OTTAWA — A Canadian Muslim organization wants the Ottawa Public Library to cancel a speech by a controversial British lawyer who advocates legal tactics to block the construction of new mosques in the U.K.

Self-proclaimed "mosquebuster" Gavin Boby is scheduled to speak at the library on Monday night, the first stop on a Canadian speaking tour that will also take him to Montreal and Toronto.

Boby is the founder of an organization called Law and Freedom Foundation, which he says is devoted to "resisting the tide of Islam" by using the municipal planning process to oppose the building of mosques.

Mosques, Boby contends, act as bridgeheads within Western society for the advance of Islam. They are unlike Christian churches because they are "primarily socio-political. Where you get a constellation of mosques you will get followers of Islam congregating," he says.

Boby encourages residents living near planned mosques to raise concerns about increased traffic or noise to convince British municipal councils to block their construction, instead of focusing on political issues that draw charges of Islamaphobia. His organization claims to have successfully opposed the construction of 16 planned mosques in 17 planning application challenges in Britain.

The Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR. CAN) calls Boby an "anti-Muslim hate-monger" and "openly Islamophobic." It points to media reports that say Boby has past links to the far-right English Defence League and claim he has said Islam encourages pedophilia, sex abuse and "pimping."

CAIR.CAN says his appearance will violate the library's rules that prohibit use of facilities for activities that contravene the Ontario Human Rights Code or the Criminal Code of Canada – specifically, hate speech.

"What we take issue with is the fact that he's being afforded a taxpayer subsidized venue as a soapbox for his message," said CAIR.CAN executive director Ihsaan Gardee. "Canadian Muslims shouldn't be asked to help foot the bill for somebody who is sending a message that basically denigrates them."

Gardee says he believes Boby should be allowed to speak in Canada but just not at a publicly-funded venue. He has not objection to Boby's planned events at Hotel Ruby Foo's hotel in Montreal and the Zionist Centre in Toronto, both private venues.

"We would be taking this exact same position if it was somebody coming to speak about preventing synagogues or gurdwaras being built."

Gardee says his group raised its objection with library but was told the facility was open to the public provided its policies are not breached.

CAIR.CAN last week sent out an alert to members encouraging them to write to library and the Ottawa city councillors on the library board.

Neither the library nor any of the councillors on the board responded to an email from the Citizen requesting comment on Saturday.

CAIR.CAN says Boby's Canadian tour is hosted by ACT! For Canada, which describes itself as a grassroots organization defending national security and Canadian democratic values.

ACT! For Canada's website, however, is given over almost entirely to discussions of Islam and terrorism, much of it highly inflammatory. The most recent edition of its newsletter, for example, claims Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf is a bestseller in Muslim countries.

Neither Gavin's group nor ACT! For Canada responded to requests for comment.

Ottawa Citizen, 2 February 2013

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The Maryland chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MD) is calling on Marylanders to contact several public officials in that state to request that they withdraw from participation in the upcoming Maryland Conservative Action Network Conference in Annapolis because the leader of a designated anti-Muslim hate group will speak at the event.

An action alert distributed by CAIR-MD calls on concerned citizens to send those officials a letter, which states in part:

"You are one of the few public officials who have chosen to speak at this conference. I believe your appearance with a hate group leader would be a disservice to your constituents and would bring disrepute to your office. I respectfully urge you to withdraw from this conference.

"The headline speaker at this event is Pamela Geller, one of the nation's most virulent Islamophobes. Geller's organization, Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA), is designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which also named Geller as a member of the 'anti-Muslim inner circle.'

"Geller has bragged online that she uses a Quran, Islam's holy text, as a doorstop. Two hotels, one in Texas and another in Tennessee, dropped scheduled events that featured Geller as a speaker. Her hate blog was cited by Anders Breivik, the terrorist who went on a killing spree in Norway.

"Geller has claimed that 'Hitler and the Nazis were inspired by Islam' and that Islam 'mandates' lies and deception. She has also posted images on her blog that include a fake photograph of then Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan in a Nazi uniform, another fake image of President Obama urinating on an American flag, and drawings purporting to depict Islam's Prophet Muhammad as a pig.

