ENGAGE draws our attention to an Early Day Motion on "Recording Islamophobia as a crime", tabled by Labour MP Keith Vaz and jointly sponsored by fellow Labour MP John McDonnell and Conservative MP Peter Bottomley. It states:

That this House notes the recognition of anti-Muslim sentiment and hate crime in the Department for Communities and Local Government's document Creating the Conditions for Integration; further notes that the document acknowledges the limited collection of data on anti-Muslim hate crime; recognises that currently only the Metropolitan Police Service specifically records this hate crime under the definition Islamophobia as a specific crime flag, similar to anti-Semitism, racism and others, whereas the recording of this crime outside of London is under different recording flags in different constabularies; and believes that all police constabularies should record this hate crime under the same flag, which will bring national uniformity in the recording of this crime and enable authorities to gather data that will aid in tackling this issue.

You can write to your MP and urge them to support the EDM here.

ENGAGE points out that you can also send the EDM to your Police and Crime Commissioner and ask if, and how, they will implement the recommendation in their policing plan and local crime strategy.

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India is finding ways to set legal precedent in the case of gang rape happened in Delhi last month.  The victim of the gang rape succumbed to her injuries after she was raped by six men when she was coming back late at night from a cinema hall with a male friend of hers. The couple watched “Life of Pi” in the cinema and took a local bus to reach home. On the bus, the six men beat up her male friend and raped the girl. Her attempts to resist their rape angered the crew to such an extent that they felt a need to mutilate her body to such an extent that she was unable to recover in the hospital.

Her death resulted in a nationwide outcry in the form of massive protests. Even in the 21^st century, women are insecure in India. According to an independent report, a staggering 600 cases of rape were reported in 2012 in Delhi alone. The Indian government  is trying its utmost to put to an end such inhumane incidents, but successes have been limited and difficult to come by.

The police has charged the five adults with rape, murder, abduction and robbery. The sixth participant, only 17 years of age, is also suspected of raping the victim as well as wielding iron bars into her body, causing fatal intestinal injuries that resulted in her death. The police claims that the five adults, if found guilty, would be awarded a death sentence. The sixth accused, the teenager, however, would merely be awarded three years of imprisonment.

The differences in sentences of adult rapists and teen rapists have caused a great deal of controversy all over India. According to a law passed in 2000, teenagers between the ages of 16 and 18 must be charged with adult punishments if they commit a crime. In a conference of India’s police chiefs and top bureaucrats in New Delhi this month, participants shed light on why the teenager would be subject to a reduced sentence despite the 2000 law.

According to the police, the suspect teenager dropped out from a school in Uttar Pradesh and was brought to Delhi by a relative where he was working at a street restaurant. His family assumed he died in the city as he stopped sending money home. The suspect had been living in Delhi for six years when the rape incident occurred.

Bhuwan Ribhu, a child activist talking about the involvement of a 17 year old in a rape case, argued “this case has exposed our failure as a society in protecting our children and women. First a boy is trafficked and exploited — later he turns to crime to change the power equation by finding a weaker person to dominate and control. We must stop this vicious cycle.”

Not everybody shares the same kind of sympathy for the 17 year old. “Here is the boy that the whole country hates. I feel guilty that I am even looking after him,” said an anonymous senior official who was not authorized to speak publicly. The official, who said he had participated in demonstrations against the gang rape, went on to say, “he had crossed all the limits of humanity. The staff feels deeply conflicted here. Our blood boils when we think of what he did.”

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▶▶▶▶▶▶ https://twitter.com/Momo_khanTweets ........ ❤(◕‿◕)❤º•○º•○º•○º•○

Life has given you wings to fly, why to crawl through your life !!
Freelance writer and an agony aunt to my friends.
Dreamer, Love my family and certainly a peaceful creature until pinched :) !!

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The joint leader of the far-right English Defence League has been arrested on suspicion of a race hate crime.

Kevin Carroll, cousin of the anti-Islam group's founder Stephen Lennon, was arrested on Saturday morning by officers investigating allegations he posted a message inciting racial hatred on Facebook.

Mr Carroll, who recently stood unsuccessfully for election as the Police and Crime Commissioner for Bedfordshire, is also the joint leader of the nationalist British Freedom Party.

