some of their other loving policy suggestions include the following vignettes,

“End to mass immigration, except for vital (highly qualified positions). Immigrants must undergo health check, have a sponsor, have sufficient funds to support them and their families and must be able to speak/write English.”

“Have a system in place to regulate all mosques & madrassas”

“Leave the European Union.”

“Promote Christian values.”

The BFP has also decided to be extremely creative and change their name to simply British Freedom, so that people won’t confuse them with the BNP. In a strange twist of irony, the parent organization of the BNP, the National Front, is beginning to see a comeback after jumping on the anti-Muslim bandwagon. The organization was popular among the far-right in the 1970’s, when it was more socially acceptable to advocate “roots” racism. According to Islamophobia-Watch,

“At next month’s London Assembly, local council and mayoral elections it  [National Front] is putting up 35 candidates – the highest number it has fielded for 30 years. Among its hopefuls is a businessman once convicted of assaulting an anti-racism campaigner who hopes to be the first directly elected mayor of Liverpool; a former BNP supporter arrested for burning a copy of the Koran; and Derek Beackon, the notorious far-right councillor.”

Classy folks.

This just demonstrates the power of Islamophobia. The fact that a nearly defunct organization that had its heyday in the late 70’s, is able to momentarily drag itself out of bed while in a drunken stupor proves that the anti-Muslim niche works. The same is true for the BNP, who has in recent years hopped onto the “it’s the Muslims vs. the rest of us” bandwagon, despite the fact that its members still hold onto their other racialist beliefs. But hey, “the enemy of my enemy, is my friend”, right?

If there is any silver lining in all of this, it is this; most British people simply don’t like thugs who resort to violence to make their points. This is why the EDL is viewed as an embarrassment (at least publicly) even to some racists; they reveal what racism is truly about, and reality face to face makes most people uncomfortable.

That’s bad publicity for people trying to impose an agenda onto others. Recall that Hitler eventually abolished the SA because he realized that his street thugs were making a bad impression on his so-called “noble Cause.” Bob Pitt of Islamophobia-Watch says it better than me:

“Some have suggested that the EDL-BFP lash-up is an example of the classic fascist strategy of building a movement with a physical force and an electoral wing. The theory behind the strategy is that by showing you control the streets and can intimidate your opponents you win admiration as a powerful movement that will be able to impose order on society and this translates into increased votes.

But this strategy is based on the successes of Mussolini and Hitler in situations of extreme economic, social and political crisis, where large numbers of people turned to the leadership of the far right out of sheer desperation. No crisis of such proportions has occurred in Britain and despite the current economic problems there is no sign of it doing so any time soon. Consequently when the far right takes to the streets of the UK with a mob of racist thugs this doesn’t impress people with the strength of the organisation and boost electoral support. Quite the opposite – voters are repelled by a movement whose public face is that of a gang of violent hooligans.”

Queen Victoria and her Indian manservant, Abdul Karim

The EDL is going to love this, looks like ‘Islamization’ has been a slow steady process for centuries in the UK.

An intriguing story about the love between Queen Victoria and her Indian Muslim servant, Abdul Karim.

I know “The Sun” is a tabloid but this is an interesting read, there will also be a documentary on the Channel 4 in the UK about this:

Diamond Jubilee ‘derailed’ by Queen’s love for Muslim

(The Sun)

BRITAIN is set to go Diamond Jubilee crazy as the Queen marks 60 years on the throne.

But just over a century ago the same celebration for her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, was nearly derailed by her scandalous relationship with an Indian manservant.

In fact Her Majesty became so infatuated with tall, handsome Muslim Abdul Karim that senior royal advisers plotted to have her declared insane just days before her Jubilee unless she halted a controversial plan to knight him.

The young waiter — he was just 24 — had begun serving the Queen’s table in June 1887 after being sent to London as a “gift” from the Indian outpost of her empire.

He soon began bewitching her with romantic tales of mysterious India, and cooking up delicious curries for her in the royal kitchens.

But royal biographer Jane Ridley believes Abdul’s striking looks also helped to draw in the Queen.

She says: “Victoria always had a great appreciation of male beauty so when she saw these gorgeous clothes, sashes and turbans kissing her feet, how could she resist?”

Victoria soon promoted Abdul from waiter to her personal teacher — or “Munshi” — and after he began to teach her a few words in Hindi the pair grew ever closer.

She had been starved of affection since the death of her beloved husband Albert in 1861, and Abdul Karim’s great-grandson, Javed Mahmood, says it is not hard to see why she fell for his great-grandad.

 

Together … Queen Victoria and her manservant, Abdul

He says: “Abdul was a very warm man. He was very jolly, entertaining — a very human person.

“Maybe those were the traits that attracted the Queen eventually, because he came across as a man of flesh and blood, and she wasn’t used to real people around her.”

But as is revealed in a new Channel 4 documentary — Queen Victoria’s Last Love — their growing intimacy did not go down well in the strictly hierarchical world of the royal household.

By 1894, Abdul was elevated to the position of Her Majesty’s Indian Secretary — making him an official member of the inner circle.

Jane Ridley says: “The idea that a servant, an outsider who has none of this pedigree or background, could suddenly leapfrog into a position of great closeness with the Queen is something courtiers found not just threatening but wrong.”

It wasn’t just Abdul’s class that troubled the Queen’s advisers. They were also scandalised by his race.

But the more the royal household attacked Abdul, the more the Queen defended him.

She fired off an angry memo to her Private Secretary, Sir Henry Ponsonby, saying: “As for Abdul Karim, the Queen cannot praise him highly enough. He’s zealous and attentive, a thorough gentleman.”

The royal household hit back by sending investigators to India who came back with alarming information about Abdul’s origins.

He was not, as he had claimed, the son of a high-flying Army doctor. In fact, his father was a lowly pharmacist who worked in Agra jail — where Abdul himself had worked as a mere clerk.

But the revelation only served to push the Queen closer to Abdul.

She took a stance that was astonishing at the time — accusing her household of racial prejudice.

In a memo to Sir Henry she wrote: “To make out the Munshi is low is outrageous. Abdul feels cut to the heart to be thus spoken of. The Queen is so sorry for the poor Munshi’s sensitive feelings.”

Rumours started to circulate that Abdul was passing Victoria inflammatory advice about India, and that he was a spy leaking secret foreign policy information.

 

Bow about that … gentleman greets Queen Victoria as she stands with Abdul

She responded by becoming even more intimate with him. When he became ill she would spend long periods in his bedchamber, fluffing his pillows and stroking his hand.

Then in 1897, with just weeks to go until Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, the Queen announced she planned to knight Abdul.

The bombshell was one step too far for her ministers and attendants.

The Viceroy of India joined forces with the Prime Minister to oppose the move. In response, Victoria threatened to pull out of the Jubilee celebrations.

With the biggest event that the British monarchy had ever seen under threat, the Queen’s eldest son, Bertie — later Edward VII — stepped in.

He hatched a plan with the Queen’s doctor, Sir James Reid, who wrote to her, saying: “There are people in high places who know your majesty well and say to me the only charitable explanation that can be given is that your majesty is not sane, and that at some time it will be necessary for me to come forward and say so.

“I have seen the Prince of Wales yesterday and he has said he is quite ready to come forward, because it affects the throne.”

Victoria had to admit defeat and Abdul did not get his knighthood.

But he was constantly by her side for the Jubilee celebrations. For the remaining four years of Victoria’s life, she was inseparable from her beloved servant.

When she finally died in 1901, the protection Abdul had enjoyed came to a sudden end.

Just days after the funeral, the royal householders marched into Abdul’s home, seized all items bearing the royal crest and burned all his precious letters from the Queen.

He was exiled to India — where he survived just eight more years, dying at the age of 46.

Queen Victoria’s Last Love is on Channel 4 on Wednesday at 9pm.

The above was a recent headline in the Daily Mail. One wonders if the Daily Mail would ever run an article titled, “Christian gang kidnaps and rapes two girls as part of their Christmas celebration?”

The wholesale misattribution of the criminal conduct of these men to Islam fits a long pattern of Islamophobic reporting at the Daily Mail.

Bob Pitt of Islamophobia-Watch breaks it down below :

Another inflammatory anti-Muslim headline in the Mail

That’s the headline to an article in today’s Daily Mail, reporting on the conviction of a group of men for abducting, assaulting and raping two girls, aged 15 and 16.

The article quotes one of the convicted men as claiming that sex with the two girls was consensual: “It was Eid. We treated them as our guests. OK, so they gave us [sex] but we were buying them food and drink.”

And that single quote is the sole the basis for an inflammatory headline that plays to the poisonous far-right racist myth that Muslims are directed by their faith to sexually molest young girls.

It’s worth noting that the report is written by Katherine Faulkner, who last year co-authored the equally irresponsible and misleading report of a drunken assault in Leicester, which led to an EDL protest against so-called “anti-white racism” in the town.

It is no accident that the Mail was one of Anders Breivik’s favourite English-language newspapers. It is cited numerous times in the manifesto he published to justify his terrorist killings and an article by Melanie Phillips is reproduced in its entirety.

We did an article on the ridiculous organization known as the Mosquebusters not too long ago. They have since changed their name to the less sexy, Law and Freedom Foundation. Their whole purpose is to use the UK equivalent of zoning laws to protest Mosque construction.

Below Vice.com interviewed director Spike Johnson went undercover and caught a lot of their extremism and loonieness:

HATE THE THOUGHT OF MUSLIMS BEING NEAR YOU? CALL MOSQUEBUSTERS

by Joshua Haddow (Vice.com)

Ever heard of Mosquebusters? It was the original nom de guerre of a gang of jerks who have vowed to help British Islamophobes oppose any plans the Muslims might have to erect big, fat mosques in their particular enclave of Albion.

But Mosquebusters don’t do this by turning at up building sites when all that’s left to do is put the crown on the minaret, or by driving bulldozers menacingly around mostly-Islamic neighbourhoods at night. They use planning permission, or rather they support anyone who wants to protest when planning permission is granted for mosques to be built. They’ve been really, really successful at it, too, citing things like a non-regulation number of parking spaces to baffle mosque planners into bureaucratic failure.

In an attempt to dent Mosquebusters’ 100 percent win rate, last year Spike Johnson (who went to the gypsy eviction at Dale Farm for us last year) spent a day working undercover with the organisation, which has now changed its name to the more corporate-friendly Law and Freedom Foundation. I spoke to Spike about his time with this secretive cabal of white-collar bigots.

VICE: Hey Spike, how are you? 
Spike: Hey, I’m good thanks.

How did you discover Mosquebusters?
I started looking at extremism for a story. On the EDL website, they have links to all kinds of pseudo-racist things. One of them was an advert asking for people to do volunteer work for Mosquebusters, but it’s gone now – at some point, they just began to shut down all their websites.

So do they still exist?
Oh, they still exist, definitely. They’re using the new name now: the Law and Freedom Foundation. It’s run by the same guys and it’s the same company.

So you applied as a volunteer to try to get access to them?
Yep. Gavin Boby – who runs Mosquebusters – was interviewing me. I was going to accompany him to court hearings and video the proceedings. He was beginning to get a lot of attention and wanted video evidence of things. To start with, I had access for maybe 24 hours and he sent me all of their instructions on how to do what they do and all of that crap. But then he figured out who I was and he shut me down.

So they try to keep what they do secret, despite a logo with a cartoon Abu Hamza on it and a name like “Mosquebusters”?
Yeah.

Is any of what they do illegal?
No, it’s all completely legal. I just think they realised that the majority of the population frown upon what they do.

You used the word “insidious” in your original investigation into what Mosquebusters do. What do you think is more damaging to the Muslim community – Islamophobes using bureaucracy to quash plans for mosques, or EDL numbskulls shouting insults at them in the street?
The former, for sure. And they realise it as well. You know, they’re not stamping their feet, they’re not waving flags. They’re being a bit quiet and cerebral about it. They realise that in order to make a change they have to go about these things from kind of a lateral route.

What did the members of the EDL that you spoke to think of Mosquebusters?
I went to a few rallies and the guys on the street don’t really know about Mosquebusters. Lately, I think Gavin Boby has been trying to distance himself from the EDL. The Mosquebusters don’t want that kind of publicity, they want to keep really quiet behind the scenes.

Did you speak to any of the everyday Islamophobes who’d used Mosquebusters’ petitions to complain about a mosque being built?
Yeah. I followed the case of this mosque that some Muslims were trying to build in West London. The people making the complaints against it sent Mosquebusters’ pre-written petition to the council.

Continue reading at Vice.com…

One of the anti-Loons of 2011, Sheila Musaji dissects the anti-Muslim propaganda of Daily Mail, Telegraph and hate bloggers Pamela Geller and Bare Naked Islam.

Another fake story about Muslims demanding special treatment

by Sheila Musaji

First let’s see how the Islamophobes slanted yet another story, and then we’ll look at the facts.

Pamela Geller posted an article Imposing Islam: London University mulls alcohol ban.  She posts an article from The Telegraph with this introduction Another nail in the coffin. Here again we see the imposing of Islam on the public square, all part of the ongoing campaign of the islamization of the West, as meticulously documented in my book, Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance.  The bottom line is, if alcohol is haram for Muslims, then don’t drink it. Period. Don’t impose Islam on non-Muslims.

Bare Naked Islam posted DON’T BAN BOOZE, BAN MUSLIMS! referring to the same Telegraph article, with the introduction You are now entering yet another Sharia-Controlled Zone in England: London Metropolitan University has just announced that it is considering banning alcohol on campus because it is ‘offensive to Muslims.’

Here is a sample of the comments under the Bare Naked Islam story:

— Muslim slaughter innocent people as the devil himself…There is “Nothing” religious about the Muslim Satanic cult! Not only do the Muslim hate non-Muslim, they HATE dogs also…If you would see what Muslim do to dogs this to would make your blood boil! There is NO place for a Muslim on earth…You want peace in the world, then rid the world of the vile creatures called Muslims and Commies!! How many more Million among Millions of innocent people have to die before the vile creatures are killed?!

— Many people are offended by moslems; myself included, so why can’t we ban islam?

— The ENTIRE Western world ought to ban Muslims from entering their countries. Further, they also need to start a crusade to drive Islam out of sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, East Asia, and any part of the Americas, Australia/Oceania where it’s taken serious hold. Do them as they have done non-Muslims for 1400 years.

— If Muslims HATE our way of life so much, then why do they come in such huge numbers to our countries? Oh, I momentarily forgot; they come to CONQUER and impose Islamic sharia law where defenseless non-Muslims have NO human rights.

Now we get to the facts that set off this hate-fest.  Once again, just as in the incident at Catholic University when Muslim students were falsely accused of “wanting crosses removed”, no Muslim students made any request to the University in England regarding alcohol.  There was no “imposition”, no “demands”, no “creeping Sharia”, no attempt at “Islamization of the West”.

Engage, a British Muslim group in England published an article outlining what actually happened.

There is coverage in the Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail and the London Evening Standard on comments by the vice-chancellor of London Metropolitan University that the university is considering creating ‘alcohol-free zones’.
He stated that this was to cater for a “21st-Century balance”, given its diverse student population. Almost 20% of the LMU’s students are Muslim, and according to the Vice Chancellor, Professor Malcolm Gillies “For many students now, coming to university is not about having a big drinking experience.”

The Guardian headlines with ‘University where 20% of students are Muslim considers alcohol-free zones’. The article states:

“A London university is considering establishing alcohol-free zones on its campuses because so many of its students consider drinking to be immoral.

“Professor Malcolm Gillies, vice-chancellor of London Metropolitan University, said the selling of alcohol was an issue of “cultural sensitivity” at his institution where a fifth of students are Muslim.

“Speaking to a conference of university administrators in Manchester, he said that for many students, drinking alcohol was “an immoral experience”.

“He told the Guardian the makeup of his institution had changed considerably over the past few decades. In the past it had been “substantially Anglo Saxon – now 20% of our students are Muslim,” he said.

““We therefore need to rethink how we cater for that 21st-century balance. For many students now, coming to university is not about having a big drinking experience. The university bar is not as used as it used to be.”

“Alaa Alsamarrai, the vice-president of student affairs for the Federation of Student Islamic Societies, said Muslim students wanted universities to be inclusive so that students “from all walks of life can come and share experiences”.

““Alcohol is a barrier to many Muslim students participating in freshers’ events and often in society activities, so we are in support of moves to have alcohol-free zones and events,” she said. “However, if a student wants to drink, we don’t want to ban them from doing that.”

Contrast this reporting with the sensationalist headlines in the Daily Mail and Evening Standard.

The Daily Mail headlines, ‘London University considers stopping sale of ‘immoral’ alcohol on campus because it offends their Muslim students’, whilst the ES headlines, ‘London university to ban alcohol because students say it’s ‘immoral’ ’

Both are factually inaccurate, as the restriction on alcohol selling would only apply to some areas on the campus, the so-called ‘alcohol-free zones’. This is something which is not clarified at all in the LES, whilst the Daily Mail makes it clear much later in its article, where it states, “Professor Gillies said he would work with the student body to move towards having areas on campus where ‘one serves alcohol and others don’t’”.

Moreover, the Daily Mail’s claim that the move is to be considered on grounds that it ‘offends Muslims’ is ludicrous. Nowhere in the comments of Professor Gillies is there the suggestion that the arrangement is motivated because alcohol causes offence to a particular group. Rather he states that it is an issue of “cultural sensitivity”, and that he is “raising the issue of changing values in student populations and the question of how a responsible university responds.”

The Daily Mail’s report is typical of its habit of publishing stories on the latest thing to ‘offend’ Muslims. Such sensationalist, and irresponsible reporting, serves to embed the false impression that Britain’s Muslim communities require ‘special’ or ‘exceptional’ treatment, apart from the rest of society.

Islamophobia Watch reports on another important detail left out of the irrational Islamophobic accounts.

The right-wing press has latched on to an interview with Prof Malcolm Gillies of London Metropolitan University in which he reportedly said he wants to create alcohol free areas on campus out of “cultural sensitivity”.

… Also worth noting is the following statement by the London Met branch of the University and College Union:

1. London Met Uni has some 25,000+ students studying in over a dozen buildings – all of which have alcohol-free coffee bars/student areas, across two distinctly separate campus areas in North and East London, with only a single student bar at each campus (the only places that serve alcohol at the university).

2. There have been no complaints or demands from students directly or via the students union for alcohol to be either banned, or partially-banned, on campus.

3. Gillies is currently selling off large sections of the university estate, including ‘The Hub’ –the student union facility (inc student bar) at the City Campus. The VC’s comments need to be seen in that light – i.e., they are simply a convenient cover for reducing student social facilities.

4. The language adopted by the VC in this regard is extremely divisive and is already stoking tensions where none had previously existed between the multiplicity of London Met’s student constituencies. The fact that the EDL (English Defence League) and other extreme Right and fascist groups have latched on to this is a major concern.