"One image posted by Geller, headlined 'Piss Be Upon Him,' showed one of the controversial Danish cartoons of the prophet covered in urine. ('Piss Be Upon Him' is designed to mock the traditional phrase 'Peace Be Upon Him' that Muslims use when mentioning any prophet of God.) In a 2010 blog entry, Geller posted a video claiming that Muslims engage in bestiality."

CAIR-MD is also encouraging concerned citizens to take part in a protest of Geller's presence at the Saturday event.

CAIR press release, 9 January 2013

See also "Kipke rejects group's call to boycott speech by 'Islamaphobe'", Maryland Gazette, 9 January 2013

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Every year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publishes a Christmas message for Christians in Israel and abroad. One of the message's objectives is hasbara, or public diplomacy, to the Christians of the world. But this year's greeting was especially political. Netanyahu chose to radicalize his traditional greeting into an attack on Muslims in Arab countries.

In his December 2011 greeting, Netanyahu made do with pointing out the fact that in the Middle East "Christians are persecuted in a routine manner, and there is little tolerance toward them."

In his 2012 greeting, Netanyahu, who continuously cautions the world that Israel is under existential threat from Iran, asserted that the Christians in the Middle East are in danger of extermination. No less.

"Today Christian communities throughout the Middle East are shrinking and many of them are in danger," said Netanyahu, according to the announcement published by his bureau in Hebrew and English. "...this is of course not true in Israel. Here there is a strong and growing Christian community that participates fully in the life of our country."

Netanyahu did not specify in his greeting exactly who is threatening to annihilate the Christians, but it's clear from the wording that he means the Muslims. As he did last year, he emphasized that the Christian community in Israel is large and that it enjoys freedom of religion and freedom to worship, but this year he added a hinted reference to the "Judeo-Christian heritage."

The reference is to a sensitive term taken from the conceptual world of the rightist-evangelical anti-Muslim wing of the Republican Party. After the 9/11 attacks, U.S. conservative politicians and intellectuals used this term in criticizing American multi-culturalism and claimed that the Muslims were engaged in a culture war against Judaism and Christianity.

Haaretz, 24 December 2012

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An anti-Islamophobia campaign has been banned from Paris public transport because of its political and religious connotations.

The publicity section of buses and Metro authority RATP, Médiatransport, has banned three posters by the Collectif contre l'Islamophobie en France (CCIF).

The CCIF has made public a letter explaining RATP's conclusion that the appearance of symbols like the veil, payots (side curls worn by Orthodox Jews) and crucifixes alongside the phrase "We (too) are the nation" plus the French flag was politically charged.

One of the posters of the "We (too) are the nation" campaign is a reworking of the Tennis Court Oath painting by Jacques-Louis David (depicting a key meeting in the run-up to the French Revolution), redesigned to give a more diverse range of religious and ethnic identities to the figures involved.

CCIF spokeswoman Lila Charef said: "Just because a poster shows a religious symbol, does not make it religious. On the contrary, our message is all-inclusive. We are still asking ourselves about the real motivation of this refusal.

"This campaign targets prejudice, Islamaphobia and stigmatising dialogue which divides citizens rather than bringing them together while our country moves through a difficult period socially and economically."

The Connexion, 14 November 2012

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Who supports the English Defence League? YouGov has conducted an interesting survey of public attitudes towards the EDL that was commissioned by the Extremis Project.

It found that the EDL has quite a high public profile – only 25% of respondents had never heard of it – which no doubt reflects extensive media coverage of the organisation since its formation in 2009, combined with the local disruption caused by the numerous EDL protests across the country over the past three years. However, of the 75% of respondents who had heard of the EDL, 42% were unsure what it represents, so the survey concentrated on the 33% of respondents who said they did know what the EDL stands for.

Only 11% of those surveyed (i.e. 3.66% of all respondents) said they would consider joining the EDL, while 85% said they would not. 19% of respondents from the C2DE social grades would consider joining, compared with only 6% of ABC1s. On the plus side, only 5% in the 18-24 age bracket would consider joining, compared with 13% those aged between 40 and 59. 

