Indonesian police have shot dead six followers of a firebrand cleric who returned last month from a three-year exile in Saudi Arabia after criminal charges against him were dropped.

Jakarta Police Chief Muhammad Fadil Imran said officers were following a car carrying 10 supporters of Rizieq Shihab, the leader of the Islamic Defenders Front, early on Monday morning. He said the followers attacked the police with guns and swords, threatening the officers’ safety.

“The officers then took firm and measured action so that six died from the group of 10 people,” he said at a news conference. He did not give further details of the violence.

An official of the Islamic Defenders Front, Ahmad Shabri Lubis, gave a different account, saying that Mr Shihab and his family were heading to a place to deliver a sermon and that guards travelling with them had been shot.

“On their way to the sermon location, the group was intercepted by unknown people that we strongly believed were part of an operational group to stalk and harm him. Those unknown people stopped and did the shooting of the family guards,” Mr Lubis said.

Mr Imran said police had been scheduled to interrogate Mr Shihab on Monday morning over an alleged violation of coronavirus health regulations during his daughter’s wedding reception on November 14, and they had received information about plans for a mass mobilisation of his supporters at Jakarta police headquarters during his questioning.

As of Monday evening, Mr Shihab had not appeared for the questioning, his second police summons after an earlier one last Tuesday.

Mr Shihab was welcomed by tens of thousands of followers when he returned to Indonesia from exile on November 10. He had left Indonesia in 2017 to go on an umrah, or minor pilgrimage, to Mecca shortly after police charged him in a pornography case and with allegedly insulting the official state ideology, Pancasila.

Police dropped both charges last year due to weak evidence, but authorities in Saudi Arabia had banned him from leaving the country without any explanation.

His return comes as Islamist forces are gaining political strength in Indonesia.

The Islamic Defenders Front was once on the political fringes and has a long record of vandalising nightspots, hurling stones at Western embassies and attacking rival religious groups. It wants Islamic Shariah law to apply to Indonesia’s 230 million Muslims.

Read more: Indonesia: Buddhist woman imprisoned for blasphemy

Two brothers are to face trial in January for their alleged involvement in a terror plot.

Sahayb Abu is accused of plotting an extremist attack in the UK, while his brother Mohammed is accused of failing to inform police of his sibling’s intentions.

Sahayb, 27, of Doyle Road in South Norwood, south-east London, was arrested in July after allegedly purchasing or attempting to purchase items for use in terrorism.

The Metropolitan Police previously said Sahayb was bitten on the foot by a police dog during the raid.

He is charged with engaging in the preparation of terrorist acts on or before July 9 this year, under Section 5 of the Terrorism Act 2006.

Mohammed, 20, of Mayfield Road in Dagenham, east London, faces a charge of failing to disclose information likely to assist in a terrorist investigation.

Prosecutor Kiernan Cunningham QC told the Old Bailey: “Sahayb Abu was planning a terrorist act in this country; the prosecution argue that his brother had information about that attack and was in a position to provide that to the police.”

He asked for the cases to be tried together, saying the charges are “intrinsically linked”.

Mr Justice Sweeney listed the brothers’ trial for January 25 next year and they are due back in court for a plea hearing on November 23.

They are both being held in custody.

Tensions between police and members of New York City’s Hasidic Jewish community have flared up again after a crowded funeral procession was interrupted by officers.

Video posted on social media showed officers in protective masks chasing a minivan through Brooklyn’s Borough Park neighbourhood as it carried the body of a deceased rabbi.

The officers can be heard shouting at dozens of people marching behind the van to get out of the street and onto the pavement.

A 17-year-old boy was taken into custody and issued a summons for disorderly conduct after he was accused of pushing a police official, according to a police spokeswoman.

The confrontation came two days after Mayor Bill de Blasio stoked divisions with a series of tweets after he went to Brooklyn to oversee the dispersal of thousands of people who crowded the streets of Williamsburg for the funeral of another rabbi.

New York has banned any gatherings, of any size, for any purpose as the coronavirus has been linked to at least 18,000 deaths in the city in just a few weeks.

Mr De Blasio called the large gathering “absolutely unacceptable” in one tweet.

In another, he said: “My message to the Jewish community, and all communities, is this simple: the time for warnings has passed.”

Republican senator Ted Cruz has sent a letter to Attorney General Bill Barr urging the Justice Department “to closely monitor New York City” for potential religious discrimination in the wake of Mr de Blasio’s tweets.

State Senator Simcha Felder, who represents Borough Park, posted a tweet after Thursday’s confrontation saying “terrorising people by sending in armies of cops during such stressful times is not helpful at all. @NYCMayor – we need real leadership. Stop the chaos now.”

Dov Hikind, a former state assembly member who is the founder of a group fighting anti-Semitism, said people violating social distancing rules in Brooklyn are relatively small in number and are behaving in ways that goes against Judaism’s central tenant of preserving life.