5. If Gillies were serious about student welfare and wider social and cultural equality and fairness, why has he personally defended the following university management decisions:

i) direct links with the Uzbekistan regime – noted for the torture of its opponents (primarily Muslim incidentally), and forced sterilisation of woman (see this week’s BBC report on the issue – http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01fjx63)

ii) cutting of most of the university’s student chaplaincy service – including the forced redundancy of the Imam;

iii) the drastic reduction in the opening hours of the Women’s Library (down to only 1 day per week), and its eventual closure;

All of this is happening at a time of huge cuts to student courses/modules – including the majority of the ‘critical’ subjects – such as philosophy and history, and mass redundancies amongst staff – both academic and student service related.

At best, Gillies utterances are a crass example of the disconnect becoming more and more evident at London Met between university management and the staff and students they supposedly represent. At worst, it is a quite cynical attempt to stir-up a divisive atmosphere in order to deflect attention from the far more serious issue of the deliberate destruction of a once proud inner city ethnically mixed and vibrant modern university.

After this interview with Prof. Gillies was published, the BBC asked some Muslims  what they thought about possible alcohol free zones.  Here are a couple of the responses:

Alaa Alsamarrai, the vice-president of student affairs for the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS), said: “We want our universities and unions to be inclusive – where students from all walks of life can come together and share experiences.  “Alcohol is a barrier to many Muslim students participating in freshers events and often in society activities – so we’re in support of moves to have some alcohol-free zones and events.  “Though if a student wants to drink in their lifestyle, we of course don’t want to ban that.”

Farooq Murad, Muslim Council of Britain secretary general, said that thousands of Muslims attended university and as far as he was aware there had never been a demand for an alcohol ban on campuses.  “There has always been a balance between social life and studying. We believe university authorities should be able to decide what works best for them in managing their campus space. Muslims have studied at universities for decades and we cannot imagine that others drinking alcohol will impede them from continuing to attend.”

The Times Higher Education reports on MORE FACTS that completely undermine the Islamophobic take on this story.

The president of London Metropolitan University students’ union has called for the vice-chancellor to apologise after he suggested the sale of alcohol should be banned from parts of the campus because some Muslim students believed drinking was “immoral”.

Claire Locke said Malcolm Gillies had “offended” Muslim students by generalising about their beliefs. There had been no calls from students to create alcohol-free areas on the London Met campus, she said.

Ms Locke argued that London Met’s Muslim students were “respectful of other people’s cultures”. Muslim students’ union officers were currently fighting for a new student bar to be opened at the university’s City campus, she added.

Outright lies or distortions about anything concerning Islam or Muslims is so common among the Islamophobes that on TAM we have an article collection that we try to update regularly called What Everyone “Knows” About Islam and Muslims.  The demonization industry has become so prolific that it is difficult to keep up with the updates as they churn this crap out daily.

The most commonly repeated false claims about Muslims and Islam are that:

Everyone “knows” that most or all terrorists are Muslims, and there are no Christian and no Jewish terrorists (or terrorists of any other religious stripe), and that Muslims are all militant,  inherently violent, more likely to engage in violence against civilians, and more likely than other Americans to be radicalized.

Everyone “knows” that Muslims are not interested in dialogue.  That Muslims don’t help Christians in need.  That Muslims can’t have Christians as friends, and are anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers, and intolerant of other faiths.

Everyone “knows” that Muslims don’t unequivocally denounce terrorism, that American Muslim leaders have not responded to radicalization in their community,  that mosques are the source of radicalization, that 85% of mosques are run by radicals, that Muslims don’t cooperate with law enforcement.

Everyone “knows” that Muslims are not equivalent to real Americans, that they are the enemy within, and a fifth column,  that good Muslims can’t be good Americans, that Muslims are not loyal to America, that they are not a part of our American heritage,

Everyone “knows” that Islam itself is the problem and makes Muslims “backward”, that Muslims have made no contribution to the West, that Islam is “of the devil”, a Crescent menace, a “green peril”, that was spread by the sword,  an “evil encroaching on the United States”, and not a religion.

Everyone “knows” that this is a Christian nation, which the Muslims are trying to take over, starting with getting an Eid stamp which is the first step towards shariah law which is a threat to America, and a threat to our judicial system, by purposefully having more children than others to increase their numbers, and they will be the majority in this country in 20 years.  Muslims are a threat to America

Everyone “knows” that Muslims have no respect for the Constitution, they don’t obey the laws of the United States,  that they are opposed to freedom of speech, don’t allow and freedom of religion.

Everyone “knows” that Muslims are given a pass by the elite media.  It’s “us versus them”.

Everyone “knows” that the Muslims’ goal is world domination under a Caliphate, and the proposed Cordoba House in NYC is a demonstration of supremacism and triumphalism, and that Muslims planned to open it on the anniversary of 9/11.

Everyone “knows” that Muslims don’t speak out against extremism or terrorism, and even those Muslims who do speak up or seem moderate are simply lying or practicing taqiyyah.

Everyone “knows” that the Qur’an is uniquely violent, that the Islamic concept of God doesn’t include God’s love, and does not include the concept of a Golden Rule,  that Allah is a moon god.

Everyone “knows” that Islam is a monolith and all Muslims are the same, like the “Borg”.  This means that every act committed by an individual who is a Muslim is directly attributable to Islam, and never because the individual is crazy, criminal, or perverted.

Everyone “knows” that Muslims don’t have a sense of humor

Everyone “knows” that Muslims are like the Fascists and Nazis and that in fact they supported those movements.

The problem is that what “everyone knows” is wrong.  These self-righteous and incorrect statements are usually followed by a demand that the Muslim community do something about whatever is the false flag of the day or face the inevitable consequences.

In addition to these “everyone knows” statements of demonization and misrepresentation, there is also a whole industry of simply connecting with Islam or Muslims with any negative idea, event, or societal trend (even when there is no sane connection to make).  These I think of as “Through the Looking Glass” claims.

For example, lots of “news” items never happened, or are simply not true.

— Arabs didn’t celebrate 9/11 at a Dunkin Donuts in New Jersey.
— Budweiser did not pull all its product from the shelves of a convenience store where there was celebration of the terrorist attacks – this never happened.
— The Muslim statement of faith (Shahada) is not an expression of hate.
— An American Missionary in Africa didn’t face possible murder charges and hanging because of a traffic accident.
— There is no verse of the Qur’an on “The Wrath of the Eagle”.
— The supposed bomb threat made by an Arizona student that led to an evacuation of the school was a hoax by non-Muslim students.
— The story that Iran was considering forcing Jews to wear a yellow star appeared in several publications and it was totally false.
— The story that Iran was going to attack the U.S. and/or Israel with nuclear weapons on August 22, 2006 was a lie.
— The slaying of the New Jersey Coptic family was falsely charged to Muslims.
— The story about the British banks banning piggy banks so as not to offend Muslims never happened.
— Muslims are not more likely to support terrorism and violence than Christians or Jews.
— Muslims did not destroy the Library of Alexandria.
— Nurses in Britain were not “ordered to drop everything and turn Muslims’ beds toward Mecca five times daily”.
— There is no  Muslim sword through the 41-cents mark on the U.S. Eid stamp.
— Sirhan Sirhan is a Christian, not a Muslim.
— The Virginia Tech massacre had no connection with Islam.
— The University of Oklahoma bombing had no connection with Islam.
— A bus driver in Britain didn’t tell passengers to get off the bus so he could pray.
— Rachel Ray’s Paisley scarf is not a symbol of “murderous Palestinian Jihad” (and neither is a Keffiyah).
— A Muslim student in Florida did not refuse to stand for the pledge of allegiance.
— There were no Muslims acting suspiciously on Air Tran flight 297.
— Wearing a tee-shirt with Arabic writing on it does not make a person dangerous.
— A Madrassah is simply a school.
— The zebibah (prayer bruise) on some Muslims foreheads is not a sign of a “commitment to jihad”.
— There is no “spit jihad”
— There is no hijabi employment jihad
— There is no Muslim “marriage to important men” jihad plot
— Jihad is not terrorism.
— Ashura is not a “Muslim blood festival”.
— Muslims are not forbidden to have non-Muslims as friends.
— The Shahada (declaration of faith) is not  an “expression of hate” that is “closely identified” with terrorism.
— The Nuclear Security Summit logo is an atom on a circular path, not an Islamic symbol.
— The U.S. Missile Defense Logo is not evidence of ‘Submission To Shariah’, and neither is the Flight 93 memorial.
— The Google Veteran’s Day logo doesn’t display a secret Muslim agenda.
— Muslims also died on 9/11.
— Barack Obama is not a Muslim, but so what if he was?
— Mattel is not promoting Sharia with a subversive doll that supposedly says “Islam is the light”.
— The Hamas “child bride” incident was nothing of the sort.
— The best buy Happy Eid statement on an ad was not a subversive attempt to “water down” American holidays
— The “Muslim plot” to kill the Pope never happened
—The story about a flight from London to Malta being stopped because a Muslim man was praying in the aisle was a lie
— Five American Muslim soldiers never plotted to poison their fellow soldiers.
— There is no devious Muslim plot to groom attractive Muslim women to marry important men or politicians – an Islamic/socialist/left wing plot to advance a pro-Muslim Agenda and take over America.
— Straight prayer lines, beards, hijabs, gender segregation during prayers, wearing a watch on your right hand, wearing “non-western” clothing, etc. are not “Sharia adherent behaviors” that might correlate with the promotion of violence.
— Muslim environmentalists are not part of a sinister plot to colonize the west.
— All of the rapes Oslo, Norway over the past three years were not “committed by Muslim immigrants using rape as a weapon of cultural terrorism”.
— There was no Muslim plot hatched in an on-line forum to attack British Jews over Israel’s actions in Gaza, and there was no “Islamist” named Abu Islam making these fake postings.
—Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazd did not justify and provide Islamic guidelines for the raping of prisoners.  The story was a lie.
— Keith Ellison’s use of the Qur’an in the photo op after his swearing in was not “undermining American culture”
—There is no Muslim scholar named Sheikh Haron, and everything he does or says as a supposed member of the Muslim community is a lie.
—Muslims do not block New York streets to pray every Friday.
—There is no plot to have terrorist babies born in the U.S.
—Stephen Coughlin, a Pentagon anti-terrorism specialist was not ousted because his superiors thought he was too critical of Islam
—The Holocaust museum shooting had nothing to do with Islam.
— Anders Breivik’s terrible massacre in Norway was not “a jihad” or even commited by a Muslim
— The word Slav does not come from the word for slave and has nothing to do with Islam.  Slavery is not only a Muslim problem.
— There is no Muslim vehicular jihad plot
— All rapes in Norway have not been committed by Muslims (not even most)
— Whole Foods offering halal products during Ramadan was not “shilling for jihadist interests”
— There is no plot by Muslim cabdrivers in New York City to impose Sharia on America
— Muslims are not more likely than non-Muslims to approve of violence against civilians (PEW poll)
— Muslims are not intolerant of other faiths (Gallup poll)
— Claims about Muslim inferiority due to “inbreeding” are racist and a misrepresentation of the issue
— The photo of a Yemeni passenger on the Mavi Marmara holding a dagger was totally misrepresented
— There was no assassination attempt on an EDL leader in Britain
— Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf did not make a comment blaming “the Jews” for 9-11
— “Islamophobia” is not an “attempt to silence freedom of speech”
— There was no Muslim Thanksgiving turkey “stealth jihad” plot
— The ridiculous complaints about crosses at Catholic University were not made by Muslims
— The White House Iftar was not a “ghoulish” or “disgraceful” attempt to appease Muslims
— Muslims don’t hate dogs
— Muslim handshaking customs are not an attempt to force Sharia on others.
— The tragic Belgian massacre by Nordine Amrani was not a “jihad” attack and Amrani wasn’t a Muslim
— The Hollywood shooter, Tyler Brehm was not a Muslim
— An Eid party for Muslim special needs kids was not any sort of “stealth jihad”
— Requesting reasonable religious accommodation in the public sphere is not “creeping Sharia”.
— Muslim students did not “target Jewish students” with eviction notices at a Florida University.
— A spelling bee for students at Muslim schools was not an example of the inability of Muslims to integrate.
(Note: click on the links to see responses to particular claims or incidents

Where do these false claims come from?  They come from a relatively small group of individuals and organizations involved in an Islamophobia industry.  Please see A Who’s Who of the Anti-Muslim/Anti-Arab/Islamophobia Industry where The American Muslim (TAM) has collected information about these individuals in an easy to use format.  Just click on the links provided to go to in-depth articles and backgrounders on these individuals.

Anders Breivik did what many anti-Muslim bigots and hate-mongers only dream of doing, killing Muzzies and the so-called enablers of “Islamization,” the leftists. They idealize and dream of restarting the Crusades and following in the footsteps of the anti-Muslim Serb officers eager to carry out orders to ethnically cleanse Bosnian Muslim villages.

Breivik terrorized on a far greater and more spectacular scale than we had hitherto seen from the anti-Muslim bigots, who were usually content with bombing and burning mosques, vandalizing cemeteries, or at worst cowardly murdering Muslim cabdrivers, shopkeepers, etc.

Breivik’s murderous actions were justified by many in the Islamophobic looniverse. It was even revealed that Pamela Geller likely had foreknowledge of a planned terrorist attack in Norway before Breivik went on his rampage.

Breivik himself has admitted ties to anti-Muslim leaders and organizations both in Europe and the US. He explicitly stated that he met with the violent anti-Muslim organisation the English Defence League, and stated that there are Knights Templar terrorist cells across Europe.

Now we have Stephen Lennon, a founding member of the EDL dropping the faux mask of condemnation against Breivik and explicitly praising Breivik and his actions, thereby giving more credence to Breivik’s claims (H/T: Jai):

Tommy Robinson, leader of the English Defence League, has spoken positively about Anders Behring Breivik’s approach to his twin attacks.

In an interview with Dagbladet he said justifying the attack on Utøya, which some conspiracy theory supporters allege was a place designed to support Fatah, would have been easier to justify if it was directed against Muslims.

“Nevertheless, he would only then have been brushed off as the one that killed Muslims because he did not like Islam. Whether you like it or not, that person was quite shrewd. What he did is despicable, but he managed to make people curious.”

Robinson, who has previously claimed Breivik was rather tough as “he dared to come forward with his opinions”, also cites the terrorist’s manifesto, major parts of which are comprised of blogs and books.

“The blogs are full of facts. You cannot yell at people because they tell the truth. You may find that the truth hurts, but it is still the truth. I read the blogs themselves – they contain facts about Islam,” he alleged.

Robinson denies that the English Defence League extols violence, “but we will defend ourselves if we must. The EDL isn’t made up of medical doctors and professors; it’s the boys from the street.”

The Independent contacted Lennon and challenged him about his statements in praise of Breivik. Lennon has been forced into a position where he is denying that he ever made the remarks. Unfortunately for him his statements were quite clear and as Loonwatch commenter Jai noted,

“The most revealing statement of all is Yaxley-Lennon’s claim that Breivik’s terrorist attack on Utoya would have been easier to justify if it had been perpetrated against Muslims.”

Luton mosque fire

Another mosque fire in the UK:

Luton: police probe mosque fire

An investigation is underway after an arson attack at a mosque in Bury Park in the early hours of this morning (April 2).

Fire crews were called to the Bury Park Jamia Masjid in Bury Park Road at 4.30am, after two large metal bins were pushed up against a door and set alight. The scene has been cordoned off by police while a fire investigation takes place.

Det Con Colin Knight, investigating the incident, said: “We’re keeping an open mind and appealing for witnesses. We don’t know at this stage what the motive was.”

Anwar Hussain, the mosque’s cultural secretary, said its leaders were angry about what had happened. “People are going to be very upset when they come for prayers,” he said. “But we will tell them to remain calm. The investigation is ongoing but my opinion is that it was deliberate. The police response has been very good, they will be checking CCTV footage from the cameras in the street, and we hope they will catch the culprits.”

Luton Today, 2 April 2012

A great article by Bob Pitt on more DailyMail Islamophobia. What’s most revealing and egregious is the clear lack of concern the Daily Mail has for factual accuracy, they will do anything it seems to demonize Islam and Muslims:

Do young British Muslims support ‘honour’ violence?

by Bob Pitt (Islamophobia-Watch)

Here is a classic piece of Islamophobic reporting by the Daily Mail, featuring the paper’s usual contempt for factual accuracy when it comes to coverage of the Muslim community.

Headlined “More than two thirds of young British Muslims believe ‘honour’ violence is acceptable, survey reveals”, the article begins: “Most young British Muslims support violence against women who ‘dishonour’ their families, a Panorama investigation will claim today.”

In reality the Panorama documentary Britain’s Crimes of Honour does nothing of the sort. The ComRes poll commissioned by Panorama, to which the Mail’s scaremongering headline refers, found that 69% of respondents agreed with the proposition that “Families should live according to the concept of ‘honour’, or ‘Izzat’”. That particular question made no reference at all to violence. Furthermore, the poll was conducted among British Asians of various faith communities. 70% of Muslim respondents said they agreed with living according to the concept of honour, but so did 79% of Sikhs, 64% of Hindus and 62% of Christians.

What the Panorama documentary claims, based on the ComRes survey, is that 18% of young British Asians believe that some forms of behaviour by women which could affect their family’s honour justify physical punishment. And even that figure is based on a one-sided reading of ambiguous findings.

In fact only 6% of respondents agreed with the proposition that “In certain circumstances, it can be right to physically punish a female member of the family if she brings dishonour to her family or community”. The figure was also 6% for respondents aged 16-24 and 7% for those aged 25-34. There were more Christians (8%) who agreed with this proposition than Muslims (6%).

The 18% figure was arrived at by presenting respondents with a number of possible “offences” by young women (disobeying their father, marrying someone unacceptable to the family or community etc) and then asking which of these actions respondents thought were “reasonable justifications for physical punishment”. 18% of British Asians in the 16-34 age bracket said they thought one or more of these actions could be regarded as “reasonable justifications”, three times more than those who thought it was “right” to carry out physical punishments.

Neither ComRes nor Panorama saw fit to try and explain this anomaly, preferring instead to emphasise the higher and discount the lower figure. An obvious explanation for the disparity, however, is that respondents might think that their family or community could regard certain actions as reasonable justifications for physical punishment while disapproving of such punishments themselves. Which puts a rather different complexion on it.

What seems to have happened here is that the Panorama documentary makers set out by assuming that support for “honour” based violence is rife within British Asian communities but found that the ComRes survey provided little support for this assumption. So the poll findings were not interpreted objectively but rather hyped up to suggest that there is solid evidence of widespread support for such violence.

As for the Daily Mail, it couldn’t even restrict itself to publicising Panorama’s dubious claims but had to invent its own.

According to Islamophobes, this taxi driver probably deserved his beating:

Racists convicted of attack on Muslim taxi driver

A taxi driver today told how he feared for his life after a group of passengers launched a racist attack on him before threatening to “take him down a side street and kill him”.

