Britain |
Girl, 15, arrested for 'burning Koran at school and posting footage on Facebook |
2010-11-26 |
A teenage girl has been arrested on suspicion of inciting religious hatred after allegedly burning an English language version of the Koran - and then posting it on Facebook. The 15-year-old, who lives in the Sandwell area of Birmingham, West Mids, was filmed two weeks ago on her school premises burning the Islamic religious book. Police have confirmed the video was reported to the school and has since been removed. A 14-year-old boy was arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of making threats. Both have been released on police bail. This incident comes just two and a half months after six yobs were arrested after filming themselves dousing the Muslim holy book with fuel and setting it ablaze behind a pub in Tyneside. It is believed the young girl was allegedly filmed setting the booklet alight while other pupils watched on. Two Facebook profiles have also been removed from the site. It is understood that the group who published that version of the Koran have visited the school to talk to pupils. Chief executive officer of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, Catherine Heseltine, slammed the burning of the Koran - one of the most offensive acts to Muslims she could imagine. She said: 'The Koran is the most sacred thing to over a billion Muslims worldwide. 'You can see that in the way Muslims treat the Koran - washing before touching it and in many Muslim homes you will find it on the top shelf above all other books. 'We will never destroy the Koranic texts. We believe it is the word of God. GodÂ’s guidance for us in this life.' |
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Britain |
Muslims campaign for Red Ken |
2008-04-18 |
![]() Not only has Livingstone been a staunch friend of the Muslim community, they said, but Johnson has a long record of insensitive and borderline racist remarks and would be a disaster for ethnic relations. "Muslims think a lot more strategically when giving their votes," said Ahmed Al-Rawi, president of the Muslim Association of Britain. "Ken Livingstone has been an outstanding ambassador for London and Britain." In the weeks leading up to the May 1 election, activists say they have been distributing pamphlets on the street, going door to door in heavily Muslim neighborhoods and working with mosques to get their message out. Muslims are concentrated in some eastern parts of the British capital but also are spread throughout the city, ranging from newly arrived immigrants from all over the world as well as those who have been in England for generations. While they have been traditionally seen as sitting on the political sidelines, they helped pull off one of the major upsets in the 2005 general election, electing maverick leftwing politician George Galloway to Parliament from the East End neighborhood of Bethnal Green and Bow. Working hand in hand with members of the Socialist Workers Party, Muslim voters unseated Oona King, a prominent supporter of the Iraq war. With barely a third of Londoners voting in the last mayoral election, Catherine Heseltine, spokeswoman for the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, said on Thursday that large numbers of Muslims going to the polls could be "decisive." Livingstone, a longtime member of the left-leaning Labor Party and mayor since 2000, has been lauded for speaking out against Islamophobia, as well as helping organize a number of large Muslim-themed events. However, he has also drawn flak for being a highly public supporter of Palestinian causes and for inviting Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Islamic scholar from Egypt, to speak at city hall in 2005. On the other side of the political aisle, Johnson has a reputation for being a throwback to the high-handed upper-class Tories of yesteryear, with a long list of inflammatory quotes from his years as a journalist and Member of Parliament. In 2002, when writing about former Prime Minister Tony Blair and Africa, he was forced to apologize for referring to Africans as "picaninnies." After the terrorist attacks on the London subway system in 2005, he wrote that "Islam is the problem" and it was the "most viciously sectarian of all religions." Adding fuel to an already heated campaign, the London Evening Standard on Wednesday published an investigative article which charged Muslims for Ken, one of the groups organizing voters, as having links to "hardline" Islamic groups. Muslims for Ken spokesman Anas Altikriti immediately hit back, saying that the story was "riddled with lies" and that his group would be contacting the Press Complaints Commission, the independent media commission that deals with concerns over accuracy in newspapers. |
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Britain |
Muslims in jailed teacher protest |
2007-12-02 |
British Muslims protested outside the Sudanese Embassy over the treatment of jailed teacher Gillian Gibbons. The small but noisy group demanded the immediate release of Mrs Gibbons, who is currently serving a 15-day prison sentence in Sudan after her class of seven-year-olds named a teddy bear Mohammed. Chanting "free, free Gillian" and "let her go, let her go", demonstrators attempted to hand over a "goodwill teddy" to the embassy, but a staff member refused to accept the gift. Some 20 British Muslims, including MP for Tooting Sadiq Khan and chairman of the Islamic Human Rights Commission Massoud Shadjareh, gathered outside the Sudanese embassy in Piccadilly. Leaders of the protest said they wanted to show that British Muslims supported Mrs Gibbons. Some arrived with their own teddy bears. The protest followed angry scenes in Khartoum on Friday in which knife-wielding fundamentalists called for the execution of Mrs Gibbons. At the London demonstration, Catherine Heseltine, a 28-year teacher and member of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, condemned the action of hard-line Islamists. She said: "They are dragging the name of Islam through the mud. The overwhelming feeling in the Muslim community in the UK is that it is really sad the way Gillian Gibbons has been treated. I haven't met a single British Muslim who has taken the naming of the teddy to be an insult." Mr Shadjareh, chairman of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, said: "I find it offensive that Islam is being used in this way by the Sudanese government and the media. "It is totally unacceptable by the Sudanese government and the press are trying to make this into another cartoon or a Salmon Rushdie issue." |
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