He said: “I’ve begged and pleaded with the minority that exists within our community that don’t give a darn – don’t give a damn – about themselves, their families or the community.

“You can’t have funerals with hundreds of people. You can’t have people praying in synagogues. You can’t do those things when people’s lives are on the line. It violates everything in Judaism.”

A concerned woman fearing “up to no good” carol singers was one of several unusual phone calls received by a police force during “Mad Friday”.

North Yorkshire Police shared details of the incident as part of a “tweetathon” documenting every call received between noon on Friday and 6am on Saturday, a period known to be one of the busiest of the year for forces across the country.

In one post, sent at 8.36pm on Friday, the force said they had been contacted by a woman in Harrogate about the carol singers, who are believed to have been from nearby Leeds.

The tweet said: “Caller from #Harrogate who is aware of Christmas carol singers in the area who she believes are from Leeds.

“Caller believes they are up to no good as they are not local to area – observations passed to local officers.”

The post triggered a series of comical responses from social media users, including one who suggested that the force should “build a wall and make Leeds pay for it”.

Another said that the caller might have been baffled by hearing the hymn Silent Night being sung “in a Leeds accent”.

One user joked that he had seen the singers in the famous Betty’s tea room earlier in the day, saying they had “asked for their crusts to be left on, and didn’t leave a tip”.

The force received hundreds of calls during the “tweetathon”, including one about a milkshake being thrown in a takeaway and another complaining about their neighbours’ “loud sex”.

The last Friday before Christmas, nicknamed “Mad Friday” and “Black Eye Friday”, is regarded as a hectic time for emergency services as it is a popular night to host festive parties.

Istanbul riot police fired tear gas and rubber pellets on Sunday to disperse a march for transgender people banned after ultra-nationalists said that “degenerates” could not demonstrate.

Hundreds of riot police cordoned off the city’s main Taksim Square to prevent the “Trans Pride” rally taking place during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Authorities have banned transgender and gay pride marches this month, citing security concerns after the ultra-nationalist warnings against any such events on Turkish soil.

“Football fans can rally in this country whenever they want. We were going to do a peaceful activity,” said Ebru Kiranci, spokesperson of the Istanbul LGBTI Solidarity Association.

“(The) holy month of Ramadan is an excuse. If you are going to respect Ramadan, respect us too. The heterosexuals think it’s too much for us, only 2 hours in 365 days,” she said.

The annual gay pride parade, described as the biggest in the Muslim world, was due to take place on June 26. Istanbul has held gay pride parades since 2003, attracting tens of thousands of marchers, but last year’s was broken up by police.

Although the Turkish republic is constitutionally secular, the vast majority of the population is Muslim.

Tayyip Erdogan, who became president in 2014 after 11 years as prime minister, has steadily boosted the power of the head of state’s office with appeals to conservative nationalist and religious-minded Turks.

This has effectively shifted Turkey from a parliamentary to a presidential system even before Erdogan seeks to amend the constitution through a referendum to make that official.

Unlike many other Muslim countries, homosexuality is not a crime in Turkey but hostility toward gays remains widespread. Critics say Erdogan and his Islamist-rooted AK Party have shown little interest in expanding rights for minorities, gays and women, and are intolerant of dissent.

The assault by the riot police targeted protesters angered by an attack on a record store launching the new Radiohead album on Saturday.

A group of men armed with sticks and bottles attacked the store late on Friday, apparently in protest at people drinking beer during Ramadan, video footage on social media showed.

Police in Southwark have released images of two women they are keen to speak with following an anti-Muslim attack against a Muslim woman in her 40s.

The incident took place on October 28 at roughly 20:10. Officers responded to reports that a Muslim woman experiencing racial and religious verbal abuse. As police arrived, the suspects had punched the Muslim woman in the head, and kicked her off the bus. The verbal abuse continued after the assault.

Police confirmed that the main suspects are two black women in their 20s. Nor have they made any arrests. The story made national headlines last month.

An eyewitness tweeted that the woman was visibly Muslim.

Just witnessed a hate crime at the Elephant. Muslim woman in hijab kicked backwards off a bus to the floor

— Antonia Bance (@antoniabance) October 28, 2015

With the release of fresh CCTV they also hope to speak to witnesses who may have photographed or filmed the attack and abuse.

Images released as part of appeal following hate crime on #Southwark bus https://t.co/GOijnYuGRb pic.twitter.com/N2MBVtgSoS

— Metropolitan Police (@metpoliceuk) December 16, 2015

Did you travel on the number 63 bus on the evening of October 28? It departed from Kings Cross towards Peckham. The incident happened on London Road in Southwark.  Do you recognise the women in the CCTV photos?

Anyone with information is urged to call police on 101, quoting reference number 3031350/15, or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555111. 

