EDL falsely claims to have recruited Joey Barton

The English Defence League has claimed that Queens Park Rangers footballer, Joey Barton, has joined their far-right group.

A picture of Barton standing next to EDL leader, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, has appeared on the EDL Support Group Facebook page with the caption "Joey Barton joins the EDL".

However, Barton and the club strongly deny any links with the far right extremists. In a statement released by the club, Barton said "As a Premier League footballer it is common to pose for photographs with people you do not know, as is the case here. I had no idea who the person was. I simply agreed to his request for a photograph. I have absolutely no connection with such a group."

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EDL resists Islamification of denim trousers

Cf. Voi website.

More on Saturday's EDL demo (2)

A video report of Saturday's English Defence League and Unite Against Fascism demonstrations features Hel Gower, head of the EDL's admin team and PA to the leadership.

Interviewed as she and her colleagues hand in their "EDL Angels are not sick" petition at Downing Street, Gower repeats the official line that the EDL's women members are "wives, mothers, grandmothers, aunts". This is no doubt true, but it doesn't prevent the laughably misnamed "Angels" from also being racists and neo-Nazis.

Here for example is a comment from a Facebook discussion by Hel Gower herself replying to a critic who opposed the anti-Muslim bigotry displayed by Gower and others:

And from another Facebook thread here is Gower announcing her voting intentions:

The British First Party is the political wing of an openly Nazi group called the November 9th Society – the date being a reference to Hitler's 1923 Beer Hall Putsch or to Kristallnacht in 1938, or very likely both.

Only last week Stephen Lennon declared that the EDL's attitude to racists was that "we find out who they are and we kick them out". And last month the EDL assured us that "neo-Nazis are not welcome at EDL demonstrations, and will be ejected whenever they are identified". So far, however, no action has been taken against the racist, Nazi-sympathising Gower. On the contrary, she acts as an official spokesperson for the EDL.

More on Saturday's EDL demo

As you can imagine, this photograph from yesterday's Angels' Downing Street protest has been the cause of a certain amount of embarrassment for the English Defence League:

However, we shouldn't get the idea that all EDL supporters are Nazi sympathisers, as the following exchange from the EDL's Facebook page (via everythingedl) clearly demonstrates:

Bulgarian police stop Ataka campaigners plastering mosque with election posters

Police prevented election campaign staff for Ataka leader Volen Siderov from putting posters of the ultra-nationalist presidential candidate on a mosque in the Bulgarian town of Shoumen, Bulgarian-language media reports said.

Siderov, currently running weakly among the field of Bulgaria's 18 would-be heads of state, is known for his stance against, among other things, what he terms the Islamisation of Bulgaria and what he alleges to be a threat to the country's national security by radical Islamists. Some months ago, he and his supporters were involved in a violent clash outside a mosque in central Sofia when the Ataka group protested against loudspeakers calling the faithful to prayer during a Friday service.

Mass-circulation daily 24 Chassa quoted the mayor of the Kaolinovo municipality, Nida Ahmed, as saying that he had called the police after a caravan of Siderov supporters had stopped in the village of Zagoriche and had attempted to plaster a newly-built mosque with Siderov posters. The group, of more than 100 people, said that mosques should be built only in Turkey, according to Ahmed.

Police intervened to stop the group and the matter ended without incident. Under Bulgarian law, putting election campaign material on houses of worship is illegal.

Sofia Echo, 9 October 2011

Defend multiculturalism conference in London next Saturday

A huge range of speakers, including MPs, campaigners, writers and musicians is lined up for the one-day conference on defending multiculturalism on 15 October.

The event, titled Celebrate diversity, defend multiculturalism, oppose Islamophobia and racism, is organised by UAF and One Society Many Cultures and sponsored by SERTUC.

It is backed by the NUT, Unite, CWU, UCU and PCS trade unions, the Muslim Council of Britain and the NUS Black Students Campaign.

Speakers announced for the conference include Francis O'Grady TUC deputy general secretary, Kevin Courtney deputy general secretary NUT, Jack Dromey MP, Helen Goodman MP, Peter Hain MP, Claude Moraes MEP, Jean Lambert MEP, Farooq Murad secretary general, Muslim Council of Britain, Edie Friedman executive director, Jewish Council for Racial Equality, Michelle Stanistreet general secretary NUJ, Hugh Lanning deputy general secretary PCS, Steve Hart political director Unite, Megan Dobney regional secretary SERTUC, Zita Holbourne PCS NEC, Bob Lambert co-director European Muslim Research Centre, Jody McIntyre journalist, Peter Oborne journalist, Dilowar Khan director, London Muslim Centre, Alaa' Samarrai vice-president student affairs, Federation of Student Islamic Societies, Kanja Sesay NUS black students' officer, Nitin Sawney musician, Sabby Dhalu secretary One Society Many Cultures, Denis Fernando Lesbian and Gay Coalition Against Racism, Weyman Bennett joint secretary UAF, Martin Smith national co-ordinator, Love Music Hate Racism.