During the terrifying incident, father-of-five Muhammed Hussain, from Holme Slack, Preston, was spat at, punched in the face, grabbed around the neck and called racist names. His attackers even threatened to cut off his beard.

The Millers taxi driver, who has been in the trade for 10 years, gave evidence in Urdu via an interpreter at the trial of his attackers, Shaun Burns, 19, of Mayfield Avenue, Ingol, and Callum Tennant, 20, who lives with his grandparents on Marshall Grove, Ingol.

Preston Magistrates Court found both men guilty of racially aggravated assault and criminal damage to the taxi, which was kicked and dented when Mr Hussain pulled over to let them out at Lane Ends pub in Ashton.

Burns’ girlfriend Bryanne-Serrita Langham, 22, of Sylvancroft, Ingol, pleaded guilty to criminal damage to a taxi and making off without paying the £4.50 fare.

Today Mr Hussain, 36, told the Evening Post: “I thought they were going to kill me. This is the first time someone has been so violent towards me. It is out of order particularly being spat on – that was an insult. I believe it was because I am a Muslim. I was scared for my life.”

Lancashire Evening Post, 23 March 2012

Mother Saly Chowdhury and her daughter Ousha outside the shop where they were attacked

No Islamophobia to see here, no racism. These racist thugs must have appeared out of no where.

It’s also interesting that the Daily Mail chose to highlight the fact that the victim of the racist attack, store owner Saly Chowdhury “refuses to sell alcohol in her store.” Why is that important:

Racist thugs spat on four-year-old girl and beat up her mother in a sickening attack in her corner shop

by Leon Watson (Daily Mail)

Racist thugs spat on a four-year-old girl and brutally beat her mother in a 
sickening attack.

Saly Chowdhury was left with a black eye and facial injuries after two men and a woman tried to steal two boxes of crisps from her shop, the Hendon Valley Stores in Sunderland.

The incident took place on last Friday at 4.40pm when the mother-of-four ran out of the shop after the thieves and accidentally locked herself outside.

When the trio started hurling racist abuse at her, she fled to her home nearby. 

But they caught up with her and spat on her four-year-old daughter Ousha, shoved her seven-year-old daughter against the wall and thumped her 13-year-old daughter in the face.

The gang then turned their attentions to Saly, 31, punching her in the face, tearing out chunks of her hair and choking her with her scarf.

Saly, who also has a nine-year-old daughter, managed to free herself and get herself and her children inside to safety. 

And just 12 hours later the mum-of-four was back behind the shop counter, determined not to let the vicious thugs get the better of her. 

Saly, who refuses to sell alcohol in her store, said: ‘I had to close my shop 
on Friday and I lost business.

‘I’m not letting them do that to me again. It was scary and it’s worrying going back to work but there is no need for this behaviour.

‘I have many great customers who know me and I know them. If this is all about stealing, then please speak to me first and we can see if something can be sorted out.

‘The problem of people coming in here and stealing things is getting worse and worse.’

Northumbria Police yesterday said the incident ‘simply won’t be tolerated’.

An investigation into the attack has been launched and is being treated as
racially aggravated.

Sergeant Tom Connor, who covers the area, said: ‘This type of behaviour is despicable.’

(via. Islamophobia-watch)

EDL fail to disrupt opening of new Islamic centre

The presence of the English Defence League failed to disrupt the opening of a new Islamic centre in Luton yesterday.

The Discover Islam Public Information Centre, based in Upper George Street, is a community project which aims to provide a neutral environment for people to ask questions about Islam or Muslims that they would feel too embarrassed or intimidated to talk about otherwise.

But outside, surrounded by police, EDL leader Tommy Robinson and around 20 of his followers handed out leaflets which stated that the centre promoted “Luton In Harm-enemy“. The protest was responding to the views expressed on a blog by the centre’s manager, Yusuf Bonner, which Mr Robinson claims are “extremist”. Mr Bonner was not present at the event.

Inside, those running the centre attempted to ignore the EDL and instead focus on what the new building would bring to the town.

Discover Islam representative, Sufian Sadiq said: “Outside is an act of intimidation. I actually wanted to sit down and have a cup of tea with them, but they refused. I think the only problem is they haven’t had the opportunity to mix in with people like ourselves.”

Speaking about the centre, he said: “We conducted a survey and asked over 500 people, who are predominately non-Muslim, about their views on co-existing. The responses included, ‘I don’t know enough about Islam … I don’t know enough about religious practices … and I feel scared going into Bury Park and intimidated going into a Mosque’. We need to sit down as a community and combat this. We will come out and show that Islam is not intimidating.”

However, Tommy Robinson said: “We’re here to let the residents of Luton know what this centre is really about. We don’t need this form of Islam in our town and it is unbelievable that they are doing it under a banner of peace. We will be stepping up a campaign over the next three months, and we will close this place down.”

Luton council leader, Hazel Simmons attended the launch to show her support for the centre. She said: “A few weeks ago we had another challenge to Luton in the form of two television programmes. They gave an image that doesn’t represent us or the town that we live in or work in. Unfortunately that is the message that has gone out nationally and we’ve got to fight back against it. This is a groundbreaking initiative and a great opportunity for the town.”

A spokesman for Luton in Harmony said: “From what I’ve heard today, this centre is something the town needs, and something the non-Muslim community have said that they wanted. This is a lovely example of the Muslim community engaging, because they recognise they need to come out and dispel the myths and propaganda coming from people who don’t know anything about what Muslims are really about.”

Luton & Dunstable Express, 14 March 2012

Via ENGAGE

Update:  See “Luton Borough Council takes action against EDL over logo use”, BBC News, 15 March 2012

Update 2:  Via Exposing the English Defence League here is a comment posted in response to the Luton Today report of the council’s legal action against the EDL:

Stephen Yaxly, lennon, tommy robison, whatever his name is now days – its un like him to break the law!! really?!?!?! considering he was a very well known drug dealer in the Wigmore area a few years back, driving around in his pimped corsa that had what can only be described as the worst paint job in the world. this guy would not think twice about stamping on your face regardless of of skin colour or background. how can somebody claim to be defending england when its people like him that give it a bad name?!?! some things the EDL say make sence but this is not the person that they should have fronting them!! i saw him on news night telling us about muslims taking girls and getting them addicted to drugs………..who the hell is he to comment when he made his living from selling drugs to anybody who would take them…….I am proud to be english but i am not proud to have StephenTommyfool speaking on behalf of the ‘english’. he is just a drug dealing thug! he is not defending england! he is giving the working class english man a bad name. On your bike Stephen!!! go back to what you do best and sell drugs to low-lives like yourself!

Far-right supporters agree with armed attacks

Mark Townsend and Richard Orange (The Guardian)

Significant numbers of far-right supporters in the UK consider violence and “armed conflict” a legitimate form of political expression, experts will warn this week.

The first audit into the attitudes and beliefs of Britain’s rightwing extremists, collated in a report by the thinktank Chatham House, will reveal that there is a “significant level of support” for planned violent attacks.

Next month the trial will begin of Anders Behring Breivik, the far-right extremist who has confessed to the murder of 77 people in Norway last July. Breivik, an Islamophobe, said he carried out the attacks on Utoya Island and Oslo to help protect Europe from a “Muslim takeover”.

The report, which polled 2,152 far-right supporters, raises concerns that the path of extremism followed by Breivik, from membership of a mainstream rightwing party to far-right terrorist, should be recognised as a possibility for UK counterparts.

Matthew Goodwin, an associate fellow of Chatham House and the University of Nottingham, said there was a danger that supporters of theEnglish Defence League (EDL), which had links to Breivik, could be tempted to become more militant. “Perhaps some might feel that more direct, more violent strategies are the way forward.”

On 31 March the EDL will stage an international demonstration in Aarhus, Denmark’s second largest city. The “counter-jihad” summit will discuss the formation of a European Defence League. Representatives from defence leagues in Italy, Poland, the United States, Finland, Sweden and Norway are expected to attend, along with the anti-Muslim group, Stop Islamisation of Europe.

The ramifications of a well-organised, European-wide far-right movement, able to share violent ideologies and pool resources, has triggered concern from anti-fascist campaigners. Last week the Czech government warned that extreme rightwing groups were becoming more sophisticated and that neo-Nazis might resort to terrorism.

Goodwin said: “If the EDL links up with similar organisations in Germany and central and eastern Europe, that is quite worrying. Many of the grassroots groups in Germany are often called ‘autonomous nationalists’, but are very, very closely networked with neo-Nazi groups and organisations that engage quite openly in violence.”

Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer‘s favorite UK anti-Muslim organization:

Thug Banned from Mosques after EDL Attack in Dagenham

(London2)

A thug who attacked two men at a rally against a Muslim place of worship has been banned from going near London mosques for five years.

John McAndrew, 29, was jailed for 14 months after throwing large stones onto a busy road and then the following month assaulting two men at an English Defence League demo against a mosque and cultural centre in Green Lane, Dagenham.

Last week, McAndrew was given an Asbo stopping him from going near Muslim schools and places of worship until 2017 and taking part in any EDL demos in England for life.

In a statement released by the Met Police last week, Barking and Dagenham Pc Mark Gellard said: “John McAndrew is an individual whose often violent behaviour is linked with his attendance at demonstrations and protests, particularly surrounding the English Defence League.

“This behaviour affects those who live, work and frequent the areas where some of these demonstrations have taken place.”

McAndrew, of Grange Road, Plaistow, was given a conviction related Asbo at Woolwich Crown Court on February 20.

The Asbo will stop him from attending Islamic festivals for five years and from publicising and attending any rally run by, or in conjunction with, the EDL in England and Wales for the rest of his life.

McAndrew was jailed at Woolwich Crown Court on December 7. He was given four months after admitting common assault against the two men at an EDL rally in Dagenham on June 18, 2011.

He received another four months for affray after admitting throwing large stones onto the A4 dual carriageway during rush hour traffic at another EDL protest at the Hammersmith Flyover on May 11, 2011, police added.

McAndrew was given six months for breaching a suspended sentence for affray at a Poundmart store in Woolwich on September 10, 2009.

He was also sentenced to four weeks, to run concurrently, for two counts of failing to surrender to police.

I don’t think this hooligan should have been jailed for burning the Koran, though in his case he probably meant to send the same message that the KKK sends when “burning crosses.” Either way his actions since being released confirm that he is an unhinged and violent character.

Bob Pitt at Islamophobia-Watch writes:

EDL member who burned Qur’an part of racist gang that threatened and abused Turkish takeaway workers

(Islamophobia-Watch)

A former Carlisle soldier just released from jail for publicly burning the Koran was among nearly a dozen people who racially abused two takeaway workers.

The city’s crown court heard that Andrew Ryan, 33, and his brother Matthew Ryan, 27, were part of a group who threatened and racially abused two Turkish men at Manhattan Pizza in Botchergate last year.

The Ryan brothers, along with three other men and four women, pleaded guilty to two charges of using racially aggravated threatening behaviour. All admitted that their abuse of the two takeaway workers had been inspired by their mistaken belief that the men were Pakistani.

Before the group are sentenced on Thursday, Judge Paul Batty QC will be shown a video of the ugly incident in which they were involved on May 20 last year.

The CCTV shows the group massing in a threatening manner outside the takeaway shop shortly before 8pm. They are seen angrily remonstrating with the two Turkish workers, some of the group ranting and repeatedly jabbing their fingers as they spill into the shop.

One of the men in the group flicked a lighted cigarette into the shop, and a drinks can is also tossed inside. At one stage, the video shows one of the defendants striding into the shop and throwing a chair.

The terrifying incident came shortly after Andrew Ryan was released from a 70-day jail term for burning the Koran in Carlisle city centre. He claimed he committed that offence with the aim of causing offence to only Islamic extremists.

News & Star, 7 February 2012

After he was convicted of burning the Qur’an in April last year Andrew Ryan was treated as a hero by the EDL, who organised a demonstration in solidarity with him before he was sentenced. As the News & Star reported:

“He arrived at the city magistrates’ court flanked by men waving the St George’s Cross and shouting nationalist chants. The English Defence League Carlisle Division had put out a call for members to support Ryan. A group gathered to parade through the city centre with him, carrying a flag with ‘EDL’ written on it. It also bore the scrawled message: ‘It’s our country, we are taking it back’.”

EDL Thug: Lee Preston

These violent attacks have been occurring with some frequency, just a few days ago we reported on an EDL supporter who attacked a family with knives and threatened to kill them. Now we have another incident in which an EDL yob attacks a Muslim. Remember the EDL is Horowitz tool Robert Spencer’s favorite UK group, he once termed them, “freedom fighters.”

Jail for racist thug who shouted ‘EDL’ when he attacked a taxi driver

A racist thug who punched a taxi driver and dragged him along a street, has been jailed for 18 months.

Lee Preston, 22, targeted cabbie Mohammed Rashid, leaving him with two black eyes, a bruised face and grazes to his shoulders caused when he was dragged to the ground.

Mr John Hallisey, prosecuting, said the cabbie received a call at 9pm on April 16 to collect five men from Chaddesden. He noticed they were carrying cans of lager and told them these could not be drunk in his vehicle. But after a few minutes, the men started drinking.

“Mr Rashid told them to stop and the response was to start hurling abuse. The defendant was saying ‘we are EDL,’ referring to the English Defence League,” said Mr Hallisey.

Preston, of Walbrook Road, Derby, began to throw beer cans out of the taxi until Mr Rashid closed the windows – a move which angered the passengers. Mr Rashid stopped his cab and told the five to leave. One said: “Get out and we’ll sort you out.”

When they eventually left, they failed to close the rear doors but Mr Rashid waited until he thought they had walked away before getting out of the cab. But he was then grabbed and prevented from getting back into the vehicle before being attacked.

During this, he heard chants of “EDL” and one man said: “I’m going to kill you.” When a second taxi driver stopped to help, he was also assaulted and had his vehicle kicked.

Police were called and Preston was found hiding under a bush.

He admitted affray and racially aggravated assault causing actual bodily harm.

Derby Telegraph, 30 January 2012

Is it necessary to turn a story about a rapist into one about the religion he grew up with?

(via. Islamophobia-Watch)

‘Strict Muslim’ raped four women at knifepoint to ‘punish them for being on the streets at night’

by Bob Pitt

Thus the headline to an article in today’s Daily Mail. As is almost invariably the case when this newspaper reports on any issue involving Muslims, the headline is intentionally misleading.

If you read the article, you’ll see it is the rapist’s family background that is characterised as “strict Muslim” not the individual himself. In fact the judge in passing sentence made the point that the rapist carried out the attacks despite and in contradiction to his religious upbringing: “The fact that you have attacked these women not withstanding your background must represent your own wholly warped personality.”

But the headline suggests to the reader that it was the man’s strict adherence to his faith which produced the violent misogyny that led him to commit these crimes.

Talks over Sunbury-on-Thames schoolgirl race attack

(BBC)

The girl was attacked by older white girls who kicked her, pushed her to the ground and drew on her face.

Surrey Police said it seemed the girl had been targeted on 11 January because she was wearing a headscarf.

Spelthorne councillor Colin Strong said the incident was being raised at a meeting with neighbourhood police as an issue that affected the community.

‘On busy road’

Detectives said they were treating the incident in Vicarage Road as a racially-aggravated assault.

Det Con Simon Egan said the girl had been targeted as she waited for a bus.

He said the suspects had kicked the victim in the leg, pulled her rucksack from her, pushed her to the floor, used make-up to draw on her face and racially abused her.

After the incident, the girl picked up her bag and ran away.

Det Con Egan said: “This was an appalling assault where a young victim has been targeted in a completely unprovoked attack.

“It would seem that suspects targeted the victim for no reason other than because she was wearing a headscarf.”

In an appeal for witnesses, he said the assault had taken place at the side of a busy road in daylight and urged any pedestrians or drivers who saw the attack to come forward.

The issue will be discussed at a neighbourhood policing meeting at the Sunbury Youth Centre, in Bryony Way, on Thursday evening.

Lib Dem’s anti-Islam rants: “Put pork restaurant next to mosque”

A Liberal Democrat candidate has refused to apologise for a series of shocking Islamophobic comments. Sick Dave Stone suggested a pork restaurant and a topless bar — named after Islam’s holiest city – should be build next to a mosque.

The would-be councillor, who is the party’s candidate for a by-election in Redcar and Cleveland on 19 January, said:

“Regarding the mosque being built near ground zero. I say let them build it. But then, across the street we should put a topless bar called “You Mecca Me Hot” … and next to that a pork rib restaurant … Then we’ll see who’s tolerant.”

A number of posts on his Facebook page were seemingly calculated to deliberately offend Muslims — including spreading outright smears. Stones claimed that the Royal British Legion were “not selling poppies in certain areas of the UK”, implying that objections from Muslims were behind the decision:

When contacted by Scrapbook, however, a spokesperson for The Royal British Legion said his claims about the poppies were “categorically not true”.

This brazen intolerance brings to mind Cllr Warren Swaine, a Liberal Democrat  who was suspended from Reading Borough Council after Scrapbook exposed a race remark about Labour MP Chuka Umunna. That incident, and an attempted cover up, led to an internal party investigation at the behest of the party’s outraged black members.

Will the Lib Dem leadership be burying its head in the sand again this time?

Eric Bikubi and Magalie Bamu

The “witchcraft” imbecility rears its ugly head again. If this were a report coming from Saudi Arabia you could be sure that Islam would be blamed.

 Kristy Bamu ‘murdered over witch claim’ in Newham

A 15-year-old boy was tortured and drowned by his sister and her boyfriend because they believed he was a witch, the Old Bailey has heard.

Kristy Bamu, from Paris, was found dead in Newham, east London, on Christmas Day in 2010.

The boy had 101 injuries and died from being beaten with a metal bar and drowning, the court heard.

His sister Magalie Bamu and her boyfriend, Eric Bikubi, both Congolese and aged 28, of Newham, deny murder.

Prosecutors told jurors of acts they described as “depraved”, “wicked” and “cruel”.

Kristy Bamu and his siblings were visiting London from Paris during the Christmas holidays

Mr Bikubi admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, a plea not accepted by the prosecution.

‘Armoury of weapons’

Kristy and his siblings were visiting the couple for Christmas, but Mr Bikubi had accused the boy and two of his siblings of witchcraft, the court heard.

All three were beaten and other children were forced to join in the attacks. But it was Kristy who became the focus of Mr Bikubi’s attention, the prosecution said.

The teenager was said to be in such pain after days of being hit with an “armoury of weapons” including sticks, pliers, a metal bar, hammer and chisel that he begged to die.

Brian Altman QC, prosecuting, said: “Eventually Bikubi took him into the bathroom, put him in the bath and started to run the water.

“Kristy was just too badly injured and exhausted to resist or to keep his head above the water.

