Islam - Europe > Guardian rebukes Denmark's surrender to Islamic hysteria; UK to Reconsider grants to some mosques - 3 stories

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UK’s far-left Guardian rejects Denmark’s surrender to Sharia

blasphemy laws while calling Qur’an burnings ‘bigotry’

SEP 4, 2023 12:00 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER

It is refreshing to see a far-left outfit such as the Guardian come out for the freedom of expression and against Denmark’s capitulation to Sharia blasphemy laws, but its dismissal of Qur’an burnings as “bigotry” is shallow and propagandistic. Salwan Momika, who has engaged in a series of Qur’an desecrations in Sweden, is not a “far-right bigot.” Rather, he is a refugee from Iraq who has considerable firsthand experience with ardent believers in the Qur’an. But that fact, and its implications, is never, ever considered in the establishment media.

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Blasphemy law is no answer to bigotry in the wake of Denmark’s Qur’an burnings

by Kenan Malik, Guardian, September 3, 2023:

Should governments ban the “improper treatment of objects of significant religious importance to a religious community”? That is what the Danish government is suggesting in a new law it announced last week that could see offenders imprisoned for two years. The proposed ban comes after a spate of incidents in Sweden and Denmark in which Qur’ans have been publicly burned, provoking an outcry (read - hysteria) across the Muslim world.

The answer to the question is both simple and complex. It is simple because any law outlawing any kind of blasphemy is unacceptable and should be opposed. Having abolished its blasphemy law in 2017, for Denmark to seek to reintroduce it in a new form is retrogressive….

If we take this law to its logical conclusion, we will not be able to speak out against Satanism, or Jim Jones kind of cults, voodoo, or any other kind of madness.

City mosque in battle to save £2m youth centre after ‘stoning’ video

triggers hate backlash

by Jane Haynes, Birmingham Mail, August 31, 2023:

The Government has withheld a £2.2 million grant to a city mosque for a vital youth centre project after a social media clip of a preacher discussing ‘stoning women’ went viral.

Leaders at Green Lane Masjid and Community Centre are now battling to overturn the decision by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to ‘pause’ the grant award.

Mosque leaders said the edited clip was out-of-context and misleading, and had triggered a deluge of hatemail and threats. Police had offered to step up patrols around the venue as a result, it said.

The DCMS confirmed it had ‘paused’ handing over £2.175 million from its Youth Investment Fund to the mosque, based in Green Lane because of the highlighted clip. It was seeking more reassurance about safeguarding and investigating online allegations.

They added: “We feel there is an insidious nature to the targeted social media campaign against us (timed to coincide) with the award of the grant. It appears like a deliberate attack on the mosque, coming after the announcement of the youth investment fund grant.

“It has now become a risk and a threat to the mosque, we are receiving hate mail and threats, as well as jeopardising a desperately needed project.”

They added: “There have been mistakes in the past. But we have gone through a lot of changes in personnel and approach, and have strict procedures that aim to support and raise up the community. We would never incite or allow others to incite violence.”

See next story.

Not sure how this 'victim' strategy helps? It seems to me that if DCMS gave in and forwarded the grant it would only cause more alienation.

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Taxpayers’ funding to controversial mosque halted amid investigation

by Charlie Peters, GB News, August 25, 2023:

A Birmingham mosque with a long history of hosting controversial speeches recently awarded millions in taxpayers’ cash has had its grant paused after a GB News investigation.

The Green Lane Masjid and Community Centre in Birmingham was awarded £2.2million from the government’s Youth Investment Fund this month to expand its youth services.

The grant, from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, was awarded for the development of a new youth centre offering programmes on leadership, critical thinking, arts and culture and “empowering marginalised communities,” according to BirminghamLive.

Distribution of the funds is being managed by Social Investment Business (SIB), but GB News understands that funding to the Green Lane Masjid and Community Centre has been paused while the SIB investigates allegations raised by this broadcaster about the mosque’s links to controversial and extremist speakers.

The funding pause comes amid a GB News investigation that revealed that the mosque has a lengthy record of hosting controversial speeches that denigrate women, promote homophobia, and praise extreme punishments such as chopping off the hands of thieves.

The Green Lane Masjid featured in the 2007 documentary titled Undercover Mosque where preacher Abu Usamah was filmed saying “take that homosexual man and throw him from the mountain.”

The sheikh also said that women were intellectually “deficient” and that “it takes two witnesses of a woman to equal the one witness of the man.”

He still preaches at the taxpayer-funded Green Lane mosque….

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Taxpayers fund mosques that host hate preachers

by David Rose, The Jewish Chronicle, August 31, 2023

The Government has vowed to stop giving taxpayers’ money to mosques that host antisemitic hate preachers after a JC investigation revealed that at least four had received grants totalling millions of pounds.

The largest grant was a £2.2 million award to a Birmingham mosque which has hosted a speaker who has described Jews as “people of envy” who “killed the prophets and the messengers”.

In a viral video, its leading imam was filmed teaching how adulterous women should be stoned to death. The money has now been “paused” pending official inquiries.

Three other Muslim centres with a history of offering pulpits to extremist speakers have also received large sums, the JC can reveal.

