Saturday, 19 January 2013
SIKH SNOWMAN
Friday, 18 January 2013
THIS WEEK'S VISITORS (1,810)
Regular update on the number of pageviews received from different parts of the world in the week just ending.
- United Kingdom 719
- United States 534
- Russia 267
- France 66
- Germany 62
- Ukraine 44
- India 40
- Spain 32
- Israel 25
- Poland 21
This week's total: 1,810 (last week: 1,681). These are aggregates of figures from the top ten countries only. Blogger's analytics doesn't show the numbers of pageviews below the tenth-ranking country and they don’t show the cumulative total including those additional countries, which is undoubtedly larger than the number shown above.
The world map at the top of this post is the graphic that I see on the stats page. The darker the green, the more pageviews from that country. I can see different versions of that map for "now" (i.e. in the last two hours), "today", "this week", "this month" and "all time". They're updated each time I look at them.
WHAT'S TO CELEBRATE ABOUT BEING A MULTI-CULTURAL CITY?
This letter appears in today's Leicester Mercury:
What's to celebrate about being a multi-cultural city?
In his First Person column ("Let's start new year with pride and confidence", Mercury, December 31), Sir Peter Soulsby reckons that two events need celebrating.
Firstly, the census shows Leicester to be one of the most "diverse" cities in the country and, secondly, Richard III's remains are probably ours, which will be good for tourism.
This does not seem to make a great deal of sense. To begin with, why are we supposed to be celebrating the idea that Leicester is now one of the least English cities in England?
Are we not supposed to enjoy our own company? In which case, why would tourists?
And Richard III is part of English history – any tourism would be based on the idea of our monocultural, English heritage, wouldn't it?
Which is going to be tricky anyway because, dead kings apart, we seem to have knocked down a very respectable proportion of our historical heritage and seem to be waiting for a large part of the rest to collapse from neglect.
Besides which, how is more immigration a good idea when we cannot find enough jobs to keep the present population fully employed, in tourism or otherwise?
Or enough housing since we are now supposed to wreck a large part of our very attractive and tourist-friendly countryside in order to accommodate a population which, I have read, makes us the fourth most densely populated country in the world.
Possibly a new walk to a world of muck, brass and realism is in order.
Russ Ball, Leicester
Thursday, 17 January 2013
COMMON SENSE AND TOLERANCE IS WHAT WE NEED
The Venerable David Newman's First Person column appears in today's Leicester Mercury:
Common sense and tolerance is what we need
The European Court of Human Rights' rulings this week on the four cases of alleged religious discrimination reveal what a lack of imagination our law-bound culture displays.
Issues that might have been resolved with a bit of common sense and compromise have become expensive displays of intolerance. Whose intolerance – the employers or the employees? There's the issue. One person's freedom is another person's bondage.
If I want my neighbourhood to be quiet, I discriminate against those who want to make a noise, and vice versa. If my conscience makes me a vegetarian then I shouldn't work in a butcher's. But if employed in a supermarket, it should be possible for me not to have to work on the meat counter.
Clearly all the cases were not the same. Wearing a cross as a mark of faith should cause no problem in a tolerant society, provided that any health and safety issues were explained and heeded.
A marriage counsellor who preferred to give sexual advice and therapy to heterosexual couples rather than homosexual couples (and vice versa) could be accommodated in most organisations, unless of course it was contrary to their original job description, just as many professionals specialise in different areas.
A university lecturer who said that he didn't really get on with small children would not get prosecuted for not going to work in an infant school.
They tried to trap Jesus into taking a grand defiant step of conscience which polarised faith and the authorities when they asked Him if it was lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, the hated occupying and oppressive power of His day.
He asked to see a coin, pointed to Caesar's head and inscription on it and told them to give to Caesar what was Caesar's and to God what was God's.
In other words, he was saying that it was right and possible to be a good citizen and a conscientious believer; and both individuals and organisations should work to enable both.