“It was only when he [Mr Bikubi] realised that Kristy was not moving that he stopped what he was doing and pulled him from the water.”

He added: “By then it was too late.”

The youngsters were forced to lie to their parents about what was happening when they phoned home, the jury heard.

Mr Altman said of Kristy’s father: “He had sent his children on holiday, not to a torture chamber.”

When police arrived they found Kristy and his siblings – brother Yves, 22, and and sister Kelly, 20, and other children.

Mr Altman said: “All were standing in the living room, hysterical, terrified and soaking wet.

‘Sorcerers’

“None of them spoke any English.”

Kelly Bamu said Mr Bikubi and Ms Bamu accused Kristy, herself and a third child of “being witches or sorcerers – practising witchcraft” which adversely influenced another child.

“Despite her own siblings’ denials that they were sorcerers, Magalie Bamu joined her boyfriend in repeating these fantastic claims and participating in the assaults,” Mr Altman said.

The three were beaten and refused food, drink and sleep and eventually, to stop the torture, they admitted being sorcerers, the jury was told.

Mr Altman said Mr Bikubi’s admission of manslaughter was rejected by the prosecution, which argues the couple carried out “the very deliberate murder” of Kristy.

‘Feral and evil’

Ms Bamu also denies two charges of causing actual bodily harm to her other siblings.

The defendants are originally from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The jury heard that witchcraft or sorcery – called kindoki – is practised in Congolese Christian churches.

Mr Altman said that taken out of the church’s control “it may take on a feral and indeed evil character, as we suggest it did here”.

The court heard that in 2008 Mr Bikubi had accused a family friend of being involved in witchcraft and had forced her to cut her hair short to purge herself.

The trial continues.

Right Wing British National Party

The recent case of an assault on a white woman by Somalis in Britain is being fully exploited by loons on both sides of the Atlantic. Islamophobia Watch investigated and exposed the distorted coverage, though as usual, the truth cannot wash away the residue such sensationalism invariably creates.

Daily Mail’s bigoted and inaccurate reporting provokes more right-wing anti-Muslim hysteria

Simon Beech

Simon Beech sentenced to prison for ten years was a member of the EDL and the BNP, any surprise?

Hanley mosque arson accused’s links to far right parties

One of the men accused of setting fire to a Stoke-on-Trent mosque was a member of the British National Party (BNP) and English Defence League (EDL).

Simon Beech was a serving soldier with the 2nd Battalion, The Yorkshire Regiment, based at Weeton Barracks near Preston, Lancashire, when he is alleged to have set fire to the City Central Mosque in Regent Road, Hanley, in the early hours of December 3 last year.

He is accused of entering the mosque, which was still under construction, with his co-accused Garreth Foster. The Crown Prosecution Service allege the pair were responsible for starting a blaze on the ground floor and feeding a gas pipe upstairs, from a neighbouring property.

Beech, of Hilton Road, Hartshill, and Foster, aged 28, of Hartshill Road, Stoke, deny arson.

Yesterday at their trial at Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court the jury heard Beech, aged 23, subscribed to Facebook and the EDL.

Peter McMaster, an intelligence researcher with Staffordshire Police, said on November 10, less than a month before the arson, Beech posted comments including “Let’s start bashing skulls, dirty, rotten rodents, they breed like rats here, they need to die like rats” and “I say we need to start taking things into our own hands because they are running the place”.

The next day he posted “Get as many heads as we can, go and smash some skull and take over Shelton”.

And Beech said he “liked” a comment someone else posted – “Nuke all mosques”. He also posted comments including “Time we took things into our hands,” and “I say we put a stop to it before it’s too late.”

Also on November 11, Beech said: “The time has come we burn their place, burn the lot of them.”

The Sentinel, 7 December 2011

Click to read more …

The EDL?

Muslim woman, 52, racially abused by Telford gang

A Muslim woman was spat at and abused by a gang of six teenagers in Telford who pulled off her religious headdress in a racially motivated attack.

The gang, who were all male, surrounded the 52-year-old woman and started aggressively pushing and shoving her as she walked along a footpath by the skate park near William Reynolds Infant School in Woodside on Tuesday. Chris Ammonds, spokesman for Telford police, said the woman was abused between 6pm and 6.20pm.

“After circling the victim the youths then started to racially abuse her. At least one of the youths spat at the victim too.

“The youths then pulled the victim’s hijab – a traditional Muslim headdress – off her head and taunted her with it but she quickly managed to grab it back off them and flee.

“The victim has been left very shaken by this incident and also suffered a long scratch to her right cheek as a result of the assault.

“The youths that surrounded the victim are all described as being white, aged between 15 and 17 and as wearing tracksuits and hooded tops or caps.

“Officers are very keen to identify the youths that assaulted this woman.”

Anyone with information should call Telford police on 101 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555111.

Read more: http://www.shropshirestar.com/news/2011/12/01/muslim-woman-52-racially-abused-by-telford-gang/#ixzz1fVSMUVur

The march of Islamophobic organizations continues. Expect Robert Spencer to support this new party.

‘Anti-Islamist political party’ to be launched this year, says EDL leader

Reuters has an article marking the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street which draws parallels with the threat from the far right today.

The article closes with a quote from EDL leader Stephen Lennon: “There will be an anti-Islamist political party forming this year. Britain’s primed for it.”

This confirms the Gates of Vienna report of discussions at the London “counterjihad” conference in September.

(via. Islamophobia-Watch)

71-year-old Muslim seriously assaulted outside Kilmarnock mosque

Police at Kilmarnock are continuing enquiries and appealing for information after an elderly man was seriously assaulted in the early hours of Friday 15 July 2011.

The 71-year-old Asian man was discovered with serious facial injuries around 0130 hrs on Friday 15 July 2011 outside the Community Mosque in Hill Street, Kilmarnock. It is believed that he was attacked prior to opening the Mosque for a prayer session and was discovered by two fellow members of the Mosque who informed the emergency services.

The injured man was taken by ambulance to Crosshouse Hospital where he is currently being treated for his injuries. Hospital staff describe his condition as stable.

Chief Inspector Wilson Brown at Kilmarnock Police Office said: ”This is a despicable act of violence carried out on a defenceless man. At this time there would appear to be no motive for this attack however we can’t rule out the possibility of it being racially motivated.

“It is believed that the man was attacked prior to him opening the Mosque and it is not known how long he may have been lying on the ground injured before two fellow members discovered him.

“At the time that the injured man was discovered by his fellow members of the Mosque, another two young men approached them to assist. Unfortunately these two men left prior to police arrival and I’d like to ask them to contact police immediately as it is vital that we speak to them.

“I also urge anyone who has any information which could assist us in tracking down the person or persons responsible for this sickening attack to contact police.

Anyone with information should contact Kilmarnock Police Office on 01563 50500 or alternatively CRIMESTOPPERS on 0800 555 111 where anonymity can be maintained.

Cumnock Chronicle, 15 July 2011

Via ENGAGE

The Hill Street mosque was opened earlier this year after the conversion of what had formerly been the Hillhead Tavern. The conversion was denounced by the Scottish Defence League who held a demonstration in Kilmarnock in June last year.

Robert Spencer next to his Perpetual Serf Pamela Geller

Even the bigoted Roberta Moore is leaving the EDL, now. When will Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller get the memo that it’s time to jump ship? (hat-tip: ZB)

British Branch of the ‘Anti-Jihad’ Movement in Full Meltdown

(Little Green Footballs)

The two most visible “anti-jihad” bloggers in the United States are probably Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller. They both appear frequently on Fox News as “experts” on Islam; Geller writes for Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government, Newsmax, and World Net Daily, and they’ve recently been touring the country showing their “Ground Zero Mega Mosque” horror film. Their anti-Muslim group “Stop the Islamization of America” was recently listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, for obvious reasons.

Spencer and Geller are also notorious for their enthusiastic support of Britain’s far right English Defence League, well known for their riots, fascist roots, and thuggish intimidation of British minorities.

Two examples: Geller gushed about the EDL here:

How I wish I could be there to stand with the English Defense League.

And Robert Spencer has called for “all free people” to support the EDL:

The EDL deserves the support of all free people.

So I have to wonder how Spencer and Geller will react to the latest news about their British allies.

First, the news that one of the EDL’s leaders, John “Snowy” Shaw, has suddenly realized that he hates Jews as much as Muslims, and is raving about the infamous antisemitic forgery “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion:” HOPE not hate blog: Infidel leader praises the Protocols.

With “the Protocols” Shaw has immersed himself in one of the most vile and dangerous forgeries of all time.

According to Shaw, the book has already begun to make things “click” in his head, and he advises “all true British patriots take the time to read this”.

Despite the book being discovered as a forgery, it has long been viewed as definitive proof of a Jewish conspiracy by Nazis and antisemites ever since. Adolf Hitler even had put it in the school curriculum in Nazi Germany. More recently, it was even among a selection of books that the BNP recommended for “patriots” during the 1980’s because they insisted it was still of historical interest.

The book is a crude record of the supposed minutes of a meeting of the Jewish community in the late 19th Century where plans for their world domination are discussed.

The book first surfaced in Russia in the early 1900’s and was used as a justification by antisemites to carry out pogroms against the Jewish community. It’s popularity spread as far as notorious Jew-Hater Henry Ford of Ford Motor car fame, who had a further 500,000 printed for distribution in the United States.

Having opened the book, Shaw is convinced by its authenticity. He is now adamant that both Jews and Muslims are conspiring together and that he “must stop them destroying our country”.

And second: hardline activist and leader of the EDL’s “Jewish Division,” Roberta Moore (a sort of British version of Pamela Geller), is very publicly bailing out of the group because of “the Nazis within:” EDL Jewish division leader Roberta Moore quits.

The hardline activist at the forefront of the “Jewish Division” of the extreme right-wing English Defence League has announced that she does not wish to be a part of it any longer because of Nazi elements within it. …

Although she described the EDL as “doing a fantastic job” she said the party had been hijacked by elements who wanted to use it “for their own Nazi purposes”.

Ms Moore said she still supported the EDL leaders and “all the genuine patriots out there who struggle to get their voices heard” but added that she no longer wished to be a part of it. “I sincerely hope that the leaders will get the strength to squash the Nazis within,” she said.

Mark Gardner, from the Community Security Trust, said: “This latest development shows, yet again, why Jews should not be involved in such circles.”

I cut ties long ago with people like Spencer and Geller precisely because they were willing (eager, in fact) to make alliances with the farthest of the far right, up to and including people with neo-Nazi connections — people like the English Defence League.

There’s no comment so far from either Robert Spencer or Pamela Geller on these developments.

The money quote from the article,

“But with Muslims, in Britain today, there is a feeling that the civilised, funny, clever ones aren’t really proper Muslims at all. And don’t think that these civilised, funny, clever people people don’t notice it.

This is subtle and pervasive – more of a smell than a substance – and I’m not sure whether it’s a very diluted version of the stench that comes off Condell or Robert Spencer or something essentially different.”

I couldn’t have said it better than that.

Islamophobia and antisemitism

by Andrew Brown (Guardian)

The great thing about being in Dubai last week was being a foreigner once more. It’s how I spent much of my childhood, how I grew up, and how I feel most at home; but it brings professional rewards as well as personal pleasures. I was for the first time in my conscious life in an environment where the most important thing about Muslims was not that they were Muslims. It gave me a moment of sudden awareness, like waking in a log cabin without electricity when all the background hum and tension of electric motors that you never normally hear is suddenly audible by its absence.

The people I was hanging out, and sometimes drinking, with were Muslim intellectuals whom I know and like in England. They’re not in any way discriminated against in this country, as far as I can tell: their lives are not impeded by the kind of people who think that Muslims are a problem to be solved. The kind of crude and open prejudice that flourishes online – and go and look at comments on the Telegraph website, or the videos of Pat Condell, if you want to know what I mean – is very rare in liberal circles, and when we catch ourselves at it, we feel guilty.

But there is a more subtle and general sort of prejudice which holds that Condell is not an extremist outcast. Richard Dawkins, for example, has praised Condell, and used to sell his videos on his website, which reminds of the way that Oswald Mosley remained a member in good standing of the English upper classes until the outbreak of the second world war, despite his views on Jews.

What I realised in Dubai was that in England today Muslims can’t escape being Muslims, any more than Jews in England in the 20s or 30s could escape being Jewish. They can’t just be unremarkable, as Jews in England can be now.

In Dubai, or neighbouring Sharjah, being a Muslim did not matter in the same way. Obviously, people made a huge amount of fuss about Islam. But when you’re in a room full of Muslim academics and students arguing about culture, or censorship, or why there is so little science in the Arab world, the arguments themselves make one thing wholly plain. Neither side is more Muslim than the other. None of the flaws of the Islamic world are essential or intrinsic to it. They may be widespread, and in some cases quite horrible. But they’re all cultural and not just religious.

I don’t mean by this that all the bad bits are cultural and all the good bits religious. That’s both false and simplistic. Cultures can be both good and bad and both are still authentically Islamic. But the whole idea of an “essential” or “true” way of being Muslim makes little sense when looked at historically, no matter how important, indeed indispensable, that style of argument is between Muslims. The same is of course true about “real” Christianity, or, for that matter, “real” atheism.

We don’t have any real difficulty accepting this about Christians in this country. Except for a few noisy bigots, it’s accepted that nice, good Christians are just as Christian as nasty and vile ones: that Jesus would be just as much at home among the Quakers as in Ian Paisley’s congregation; in fact most Guardian readers believe that he would like the Quakers more. Certainly this is true about Jews. No one really believes that Lionel Blue is less Jewish than the chief rabbi (unless the chief rabbi does).

But with Muslims, in Britain today, there is a feeling that the civilised, funny, clever ones aren’t really proper Muslims at all. And don’t think that these civilised, funny, clever people people don’t notice it.

This is subtle and pervasive – more of a smell than a substance – and I’m not sure whether it’s a very diluted version of the stench that comes off Condell or Robert Spencer or something essentially different. Either way, it is a smell of which I spend most of my life unaware, and Muslims notice much more often. I shall try to flare my nostrils a little more often.

Hate blogger Pamela Geller

N.Y. Anti-Mosque Leader Defends Group That Clashed With British Police

(Newsweek)

A leader in the movement protesting plans to build an Islamic cultural center two blocks from Ground Zero in lower Manhattan is defending the actions of a right-wing, anti-Muslim group that was involved in violent clashes with British riot police over the weekend.

Pamela Geller is a conservative blogger, activist, and a principal organizer of Stop Islamization of America (SIOA), which seeks to block construction of the proposed center. The group is sponsoring a protest rally at the site on the 2010 anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, a week from Saturday. In a posting on her Atlas Shrugs blog, Geller expresses sympathy for the goals and actions of the English Defense League (EDL), a far-right group implicated in violent clashes with police during an anti-Islamic demonstration last Saturday in the northern English city of Bradford. “The stated goal of the EDL is to oppose militant Islam and the sharia,” Geller writes. “What’s wrong with that? Everything to the PC, leftist slaves in the media and the government.”

In an e-mail to Declassified, Geller affirmed her support for the EDL and defended the group’s actions in Bradford, which, with its nearby sister city of Leeds, has a substantial Muslim population, many of Pakistani extraction.

Geller wrote: “The media has been defamatory and libelous towards any and all counter jihad activists, including the EDL, which far from being neo-Nazi and racist, is pro-Israel and has Sikh and other non-white members and spokesmen. The EDL’s own explanation of what happened in Bradford ishere. As you can see from that statement, a group of Islamic supremacists and Communists actually began the violence by throwing rocks at EDL members. White supremacists at the demonstration did not represent the EDL, and EDL members actually removed them from the demonstration.”

British media reports—including accounts from outlets known for their conservative political slants—and official police statements on the Bradford clashes do not offer much support for, and in some cases contradict, the account offered by the EDL. In an official chronology of last Saturday’s events posted on the Web site of the West Yorkshire Police, the first reference to violence is a 2:30 p.m. entry that says: “Missiles have been thrown in the area around the Bradford Urban Gardens, however, this has been contained and the police are utilising their resources to manage the current situation.”

Bradford Urban Gardens is the location at which U.K. authorities had allowed the EDL to stage its rally; a left-wing counterdemonstration was booked a half mile away. (The EDL had wanted to conduct a march through the city, but authorities denied permission.)

A report from The Daily Telegraph, a newspaper known for its conservative sympathies, says violence broke out “as chanting EDL supporters began throwing missiles towards Asian youngsters and anti-fascist activists who had been taunting them with shouts of ‘Nazi scum off our streets.’ ” The Telegraph said that as EDL protesters got off buses that had taken them to the site, they shouted slogans at locals, including “Allah-Pedophile,” “We want our country back,” and “We love the floods”—a reference, the paper said, to flooding that’s now devastating much of Pakistan.

The Daily Mail, a newspaper perhaps even more conservative thanThe Telegraph, also reported on the violence. The paper’s Web site carries photos of what it says are EDL protesters, with one caption reading, “Crossing the line: EDL supporters in hats, hoods and balaclavas hurl missiles at police in Bradford today.”

By her own account, Geller’s support of the EDL and other anti-Muslim groups in the U.K. has put her at odds with what are considered mainstream groups representing Britain’s Jewish community. In an interview with the conservative FrontPage Magazine Web site, Geller claims that rabbis and prominent Jewish groups in Britain had urged Jews to boycott a demonstration that a group called Stop the Islamization of Europe (SIOE) organized last December to protest plans to build a mosque in the North London neighborhood of Harrow.

According to Geller, the Community Security Trust, which keeps watch on extremist and anti-Semitic activities in the U.K., much like the Anti-Defamation League does in the U.S., urged Jews not to support the SIOE protest, as did unnamed rabbis who said the protest’s “only purpose” was “to spread hatred and fear.” Geller accused U.K. Jewish groups like the CST of “aiding and abetting Islamic jihad and Islamic anti-Semitism.” A person familiar with the views of British Jewish leaders, who asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive information, said mainstream Jewish groups regarded the English Defense League as “politicized football hooligans.”

In an e-mail to Declassified, Geller acknowledged that some epithets that The Telegraph attributed to EDL protesters in Bradford were “in bad taste, although in saying that I am not accepting the accuracy of The Telegraph account, and also understand that words said in anger are not always words the speakers would endorse in moments of reflection.” In a move apparently designed to avoid such embarrassments at her group’s upcoming 9/11 event, she said, “We have already published several notices warning that inflammatory signs will be removed.”

Geller said the EDL itself acknowledged that there may have been neo-Nazi thugs among its ranks: “The left and real neo-Nazis frequently attempt to infiltrate EDL rallies in order to discredit the EDL. This is amply documented. Both have an interest in seeing the EDL fail: the left so that there will be no serious resistance to its agenda, and the neo-Nazis so that there exists no respectable alternative to them in opposing the British elite, and also because the neo-Nazis have generally aligned with the Islamic jihad that the EDL resists.”

