We have been notified of a Facebook page called ‘Poland – Birmingham‘ which highlights an area of growing concern for us. Over the last 4 years, we have not highlighted this issue since we have believed that a migrant community that has also suffered a great deal of prejudice and bigotry deserves support and no
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A Maryland county will allow Muslim and Hindu students a day off from school to celebrate Diwali and Eid al-Adha. The Howard County Board of Education faced a tough decision: to foster inclusion by removing all religious holidays from the academic calender; Or add extra days to include non-Abrahamic celebrations. A unanimous decision in favour of the latter will result in school closings or professional development days for staff in the 2016/17 academic year. The board also voted to allow staff to take a professional development day off for Lunar News Years Eve, after requests from the local Chinese and Korean communities. As it falls on a Saturday, students remain unaffected. Schools in the county have shut during Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. But a recent motion threatened to end this tradition. It proved controversial enough to attract more than 300 people to a public hearing in December. State and federal laws prevent schools from closing on religious holidays (unless mandated otherwise). Adjusting academic calenders requires a secular reason. Baltimore County had recorded a large levels of absenteeism during these Jewish holidays. Art Abramson, Executive Director of Baltimore’s Jewish Council, welcomed changes to academic calenders on the [...]
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Meet Steve Uncles, who is the Kent Police and Crime Commissioner candidate for the English Democrats. One of the leading activists for the English Democrats, his tweets leave little room for doubt, that he has problems about Islam and Muslims. The English Democrats have absorbed previous supporters of the British National Party and the Party
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Europe’s continued anxieties towards the refugee crisis has allowed fringe groups to exploit tensions. Finland’s “Soldiers of Odin” is one such example. This ‘street patrol’ movement promises to protect native Finns from immigrants and Muslims. It considers itself “a patriotic organisation fighting for white Finland”. They claim that Islam causes insecurity and increased crime. At protests they have carried signs that read “Migrants not welcome”. You can trace the origins of the movement to a protest in the town of Kemi, near the northern city of Tornio, last October. Its founder Mika Rana, justified their patrols under the guise of security. Social media allowed the movement to connect online. And share their anxieties (and hatred) of different cultures. A Facebook post alleging that asylum seekers housed near a school in Kemi had spied on young girls brought them onto the streets. Rana’s own social media account reveals his white supremacist beliefs. His Facebook ‘likes’ include Holocaust denial, nostalgia for Nazism, and a ‘Stop Islam’ page. The Internet has always enabled far-right ideologues and groups to disseminate materials with ease. Social media serves to intensify the process. And it allows groups to mirror other far-right groups across Europe. Take for example, [...]
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Muhammadu Buhari, a Sunni Muslim and a former military dictator, has surprisingly won the 2015 Presidential elections in Nigeria after three consecutive defeats. Buhari has campaigned on a platform of ‘change’, promising economic stability, to curb corruption and to utilise political strength in tackling the terrorist group, Boko Haram. The Buhari government, however, has faced international criticism, due to the clash between the army and the minority Shia community in Zaria. Reports of events prior to the clash are unclear, the army asserts that the Nigerian Chief of Army Staff, Genenral Tukur Buratai, was blockaded near Zaria and the convoy was attacked by a petrol bomb. The Shia Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) deny any attack occurred and demand the release of their leader Ibraheem Zakzaky. The government forces raided Zakzaky’s home and the whereabouts of his wife and sons are unknown. The IMN have stated that they have been killed in the raid, however, the Nigerian authorities have declared that his wife is in custody. Iran has condemned the attacks and called for the release of the Shiite leader. The movement has also been confronted by Boko Haram. The problem remains complex: it would be too simplistic to apportion [...]
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UKIP Peer, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, is set to ask a question in the House of Lords on the 27th of January 2016. The question that has been tabled is the following: “Whether Christians could be recorded as having committed an anti-Muslim hate crime from April 2016 by preaching the divinity of Christ in public
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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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A former legal worker walked free from court after a jury cleared her of racial abuse towards Muslim families. Virginia Agraviador, 53, had screamed ‘I don’t hijab, I am happy with my miniskirt’ and ‘f**k off back to your own country’ at passers-by who wore Islamic clothing as she sat in Kensington Gardens. A MailOnline article
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Sadly, as we have said before, there are groups who want to tackle anti-Muslim prejudice or Islamophobia. This is noble cause, but it is one that is based on ensuring that bigotry against other groups is not promoted or published. How many times have we come across material from some of these groups that is
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In a recent column for Middle East Eye, Dilly Hussain (Deputy Editor of 5Pillars) wrote that Tell MAMA’s mission of providing a service for British Muslims to report hate crimes will soon be obsolete now that the Home Office has required all police forces in the United Kingdom to record anti-Muslim hate crimes on par
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