The individual conscience may not always be right, but it should always be treated with respect. Similarly we may disagree with the prevailing ethos, but we should choose our battles carefully and always be lovingly principled.
Exchanging religious intolerance for secular intolerance (or vice versa) is not a recipe for a good society.
The Venerable David Newman is Archdeacon of Loughborough.
BBC RADIO LEICESTER: EAST PARK ROAD INCIDENT
MB: It’s eight minutes past eight. Now: next this morning, police and religious leaders in Leicester are calling for calm following an attack on a restaurant in the city earlier this week. The police are continuing to question six men after a number of people were injured in the incident on East Park Road on Monday night. Now, detectives have also confirmed they’ve now spoken to a Sikh girl and her family regarding a separate incident.
Raj Mann is from the Leicestershire Sikh Alliance, and he’s worried these recent incidents could cause friction in the community.
RM: In Leicester we are a community of communities and we enjoy good standards of community cohesion; there is room for improvement on that. Unfortunately, the police yesterday mentioned two religions, mentioned Sikh-Muslim tensions.
MB: Well, Luman Ali is from the Federation of Muslim Organisations. He’s calling for calm and urging people to work with facts, not rumours.
LA: I think it’s up to us to monitor the concerns of our youth and make sure things don’t get out of hand. This is always the case when you have incidents of violence. It’s a process of misinformation which we have to work hard to work against, especially in the form of these text messages that fly around with misinformation that aren’t helpful to any of us.
MB: Now members of the faith communities in Leicester met last night with the police. George Ballentyne, from Leicester Council of Faiths, was there and joins us now. Good morning George.
GMB: Good morning.
MB: What exactly happened last night?
GMB: Well it was a very productive meeting and I think it was very positive. We had 30 people there in all, and there were representatives from the Sikh and Muslim communities, as well as other faith communities in the city. I should just mention that the two people we’ve just heard from, they were both at the meeting last night, both contributed to it. And we spoke with Rob Nixon (who’s the City Commander) and two of his colleagues, about the current situation of the investigation into the incident. Then we went on to talk about some of the underlying issues that are of concern to the communities, in terms of protecting young people and vulnerable people. And then we devoted the last part of the meeting to talking about how to move forward, how to preserve that unity amongst the communities that Leicester is so famous for and how to also work with (like) the city’s Safeguarding Board, with schools, with GPs, to make sure that these kind of situations are open, not confined inside the community networks and that there are actually practical ways of addressing these issues that don’t end up with the kind of incident that we saw a couple of nights ago.
MB: George, apart from the specific concerns about protecting vulnerable children and this specific incident, were there major concerns about any disruption to that unity and racial harmony in our city?
GMB: Well of course there were, because we have to be careful in Leicester that we don’t become a kind of site for working out a national situation and we were very conscious that we have to attend to what’s going in Leicester, what the people do in Leicester and keep things within our own community, rather than making it a place of working out difficulties that are happening in other cities around the UK. We’ve always been aware that the situation in Leicester tends to be different from what we see in other parts of the country. There’s a higher degree of integration, there’s a higher degree of a kind of happy living alongside each other and we really (uhm …). You know, that exists because people work at it, it’s not an accident; and when something like this happens, we have to be really careful to take action. Rob Nixon, the City Centre Commander, was praising the faith communities that within 48 hours of the incident, we had this quite large-scale meeting of people who are opinion-formers and influential speakers within their own communities. And he felt that this was a sign that we really do want to take this topic seriously and address it in a way that will deal with it and heal any kind of rift that may have emerged within our communities in the city.
MB: Now, much of this disruption seems to have been caused by the rumours that have been flying around on texts and so on – some of them may have been malicious, we don’t really know – but how can that sort of thing be stopped?
