Man sentenced for fireworks attack on Rhyl Islamic Cultural Centre

Keith Hall, 38, from Rhyl, received a 16-week suspended prison sentence after pleading guilty to a religiously-motivated firework attack on the town’s Islamic Cultural Centre. During the trial, CCTV footage from a nearby pub revealed that Hall had approached the mosque twice in 20 minutes. Nor did act alone. The footage also revealed a man

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Who is Pegida UK’s new leader Paul Weston?

At a Bedfordshire pub, the UK branch of Pegida announced a new leadership structure, following its disastrous relaunch in late 2015. At the helm is Paul Weston, leader of the fringe party Liberty GB. Weston stood in the 2015 General Election and mustered just 0.4 per cent of the vote (158 votes) in Luton South.

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Why do people want Titanic priest Father Thomas Byles sainted?

A campaign to canonise a Catholic priest who stayed on the RMS Titanic instead of fleeing remains ongoing despite renewed interest in his story. The story of Father Thomas Byles and his acts of selflessness, however, deserves re-telling. Roussel Davids Byles was born in 1870 to a Protestant family in Leeds. His father, Reverend Dr. Alfred Holden Byles and mother Louisa Davids also had six other children. He excelled at mathematics and  gained a scholarship to Balliol School, Oxford. When at Oxford, Byles gravitated towards the Church of England. His younger brother, William, however, converted to Catholicism first. In 1894, he had a conditional baptism (sub conditione) at St. Aloysius Church in Oxford. Upon entering the Catholic faith, Roussel adopted the name of Thomas. After spending two years in Rome, Byles became the ordained priest of St Helen’s Church, Chipping Ongar, Essex in 1904. In 1912, he had boarded the ship to attend the wedding of his younger brother William, in New York. This last minute decision to board the Titanic instead of a different ship cost him £13 (roughly £1,100 today). His second class ticket was number 244310. His duties included performing mass for second and third class passengers. [...]

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For God (Allah), King, Country and Poland: The Polish Tatar Muslims & Their Story of Survival Against Overwhelming Odds

The Tatar Muslim turns to me and laughingly says that on the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, Muslims from other countries like Indonesia looked puzzled when they queried where he was from and the response left them with a look of disbelief. Poland he replied, to which the answer was always the same. ‘Poland? Are there […]

Extremist Far Right Group Britain First State ‘London is Finished as a British City’

Just when you thought that they could not top their bizarre rhetoric any more, along comes the following comment which Britain First’s Paul Golding circulated today in an electronic flyer. It seems that being ‘patriots’ does not stop them abusing the capital city of our nation – so much for their deeply held pride in

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Joshua Bonehill-Paine jailed for inciting antisemitic hatred

The self-styled “nationalist, fascist, theorist and supporter of white rights” Joshua Bonehill-Paine, of Yeovil, Somerset, has been sentenced to three years and four months in prison following his conviction for inciting racial hatred. Police arrested Bonehill-Paine ahead of a planned neo-Nazi rally in Golders Green in July – the heart of London’s Jewish community. Bonehill-Paine had created antisemitic images to promote his ‘anti-Jewification’ rally. One image included weed killer sprayed over the entrance of Auschwitz. The image ridiculed the horrors of the Holocaust. And called for the ’round-up’ and removal of Jewish communities from Golders Green. A racist and antisemitic caricature of a Jewish man underscored much of the propaganda. During the trial, the prosecution argued that the ‘O’ of Golders Green referenced the SS. Forensic analysis of Bonehill-Paine’s laptop revealed many versions of the flyer. Owing to public outrage and a fear of disorder, the Met Police moved the protest to Westminster. More than 2,000 signed-up to a counter protest online. The ‘Golders Green Together’ campaign helped raise community awareness and counter-narratives. Members of the neo-Nazi group New Dawn also had a part to play in the Golders Green protest. Bonehill-Paine was arrested in February on suspicion of malicious [...]

