As the parliamentary select committee for Communities and Local Government launches an inquiry into Prevent, there’s news that Sheffield City Council has allocated a small fraction of the half a million pounds designated for preventing violent extremism on grass roots initiatives. A local...
Lancashire Police have charged a man who distributed a leaflet blaming Muslims for the heroin trade (left) with incitement to commit religious hatred. Prosecutors had earlier reported that prosecuting individuals for racially abusive material was presenting problems; the heroin leaflet was among...
There’s some coverage (Guardian, Daily Mail) in the papers today about the riots that erupted in Birmingham city centre on Saturday afternoon when far right extremists clashed with anti fascist campaigners. Casuals United, a medley of far right extremist groups, including the English and Welsh...
John Denham, the new Communities and Local Government Minister (pictured) has announced what appears to be a pivotal shift in the relationship between Government and British Muslims. Recognising that CLG’s ‘preventing violent extremism’ programme has had the unintended...
A couple of weeks after Newsweek ran a cover story debunking the Eurabia myth, a new YouTube video, ‘Muslim demographics’ regurgitates alarmist statistics that falsely predict the imminent ‘Islamification of Europe’. The BBC reports that the video has been viewed more...
The BBC Asian Network has a report today on the growing number of religious hate crime incidents affecting Muslim women in Scotland and their failure to refer them to the police. According to the Muslim helpline Amina half of the calls they receive involve incidents of hate crime and yet, only...
Professor Tariq Ramadan, the newly appointed His Highness Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani Chair in Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford University, pens a column in today’s Guardian on Turkey and her future membership of the EU. Rounding on critics who argue Turkey’s geography, culture and...
The Press Complaints Commission’s new Chair, Baroness Peta Buscombe (pictured), has announced plans to hold an independent review into its workings, and how they might be improved, for the first time since the self-regulatory body was formed 18 years ago. The Conservative peer, who took...
As the Iraq Inquiry, recently set up by the Prime Minister Gordon Brown, prepares for hearings that will begin this autumn, The Times today reports that Blackwater (now called Xe), a security company employed by the US government to provide security to military convoys and US diplomats in Iraq,...
Communities Minister Shahid Malik (pictured) yesterday launched new guidance for local authorities on mainstreaming community cohesion into other services. The guidance document details some of the social and financial benefits of cohesive communities (admittedly, the report only carries cost...