Finsbury Park Mosque in north London, which hosted an Egyptian imam who pledged to “liberate” Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem from the “filth of the Jews”, received almost £300,000 from the Labour-controlled Islington Council between 2017 and 2022.

The mosque’s general secretary, Mohammed Kozbar, praised Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the wheelchair-bound founder of Hamas who was killed by Israeli missiles in 2004, as a “martyr” on a visit to Gaza in 2015.

Lewisham Islamic Centre in south London, whose chief imam Shakeel Begg once called on young Muslims to “go to Palestine and fight the Zionists”, was given £540,000 between 2015 and 2020, in what its accounts describe as “local authority grants”.

Following the revelations, Communities Secretary Michael Gove and Home Secretary Suella Braverman are demanding tighter “due diligence” checks by both central and local government, the JC understands.

A government source said: “All parts of government including councils are responsible for spending public money appropriately, so they must be far more careful about the organisations they support.

“It’s appalling that mosques and other religious organisations in receipt of taxpayer funding have provided platforms for extremist preachers to spread vile messages of hate.

“We will be taking action to improve due diligence and seek to exclude organisations that fail to deliver their responsibilities effectively.”

The measures that are being considered include a requirement that before granting public funds, both central and local government agencies must check with the Home Office and Levelling-Up departments for evidence that the recipient has sponsored extremism.

A High Court judge found that Begg, who has been imam of the Lewisham Islamic Centre since 1998, promoted “violence in support of Islam” during his failed libel action against the BBC in 2016.

Michael Adebolajo, who murdered Private Lee Rigby in a London street in 2013, was a member of his congregation, although Begg said the killing left him “appalled” and went against Islamic teaching.

In 2021, Begg attended an event at the Lewisham mosque where a speaker expressed support for rocket attacks on Israel, and was praised by the imam as “inspiring”.

Lewisham Council, which is Labour-controlled, claims to have no record of the £539,418 shown as being given to Begg’s mosque in its accounts.

Lewisham Islamic Centre’s 2022 annual report includes an endorsement by local Labour MP Ellie Reeves saying it does “absolutely brilliant work for the Lewisham community” and another by the borough’s mayor, Damian Egan, who described it as “a source of guidance, community and friendship”.

In early August the Department of Media, Culture and Sport (DCMS) was reported to have given £2.2 million towards a scheme run by the Green Lane Masjid in the Small Heath area of Birmingham….

Is This How Science Works These Days? Why the Wuhan Cover-up in America?

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Scientist Who Emailed Fauci About COVID-19 Being ‘Potentially Engineered’ Deactivates Account

BY JACK PHILLIPS

Epoch Times

June 7, 2021

A scientist who emailed top U.S. infectious diseases official Dr. Anthony Fauci about COVID-19 being possibly engineered in a laboratory suddenly deactivated his Twitter account over the past weekend.

Kristian Andersen, a virologist at California’s Scripps Research Institute, emailed Fauci in January 2020 about the possibility of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus being engineered, in documents that were released by the federal government via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request last week.

Andersen, according to the email, made note of a Science magazine report about viruses, and told Fauci: “The unusual features of the virus make up a really small part of the genome (<0.1%) so one has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered.” He later continued in saying that “we have to look at this much more closely and there are still further analyses to be done, so those options could still change.”

Weeks later, Andersen published a study that claimed the virus has a natural origin and reportedly received a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant.

That's a remarkably quick turnaround for a scientist. One wonders if he had gone public with his concerns rather than emailing Fauci,  would he have received an NIH grant? Is this how science works these days - if you produce a report supporting the approved narrative, you get grant money? If you don't, you don't! Is this how politics controls science? If so, we cannot believe anything in the name of science that supports the acceptable narrative.

This brings up another question - Why was protecting Wuhan from blame the acceptable narrative in America? Was it because Trump was blaming Wuhan and anything Trump said was unacceptable narrative and had to be countered? Or was there some other reason?

So many people I know think so highly of science but have no idea how much it is being controlled.

“These two features of the virus, the mutations in the RBD portion of the spike protein and its distinct backbone, rules out laboratory manipulation as a potential origin for SARS-CoV-2,” Andersen said in a news release in March.

Over the past weekend, users on Twitter noted that Andersen—who had deleted thousands of tweets in recent days—deleted his account. The Epoch Times has contacted the social media platform for comment. A spokesperson for Twitter told news outlets that his “account was deactivated by the user. No action was taken on Twitter’s part.”

David Baltimore, the President Emeritus and Distinguished Professor of Biology at the California Institute of Technology, told the Wall Street Journal over the past weekend that the email from Andersen is a smoking gun and “a powerful challenge to the idea of a natural origin for SARS2,” referring to another term for the CCP virus.

Fauci, the head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who has frequently given interviews about the pandemic since early last year, has drawn considerable criticism in recent days after his emails were published. Critics have said that he appeared to have had more knowledge about the theory that the virus may have “escaped” from the secretive Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.

Republicans, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), have called for Fauci’s ouster since his emails were published.

“I mean, everything we’re finding there, how can the president—and I know the American people don’t have trust in Dr. Fauci,” McCarthy said during an interview with Breitbart News on Saturday. “Let’s find a person we can trust. Take politics aside. I mean we’re talking about American lives here.”

Andersen has not responded to a request for comment.