She added that while she would not assert that the EDL “can do no wrong, I just refuse to accept accounts of EDL misdeeds from sources that have been proven in the past to have lied about EDL activities.”

Drunken man who stuffed ham in Muslims’ shoes, hung meat slices outside mosque spared jail time

BY PHILIP CAULFIELD
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

A drunken British man who stuffed ham inside Muslim worshipers’ shoes and draped meat outside a mosque as they prayed was spared a jail term because he apologized.

Jamie Knowlson, 30, pleaded guilty to racially or religiously aggravated harassment last month and was facing two years in jail for the drunken stunt.

A judge in Bristol, England, let him walk with a six-month suspended term last week because he apologized to mosque officials, The Telegraph reported.

“It is difficult to imagine a more offensive incident,” Bristol Royal Court Judge Carol Hagen said. “Not only the fixing of meat to railings, but aggravated, in my view, by the fact that members of the mosque were inside praying at the time.”

Prosecutors say Knowlson crept into the Al-Baseera mosque at 6:30 a.m. on January 9 and slipped slices of ham into worshipers’ empty shoes, which were lined up outside the prayer hall.

Knowlson also hung some slices on the railings outside the building, where some 2,000Somali Muslims pray each week, prosecutors said.

The plastered Brit returned a short time later and was confronted by a mosque official,Abdi Djmaa, security footage shows.

Djmaa said that Knowlson ranted that “the next visit will be harder” and made slurred threats about “bad meat” and “girls,” The Telegraph reported.

Islamic dietary restrictions forbid Muslims from eating pork.

Knowlson’s lawyer, Ian Halliday, said his client regretted the ham-handed prank.

“This was a brutal, misconceived, drunken prank. He returned to the mosque and offered his apologies in person,” Halliday said.

The judge also also sentenced Knowlson to 150 hours of community service.

After the verdict, mosque officials said worshipers were upset and shocked.

“We don’t eat pork and we are banned by our faith from eating it, as it makes us impure when we are going to our prayers,” said Mubarak Mohamud, an imam at the mosque.

“We don’t hate the man; we just suppose he doesn’t know us,” he said.

Can you imagine the ramifications if a Muslim had done this? These packages were designed to “maim and kill,” but for the haters out there only Muslims can be terrorists.

Celtic Manager Sent ‘Lethal’ Nail Bomb

(SkyNews)

Police are hunting a nail bomber who has sent several potentially lethal devices to prominent people connected with Celtic Football Club – including manager Neil Lennon.

The devices were addressed to the team boss, a high-profile lawyer and also to a member of the Scottish Parliament.

Fears former Labour minister and Celtic director Brian Wilson had also been targeted after he received a suspicious parcel proved to be a “false alarm”.

Strathclyde Police say the packages, sent through the post, were designed to “maim or kill”.

They contained a combination of nails and high explosives.

It is believed devices have been sent on at least three separate occasions.

It is understood that the package did reach the office and an employee raised the alarm when nails were seen protruding from it.

Mrs Godman is the outgoing Deputy Presiding Officer in the Scottish Parliament.

Recent media coverage told of how she had worn a Celtic top underneath her jacket whilst on duty during a recent sitting of the Scottish Parliament.

The latest incident was on April 15, when a device was sent to Paul McBride QC at the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh.

It was intercepted at a Royal Mail sorting office.

The high-profile barrister works for Celtic and has been an outspoken critic of the Scottish Football Association in its recent dealings with the club.

Although no-one was injured by the three devices, they were handed over to police and were the subject of controlled explosions.

Counter-terrorism officers have contacted public figures they believe could fall into the category of potential targets.

High-profile Catholics are also being warned to be vigilant, including the leader of Scotland’s Catholics, Cardinal Keith O’Brien.

SNP leader and First Minister Alex Salmond said he hoped Scotland would “unite to condemn those who abuse football with their pathetic and dangerous prejudices”.

“We will not tolerate this sort of criminality in Scotland,” he said.

“We’ve got to galvanise ourselves to eradicate this evil from attaching itself to the wonderful game of football.”

Officers are visiting the mail rooms of broadcasters in Scotland as a precaution, to advise staff on how to handle suspect packages.

The hunt for the nail bomber is being concentrated in Scotland.

Investigators are following a line of inquiry relating to the bomber being a rogue supporter of the rival Rangers team.

A spokesman for Strathclyde Police told Sky News: “We believe we are dealing with someone who is Scotland-based. There’s every chance someone from a Loyalist background is involved.”

Abhijit Pandya

Lovely lookin’ fella’ isn’t he? Maybe if he dyes his hair using peroxide he can try to be the British version of Geert Wilders?

I guess he was too Brown for the BNP. I wonder how the EDL folks who want “British to be about British” feel about this lad? Anybody will do who can save us from the dreaded  ”Muslamic ray guns.”

UKIP by-election candidate backs Geert Wilders, says Islam is ‘morally flawed and degenerate’

Abhijit Pandya, an Indian-origin candidate for the Leicester South byelection, has sparked fury by making critical remarks about Islam in his blog less than a week before the May 5 elections.

Pandya, 31, is the candidate for the UK Independence Party, which is opposed to Britain’s membership of the European Union.

On his blog, Pandya called Islam “morally flawed and degenerate” and said he backed Geert Wilders, a controversial Dutch politician who allegedly called Islam a retarded ideology.

He wrote: “A theological system that fundamentally encourages discrimination between those who believe it and those who don’t, treating the latter as second-class citizens, is backward. A system that treats women as slaves without chains is morally flawed and degenerate.

“Cultural practices in many parts of the world which include child marriages and the death penalty for practising homosexuality are reminders that man is capable of going back to the dark ages very quickly.”

He goes on to ask: “Why should Britain, the country that fathered the modern world, put up with this, as Wilder’s [sic] put it, ‘retarded ideology’.”

Pandya wrote: “Islamic culture inherently rejects the Western way of life, more specifically the Protestant work ethic that has successfully built the economies of the West.

“It is also fundamentally socially intolerant, closing itself off to the rest of society and local communities and forming ghettos that are economically dysfunctional and ethically espouse, perhaps without realising it, intolerance that undermines both social and human capital”.

Deccan Herald, 27 April 2011

See also Leicester Mercury, 27 April 2011

The IRA, a terrorist organisation that Peter King supported financially and politically through the 80′s and recently in 2005, has been quite active in recent weeks. Imagine if the bomb that was found was left by a Muslim, we would not hear the end of it. The question one should ask is: why are Muslims being put on trial?

Peter King must be happy to hear about the Homeland Security hearing in Manhattan. King started something “revolutionary,” putting Muslim Americans and Islam on trial and now his minions are following.  But King felt it was important to give praise to one special minion, Greg Ball

Here is a good summary from AlJazeera on the IRA and their recent surge in activity.

Hat tip: Europeans Against Islamophobia

Army defuses N Ireland van bomb

(AlJazeera)

Police say device was likely set by dissident Republicans to cause disruption ahead of election campaign.

Army bomb-experts in Northern Ireland have defused a 225-kilogramme van bomb near the Irish border.

The bomb, hidden underneath a motorway bridge near the main Dublin-Belfast road, was rendered inactive on Saturday following an 18-hour operation.

Police said that the bomb had been set by dissident Republicans to cause “huge devastation” in the nearby town of Newry ahead of Northern Ireland’s election campaign.

They said that it had likely been abandoned short of its target and before it could be detonated.

Two warning calls were made to police about the bomb on Friday.

“In this case, this bomb may have been on its way to the centre of the town,” David McKittrick, Ireland correspondent for the UK’s Independent newspaper, told Al Jazeera.

“The security forces were successful in stopping that happneing, but at the same time they weren’t successful in preventing the making of the bomb and there were hold-ups, once the bomb was discovered, in clearling the area.”

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bomb, but police said a phone call to warn about the bomb used a code word previously used by dissident Republicans.

Impatient motorists

Police shut the road following the discovery of the bomb, but impatient motorists unwilling to take a diversion moved the traffic cones and “road closed” signs.

BBC Northern Ireland footage showed dozens of cars driving directly past the van before police reinforced the barriers.

The bomb was double the size of those used in a number of bombings last year by Irish Republican Army (IRA) dissidents, none of which caused serious injuries.

Recent weeks have seen a surge in activity by IRA dissident groups opposed to the 1998 peace agreement which largely ended three decades of violence that killed more than 3,600 people.

A week ago Ronan Kerr, a 25-year-old police constable, was killed when a bomb exploded under his car in Omagh, an attack police suspect was organised by IRA dissidents to scare Catholics from joining the north’s police force.

The killing prompted a public outcry in Ireland.

Detectives said they had detained a 33-year-old near Omagh on Friday night in the third arrest connected with the murder.

This is pretty bad even for a tabloid.

Daily Star reporter quits in protest at tabloid’s ‘anti-Muslim’ coverage

The Daily Star has been accused of printing fictional stories by a disgruntled reporter who has resigned over its “hatemongering” anti-Muslim propaganda.

In a resignation letter, Richard Peppiatt said he was leaving after the Star gave sympathetic coverage to the far-right English Defence League last month.

Peppiatt admits producing a number of fictional stories about celebrities during his two years at the tabloid, a practice he implies was sanctioned by his seniors.

The reporter, who was once made to dress up in a burqa, now accuses the paper of inciting racial tensions and Islamaphobia. “You may have heard the phrase ‘the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil sets off a tornado in Texas’,” Peppiatt wrote to the proprietor, Richard Desmond, in a letter seen by the Guardian.

“Well, try this: ‘The lies of a newspaper in London can get a bloke’s head caved-in down an alley in Bradford.’ If you can’t see that words matter, you should go back to running porn magazines.”

Desmond’s media empire has included pornographic magazines and adult TV channels as well as Express newspapers, Channel 5 and celebrity magazines. Desmond has said he was not consulted before the decision to publish the front-page story and editorial about the EDL.

Peppiatt tells him in his letter: “The weight of your ownership rests heavy on the shoulders of everyone, from the editor to the bloke who empties the bins.”

Peppiatt, who handed in his resignation this week, said the “incendiary” suggestion the EDL was planning to field election candidates was known to be an exaggeration. “But further up the newsprint chain it appears a story, too good to allow the mere spectre of reality to restrain, was spotted,” he wrote.

The EDL story is one of a number of prominent articles published by the Star that Peppiatt claims were made up, including some of his own. The reporter was recently involved in stories claiming Rochdale council had spent taxypayers’ money on “Muslim-only squat-hole loos”. In fact, the toilets were neither paid for by the local authority or “Muslim-only”.

“I was tasked with writing a gloating follow-up declaring our post-modern victory in ‘blocking’ the non-existent Islamic cisterns of evil,” Peppiatt wrote. The Press Complaints Commission later ruled the story was inaccurate and misleading.

The reporter also quotes Kelly Brook, who recently complained about the number of fabricated stories she reads about herself on the internet. She said: “There was a story that I’d seen a hypnotherapist to help me cut down on the time I take to get ready to go out. Where do they [journalists] get it from?”

Peppiatt wrote: “Maybe I should answer that one. I made it up. Not that it was my choice: I was told to.” He said he had “plucked” the story about Brook’s experimentation with hypnotherapy from his imagination, adding: “Not that it was all bad. I pocketed a £150 bonus.”

In a list of “my other earth-shattering exclusives” for the Star, Peppiatt recalls producing articles about Michael Jackson, the pop star Robbie Williams and Katie Price which he said had no factual basis.

He also admits making up a story suggesting that Matt Lucas was on suicide watch following the death of the comedian’s former civil partner. Lucas won substantial damages in court. Peppiatt criticises the Star’s editorial judgment in his letter, accusing it of hypocrisy, and “arranging the day’s news based on the size of the subjects’ breasts”.

He adds: “On the awe-inspiring day millions took to the streets of Egypt to demand freedom, your paper splashed on: JORDAN … THE MOVIE. A snub to history? Certainly,” he writes. “An affront to Journalism? Most definitely.”

As a young reporter desperate to make his name in Fleet Street, Peppiatt concedes he took to his commissions “with gusto”, but now questions the ethics of what he was required to do, suggesting he was at times promoting an anti-Muslim agenda.

“On order I dressed up as John Lennon, a vampire, a Mexican, Noel Gallagher, St George (twice), Santa Claus, Aleksandr the Meerkat, the Stig, a transvestite, Alex Reid. When I was ordered to wear a burqa in public for the day, I asked: ‘Just a head scarf or full veil?’ Even after being ambushed by anti-terror cops when panicked Londoners reported ‘a bloke pretending to be a Muslim woman’, I didn’t complain.

“Mercifully, I’d discovered some backbone by the time I was told to find some burqa-clad shoppers (spot the trend?) to pose with for a picture [with me] dressed in just a pair of skin-tight M&S underpants.”

Peppiatt’s letter concludes by criticising Desmond for not providing greater resources. “When you assign budgets thinner than your employee-issue loo roll there’s little option but for Daily Star editors to build a newspaper from cut-and-paste jobs off the Daily Mail website, all tied together with gormless press releases.

“But when that cheap-and-cheerful journalism gives the oxygen of publicity to corrosive groups like the EDL … it’s time to lay down my pen.”

The Daily Star rejected Peppiatt’s claims, implying he may hold a grudge against his employer after being “passed over” for several staff positions. It said: “Regarding the paper’s coverage of Islam, he never voiced any disquiet over the tone. For the record, the Daily Star editorial policy does not hold any negativity towards Islam and the paper has never, and does not endorse, the EDL.”[Peppiatt] refers to a Kelly Brook story – in fact he approached and offered the newspaper that story, vouched for its accuracy, and then asked for and received an extra freelance fee for doing so,” the statement said.

The Star also claimed that Peppiatt had been warned by senior reporters after suggesting he would make up quotes.

Just imagine if a Muslim was caught doing this. This would fill up Spencer’s and Geller’s blog quicker than we can fathom. (hat tip: Ibn Rushd)

Pastor jailed for trafficking African child ‘slaves’

A church pastor has been jailed for 11 and a half years after being found guilty of trafficking children into the UK for use as domestic “slaves” at her home in Barking, east London.

Lucy Adeniji brought two children and a 21-year-old woman to the UK from Africa illegally and used them as servants.

She was convicted of 17 different counts at Isleworth Crown Court.

The mother-of-five is the first person to be jailed for trafficking children into the UK for domestic servitude.

In a case that has been likened to modern-day slavery, Adeniji smuggled the three victims into Britain on false passports, and used them as servants at her home in Ray Gardens, Barking.

An illegal immigrant herself, Adeniji, 44 – originally from Nigeria – had told the victims’ parents they would have a better life in the UK, but instead viciously beat them if they failed to please her.

Benefits inquiry

The abuse only came to light when one of the victims escaped from Adeniji’s home after being beaten.

Adeniji was convicted last month of assault, child cruelty and facilitating illegal entry into the UK of a child.

She also admitted six counts of obtaining false passports for herself and her own children and two counts of facilitating illegal entry.

Adeniji faces a separate investigation into money she claimed in benefits for her own children.

Det Insp Gordon Valentine, of the Metropolitan Police’s Operation Paladin – which targets child trafficking – said the case could be the tip of the iceberg.

“The people who are using this form of slavery in their households know it is wrong,” he said.

“This case is very important because it shows victims that we can have successful prosecutions and that they can find justice.”

The case has echoes of the maltreatment of Victoria Climbié who died at the hands of her guardian, Marie Therese Kouao. She and her boyfriend Carl Manning were found guilty of Victoria’s murder in 2003.

Is this a case of if you want to pray there we will burn it down?

Video & gallery: Huge fire at St Michael’s Church in Ipswich ‘suspicious’

FIRE investigators are “99 per cent sure” that a blaze which ripped through a church in Ipswich was started deliberately.

The fire at St Michael’s Church in Upper Orwell Street has left the Victorian building structurally unsafe.

An inspection of the remains of the vacant church by experts has revealed the roof is too unstable for fire investigators to enter the building.

A spokeswoman for Suffolk police said at this stage it is thought the fire started in the rear of the church shortly after 10pm on Monday.

She said: “The roof is very unstable and so it is too dangerous to enter the building at this stage.

“It looks like the fire was started at the rear of the church and spread straight to the roof.”

Today the owner of the dilapidated Victorian church said the community’s “dream is over”, after 25 years of savings and fundraising “went up in flames”, revealing his has no insurance.

Muhammad Manwar Ali, chief executive of Jimas, the organisation that owns the building, was at the forefront of plans to transform the church into a £1million Muslim-run community centre.

Dismayed, Mr Ali returned to the scene this morning as fire investigators and a building inspector assessed the extent of the damage.

The roof is completely destroyed and parts of the church were still burning, according to firefighters.

Tragically, the site was not insured and owner Mr Manwar Ali is set to lose the £350,000 he paid for the church last year out of his own life savings, fundraising and loans from friends.

And plans to spend up to £1 million over the next few years on transforming the run-down site have been shelved as the building teeters on the brink of collapse.

But incredibly, Mr Manwar Ali said that even if the police did manage to track down those responsible, he would rather invite them round for a cup of coffee than see them go to prison.

He said: “The foolish things is we hadn’t insured it. Hopefully there is nobody who has been harmed or hurt – there could have been somebody inside.

“I will forgive them (those responsible) and let them know I don’t want to see them in prison.

“They can come and have free coffee in our shop.”

He stressed that the church would have become a community centre, not a mosque, and that it would have been open to everyone in Ipswich.

He said: “We were not doing it for business or to make money for ourselves, even if people find that hard to believe.

“It wasn’t a Muslin or Asian thing – it would have been a fantastic place for Ipswich.”

If you were in the area and saw or heard anything suspicious, or if you have information about how the fire started please call Ds Michael Brown at Ipswich CID on 01473 613500.

Elliot’s main point echoes a lot of what we were saying in our article, Islam and the Media in the Age of Islamophobiapalooza.

Fox’s favorite Muslim radical

By Justin Elliot

On Thursday, the radical Muslim and veteran provocateur Anjem Choudary plans to hold a demonstration in front of the White House calling for an extreme form of sharia to reign in America.

Whether the protest actually goes forward — there’s a real chance it won’t, if Choudary’s past stunts are any guide — doesn’t really matter. Choudary, who is known for applauding terrorism and calling for stonings of gay people and the overthrow of democratic governments, has already logged several appearances on Fox and CNN, generated a bunch of articles in the right-wing press, and even prompted a member of Congress to demand that he be banned from the country. All that in the last month.

Choudary is a London-based preacher who has over the past decade become the face of radical Islam in the British press — especially in the tabloids, and even more especially the right-wing papers owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. — despite having no religious credentials and virtually no public support. In fact, according to those who have tracked his career in Britain, Choudary is wholly a press creation.

“He’s a media whore,” says Mehdi Hasan, a senior editor at the New Statesman who has covered Choudary. “There are real Islamist groups that can get crowds together but his is not one of them. He doesn’t have the numbers to make good on his claims. What he does have is a media that’s very happy to play the game with him.”

