Why the Home Office must stop these Polish far-right politicians from entering the UK

Faith Matters calls on the Home Office to stop two far-right politicians from Poland from speaking at a community event in Manchester on Sunday, May 1. Those names include the disgraced former MEP and far-right extremist from Poland, Janusz Korwin-Mikke, and Konrad Berkowicz of the far-right Confederation bloc, which we’ve highlighted before. We made the […]

Far-right ‘freedom picnic’ for Poles in Manchester features antisemitic speaker

A speaker at a far-right “freedom picnic” in the Bury area of Greater Manchester on September 15 had previously said that Poles were “being outmanoeuvred by Judeans who are trying to force our government to pay extortion money disguised as compensation”. Stanisław Michalkiewicz, hosts a radio show on the Polish-Catholic owned Radio Maryja, which, according […]

Parsons Green: Aladdins takeaway and Yahyah Farroukh abused and threatened online

Staff at a fried chicken shop received threats and abuse after an employee was arrested and then released without further action during the Parsons Green attack investigation. A Facebook post from Aladdins Fried Chicken in Hounslow, west London, said staff faced abuse and threats on social media, over the telephone, and in person, following the […]

Mahershala Ali and the importance of Black Ahmadis in America

Mahershala Ali has won the Oscar for best-supporting actor – an accolade many had expected – for his performance in Moonlight, the critically acclaimed story of a black gay man’s coming of age. Ali had already picked up awards from the Screen Actors Guild, Critics Choice, and the NAACP Image award. During his acceptance speech […]

Why did Katie Hopkins share a white nationalist hoax?

At 9:37pm on May 18, 2016, Katie Hopkins tweeted ‘Give me strength. Stick up a chuffing sign for English Language School’. Her bombastic tone accompanied an image which suggested that road signs in Bradford now included Urdu. Twitter users soon exposed the hoax. @jake_conran @KTHopkins @Juliet777777 Er, same van in the background. 100% photoshopped. — Adam Leyton (@AdamLeyton) May 18, 2016 @jake_conran @KTHopkins same van. Pull your head out of your arse pic.twitter.com/H53qut3OV2 — Graeme Rayner (@grimois) May 18, 2016 The origins of the hoax stem from a white nationalist hate site called The New Observer. Its content rallies against perceived ‘white genocide’. Editors of the site insist on labelling migrants and refugees as“illegal invaders” and “Third World colonizers.” Nor does the content lose its traditional antisemitism. Articles are rich with Holocaust denial. And obsess over the ideas of an all powerful ‘Jewish lobby’. An article on September 6, 2015 was headlined ‘Jewish Supremacists Using “Holocaust Fable” to Promote Third World Invasion of Europe’. The election of Sadiq Khan as London Mayor was ‘the first such formerly European city to officially fall before the nonwhite invasion of Europe.’ But to return to the Bradford story, the hoax goes beyond photoshopped [...]

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Why Ken Livingstone is wrong about Hitler and Zionism

Ken Livingstone’s comments on Hitler and Zionism created a justified outrage. His comments divorce the realities of Hitler’s antisemtism and Nazi violence. Hitler opposed the creation of a Jewish state in his 1925 autobiography Mein Kampf. Hitler’s antisemitic outlook owes in part to the writings of Henry Ford and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. His commitment to the conspiracy of a Jewish plot to rule the world prevented him from entertaining the idea of a single Jewish state. This became a meaningful way for the Nazis to dehumanize Jewish communities. Hitler obsession with the racist conspiracy of global Jewish influence germinated in Vienna. This grew in the 1920s when party ideologue Alfred Rosenberg introduced him to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Nazi Party had already published copies of the text in 1919. And by 1939, the party had published at least 23 versions of the text. So Livingstone’s point that Hitler “was supporting Zionism” is wrong. Nor did Israel exist in 1932. The conflation between Zionism, Israel and Hitler only serves to cause deep upset. Livingstone’s comment also divorces the complexities of Jewish thought in this era. Removed from the historical context of growing antisemitic [...]