>> Go here to download the conference flyer
>> Read more about the conference

The event takes place at the TUC conference centre, Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3LS from 9.30am to 5pm on Saturday 15 October.

Immigration officer forwards racist email to Muslim-American lawyer

HELENA — Shahid Haque-Hausrath sat down at his computer on the morning of Sept. 28 and, as he does at the start of most work days, began reading his email. In his inbox that morning was an email from the state's top U.S. Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement official, Bruce Norum.

Haque-Hausrath is an immigration attorney who often deals with ICE on immigration and deportation cases, so he wasn't necessarily surprised to see an email from Norum, the supervisory detention and deportation officer for Montana.

Haque-Hausrath said he was somewhat perplexed by the email's subject line: "FW: This AA Pilot tells it like it is ..." In the body of the email Norum simply wrote "Good read" ahead of a forwarded message.

When Haque-Hausrath read the contents that followed Norum's apparent recommendation, his curiosity turned to stunned amazement. The forwarded message contained a lengthy, racially charged essay that appeared to be a rebuttal to the idea that Arabs and Muslims deserve the same protection under the law against racial profiling and discrimination as other citizens.

The content of the essay seems to advocate a "loyalty test" for Muslims and Arabs before they should be granted the same rights and freedoms afforded to other citizens of the United States.

"I want to know, I DEMAND to know and I have a right to know, whether or not you love America ..." the essay reads, in part. "Do you pledge allegiance to its flag? Do you proudly display it in front of your house, or on your car? Do you pray in your many daily prayers that Allah will bless this nation; that He will protect it and let it prosper? Or do you pray that Allah with (sic) destroy it in one of your Jihads?"

The essay is purported to have been written by an American Airlines pilot named John Maniscalco. According to Snopes.com, the essay has been circulating on the Internet since as far back as June 2002.

Great Falls Tribune, 8 October 2011

Update:  See "CAIR seeks reprimand for ICE official who forwarded Islamophobic email", CAIR press release, 9 October 2011

Conservative shock jock reels off Islamophobia's greatest hits

Conservative shock jock Bryan Fischer whipped out his best anti-Muslim rhetoric at the Values Voter Summit on Saturday.

Some highlights:

"Christians and Muslims do not believe in the same God."

"I believe it's important that we have a president who understands that Islam is not a religion of peace, but a religion of war and violence and death."

"Every single Mosque in America is a potential recruiting or training cell for Islamic terror."

"The greatest long-term threat to our security and liberty is not radical Islam, but Islam itself."

"This is not Islamophobia, this is Islamo-realism."

"The more devout a Muslim becomes, the more of a threat he becomes to our national security."

TPM, 8 October 2011

Far right flops in London and Leeds

The English Defence League Angels' London protest today must have been a major disappointment for them. As you can see from the photo (courtesy of Tom Griffin) barely a hundred EDL turned up and most of them were men. Considering that the event was a national mobilisation and had been publicised for weeks in advance, this was little short of a disaster for the EDL.

Socialist Worker reports that the Infidels' demonstration in Leeds was even smaller, as this photo (via Expose) confirms.

All in all, not a good day for the Islamophobic far right.

Spanish girl thrown out of exam for wearing headscarf

A Spanish schoolgirl has been expelled from school during an exam after refusing to remove her Islamic headdress or hijab, school officials said. "They told me to remove it… they humiliated me in front of my peers," she told El Mundo newspaper.

The 14-year-old girl, who lives in Madrid, decided to wear hijab this summer. Her parents became outraged by the expulsion and described it an "abuse," reporting the case to judiciary officials.

This comes while there are no clear guidelines prohibiting the wearing of headscarves in state schools in Spain. Muslims currently account for just over one million of Spain's 46-million population. Muslims in Spain have been witnessing a growing trend of Islamophobia as e hostility towards the expressions of Islamic symbols and practices grows in the European state.

The discriminatory policies on the rise in Spain clearly breach the country's Law of Religious Freedom, as well as the International Human Rights law.

Press TV, 8 October 2011

See also Bikya Masr, 5 October 2011