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Statue honouring pro-Nazi politician Bálint Hóman causes outrage in Hungary

Hundreds of Hungarians held a candle-lit vigil against a planned statue honouring a pro-Nazi minister. The protest in the city of Székesfehérvár this past Sunday included diplomats from the United States, Israel, Canada, and Washington’s special envoy on anti-Semitism Ira Forman. Bálint Hóman remains of Hungary’s most toxic reminders of its complicity in the Holocaust. He supported discriminatory policies that disposed Jews of land and denied them university jobs in the 1930s. He advocated a close alliance with Nazi Germany. And supported policies that resulted in the deportation and murder of more than 500,000 Jews. Székesfehérvár’s mayor, András Cser-Palkovic, a member of the ruling Fidesz party, will ask the Hóman Foundation to reconsider its planned installation. Fidesz has already donated Ft15m ($52,000) to the project. The Hóman Foundation hope to unveil the statue on December 29 – the 130th anniversary of Hóman’s birth. Hungary’s close ties to Nazi Germany began before the onset of war. In 1938, the Nazis annexed Sudeten region of the now Czech Republic. Hungary gained territory from this action. That same year, Hungary passed laws that cut Jewish employment by 80 per cent. A year later, and Hungarian laws racialised Jews. Against this backdrop, the Nazis [...]

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Why was a Buddhist man attacked and accused of being an ISIS terrorist?

On a July evening in Plymouth, Jak Burgess, 20, boarded a bus heading towards the city centre with friends, and sat next to a Buddhist man of Sri Lankan origin. Within seconds, Burgess accused him being a member of ISIS who intended to bomb the bus. An accusation that turned to violence in a paroxysm of racist rage. Perturbed, the bus driver stopped the vehicle, and helped the Buddhist man downstairs. His attacker followed. And his tone grew more aggressive when the Buddhist man refused to shake his hand. A police appeal soon bore positive results. And Jak Burgess admitted the racially aggravated charge. He then failed to attend his sentencing hearing earlier this month. Now Plymouth Magistrates’ Court have issued a warrant for his arrest. The question remains: how do you account for this incident? One explanation concerns racialisation. It is in the assumption of Muslim identity based on ethnicity. Racialisation also impacts white converts to Islam. This owes in part to their expressions of religiosity. In a broader sense, religious conversion creates a fundamental shift in how a person views the world. A study of British converts to Islam published in 1996 found that it created an identity [...]

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Why Donald Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric will continue to endure

Donald Trump proposes a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States“. The shift in rhetoric follows the shootings in San Bernardino, California. His proposed ban would also include Muslim tourists and citizens based abroad. In a press release, Trump cited growing hatred of the United States in Muslim communities. The localities of these communities are not contingent to Trump’s argument – only a perception of truth matters. Recent data from Pew offers added nuance. It found the countries with the most unfavourable views of the United States were Jordan and Russia. Positive ratings in Turkey had increased from 19 per cent to 29 per cent. In Lebanon, 48 per cent of its Sunni Muslim population had expressed favourable views of the United States. Its Shia population, had for the most part, expressed anti-American sentiment. Other polls from Pew point to a broad rejection of terror groups like ISIS and suicide bombing among Muslims across the globe. Pew data also found that many Muslim Americans want to assimilate into American culture. It’s also noteworthy that 81 per cent of Muslim Americans hold U.S. citizenship, including 70 per cent born abroad. Foreign-born Muslims take up a higher rate of [...]

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Why extremist groups want you to ban their online content

Facebook briefly banned Britain First’s page on 30 November, sparking momentary cries of celebration on social media. But within an hour, the far right organisation’s page was restored, claiming Facebook’s censorship to be a ‘fascist attack’. Britain First currently has over 1 million likes on its Facebook page—more than Conservatives and Labour combined. Its page on average generates hundreds of likes for posts. Immediately following restoration, likes spiked into the thousands. Despite their inflammatory material, banning social media sites like Britain First is a highly ineffective approach. Research points to the negative consequences that arise from exercising bans. The International Centre for Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) found through in-depth analysis that a systematic blocking of sites with extremist material is both impractical and counterproductive. It found that strategies which include removing websites, filtering content for accessibility, and hiding search engine results, have little to no effect hindering such networks. This is due to the particular challenges of internet regulation. The scale of website traffic makes identifying and monitoring content extremely difficult, as well as resource-intensive. Even when web page takedowns do occur, sites and forums tend to re-emerge rapidly. The far-right website, Gates of Vienna, was taken down twice in [...]

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