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Croatian Jews boycott official Holocaust memorial over rising neo-Nazism

Around 300 of Croatia’s Jewish population held a vigil outside the country’s most notorious concentration camp in protest at the government’s alleged failure to challenge rising neo-Nazi sentiment in the country. Part of this failure concerns the downplaying of the crimes of Croatia’s pro-Nazi regime. The ultra-nationalist and antisemitic Ustaša regime took power on August 10, 1941, after Axis forces had invaded Yugoslavia on April 6, 1941. Concentration camps were built nationwide to ‘purge’ Croatian society of ‘foreign elements’. This extended to Jews, Serbs, Roma and non-Catholic minorities. Ustaša fascists exterminated over 500,000 Serbs. They forced 250,000 into exile and made 250,000 more Serbs convert to Catholicism under pain of death, according to Yad Vashem. The fascist regime murdered  75 per cent of Croatia’s pre-war Jewish population of 40,000. Jews in Croatia now make up 1 per cent of the general population. Between 15,000 and 20,000 Roma were also murdered by the Ustaša regime, as were between 5,000 and 12,000 ethnic Croats and Muslims. Croatia’s largest concentration camp was the Jasenovac complex, a string of five camps along the Sava River, east of Zagreb. Close to 100,000 people were murdered in this camp between 1941 and 1945. Prisoners at the [...]

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Bucharest mayoral candidate outed as Holocaust denier

A mayoral candidate in the upcoming Bucharest election had denied Romania’s complicity in the Holocaust in a 1994 news article. Marian Munteanu now of the National Liberal Party (PNL), had founded the ultra-Christian and nationalist Movement for Romania (Mişcarea pentru România) in 1991. The accusations surfaced in their newspaper ‘Mişcarea’ in June 1994. The party foleded in 1996 as Munteanu pursued other interests. He denied that Romania had experienced an anti-Jewish Holocaust and the 400,000 deaths were no more than a ‘deeply flawed assessment’. Much of Romania’s Holocaust denial concerns the actions of Nazi collaborator General Ion Antonescu. His antisemitism is, however, without question. In a 1941 session of the Council of Ministers he said: “I give the mob complete license to massacre [the Jews]. I will withdraw to my fortress, and after the slaughter, I will restore order.” Antonescu ordered pogroms and the closure of all ‘Jewish communist cafes’. The repressive regime had proved one of Hitler’s most consistent allies during the Second World War. General Antonescu had met with Hitler in 1943 to reassure him of Romania’s unconditional support. Romania and other Axis allies were part of the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Odessa, a city [...]

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What do Muslims in Britain actually think?

Channel 4 commissioned ICM to poll Muslims in Britain on a range of issues from women’s rights to marriage equality. But did the poll titled “What do British Muslims really think?” answer its own question? Polling British Muslims is a difficult and expensive task. It’s why YouGov avoided the Sun’s now infamous ‘1 in 5 Muslims’ poll. ICM’s researchers picked 138 random Local Super Output Areas where Muslims make up at least 20 per cent of the population. This skewed the findings to areas with relative social deprivation. It also over-represented certain ethnic groups. Yet it still captured 51 per cent of the total Muslim population. Of the 1,081 Muslims polled, 55 per cent were Pakistani. British Asians/Asians totaled 83 per cent of the polling data. Data from the last census revealed that British Asian/Asians totaled 67.6 per cent of Muslims in England and Wales. The poll included just 11 Arabs and 16 white Muslims who account for 6.6 per cent and 7.8 per cent of Muslims in England and Wales. Despite methodological issues it remains a serious poll. As with previous surveys – Muslims identify with Britain at a higher rate than the national average. They also expressed greater [...]

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Are sales of the burqa and niqab on the rise?

A Daily Express article which suggested that burqa sales are on the rise in Blackburn contains some basic errors. The headline “Burka sales BOOM” can serve to reinforce the imagery of religiosity and violence. Imagery that has featured in counter-jihad circles since 2006. The Other Islamic Bomb => pic.twitter.com/RlcqQwal2i — Scott M (@EVdeals1) April 27, 2013 Describing a ‘sales boom’ is a journalistic cliche and not instrincially offensive. In this context, however, it lacks sensitivity. The central claim of the article weakens under scrutiny. Paul Baldwin, the Express journalist, only interviewed a single store owner. And Baldwin acknowledges that ‘exact figures are hard to establish because many burkas are sold door-to-door’. Nadeem Siddiqui has seen a rise in sales. His Hijab Centre in Blackburn went from selling ‘one or two burkas a month’ to ‘one or two in a week’. It’s a rise but it hardly meets the inflated claims of the headline. The Express also carried out a ‘snap survey’ in the town and ‘found around 30 per cent of muslim women completely covered their faces’. That figure sounds daunting when the journalist had just informed readers that Muslims make up 11 per cent of the local population. It [...]

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