Now, Choudary, 43, is using the same formula — making deliberately offensive statements and trumpeting plans for provocative demonstrations — in the United States, where the media has proved all too willing to accommodate him. He can be understood as the Muslim analogue of Terry Jones, the obscure Florida preacher who created an international controversy last year with plans for a “Burn the Quran Day.” He is a radical with minuscule public support, but one who can, given enough free airtime, do real-world damage.

Last month on Fox Sean Hannity had a sparring match with the preacher that ended with Hannity calling him “one sick, miserable, evil SOB.” (It’s worth noting that Fox has the same parent company, News Corp., as some of the U.K. tabloids that obsessively cover Choudary.) Here’s a taste of the exchange:

Two weeks later, Choudary was back on the network, where an angry Gretchen Carlson told him that “I can tell you one thing, Americans don’t want sharia law.” Adam Serwer has argued that Choudary is, for Fox, a “cartoonish buffoon who can be counted on to confirm every stereotype about Islam and Muslims.”

But it’s not just Fox. Late last year Eliot Spitzer had Choudary on CNN and heroically derided him as a “violent and heinous terrorist.” In February, Spitzer hosted him again to argue that the revolution in Egypt was an “Islamist uprising.” Choudary has also been on programs with ABC’s Christiane Amanpour and CNN’s Fareed Zakaria.

So where did Choudary come from? Born and raised in Britain, his rise to prominence came as the right-hand man of Omar Bakri, a founder of the extremist group Al Muhajiroun. Like Choudary today, Bakri was a press-hungry provocateur, but he also played a role “in the radicalization of some young men,” according to the BBC. Bakri left the U.K. for Lebanon after the 7/7 bombings in 2005. The British government has since barred him from re-entering the country, and Bakri has been charged in Lebanon with forming a militant group to undermine the government there.

In Bakri’s absence, Choudary became the leader of Al Muhajiroun’s successor group, Islam4UK. Both were proscribed in 2010 under a British law that allows for groups to be banned if they “unlawfully glorify the commission or preparation of acts of terrorism.”

(Choudary has not always been so devout. The Daily Mail published an exposélast year revealing that, while he was student at Southampton University, he had been a hard-partier who gambled, drank, used drugs, looked at porn and had sex with Christian women. The paper had pictures to prove most of the charges.)

When I spoke to Choudary Tuesday, he refused to discuss how many followers he had, beyond claiming that he can attract 150 people to his lectures. “I’m not going to give you details of our administration,” he said. But according to Inayat Bunglawala, a Muslim commentator who is involved in combatting extremism in Britain, Choudary’s record for getting large numbers of people to turn out to events is thin. Bunglawala points to a 2009 demonstration at a parade in the town of Luton in which Choudary and his cohort held signs assailing British troops returning from Iraq as “butchers” and “terrorists.”

Choudary and some of his followers had advertised the event by leafletting for a week among the 20,000-strong Muslim population in the town, says Bunglawala, who has closely tracked Choudary’s career. But the turnout was vanishingly small. “Literally only 20 people showed up and yet they got the front pages of just about every right-wing tabloid the next day. Even the BBC gave them a lot of coverage on that.” Bunglawala observes: “It’s almost a symbiotic relationship between Choudary and the right-wing papers.”

Choudary also has a long history of publicizing demonstrations that never actually happen. In 2009, for example, he planned a “March for Sharia” in central London that drew widespread press attention. The promotional effort included Photoshopped images of what Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Square would look like under Choudary’s vision of the caliphate, with minarets and the like. But at the last minute, he canceled the event, claiming threats from right-wing groups.

None of this has stopped the tabloids from regularly calling Choudary to weigh in on pretty much anything in the news. There is, for example, this typical lead from a recent Daily Star piece: “Hate preacher Anjem Choudary last night urged a Muslim uprising against the royal wedding … He said it would be against Islam for Muslims to celebrate the nuptials.”

Choudary does his part by making himself extremely easy to reach; his mobile phone number is posted all over his website and he responded to my e-mail seeking an interview in just a few hours. He even once agreed to have a bull session over milkshakes with Vice Magazine, which noted his favorite flavor is chocolate.

Now, in advance of the planned “Shariah4America” demonstration in Washington, Choudary is following a familiar script. His group has postedimages online of the White House with minarets and the Statue of Liberty wearing a veil. It’s not hyperbole to say that everything he does is for media consumption. When I asked him about a 2003 episode in which Al Muhajiroun unveiled posters hailing the Sept. 11 hijackers as the “Magnificent 19,” Choudary was candid: “It was a media ploy in order to attract the attention of the media and the general public about why such things take place.”

Whether or not the demonstration actually happens Thursday, the Choudary phenomenon is at least as much about the laziness — and, arguably, irresponsbility — of the media as it is about Islam. Says terrorism analyst Daveed Gartenstein-Ross: “One lesson from our experience with would-be Quran burner Terry Jones is that when fringe or relatively fringe figures … are given a great amount of media exposure, it generally increases their power rather than diminishing it. Unfortunately, the media either has not absorbed that lesson, or else does not want to.”

Justin Elliott is a Salon reporter. Reach him by email at jelliott@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @ElliottJustin More: Justin Elliott

How long til Roberta is posing with Pamela Geller?

Just when you think that the bizzaro world of Islamophobia could not get any more loopy than the Geller/Spencer alliance there springs yet another vitriolic figure to make the lives of peaceful citizens that tad bit more intolerable.

Roberta Moore, the newly appointed head of the UK branch of the Jewish Defence League (JDL), a committed ally of the English Defence League (EDL).

How two such juxtaposing ideologies managed to align with each other is surprising but not difficult to comprehend. They have a common “enemy”: Islam and Muslims. The coalition aims to single out Muslims in Britain, scrutinize and suffocate their existence, and cause restless violence.

Little is known about Moore, but in an expose and interview with Israeli news giant Haaretz what is prominent are Moore’s hard-line Kahanist and radical Zionist views. She may not project Pam Geller’s ‘zombied-out fascist-loon star’ look, but hey, do not be fooled, the lady is Britain’s answer to Geller.

Roberta Moore is a Brazilian born Jew, who joined the Israeli Army at the Age of 18, and reportedly carved a business career for herself in Israel. She describes herself as a non-practicing Jew, but an ‘unrestrained Kahanist’, (follower of racist JDL founder Rabbi Meir Kahane), and believes in engaging in a racial war with the Muslim world, especially Palestinians, in order to reclaim the Holy land of Israel in the name of ‘Kahanism’.

So, let us analyse the many ramblings of the JDL priestess:

‘We believe that if we call the enemy by his name, we will be able to fight him. We single out organizations that discriminate against Jews and anti-Zionist organizations, and try to explain there is no difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. We send them letters and wait for a response, and then we take action to expose them.”

Moore’s hatred of anything remotely Islamic is linked to her radical and neo-fascist beliefs. Roberta Moore really should not be quick to engage in Muslim bashing, seeming as though she herself has a very disputable agenda and political affiliations.

Let us delve deeper into the violent warmongering world of ‘Kahanism’.

‘Kahanism’ is a far-right, nationalist ideology, viewed by many as a radical, extremist fringe group. It is a fundamentalist theory that encourages acts of terrorism and violence against Muslims and Arabs.

Kahanism was the brain child of ultra-racist Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the USA Jewish Defence League (JDL). JDL is listed as a terrorist organisation by the United States of America, where the group is described by the FBI as a ‘right-wing terrorist group’ plotting terrorist attacks in the US, and is cited as a hate group engaging in ‘anti-Arab terrorism’, by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Kahanist offshoot parties, ‘Kach’ and ‘Kahane Chai’, are also listed as terrorist groups by the USA, Israel, Canada, and the European Union.

The JDL/Kahanist ideology was also responsible for the murder of American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee Regional Director, Alex Odeh in 1985, a plot to kill US Congressman Darrell Issa in 2001, and for the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs Massacre, where JDL member Baruch Goldstein, gunned and killed 29 Palestinian worshippers, and  left 125 wounded.

This act of murder was met with condemnation and support of Goldstein in the Jewish World.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, described Baruch Goldstein as, a ‘degenerate murderer’, and ‘a shame on Zionism and an embarrassment to Judaism’.

The JDL maintained that the act of murder by Goldstein was ”a preventative measure against yet another Arab attack on Jews”.

Rabbi Dov Lior of Kiryat Arba praised the massacre, “Goldstein could not continue to bear all the cases he was seeing as a doctor; he might have gone insane from all he went through” further adding “since Goldstein did what he did in God’s name, he is to be regarded as a Righteous Man” and asserted that Goldstein was “a martyr of God”; “His hands are innocent, and his heart is pure.’

Mike Guzofsky, a Jewish militant and spokesperson for Kahane Chai in New York praised Goldstein,”He wanted to stop the peace process dead. He couldn’t have picked a better day – Purim, when Jews fight back.”

Does this make Moore a terrorist or a terrorist supporter?

“We are not anti-Muslim,” Moore emphasizes. “We are anti-Islam, as everyone should be. Islam is not a religion, but a cult. It has all the features of a cult, like the religions of Jim Jones and David Koresh. It’s exactly the same. But people don’t understand that.”

Moore echoes Wilders here, stating that Islam is not a religion, that it should not be afforded the status of religion. How exactly does “anti-Islam” translate itself into a practical idea? When it comes from the mouths of bigots and not critics it is nothing less than hate speech.

The reality is that Kahanism is in fact a cult which deliberately recruits Jews, brainwashes them to commit violent acts, uses them as tools for political gain, and then praises the murders and massacres of innocents in the name of God, sound familiar?

Moore clearly is subjective and selective in her approach to Islam, only highlighting the extremist interpretation, whilst completely neglecting the moderate and peaceful majority. However, what is most disconcerting is Moore’s hatred and religious stereotyping, which is responsible for the misinformation and moral panic that is spread by her hate group.

Moore goes on to continue her Islamophobic speel:

“In Britain we are critical of the Muslims because they come here and get government support and then have the temerity to hurt the country and its citizens. They say, ‘We will attack you, we will inflict a holocaust on you’ – all that rubbish. Why should I be silent?’

Moore’s constant use of the term ‘they’, to refer to Muslims, only confirms her isolationist mentality of apartheid and colonisation towards Islam.

So what about all the tax paying, law abiding, peaceful Muslim citizens who contribute billions in revenue to the UK? Are they merely a fairy tale or a hologram? Moore’s hatred of Muslims leads her to repeat the well worn charges leveled at immigrants and those despised as the “other” that they are “leeches on the State.”

If Roberta Moore is so concerned about British society and its security, she should care to mention the need to tackle drug gangs, knife gangs and crime, sex trafficking, the UK arms trade, gang warfare, child abuse and paedophile gangs, the broken judicial system, and the list could continue.

According to Roberta Moore, only Muslims are paedophiles and drug addicts, and commit crimes, no one else.

Roberta Moore claims that Muslims want to kill, destroy her, and eradicate Israel by inflicting a Holocaust on the Jews. Must I remind her who was really responsible for the Holocaust, the Nazis, White Supremacists who still scathingly despise the Jews and many of their adherents are in the EDL, the group she has decided to ally with.

“There is no solution. We have to do what we did with the Nazis – fight back! They are harming and insulting us, and we have to become stronger, to fight and that’s all. Then there will be peace. It has to be made clear that anyone who touches Israel will be attacked in return: an eye for an eye. When that happens, we will no longer be in the situation in which we find ourselves today.’

It really irks me when radicals such as Moore compare Islam  and Muslims to Nazism and Nazis. The difference is that Muslims did not create Jewish suffering and murder six million Jews; the Nazis committed the heinous crime and unbelievably she is now in bed with the cretins who are the progeny of the hateful ideology of Hitler.

It makes as much sense as Barney and Friends getting the lead role in Saw 4.

Completely illogical.

That Nazi elements are prevalent in the EDL has been well documented by many news outlets, activists, and commentators.

The EDL leader Tommy Robinson is a former member of the British National Party (BNP) an extreme racist and violent political group in the UK, famous for its anti-Semitic views and Holocaust denial. Robinson also was convicted for the assault of an off-duty police officer, and served a 12 month prison term.

EDL-Stoke

Many of the EDL demonstrations have consisted of its supporters bearing Nazi salutes. Many of the EDL supporter hail from thug gangs and football hooliganism.

I wonder how long this EDL/JDL honeymoon alliance will last? I mean, when Kahanists and Nazis start working together, bad things are bound to happen.

In Early January, Rabbi Nekrich of Brandenburg, Germany, issued a warning to German Jews to stop wearing traditional Jewish clothing and symbols that would clearly identify them as Jews to fascists. This was due to the recent rise in Anti-Semitic attacks against Jews in Germany, and also from the Rabbi’s personal experience in a train, where he was harassed due to his identifiable clothing.

‘Formerly from Russia, Rabbi Nekrich said he had been accosted on a train in Brandenburg by drunks three years ago.

‘I’m not saying that they were neo-Nazis,’ he told a Berlin newspaper. ‘But they had very short hair.

‘I had started to read a prayer book when one of the men approached me, asked if it was written in Hebrew and then threw it on the ground.’ (Daily mail)

This proves that the neo-Nazis are still as dangerous and existential a threat to Jewish existence that they were in 1933, when the Holocaust began and instead of teaming up with them as Roberta Moore has done she should urge Jews and other concerned citizens to fight the threat they pose.

Roberta goes on to claim,

“I had a Muslim boyfriend for four years, but he wasn’t religious. He drank and ate pork like everyone else. I have many Muslim friends from Pakistan and Iraq, and also people with whom I have business connections. I get along with them very well because they do not try to impose anything. The problem is that they are being brainwashed and believe they are superior to everyone else. They have the right to think that, but don’t try to force your opinions on me and tell me the clothes I wear or the music I listen to are bad. Or that my beliefs are inferior and I must not do this or that. Why do we women have to cover anything?”

Roberta Moore is offering this revelation as a means of detracting from her racist ideologies. Her claims are a mass of contradictions.

She further claims that she has many friends from Muslim backgrounds, yet in her quotes she happily labels and stereotypes, referring to Muslims as ‘they’, criminals, Palestinians as her enemy, accusing all Muslims of being welfare scroungers, brainwashed, accusing all Muslims of wanting to kill her and spark a genocide, and some other really schizophrenic ramblings.

Why would any Muslim want to be her friend, when Roberta Moore views them as the scum on her shoe? It really defies basic human understanding.

In conclusion, Roberta Moore, an incredibly puzzled woman is a terrorist endorsing, media obsessed, attention seeking anti-Muslim Islamophobic sell-out, who is marred with fascist and xenophobic qualities, and has aligned with dangerous fringe extremist groups to further a warped agenda — a description that mirrors to a tee her American doppelgänger Pam Geller.

Baroness Warsi says Muslim prejudice seen as normal

(BBC)
Baroness Warsi, co-chairman of the Tory Party, will warn against dividing Muslims into moderates and extremists.

The baroness, the first Muslim woman to serve in the cabinet, will say such labels fuel misunderstanding.

She will use a speech at Leicester University to accuse the media of superficial discussion of Islam.

Baroness Warsi will say anti-Muslim prejudice is now seen by many Britons as normal and uncontroversial, and she will use her position to fight an “ongoing battle against bigotry”.

In extracts of the speech, published in the Daily Telegraph, the peer blames “the patronising, superficial way faith is discussed in certain quarters, including the media”, for making Britain a less tolerant place for believers.

She is expected to reveal that she raised the issue of Islamophobia with Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to Britain last year, urging him to “create a better understanding between Europe and its Muslim citizens”.

‘Social rejection’
The BBC’s religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott said Baroness Warsi is to say publicly what many Muslims privately complain about – that prejudice against them does not attract the social stigma attached to prejudice against other religious and ethnic groups.

“She told the 2009 Conservative Party conference that anti-Muslim hatred had become Britain’s last socially acceptable form of bigotry, and claimed in a magazine article last October that taking a pop at the Muslim community in the media sold papers and didn’t really matter.”

In her speech, she is expected to say the description of Muslims as either moderate or extremist encourages false assumptions.

“It’s not a big leap of imagination to predict where the talk of ‘moderate’ Muslims leads; in the factory, where they’ve just hired a Muslim worker, the boss says to his employees: ‘Not to worry, he’s only fairly Muslim’,” she will say.

“In the school, the kids say: ‘The family next door are Muslim but they’re not too bad’.

“And in the road, as a woman walks past wearing a burka, the passers-by think: ‘That woman’s either oppressed or is making a political statement’.”

Baroness Warsi will say terror offences committed by a small number of Muslims should not be used to condemn all who follow Islam.

But she will also urge Muslim communities to be clearer about their rejection of those who resort to violent acts.

“Those who commit criminal acts of terrorism in our country need to be dealt with not just by the full force of the law,” she will say.

“They also should face social rejection and alienation across society and their acts must not be used as an opportunity to tar all Muslims.”

Asked about Baroness Warsi’s speech, a No 10 spokesman said she was expressing the view that there needed to be a debate “about the issue of radicalisation in Great Britain and terrorism”.

The alignment of Robert Spencer’s favorite UK organization and the loon pastor of Florida, Terry Jones.

Theresa May pressed to halt visit by anti-Muslim US preacher

(Guardian)

Home secretary Theresa May is under intense pressure to ban controversial anti-Muslim preacher Terry Jones from Britain after far-right activists said he had agreed to address them at a demonstration about “the evils of Islam“.

The English Defence League (EDL) said it was “proud to announce” that the US pastor, who caused outrage with plans to burn the Qur’an on this year’s anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, would be attending the event in Luton in early February. Jones confirmed that he would be arriving in the UK. The pastor’s website said he intended to visit the EDL’s “biggest demonstration to date” in February. The website stated: “During the protest, Dr Terry Jones will speak against the evils and destructiveness of Islam in support of the continued fight against the Islamification of England and Europe.”

President Barack Obama warned in September that Jones’s planned Qur’an burnings would be a “recruitment bonanza” for al-Qaida and the US state department said it would put the country’s citizens at risk across the world.

Tonight the British anti-extremist campaign, Hope Not Hate, launched its own petition urging May to ban Jones from Britain, while MPs demanded immediate action from the home secretary. Hope Not Hate’s campaign co-ordinator, Nick Lowles, said: “Pastor Jones’s presence in Luton will be incendiary and highly dangerous. He will attract and encourage thousands of English Defence League supporters to take to the streets of Luton.

“Like the EDL, Pastor Jones indiscriminately targets all Muslims and their actions can only lead to increased tensions and racism in our communities. His appearance will rightly cause concern and fear among Muslims across the country.”

Jon Cruddas, Labour MP for Dagenham, said he would table an urgent parliamentary motion tomorrow demanding that the pastor be banned from coming into the country.

“We have seen how Pastor Jones, with a very small congregation in Florida, created a firestorm by urging the Qur’an to be burned,” Cruddas said. “We should not allow racial hatred to be whipped up in this manner in our country.”