Only 6% (2% of all respondents) said they agreed with both the values and methods of the EDL, while 23% (7.33% of all respondents) said they agreed with the EDL's values, but not its methods. Again, the figure was higher for C2DEs, 31% of whom said they disagreed with the EDL's methods but supported its values. 69% said they disagreed with both the EDL's values and methods.

There were some regional variations in potential support for the EDL, with only 9% in Scotland saying they agreed with the EDL's values but not its methods. This is hardly surprising, given the EDL's identification with English nationalism. Demonstrations organised by the EDL's sister organisation the Scottish Defence League have attracted negligible support.

Few of these respondents who said they knew what the EDL stands for bought the EDL's fraudulent claim that it rejects racism. 74% agreed that it is a "racist organisation", while only 17% took view that the group is not racist.

As I say, I think this survey is interesting, but it doesn't tell us anything new. It is well known that the far right has its main base of support among C2DEs, and that young people are more emphatic in their rejection of racism than the older generation are. As for the low level of support for both the aims and methods of the EDL, it seems self-evident that a movement with the well-deserved reputation of a gang of violent racists will have difficulty appealing to the wider public.

This doesn't augur well for the EDL's entry into electoral politics. But the real danger isn't that the EDL's political wing, the British Freedom party, will be able to emulate the earlier successes of the BNP and actually get some of its candidates elected to political office. That has never been on the cards. With the electoral road blocked to them, however, the likelihood is that the EDL's rank and file, stoked up with paranoid far-right fantasies about the threatened Islamisation of the UK, will turn to more violent forms of direct action.

Update:  The British Freedom party has reported the results of the poll under the bizarre headline "Survey reveals EDL support base is potentially 7 million strong". They reach this figure by extrapolating from the 11% of respondents who said they would consider joining the EDL. They have overlooked the fact that it was 11% of the 33% of respondents who said they knew what the EDL stands for (i.e. 3.66% of all respondents). The real prospects for the EDL/BFP are more accurately reflected in the steady decline in numbers at EDL protests and the derisory votes BFP candidates received in the local elections in May.

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Waltham Forest has sent a message of defiance to the racist English Defence League (EDL), which plans to march in the east London borough next month.

Over 120 people packed into a We Are Waltham Forest public meeting on Tuesday evening. They pledged to build the biggest possible counter demonstration and to prevent the EDL from taking to the streets.

Speakers included local MP Stella Creasy, Weyman Bennett from Unite Against Fascism, and author Owen Jones. They talked about how the EDL targets areas with Muslim populations and uses its demos to spread hatred and fear.

The EDL has already flinched at the size of opposition to them in Waltham Forest, postponing its march from 18 August to 1 September.

"Let's be clear," Stella Creasy told the meeting. "We didn't want them on the 18th, we don't want them on the 1st – and we don’t want them at any time."

Speakers from the audience celebrated multicultural London and described the way these traditions had been forged in struggle. All agreed that the EDL should be stopped – and that a massive counter protest was crucial.

Socialist Worker, 1 August 2012

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The Rutherford County Commission voted 15-6 Thursday night to appeal a court ruling that voided approval of a mosque. "I just can't imagine an appellate court would agree we should discriminate," Commissioner Trey Gooch said before the vote.

County Attorney Jim Cope estimates that the legal fee cost to appeal will be in the $15,000 to $25,000 range. While waiting for the appeal to work its way through the courts, Chancellor Robert Corlew's Wednesday ruling banning the county from issuing a certificate of occupancy to the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro will stand unless it's overturned or he dissolves it, Cope added.

Commissioners took action in response to the recent court order from Corlew that made approval of the mosque void because the county government failed to provide adequate public notice before approving the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro's construction plans to build a mosque on Veals Road off Bradyville Pike.

The county's Regional Planning Commission, which voted to accept the ICM's long-term site plans for a 52,960-square-foot center, also voted 6-1 Monday to appeal Corlew's ruling.

Daily News Journal, 15 June 2012

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