A message posted on Facebook by a group which supports the EDL read: "Kev was arrested in Luton Town Centre for Religious & Racial Hatred, following on from screenshots being provided to the OB of FB comments 'allegedly' made.

"He has now been bailed with conditions and has to sign in at the Police Station twice a week. He was on his way to a meeting in Luton when he noticed he was being followed, Kev says it was something out of the sweeney as they all pulled up around him, pepper spray, flashing lights, well over the top."

The EDL was dealt a blow last week when its founder and leader Stephen Lennon – who also uses the alias Tommy Robinson – was jailed for 10 months for entering the USA illegally.

A spokesman for Bedfordshire Police said: "a 43 year old was arrested on Saturday morning on suspicion of 'Display threatening abusive/insulting written material with intent/likely to stir up racial hatred'."

Independent, 14 January 2013

According to the British Freedom party, of which Carroll is now chairman, he was arrested in connection with a Facebook post from October in which he described Muslims as "all fukin backward savages, a devil spawned death cult worshiping all that is unholy and barbaric, pure evil".

It is of course welcome news that Carroll has been arrested in connection with this blatant incitement of hatred. However, it is difficult to see how a prosecution under the racial hatred law (Part 3 of the Public Order Act) could succeed, as Muslims (unlike Jews and Sikhs) are defined as a multi-ethnic faith community and except under exceptional circumstances are not protected by that legislation.

A charge under the religious hatred law (Part 3A of the Public Order Act) would also fail, as that legislation is completely useless, requiring both proof of intention and that the words should be threatening (which in this case they are not).

What this underlines is the need to amend the religious hatred law so that Muslims have the same protection against incitment to hatred that mono-ethnic faith communities do.

As things stand, the Crown Prosecution Service might be better advised to charge Carroll under Section 127(1) of the Communications Act 2003, which makes it an offence to send over a public electronic communications network a message that is "grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character". The offence carries a possible 6-month prison sentence.

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A 31-year old woman, Erica Menendez of the Bronx in the United States, will be charged with second-degree murder a in connection with the death of a Muslim man who was pushed onto the tracks of a Queens subway station and crushed by an oncoming train.  According to the New York Times article, Ms. Menendez pushed the man onto the tracks because of the September 11th terrorist.  A question that has shown up recently on the Muslim Academy website and the comments is: what exactly is a hate crime?  I would like to take the question one step further and ask: Are hate crimes meaningless?

The United States has had a long and checkered past when it comes to civil rights.  From the beginnings of the native American genocide, through Slavery and anti-Chinese exclusion acts, through Japanese internment camps and the civil rights struggles of the 1960′s, America has had to come to grips with her reality as a melting pot of different cultures and religions.  The result hasn’t always been pretty, with crimes committed against different races, genders, and religions.  In order to protect special classes of people, various states and the Federal Government have enacted hate crime legislation.

Hate crime legislation makes it a federal offense to commit an act against a protected group out of hate.  That is to say, burning a church down because you are crazy is a normal crime, but burning a church down because you hate Christians is a ‘hate crime’.  Killing a Muslim man in the course of a robbery is a normal crime, but what Ms. Menendez did, by killing him because he is Muslim, raises the bar to a hate crime, with additional penalties that come with the fact that it is, in fact, a hate crime.

It is my humble opinion that hate crime legislation is useless and should be abandoned.  It is not our place to legislate hate.  A crime is a crime.  If you kill someone because you don’t like his outfit, is that somehow ok?  But killing him because of reasons that society has deemed inappropriate raises the bar so that you should receive extra punishment?  If Ms. Menendez had pushed the man onto a train because she thought it was funny, she should receive less punishment?  No.  A woman who pushes a man in front of a train for fun or spite should be given the exact same punishment as a woman who pushes a man in front of a train because he is Muslim.

Hate crime legislation is nothing more than an attempt by legislators to let the populace know that they are trying to do something about crimes like this.  But the legislation is a mere facade, an illusion with no real substance.  You can’t change people and you can’t punish people for hating.  You can punish acts but you shouldn’t punish a person any differently because you want to placate a certain subset of society.  We live in a new world where America says all people are created equal.  Well then American should really treat people equally, and not judge whether one type of murder is better than another.

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A 31 year old woman was charged on Saturday 29th December of second-degree murder as a hate crime following the death of a man who was pushed onto the tracks of a subway station in Queens.