The EDL announced Jones’s planned visit on its Facebook site today, saying he would attend “our biggest demo to date” and describing it as “the big one”. There are fears that copies of the Qur’an could be burned by extremists.

The last time the EDL marched in Luton, 250 of their supporters went on the rampage through an Asian area of the town. Shop windows were smashed, cars overturned and a number of people were attacked. Thirty-five people were arrested as a result of the violence. Eleven people were arrested yesterday as 500 EDL supporters marched in Peterborough.

“The EDL march in February has the potential to be far worse,” Lowles said. “Only extremists will benefit from his visit and, as we know, extremism breeds hatred and hatred breeds violence. Pastor Jones, a preacher of hate, must be stopped from entering the UK.”

The home secretary has the power to exclude or deport an individual if she thinks their presence in the UK could threaten national security, public order or the safety of citizens. She can also do so if she believes their views glorify terrorism, promote violence or encourage other serious crime.

May has been keen to show that she is tough on extremism. Five weeks after the coalition government came into power, she banned a radical preacher who claimed that “every Muslim should be a terrorist” from entering Britain. Zakir Naik had been due to give a series of lectures at Wembley Arena and in Sheffield in June.

However, visitors from other countries cannot be banned just for having opinions that other people would find offensive. In the past, May has said the powers can only be used in “very serious” cases. She has already acted against the EDL, banning a march in Leicester in November.

News of Jones’s planned visit comes as the head of the police intelligence unit on domestic extremism reveals that the EDL and related splinter groups have become his biggest concern.

Adrian Tudway, the national co-ordinator for domestic extremism, told the Observer: “We look at the extreme right and left, but currently our biggest single area of business are the various groups which call themselves defence leagues. These defence leagues can be found across England.”

The unit is monitoring a “number of individuals” connected to extreme rightwing groups, details of which are disseminated to local police forces.

At the height of the controversy over Jones’s threat to burn the Qur’an, effigies of the pastor were burned in Afghanistan and there was widespread condemnation across the Muslim world. Jones is a Pentecostalist who bases his theology on the literal text of the Bible. He runs the Florida-based Dove World Outreach Centre, which objects to Islam because it “teaches that Jesus is not the son of God, therefore taking away the saving power of Jesus and leading people straight to Hell”.

Islamophobia? What Islamophobia? These four youth were probably a bunch of undercover Mooslims practicing taqiyyah to take over the West.

Of course over at JihadWatch, Spencer and his drones probably blame the Muslim victims at the mosque for “provoking” the teenagers by being Muslim and worshipping in a mosque.

(hat tip: Marco)

Four arrests over Stoke-on-Trent mosque arson

(BBC)

Four teenagers have been arrested after a gas pipe was put into a Stoke-on-Trent mosque in an attempt to set light to the building, police said.

The incident is being treated by police as a deliberate racist attack.

Officers were called to Regent Road at 0630 GMT after live CCTV footage showed smoke emerging from inside the building.

Three males aged 16, 18 and 19, and an 18-year-old female remain in custody. All are from the local area.

A Staffordshire Police spokeswoman said there was no structural damage, but the fire was being treated as a case of criminal damage.

‘Community appalled’

Police said the attackers fed a gas pipe from a nearby building through a mosque window.

Ch Insp Wayne Jones said: “It’s clearly visible for people to see.

“A gas meter on an external wall has been interfered with. That’s gone into the mosque and the damage could have been significant.

“At this stage we are treating this incident as a racist attack on a religious building.

“I am sure the community are as appalled as we are at this behaviour.”

Stoke-on-Trent CID are examining the scene and CCTV footage of the area.

One of our readers, Jalal, emailed us to inform us of what he believes is a hate crime. He was a friend of the victim, and this is what he had to say to us,

i want you to know of a hate crime that took place in the UK just a few days back, we had a mutual friend so I’m sending this to you,

Boy injured in Deanshanger group attack dies

(BBC)

A 16-year-old boy critically injured in an attack in a Northamptonshire village has died in hospital.

Adil Basharat, of Milton Keynes, was assaulted in Stratford Road, Deanshanger, at 1100 GMT on Friday.

He died in Milton Keynes General Hospital on Sunday morning. Police said they had received no indication that the attack was racially motivated.

A 21-year-old man and three men aged 19 have been charged with Adil’s murder and are due in court on Monday.

The men are from Deanshanger, nearby Cosgrove and Stony Stratford in Buckinghamshire, and will appear at Northampton Magistrates’ Court.

Police appealed for anyone with information to contact them.

A tribute page on Facebook to Adil has been visited by thousands of people, some of whom have been leaving photographs and messages about the teenager.

this has not been mentioned in the mainstream much but this WAS a hate crime, he was attacked for being a pakistani muslim. i am telling you this as a certified fact,

It would not surprise us if indeed this was a hate crime considering the pervasive atmosphere of Islamophobia and the rise of such anti-Muslim hate groups as the EDL in Britain and Europe in general.

Hate for Muslims doesn’t exist? Spencer would probably blame it on Muslims.

Severed pig’s head dumped at Cambridge mosque

A severed pig’s head has been left outside a mosque in Cambridge – triggering alarm among the city’s Muslims. Families found the head on the steps of the place of worship on Monday night on their way to prayers. An emergency meeting was due to be held last night after the incident at the Shah Jalal Bangladeshi Community House in Darwin Drive.

A worshipper at the mosque, who did not wish to be named, told the News: “It is a terrible insult. There are about 40 families who go to the centre and everyone is highly emotional at the moment. It was left there between 8.15pm and 9pm. Some families found it as they went for prayer at about 9pm. It was a very ugly sight. This was a nasty and appalling thing to do. We thought we had good relations with the community around here.”

Some Muslims believe the pig’s head attack could have been triggered after an application to increase the number of worshippers at the mosque prompted objections from some residents.

Sureyya Ozkaya

A 14 year old Muslim girl recently was brutally beaten and burned by assailants who made racial insults and attacked her for her faith (hat tip: Milda).

Girl attacked burned and robbed in broad daylight

By Mike Didymus

These are the shocking injuries inflicted upon schoolgirl Sureyya Ozkaya during a brutal daylight assault near her Thornton Heath home.

The 14-year-old’s hair was set on fire and her hands and feet were cut with glass during the attack in Grangewood Park, before her attackers smashed her head against a tree and left her bleeding in a bush.

She was stumbled upon by a woman walking her dog and carried home to nearby Kitchener Road following the attack, at about 7.30pm on June 9.

Sureyya’s mother Pemdegul Kale, 39, said three girls taunted her daughter about her Muslim faith as they carried out the assault, before burning her hair with a lighter and stealing her trainers.

Mrs Kale said: “My daughter is so scared. She does not want to stay in the house – she is staying at a relative’s now and wakes up crying.

“She comes here and stays for an hour, but only gets to the front door before she wants to go again. I miss her and I want her to come home.”

The family have been critical of the police’s response to the attack, complaining they had to collect hair cut from Sureyya’s head themselves several days after the incident.

Mrs Kale said: “We are doing the police’s job for them. We had a phone call 24 hours after it happened saying they were taking statements from someone on July 22.

“It is too long. I want this to be done and over with.”

A 14-year-old girl and an 18-year-old woman have been arrested in connection with the attack and bailed to return to a south London police station on July 22.

Anyone with information can call Croydon police on 03001 231212, or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.

This highlights just how odious the embrace of Islamophobia by the likes of Robert Spencer and company is. They revel in something that in its worst manifestations can lead to physical harm and even death.

Just recently Spencer posted a piece containing a photo of him holding an “Islamophobia pills” box. At a lecture in Sweden (probably canoodling with Euro-supremacists), a “Muslim” (loonwatcher no doubt) gave him the box to cure him of his Islamophobia. Instead Spencer posted a picture of himself holding the box and then went on to blame Muslims for Islamophobia.

Robert Spencer holding "Islamophobia Pills"

I was speaking in Sweden yesterday, and during the Q&A a Muslim presented with the little box of “Islamophobia” pills I’m holding in the photo above. It’s a clever little piece, if you like that sort of thing, listing the ingredients of this “cure” for “Islamophobia” as “multiculturalism,” “open-mindedness,” and the like.

But of course none of that will cure this disease, which is non-existent in any case.

A great article from one of the foremost analysts of racism. (hat tip: iSherif)

Fighting anti-Muslim racism: an interview with A. Sivanandan

By IRR News Team

IRR News spoke to one of the foremost analysts of racism and Black struggle as to how to meet the contemporary challenge of anti-Muslim racism.

Should we look at Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism today as something new and apart, or as a continuation of the racism we have known in the UK?

A. Sivanandan: Every racism is different and every racism is the same.

Western culture, because it is a culture of conquest and subjugation, is impregnated with racist and nativist/anti-foreigner ideas. Such ideas develop into a fully-fledged ideology when harnessed to an economic or political programme such as slavery or apartheid. But they can still become a material social force, justifying discrimination and engendering racial violence, in areas and times of economic hardship when there is competition for jobs, housing etc between indigenous and foreign or immigrant workers

It is ‘natural’ for indigenous, poor, white people who have to compete for housing, employment, social services etc to be hostile to those who look like the obvious cause of their hardship, marked out by colour, foreignness or cultural difference. When such hostility is lent justification by government policies (domestic and foreign) and harnessed by political parties for electoral gain, racial ideas become firmed into a quasi-ideology which, in turn, feeds and justifies popular racism.

The components of racism are always the same – cultural, political, economic and social. But the shift from an industrial to a post-industrial society gives the components of racism a different weightage.

The racism of industrial capitalism was connected to exploitation – slavery, colonialism, indenture, immigration. Racism was imbricated in labour exploitation. The economic factor was dominant in the way racism changed and was shaped and became functional. In post-industrial capitalism, where the exploitation of labour in the old sense is concentrated in the periphery; the political and cultural components are dominant. And ideas, in an Information Society dominated by the media, become material irrespective of the economic factor. There is, in other words, very little disjuncture between the racist idea and the racist act; they virtually flow into each other.

Are you saying that before we even look at contemporary Islamophobia, per se, we have to look at the way that the balance within racism itself has changed over the last thirty years or so?

A. Sivanandan: Yes. By and large, under industrial capitalism, racist views, filtered down through slavery and colonialism, were prevalent mostly among the working class. But in post-industrial society racial ideas run through the whole of society and culture. For, globalisation and the market have sundered the ethos of the nation state and opened the door to nativism.

Let me explain. Globalisation has shifted the role of the state from welfare to market. The welfare state was guided by principles of social equality, which made for social cohesion. The market state is guided by the principles of wealth creation and individual success, which fractures society, fragments communities, and reifies personal relationships. There is nothing organic now to cohere the nation. Hence the imposition from above of British values and programmes of social cohesion to hold the nation together – aided now by the politics of fear and the ‘enemy within’, creating in the process a faux nationalism evident in everything from foreign policy to oaths of allegiance in our town halls.

How does this then relate to how we tackle Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism, are they really the same thing? Can the terms be used interchangeably?

A. Sivanandan: Yes and no. Yes, Islamophobia is implicated in anti-Muslim racism; but no, the one does not equate the other. I see Islamophobia as a term relating to a set of ideas which indicate an antipathy to Islam – which can range from the crude and direct demonisation we find in the tabloids to the intellectual sophistry we associate with people like Amis. Whereas anti-Muslim racism is the acting out of that antipathy, that prejudice – in violent attacks on the street or, when institutionalised in the state apparatus, in the impact of the anti-terror laws, in racial profiling by the police, and so on.

The distinction is important because Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism reside by and large in two different constituencies – and each has to be fought on its own ‘merits’. Islamophobia, in its most sophisticated form, is the province of middle-class opinion formers, erstwhile liberals, defenders of the true liberal faith against the encroachments of illiberal Islam, as defined by them, the ‘liberati’. Anti-Muslim racism is the province of the working class and is no different from past working-class racisms. Except that now it finds its justification in Islamophobia – suitably translated into the vernacular of stereotype and scapegoat by the tabloids, the carriers of racist culture. Racism is now justified not on notions of racial superiority but on notions of Islamic ‘barbarity’. And religion is racialised.

Hence the confusion that fighting Islamophobic discourse is tantamount to fighting anti-Muslim racism. But, as I have said, Islamophobia is not the cause of anti-Muslim racism but its rationale. Religion is not race. And unless we unravel race from religion and employ different strategies for the different sites of struggle, while still keeping their relationship in view, we will be rendered ineffective on both sites. Conversely, to let the fight against Islamophobia (ideological/theoretical) dictate the fight against anti-Muslim racism (strategic/practical) is to intellectualise both and undermine action. To concentrate on the anti-racist aspect of struggle without missing out on the fight against Islamophobia, however, is not only to be able to draw on the long history of that struggle but also to gain the support of allies that were made on its way, especially – at a time of British National Party (BNP) resurgence – the anti-fascists. Such solidarity is also important to make sure that the liberati’s use of the term Islamofascism does not let the real fascism off the hook.

There are other reasons, too, why we need to focus on the struggle against anti-Muslim racism. Firstly, because anti-Muslim racism has become institutionalised through the government’s ‘Muslim wars’, its anti-terror laws, its use of stop and search and its failure to curb the media’s excesses. (And institutional racism, as we know, reproduces itself at other levels of society.) Second, these in turn breed a culture of fear and suspicion and give groups such as the BNP and the English Defence League a hold on public opinion. Third, the government’s elevation of ‘British values’ (as opposed to universal values) to which we should all aspire – and therefore to British culture – confirms the popular view that Muslim values and Muslim culture are raw and threatening. And this gives a fillip to nativism which, in the hands of the Right, turns into the rough and tumble patriotism of the street.

Do you feel that the extreme Right in the UK has shifted, like other rightwing groups in Europe, towards recruiting on the basis of Islamophobia?

A. Sivanandan: In the past, the extreme Right’s fascist ideology was per se reprehensible to all sectors of society in a democracy. Today, the classlessness of Islamophobia, ie the fact that it runs through the whole of society, from the liberati to the illiterati, and is made respectable by government policies, has given groups like the BNP a new constituency within ‘middle England’ on whom they work for electoral purposes. Hence its two faces: one electoral and the other populist – and its bipolar tactics of putting on a respectable front for the first and a militant front for the second. And the politics of fear engages both constituencies. The middle-England constituency is frightened by the immolation of its culture and values, and the working-class constituency is frightened by the spectre of aliens taking their jobs, homes, shops, and marrying their children.

So are you really saying that activists should be just addressing anti-Muslim racism as it affects poor communities on the streets?

A. Sivanandan: At the risk of repeating myself, we have to fight both Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism when and where they are acted out. But the fights are at two different levels which need two different strategies and weapons. We need to dismantle and critique the intellectual arguments being put forward by Islamophobia’s intellectual protagonists and attack the media at every turn for popularising and disseminating that discourse. And we have simultaneously to take up the other fight, the fight against Anti-Muslim racism, be that at the level of government policy or the level of hate crime on the street.

Why it is important to understand the two fights as different but connected is because of the danger that, in confining ourselves to the religious aspect of the fight against Islamophobia without taking on its political translation on the street, we would once again descend into the inward-looking politics of identity.

Any Asian could be a Muslim. Any Asian wearing a headscarf or a beard must be a Muslim. Every Muslim is a fundamentalist. Every fundamentalist is a terrorist. We are in danger of creating a culture of suspicion and distrust not only between communities but within communities, indeed within families and between individuals – which can hardly count for British values or democracy!

English Defense League Hooligans holding up Israeli Flag

The EDL has created a Jewish division, obviously playing off of the narrative they have created for themselves as big backers of Israel. Many Jewish organizations are truly appalled by this, and rightly see this as a ploy by the EDL, and that their support for Israel is in fact founded on a foundation of Islamophobia and intimidation.

A while ago we reported about a strange new nexus that has developed amongst right-wing Islamophobes. The hoisting of the Israeli flag as a badge of honor that is supposed to make them immune to accusations of bigotry,

one sees an emerging trend amongst some right-wing and fascist groups proclaiming their unconditional support for the state of Israel. What is likely is that many of these organizations, whose roots are steeped deep in a history of anti-Semitism are recreating themselves; dropping a now unpopular prejudice (anti-Semitism) for one more in vogue–anti-Muslim Islamophobia. Gone are the days when what they claimed to champion were the “Christian values and traditions of Europe” now they have added “Christian-Jewish” values to their slogans.

I wonder how Pamela Geller feels about this, considering she gives her unconditional support to the EDL? Will she accuse these groups of being dhimmis?

Jewish Leaders Condemn the English Defense League

by Daniel Trilling

The Jewish Chronicle reports that the English Defence League has established a Jewish division. The far right, anti-Islam protest group whose violent nature was exposed by the Guardian last week (and covered by the NS here) has professed support for Israel in the past and is now urging British Jews to “lead the counter-Jihad fight in England”.

But its advances have been swiftly rebuffed by Jewish leaders. Mark Gardner, communications director for the Community Security Trust, told the Chronicle:

The EDL intimidate entire Muslim communities, causing tension and fear. Jews ought to remember that we have long experience of being on the receiving end of this kind of bigotry.

Jon Benjamin, chief executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said:

The EDL’s supposed ‘support’ for Israel is empty and duplicitous. It is built on a foundation of Islamophobia and hatred which we reject entirely.

Sadly, we know only too well what hatred for hatred’s sake can cause. The overwhelming majority will not be drawn in by this transparent attempt to manipulate a tense political conflict.

Islamophobic violence is on the march as we continue to document hate crimes on Muslims and Muslim places of worship. Of course to Robert Spencer and company Islamophobia doesn’t exist.

In Leeds, we have the story of Muslim gravestones being desecrated:

Muslim Graves Damaged in Leeds Cemetery

Nineteen gravestones have been vandalised in a section of a Leeds cemetery used by Muslims.

One headstone was broken and a number of name plaques on wooden stands were damaged at Harehills Cemetery.

Police said they were “keeping an open mind” on whether the graves were deliberately targeted because they were linked to Muslim families.

The damage is believed to have happened overnight last Thursday. Witnesses are being asked to contact police.

Insp Nik Adams said: “This incident has caused a great deal of upset and distress to a number of people in the local community.

“Over the weekend we have worked alongside community and religious leaders to identify and contact the next of kin of those whose graves have been affected by this mindless vandalism.

“At this stage in the investigation we are keeping an open mind on whether the graves were deliberately targeted because they were linked to Muslim families or whether they were vandalised because of their proximity to a nearby path and two thoroughfares that run through the cemetery.”

In the Netherlands, that bastion of tolerance and liberty where polls have shown an increase in popularity for neo-fascist Muslim hater Geert Wilders we have the story of a pig head left by a Mosque which was also smeared with blood and animal intestines.

Groningen Mosque Smeared with Blood

A mosque in the Selward neighborhood of Groningen was smeared with blood Tuesday night, police reports. In addition to the blood, animal innards and the head of a wild boar were found by the mosque.