The post Can you help? Witness appeal after Muslim woman assaulted on London bus appeared first on TELL MAMA.

This morning, a taxi driver of Aghan heritage was found in the street with head injuries after suffering a serious assault. South Yorkshire Police were called to the scene and the taxi driver was later admitted to hospital and as part of a routine procedure, was induced into a coma.

The victim is responding to stimuli though he has suffered serious head injuries. Rotherham police have confirmed the arrest of a 20-year-old male who is in custody and a second individual is being sought regarding the serious assault on the taxi driver.

We have been extremely active in Rotherham over the last 3 years and we have reported in numerous hate incidents and crimes. More recently, the murder of Mushin Ahmed rocked the community, as have numerous attacks on mosques and incidents against taxi drivers who have talked to us about the increasing hate that they are receiving.

If anyone has information regarding this serious assault, please do get in touch with the police on 101, quoting incident number 178 of October the 3rd 2015.

The post Attack on Rotherham Taxi Driver Leaves Him With Serious Head Injuries appeared first on TELL MAMA.

This report argues that the current strategy’s centralised and top-down deployment markedly reduces local capacity to find tailored solutions that make sense for a given community. The Prevent strategy’s move away [As Prevent Centralises, Community Engagement and Local Capacity To Implement Local Tailored Solutions Falls] from community engagement to a centralised approach is not likely to assemble necessary resources, partners and stakeholders to address the issue of extremism that has changed so significantly given social media platforms and the use of the Internet. However, it should also be stressed that calls by some community groups to scrap Prevent are naïve and politically immature given the continuing and sustained terrorist threat to our country which has so violently taken so many lives.

The 2011 Prevent strategy fixates on ideology and religiosity at the expense of understanding propensity for violence. It excludes and isolates groups that do not fit into its narrow definition of ‘British values’. By operating through a highly centralised approach to disrupting extremists, the Prevent strategy runs the risk of deteriorating the healthy liberal public sphere deemed necessary to opening counter-speech and debate that can challenge the intellectual basis of genuinely violent extremist opinions.

The strategy’s current fixation on ideology runs the risk of alienating and excluding potential partners that have the penetration and information needed to actively challenge extremism. Local actors pushing to incorporate Muslim voices in the process and review of Prevent can mitigate these problems to an extent. While making Prevent leaner and more focused is a positive approach, it should be done in conversation with communities rather than through centralised decision-making structures. In essence, the move in the strategy is one away from addressing radicalisation through communities, securitising them instead of treating them as partners and leaders.

Further, the fixation on ‘ideology’ and ‘non-violent extremism’ will alienate members of the Muslim community who under the previous Prevent agenda were able to access spaces to express dissenting voices. The danger today is that these spaces will be suffocated, along with space for dissenting voices. Whilst we may not agree with some groups and individuals who fall foul of the ‘British values’ espoused by the Home Secretary, it is important to acknowledge that some groups who do not believe in democracy need to be challenged openly and through debate and discussion. Pushing them to the margins and using pressure to cancel venues simply will drive these views underground and could further alienate individuals who may feel that they have no stake in the social life of our communities.

Where Prevent training was previously conducted in partnership with the local Muslim community, the new strategy clearly sees Muslim organisations and institutions as targets and recipients of training without any capacity on their own to challenge extremist views, rather than equal stakeholders in countering-terrorism.

As Prevent Centralises, Community Engagement and Local Capacity To Implement Local Tailored Solutions Falls

• Encourage the Metropolitan Police Service to focus Channel referrals on clear cases of illegal, violent speech and use alternative measures such as working with families for cases of ‘non-violent extremism’ or deviation from ‘British values’.
• During the commissioning process for the CTLP, ensure that the Local Authority representative has consulted with various community groups from all faith groups and is able to represent their voice and ensure that the CTLP commissioning process benefits from a balanced approach.
• Encourage the Metropolitan Police Service to engage with and be aware of the dynamics of Muslim communities and work with communities to tackle anti-Muslim hate and intra-Muslim tensions, viewing them as real partners and not through a simple securitisation agenda.
• Local authorities should engage with groups critical of Prevent without funding them. Their views should be taken seriously when planning Prevent projects alongside a diversity of other voices.
• Ensure that safe spaces for young people to voice their opinions are available without fear of referral to Channel.
• Universities must have clear policies about speakers but also err on the side of freedom to debate and challenge, teaching students how to challenge views in a nuanced and critical manner. The starting point for universities should be to encourage debate and free speech, though also acknowledge that student societies need support, monitoring and clear frameworks around respect for core human and civil rights for all. This means tackling to gender prejudice and enforced segregation within student societies, for example.
• The pool of authorised Prevent providers must be widened to more diverse voices to produce local solutions. Local authorities should be able to work with a variety of partners to provide balanced and effective training to any individuals tasked with exercising the Prevent duty