The New York Times reports:

"In a statement released by the district attorney's office, Mr. Brown quoted Ms. Menendez, 'in sum and substance,' as having told the police: 'I pushed a Muslim off the train tracks because I hate Hindus and Muslims ever since 2001 when they put down the twin towers I've been beating them up.' Ms. Menendez conflated the Muslim and Hindu faiths in her comments to the police and in her target for attack, officials said."

We have reported earlier on Pamela Geller's anti-Islam advertising campaign on the New York subway, a campaign that has deliberately attempted to generate racist fear and hatred.

Defending their right to be as offensive as possible to Muslims, Geller et al constantly claim the right to 'freedom of speech'.

Imraan Siddiqi of CAIR, who runs the Stop Islamophobia Now website, took this up on Twitter: "Since when did the subway become the existential battleground, which to fight ones' ideological battles?"

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The Indiana man accused of setting fire to a prayer room at the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo has been charged with hate crimes in a federal indictment.

Officials announced Thursday Randolph Linn, 52, of St. Joe, Indiana was charged with intentionally defacing, damaging and destroying religious property and using fire to commit a felony.

The indictment alleges on Sept. 30, Linn drove from Indiana to the Islamic Center in Perrysburg and used gasoline to set fire to the prayer room after unlawfully entering.

The Perrysburg Township Fire Department was notified around 5 p.m. Officers discovered the carpet burned near a red plastic gas can in the middle of the prayer room.

The fire was extinguished by sprinklers, causing significant damage to the room and other areas of the center. The fire was ruled an arson, according to an affidavit filed in U.S. District Court.

After releasing a surveillance photo of the suspect, a woman contacted authorities to identify Linn as the culprit. The woman stated that she knew Linn and that he had recently made anti-Muslim comments. Specifically, she stated that Linn had complained about the international Muslim community's reaction to the anti-Muslim video on Youtube and recent attacks on U.S. embassies and the deaths of military personnel in the Middle East. She further stated that Linn complained that Muslims in this country get a "free pass," according to the affidavit.

Linn was arrested on Oct. 2. While being booked and after being read his Miranda rights, Linn stated: "(expletive) those Muslims," according to the affidavit. He is scheduled to be arraigned Thursday in U.S. District Court in Toledo.

Northwestohio.com, 18 October 2012

Update:  See "Indiana man accused of mosque arson pleads not guilty", Toledo Blade, 18 October 2012

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The RCMP is investigating the possibility of a hate crime after several piles of bacon were found outside a mosque in Port Coquitlam, B.C.

Police say it's the second such act of vandalism and mischief at the Islamic Society of British Columbia mosque and Islamic Centre in the last 18 months.

Society president Saad Bahr said Tuesday it's clear the action was intended to offend, but his group would welcome the opportunity to speak to those responsible and have them learn about Muslim beliefs. "We believe that whoever is responsible for this act does not know us and does not understand what we stand for," Bahr said in a news release.

Coquitlam RCMP Supt. Claude Wilcott said police are disturbed someone would deliberately choose to target the society. Wilcott said investigators haven't been able to eliminate the possibility that the two incidents were motivated by hatred. "We want to send a clear message that we take this type of activity seriously and it won't be tolerated in our jurisdiction."

Police were called to the same mosque in March last year after someone spray painted two racially offensive words on the outside wall of the mosque.

RCMP spokesman Cpl. Jamie Chung said the act could just be a stupid practical joke, but for now police are looking at the possibility it was a crime directed at the Muslim religion. Chung said the bacon was scattered around the property in piles of four or five pieces each. "It is very deliberate if [they] spread them out in several different places. It is not just someone walking by and dropping a package of bacon on the sidewalk."

The property is equipped with closed circuit cameras and investigators are in the process of reviewing the video.

Police are also seeking the public's help in trying to find who dumped the bacon, which was discovered last Wednesday, Chung said.

The Coquitlam RCMP has been working with the Islamic Society of B.C. and the Integrated Provincial Hate Crimes Unit on the investigation.

CBC News, 2 October 2012

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A message of hate was spray-painted on a Suffolk County mosque and now police are searching for the vandals.

The angry words on the Bay Shore mosque threatened a rising war. It's believed that someone came over the fence and vandalized the building, police said.