GMB: Well social media’s a great thing and I’m a big fan of it and even just in the ten minutes before coming on air, Radio Leicester and I have been tweeting and retweeting each other, saying to people: listen to this spot, find out what’s going on. But it’s also a terrible rumour mill it’s the way it is now that (you know) people can express their opinions or their beliefs or their misconceptions about things and it’s part of the freedom that we have to do that and people have to be very conscious, I think, and very self-aware that someone may only see one tweet, one Facebook post or something like that and it could really inflame things, it can give people the wrong idea. But it also meant that the police, the Council of Faiths, other organisations involved, like the Federation of Muslim Organisations, the Leicestershire Sikh Alliance, we’re all using social media responsibly right now to try to get the facts out there, get the names of the people that folk can talk to if they’re concerned and help to actually help to show the process that’s going on in a very live and transparent and current way.
MB: I have to say that we should take things at face value more than we do, we believe, or many people believe what they red and there are lots of untruths around on social network sites and so on and that can be damaging, can’t it? But no doubt the faiths in Leicester are determined to work together and that’s the strength of Leicester, isn’t it?
GMB: I really think that’s so. I mean, there were people there from every walks of the communities there last night, from the kind of folk who really pride themselves on having their ear to the ground and knowing what’s happening amongst people on the street, through to those people who are very involved with the places of worship and the community centres, working with all different kinds of different people within the communities. The most important thing, really is that the message we call want to come out from last night is that this is not a faith-on-faith issue, it’s not a community-on-community issue, the police are very clear that what we are dealing with is criminal behaviour, it’s criminality, not conflict of belief or conflict of practice among the communities and the important thing is to deal with the situation as it exists and everybody’s really now into this process of dispelling some of the myths, make people feel a bit more secure and happy about what the police are doing, how the communities are meeting together – and the Leicester Council of Faiths has such a good track record over more than a quarter of a century of helping to promote trust, understanding and co-operation amongst the communities. And it’s at times like this when we are put to the test and we hope that we are able to do it in such a way that serves the greater good in the city.
MB: Okay George, just remind us then, if it’s not “faith-on-faith”, how would you describe this: just pure criminality?
GMB: That’s the term that the police want to use. Whoever would have done this and however it would have arisen, this is criminal behaviour.
MB: George, thank you for joining us this morning. George Ballentyne from the Leicester Council of Faiths. And we’ll follow that story here on BBC Radio Leicester; any developments, you’ll hear them first here on 104.9 FM.
Just after a quarter past eight. The headlines on BBC Radio Leicester: As you’ve just heard, the Council of Faiths in the city has told this programme they’ll work together to heal any rifts in the Spinney Hill community after an attack on a restaurant on East Park Road earlier this week.
If you visit this blog before Thursday 24 January, you can hear the interview on BBC Radio Leicester's Listen Again facility, starting at 0808.
PEACE TALKS HELD AFTER RAMPAGE AT RESTAURANT
This article appears on the front page of today's Leicester Mercury:
Peace talks held after rampage at restaurant
Police and faith leaders met last night to find ways of easing tensions after the ransacking of a Muslim-owned restaurant by a 40-strong Sikh mob.
The city's top officers sat with representatives from Leicester Council of Faiths to discuss the apparently orchestrated attack by a vigilante gang at the Moghul Durbar restaurant, in East Park Road, Spinney Hills, on Monday night.
Police said they were worried the incident – which they said was fuelled by false rumours – would lead to revenge attacks and escalate as both groups sought retaliation.
City police commander Chief Superintendent Rob Nixon said Monday's attack was sparked by misinformation regarding the rape of a teenage Sikh girl.
"We are aware of a number of rumours and misinformation which is circulating within the communities in Leicester," he told the Mercury.
"Firstly, a rumour that a Sikh girl has been raped and Leicestershire Police has done nothing despite being in possession of video evidence of that rape. This is not true.
"Reports that a Sikh girl has been snatched from outside a gurdwara in Leicester are also false.
"As part of a separate investigation, officers are speaking with a girl and her family in relation to concerns her family have raised for her welfare. We are unable to comment further on this investigation.
"Leicestershire Police urges members of the community not to listen to rumour or speculate about the incident."