The Groningen city council responded in shock to the attack Thursday.

“We are deeply affected, because Groningen hadn’t known such outrages till now. Only expressions of indignation and disgust are proper here,” according to deputy mayor Frank de Vries. “This doesn’t belong in our city. We immediately promised the mosque board our support.”

The police opened an investigation and will keep extra watch for the mosque and the area.

Our final story comes from Canada, where someone obviously wants to intimidate the “Mooslims.” (via: Islamophobia-Watch)

Ontario Mosque Vandalized

Regional police are investigating a possible hate crime after the mosque of the Muslim Society of Waterloo & Wellington Counties was vandalized this week.

Two windows were broken and offensive graffiti painted around the Erb Street building, leaving many members to question why someone would do such a thing to a place of worship. Offensive pentagonal symbols and the numbers 666 were painted around the building. The windows that were broken were in the women’s prayer area. “It’s a hate crime,” said Faheem Uddin, president of the mosque. “It’s pretty bad. It’s upsetting.”

Yesterday, a large crowd attended a funeral at the mosque, with the graffiti and broken windows in plain view. “We just pray for the person who did this,” said Abdul Mannan. “May God guide him. We’re peace-living people. We love everyone and we want everyone to love us.”

A news release sent out by Waterloo Masjid public relations states that similar incidents have occurred at mosques in Hamilton and Montreal.

The Record, 20 March 2010

See also IQRA, 21 March 2010

Michael Gove Opposes Mosque

The construction of a mosque is opposed by the  EDL and other right-wingers, a Conservative MP agrees with them. (via Islamophobia-Watch)

Michael Gove Opposes Mosque at Center of ‘Inflammatory Campaign’

A Conservative frontbench spokesman, Michael Gove, has opposed plans to build a mosque in his constituency after it became the target of an “inflammatory and offensive” online campaign.

The shadow schools secretary, who warned that the west was facing a “total war” from Islamists in his book Celsius 7/7, had initially refused to take sides in the dispute over proposals to build a mosque next to Sandhurst barracks in Camberley, Surrey. But this week he said he had been convinced that the strength of feeling was threatening the area’s “good community relations” and called on local Muslims to withdraw the application.

“The issue has become a flashpoint and people from inside and outside the community were making statements that I did not think would further community relations,” he said. “It struck me that it was best to ask the Bengali Welfare Association to withdraw the application and to consider how to improve the facilities for worship for the Muslim community in a calmer environment.”

A Facebook group set up to oppose the mosque has 6,834 “fans” and was criticised by one local organisation opposing the mosque as “inflammatory and offensive”. The Facebook group is supported by the far-right English Defence League.

The local Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate, Alan Hiliar, said Gove had “lost all respect” over the issue. “I reject Michael Gove’s decision to ask the community to withdraw their application on the ground that it’s ‘divisive’. To ask the Muslim community to withdraw the application is simply kicking the issue into the long grass; it resolves nothing.”

Guardian, 13 February 2010

Angus Macleay

If the words “Christianity” were replaced with “Islam,” Robert Spencer would be saying how all of this is confirmed by the Quran, blah blah blah. However would he be brave enough to say that what this English priest is saying is confirmed by the Bible?

Just imagine if a Muslim Imam had said that?

A British pastor offended his parishioners by encouraging women to “be silent” and “submit” to their husbands, The Sun reported Saturday.

Church of England reverend Angus MacLeay issued a leaflet to churchgoers saying that women should not speak if questions could be answered by their husbands.

The leaflet, entitled The Role of Women in the Local Church, adds that wives should “submit to their husbands in everything.”

It continues, “Wives are to submit to their husbands in everything in recognition of the fact that husbands are head of the family as Christ is head of the church.

“This is the way God has ordered their relationships with each other and Christian marriage cannot function well without it.”

Dozens of women canceled their membership at St. Nicholas Church in Kent, England, where married MacLeay is rector after the leaflet was handed out.

Last Sunday, the curate at the same church delivered a medieval-style sermon called Marriage and Women, telling women to submit to their husbands to make marriage work.

Reverend Mark Oden, a married father-of-three, told the congregation, “We know marriage is not working.

“We only need to look at figures – one in four children has divorced parents. Wives, submit to your own husbands.”

During the sermon, Rev. Oden also blamed “modern woman” for the high divorce rates in the U.K.

One female member of the church said she was “disgusted” by the sermon and will no longer be attending that church, adding, “How can they talk that way in the 21st Century?

“No wonder the church is losing touch if this is the kind of gobbledegook they want us to believe in.”

150 people joined this anti-Muslim group on Facebook, interesting considering how Pamela Geller seems to only think Muslims create hateful Facebook groups. (via Islamophobia-Watch)

Anti-Muslim Racists Arrested in Wales

Five men have been arrested after a Facebook site was set up declaring “all Muslims should be thrown out of Wales”.

Around 150 people joined the group on the social networking site claiming they would march through the Rhondda Valleys to make their feelings known. But South Wales Police have now stepped in and arrested five men for religiously aggravated public order offences.

It is one of the first occasions people have been arrested over comments posted on Facebook. The group has also been removed from the site. Police now believe the march will not go ahead, but they will be on standby in case anyone turns up.

Members of the group, which was entitled Rhondda March, said they would walk from Treherbert down to Pontypridd on February 28. And the organisers declared: “We Dont Want Musslims in our country move them out they are takeing over.”

The group’s message board was inundated with comments including “ai im in, gona put sum nails in a stick 4 the f******” and “Got my steel toe caps ready, wot a craking idea”. Another reads: “send the f****** bk. Join us u now u want 2 stand up tall”. A further message said: “Move these musslims back home”. And another read: “yeah support our local buissnes not forgin ones. Im in”.

Wales Online, 7 February 2010

Lord Carey - Telegraph

Writing in the Times, Lord Carey explains why he he has signed up to a call for restrictions on immigration:

“The sheer numbers of migrants … threaten the very ethos or DNA of our nation…. Democratic institutions such as the monarchy, Parliament, the judiciary, the Church of England, our free press and the BBC … support the liberal democratic values of the nation. Some groups of migrants, however, are ambivalent about or even hostile to such institutions. The proposed antiwar Islamist march in Wootton Bassett is a clear example of the difficulties extremists pose to British society.

“Furthermore, the idea that Britain can continue to welcome with open arms immigrants who immediately establish their own tribunals to apply Sharia, rather than make use of British civil law, is deeply socially divisive.”

See also the Daily Mail, 7 January 2010 (via Islamophobia-Watch)

(via: Islamophobia-Watch)

This is England, Masked like Terrorists, members of Britain’s newest and fastest-growing protest group intimidate a Muslim woman on a train en route to a violent Demo

by Billy Briggs

On Platform One at Boltonstation a mob of around 100 men punch the air in unison. The chant goes up: ‘Muslim bombers, off our streets, Muslim bombers off our streets…’

Their voices echo loudly and more men suddenly appear; startled passengers move aside. The group march forward waving St George Cross flags and holding up placards. The throng of men around me applaud. A train heading for Glasgow draws up on the opposite platform and the men turn as one, bursting into song: ‘Engelaand, Engelaand, Engelaand.’

Some of the men hide behind balaclavas, others wear black hoodies. A few speak on mobile phones, their hands pressed against their ears to block out the cacophony.

‘It’s already kicking off in Manchester. This could be tasty,’ shouts one. These are some of the most violent football hooligans in Britain and today they have joined together in an unprecedented show of strength. Standing shoulder to shoulder are notorious gangs – or ‘firms’ as they are known – such as Cardiff City’s Soul Crew, Bolton Wanderers’ Cuckoo Boys and Luton Town’s Men In Gear.

The gathering is remarkable, as on a match day these men would be fighting each other. But it is politics that has drawn them together. They are headed for Manchester to support a march by the burgeoning English Defence League.

The police are here in force, too. ‘Take that mask off,’ barks a sergeant to one young man. He does so immediately but protests: ‘Why are they allowed to wear burkas in public but we’re not allowed to cover our faces?’

‘Just do what you’re told,’ the policeman snaps back.

An EDL demonstrator is arrested at Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester in October

‘It’s always the same these days. One rule for them and another for us. I’m sick of this country,’ a man standing next to me says in a West Country accent.

He draws on a cigarette then flicks it to the ground in disgust. He starts to complain again but when the tannoy announces the arrival of the train to Manchester Piccadilly he raises his hands above his head and starts another favourite.

‘Rule Britannia, Britannia rule the waves… Britons never, never, never…’ His companions join in. As the train comes to a halt the crowd surges forward.

The carriages are almost full so the men pack themselves into the aisles followed by policemen speaking into radios. A group of lads drinking beer at a table eye the new contingent warily.

One man wearing a baseball cap clocks their fear and reassures them.

‘It’s all right lads, nothing to worry about. We’re protesting against radical Islam. Come and join us.’

Further up the carriage another bursts into song.

‘We had joy, we had fun, we had Muslims on the run,’ he starts up. Nobody joins in and a couple of his mates tell him to ‘shut up’ as they point to a woman dressed in a black hijab sitting at a table.

A man standing close to her is masked and holds a placard. It has a picture of a Muslim woman crying with red blood streaming down her face. ‘Sharia law oppresses women!’ the slogan reads.

The rise of the English Defence League has been rapid. Since its formation at the start of the summer the group has organised nearly 20 major protests in Britain’s cities, including London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Luton, Nottingham, Glasgow and Swansea.

Its leaders are professional and articulate and they claim that the EDL is a peaceful, non-racist organisation. But having spent time with them, there is evidence that this movement has a more disturbing side. There is talk of the need for a ‘street army’, and there are links with football hooligans and evidence that violent neo-Nazi groups including Combat 18, Blood and Honour and the British Freedom Fighters have been attending demos.

Violence has erupted at most of the EDL’s demonstrations. In total, nearly 200 people have been arrested and an array of weapons has been seized, including knuckledusters, a hammer, a chisel and a bottle of bleach.

As the EDL gains support across the UK, Muslims have already been targeted in unprovoked attacks. In the worst incident, a mob of 30 white and black youths is said to have surrounded Asian students near City University in central London and attacked them with metal poles, bricks and sticks while shouting racist abuse. Three people – two students and a passer-by who tried to intervene – were stabbed.

Following the Manchester protest, when 48 people were arrested during street violence, the Bolton Interfaith Council Executive issued a stark warning that race relations were under threat and Communities Secretary John Denham compared the EDL to Oswald Mosley’s Union of British Fascists, who ran amok in the Thirties. In response to these fears, the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit, a countrywide police team set up to combat domestic extremism, has been investigating the EDL.

‘The concern to me is how groups like this, either willingly or unwillingly, allow themselves to be exploited by very extreme right-wing groups like the National Front and the British Freedom Fighters,’ Metropolitan Police chief Sir Paul Stephenson has said.

Welsh Defence League members burn an anti-Nazi flag in Swansea

I had met the English Defence League for the first time in Luton three weeks before the Manchester demonstration. After several calls, key members agreed to talk on the condition that I did not identify them. We met at a derelict building close to Luton town centre. Eleven men turned up. All wore balaclavas, as they often do to hide their identities, and most had black EDL hoodies with ‘Luton Division’ written on the back. They’d made placards bearing slogans such as ‘Ban the Burka’.

The group’s self-proclaimed leader, who goes by the pseudonym Tommy Robinson, did most of the talking. A father of two, Robinson explained the background to the rise of the movement.

‘For more than a decade now there’s been tension in Luton between Muslim youths and whites. We all get on fine – black, white, Indian, Chinese… Everyone does, in fact, apart from these Muslim youths who’ve become extremely radicalised since the first Gulf War. This is because preachers of hate live in Luton and have been recruiting for radical Islamist groups for years. Our Government does nothing about them so we decided that we’d start protesting.’

EDL demonstrators in Birmingham in September

Robinson could barely conceal his anger as he explained that the spark for him had been the sight of radical Muslims protesting when soldiers paraded through the town on their regiment’s return from Afghanistan in May.

Following the incident Robinson set up a group called United People of Luton and, after linking up with a Birmingham-based organisation called British Citizens Against Muslim Extremists and another called Casuals United (largely made up of former football hooligans), they realised there was potential for a national movement.

‘We have nothing against Muslims, only those who preach hatred. They are traitors who should be hanged and we’ll keep taking to the streets until the Government kicks them out.’

More than 100 divisions have been set up across Britain and a careful co-ordination means the EDL is becoming efficient and a potential catch-all for every far-right organisation in Britain.

Robinson admits that he has attended BNP meetings in the past. Another prominent member and administrator of Luton EDL’s Facebook group is Davy Cooling, a BNP member. Sean Walsh, an activist for the EDL in Luton, is a member of the BNP’s Bedfordshire Facebook group.

Even within the EDL there are concerns over links to extremists. A former member called Paul Ray recently claimed that the group had been hijacked by BNP activists, including a man from Weston-super-Mare, Chris Renton, who helped set up the EDL website. Ironically, Ray himself has extremist contacts, including a German former neo-Nazi who is friends with Northern Ireland Loyalist Johnny ‘Mad Dog’ Adair.

Casuals United was the brainchild of Jeff Marsh, a convicted football hooligan from Cardiff City’s Soul Crew, one of the most feared gangs in Britain. Marsh operates behind the scenes, orchestrating activities with both Casuals United and the Welsh Defence League, a sister group of the EDL.

The public face of Casuals United is another Welshman called Mickey Smith. An avowed football hooligan, he is banned from Cardiff City’s football ground. Together, Marsh and Smith organise the 50 or so gangs actively recruiting members across the UK.

The EDL insists it is separate from Casuals United, but dig a little and it becomes clear they operate hand-in-hand. Joel Titus is a cocky but politically naive 18-year-old Arsenal fan of mixed race. He tells me that the EDL youth division he runs has over 300 members across the UK.

‘We want to hit every town and city in Britain,’ he says.

Titus became involved with the movement through Casuals United. And according to anti-fascism magazine Searchlight, his role is to recruit football hooligans.

He sticks to the ‘peaceful movement’ mantra but a text I later receive from him ahead of an EDL demo in London reveals his involvement with the hooligans. It reads: ‘Right lads, the “unofficial” meet for the 31st (London) is going to be 12 o’clock at The Hole In The Wall pub just outside Waterloo Station. I will be there just before that. Remember lads were (sic) going as Casuals Utd and if you could obtain a poppy to wear it would make us look good even if we are kicking off. lol. Cheers lads. Joel “Arsenal” Titus.’

EDL members meet at a rendezvous pub before travelling to Manchester

Alarmingly, the EDL is becoming more sophisticated and those orchestrating its activities at the top are far more astute than its foot soldiers. I meet two of the EDL’s key figures in a Covent Garden pub – a respectable looking man called Alan Lake, and a man who goes by the moniker ‘Kinana’.

Lake is a 45-year-old computer expert from Highgate, north London who runs a far-right website called Four Freedoms. This summer he contacted the EDL and offered to both fund and advise the movement.

‘Our leaders in this country no longer represent us,’ he says.

Lake’s aim is to unite the ‘thinkers’ and those prepared to take to the streets. He describes this marriage as ‘the perfect storm coming together’. Lake says that street violence is not desirable but sometimes inevitable.

‘There are issues when you are dealing with football thugs but what can we do?’

He criticises fascist organisations, however, and says he will only support the EDL so long as it doesn’t associate with the BNP. When I ask about extremists hijacking the movement, he says: ‘There are different groups infiltrating and trying to cause rifts by one means or another, or trying to waylay the organisation to different agendas. The intention is to exclude those groups and individuals.’

These men are outwardly intelligent and their political nous combined with the brawn of the casuals makes them a quasi-political force.

Britain’s neo-Nazis realise this. For Kevin Watmough, leader of the neo-Nazi British People’s Party and a former member of the National Front, the rise of the EDL is reminiscent of the Seventies.

‘The protests remind me of the National Front marches, but I wouldn’t march with the EDL because they have blacks as supporters,’ he told me.

But other neo-Nazis have joined EDL demos. These include members of Combat 18 and the British Freedom Fighters, who later posted videos of themselves on the internet.

Watmough lives in Bradford and can recall the 2001 riots, which came about as a result of tensions between whites and Muslims. Bradford, along with Oldham, another tinderbox northern city that witnessed riots in 2001, is a stated target for the EDL and Casuals United in 2010. Tension is likely here and in other towns where the EDL is also promoting spontaneous flash demos and the occupation of building sites for new mosques.

Professor Matthew Goodwin, an expert on far-right organisations who has advised the Home Office, says that the police are right to monitor the EDL and to take them seriously.

‘(The EDL) is now well-organised and not just a minor irritant. It has become a rallying point for a number of different groups and to have them marching through sensitive areas is a major concern.’

Communities Minister John Denham has also condemned the rise of the EDL: ‘If you look at the types of demonstrations they have organised, the language used and the targets chosen, it looks clear that it’s a tactic designed to provoke, to get a response. It’s designed to create violence. And we must all make sure this doesn’t
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1238213/This-England-On-trail-English-Defence-League.html#ixzz0bC5X3XLJ

Cradley Heath Mosque Burned to the Ground

A Mosque was torched and burned to the ground in Cradley Heath. (via Islamophobia Watch)

Cradley Heath Mosque Burned to the Ground by Arsonists

CRADLEY Heath’s Muslim community is appealing for help after its mosque was burnt to the ground by arsonists.

A fire engulfed the Cradley Heath Mosque and Islamic Centre in Plant Street on Boxing Day destroying the building and the religious countless books inside.

It is the second time in five years that the building has been targeted by arsonists and police are hunting the culprits.

The West Midlands Fire Service first reported that the blaze on Plant Street had destroyed ‘industrial units’ in Plant Street but when the smoke cleared it became obvious the building was a mosque.

The mosque was a thriving part of the community with 400 worshippers using it and classes of children being taught there.

The worshippers are now trying to find a new place to worship as the new Mosque they have being building alongside the old one will not be ready for use for several years.

Basharat Ali, secretary of the mosque and education centre, said: “This is not the first time we have been targeted, there was a similar attack four or five years ago.

“The building has been completely destroyed and all the books we use with the children have been damaged by water.”

“He added: “The new building is under construction, it is a shell inside and it is due to open in a few years.”

According to a recent poll taken more people in Britain are open to banning minarets than in the United States. (via Islamophobia-Watch)

People in Britain are open to the idea of banning minarets, according to a three-country poll by Angus Reid Public Opinion. 37 per cent of respondents in Britain would vote in favour of a ban, while 25 per cent would vote against it.

In the United States, 21 per cent of respondents would vote to ban minarets, while 19 per cent disagree. In Canada, 35 per cent of respondents would vote against a ban, while 27 per cent would endorse one.

Angus Reid Global Monitor, 22 December 2009

Cf. Sholto Byrnes’ comments on the New Statesman blog, 21 December 2009

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”.