The imam at Masjid Darul Quran Mosque showed CBS 2's Lou Young the now white-washed spots where the messages were found. A pair of spray-painted statements that were written apparently referred to the overseas violence against U.S. embassies and consulates by Muslim extremists. They appeared along with an ominous reference to rising war, but the messages were directed against neighbors worshiping peacefully.

Police called it a hate crime. "This is an attack on the community here in Suffolk County. It tears at the fabric of our community," said Suffolk County Police Lt. Stephen Hernandez

The overseas violence was condemned repeatedly from the pulpit at the Long Island mosque and the U.S. Libyan ambassador was mourned the very day he died. So the words especially hurt and the worshipers said they are worried it might not be an isolated incident.

"There are things happening all over the country. It is troubling to see this happening in America. The America that I love so much," said worshiper Mohammed Zainul.

The hurtful graffiti was painted last week. Friday morning someone came in the other side of the property to drape toilet paper over the imam's house. Members of the mosque said they believe the actions are part of a pattern.

"I feel scared they might hurt my brothers and all that," worshiper Mohammed Laiqat said. "I'm definitely worried about this." In 20 years of worship in the community, the worshipers said they have never before felt unsafe or targeted.

Police are offering a $2,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the vandals.

CBS New York, 22 September 2012

See also "CAIR asks FBI to probe hate vandalism of NY mosque", CAIR press release, 21 September 2012

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As the first of an estimated 1,500 Muslims began to arrive at Cpl. Allan E. Kivlehan Park in New Dorp, Staten Island, early Sunday morning to celebrateed Id al-Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan, they discovered uncooked bacon scattered on the ground.

The New York Police Department is investigating the incident as a possible bias crime.

Pig parts have been used in other instances to taunt Muslims, according to a statement by the Council on American-Islamic Relations of New York.

The police said they did not know how much bacon had been placed on the ground. The incident was reported Sunday by the Staten Island Advance.

New York Times, 20 August 2012

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A Muslim family representing England in the European Chess Championships taking place in Austria allege to have been the victim of Islamophobia, racism and even physical hate crime. 13-year-old Yusuf Bin-Suhayl was attacked and left bleeding by the mother of a fellow English competitor.

The family have had a police escort to their hotel and tournament.  Father Sohale Rahman has made numerous complaints to the English Chess Federation who is overseeing the competition but to no avail.  Throughout the competition the Rahman family who have three children representing England have been subjected to bullying and hate crime.  Mother, Tomasina Contu, was spat on when she asked the father of one English competitor not to bully her son! It is of no coincidence that Tomasina wears a hijab.

The problems seem to have started from when the family asked for halal meals for themselves. Father Suhayl Rahman said, "I cannot believe my family has been subjected to so much racism and Islamophobia  and the English Chess Federation has just stood by and done nothing."

The Islamic Human Rights Commission will be launching a campaign to see that those responsible for Islamophobia are brought to justice and those that are responsible for dereliction of duty are held responsible.

Chair of IHRC, Massoud Shadjareh, said, "This is a shocking case of racism and Islamophobia and one that should not go unnoticed, the children are so young and should not be subjected to such hate."

IHRC press release, 10 August 2012

See also IHRC action alert, 10 August 2012

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In this Episode, Caitlin and Chris discuss life in Bangladesh with Muntasir, a freelance journalist living in Bangladesh. He discusses crime, poverty, addiction, and slums in Bangladesh.

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An Islamic community center in Riverview was vandalized in an act that Baltimore County police have classified as a hate crime.

According to police, between 7:30 p.m. on April 20 and noon the following day, someone tossed a rock through a rear window of the Bab E Mustafa Community Center on the 4300 block of Hollins Ferry Road. No other businesses or buildings were damaged in the incident, police said.

The community center includes a mosque where daily prayers are held, as well as a child care center. According to former Imam Raja Khan, the community center has been located in Riverview for more than two years and primarily serves Muslims of Indian and Pakistani origin.

Members of the community center report being routinely taunted by juveniles in the neighborhood, according to police.

Arbutus Patch, 25 April 2012

See also "FBI asked to investigate possible Islamic center hate crime", Arbutus Patch, 26 April 2012

And CAIR press release, 26 April 2012

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