Workers and diners were injured when a frenzied mob piled into the restaurant on Monday evening, smashing doors and windows.
Three men were still in hospital last night, in a stable condition.
Within an hour of the attack, police had arrested six Leicester men in connection with the incident.
Yesterday morning, magistrates granted the police an extension, which means officers can detain the suspects for questioning for up to 96 hours from arrest, after which they must be charged or released.
Police met members of the Sikh and Muslim communities at Mansfield House police station, in the city centre, yesterday evening, to discuss ways to relieve the tension within the Spinney Hills community. Assistant city mayor Manjula Sood, who is chairman of Leicester Council of Faiths, was at the meeting.
She said: "Both the Sikh and Muslim communities are anxious, but they must trust the police to sort this matter out.
"We should not let this one incident destroy everything we have worked to build over all these years. Police have been in touch with all the religious communities and we are meeting to see how we can resolve this issue safely and without any more incidents."
City mayor Sir Peter Soulsby said he had been in contact with the police and reiterated their call for calm.
"Something of this sort is worrying and distressing, but it's important to make the point of how unusual it is for something like this to happen in Leicester," he said. "And a lot of people have been left scratching their heads, wondering how it ever happened in the first place.
"We have to make sure that this does not go any further and the police are allowed to do their job."
Officers have been visiting places of worship, businesses and members of the community to reassure them the attack was an isolated incident.
Nosheen Awan, who runs designer clothing shop Rima's, a few doors away from the Moghul Durbar restaurant, said: "There have been a lot of rumours going around. It's hard to know what to believe.
"We haven't been open long and it's scary to know that something like this has happened."
Anyone with information relating to the incident can call police on 101.
Alternatively, contact Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
Wednesday, 16 January 2013
MEETING WITH POLICE RE EAST PARK ROAD INCIDENT
There are 30 people attending this evening, with much wider representation than just the Council of Faiths. By my reckoning, there are six Sikh groups or organisations represented, three Muslim, two Hindu and one Christian. There are four City Councillors and three police officers. The Race Equality Centre (TREC) is also represented. Nine of those attending are members of Leicester Council of Faiths; both members of staff (Ajay and myself) are present too.
After introductions round the table, Fayyaz Suleman (Vice Chair, Leicester Council of Faiths) sets the tone, explaining why the Council of Faiths is involved and what it can do in relation to this situation - at this meeting and, with attendees' consent and involvement, afterwards.
As far as this meeting is concerned, Fayyaz explains that the Council of Faiths and the police hope that those present will voice their concerns as individuals and as members of their respective communities and organisations; that we'll be able to receive a briefing from the police on the current situation; and that we can chart our way forward to serve the best interests of all communities, promoting cohesiveness throughout the city - not just for those directly affected.
Fayyaz then hands over to Rob Nixon, City Centre Commander, who outlines three specific topics on which he wants to speak:
- The current state of the police investigation into the incident (including an accurate description of the incident itself as it was first reported to the police; how the police responded; what actions have been taken by the police since the incident; what the police intend to do next)
- Wider issues on which some communities feel vulnerable (to do with protection of children and young people)
- How to move forward, who to engage from within the faith communities and the wider city to ensure a genuine multi-agency approach that has as positive an outcome as possible.
Below are some of the key points that I note from Rob's presentation and the discussion that follows. I have not included specific details about the police investigation. These are available from the police in a variety of formats and sources.
- The police have to secure the trust and confidence of communities, families and individuals, following due process. Everyone involved has to understand that this can't be done overnight and that patience is required.
- We must move away from profiling any of our communities as predator and prey or representing the relationship between any of our communities as that of victimiser and victim
- This horrific incident is also an unasked for opportunity for people of diverse communities to come together and make common cause for a positive and progressive attitude to the issues that provoked this incident.
- We all have to help steer the narrative away from any sense of condoning the behaviour of people taking the law into their own hands.
- There needs to be a general realisation that the police are dealing with criminal behaviour, not a faith-based issue - especially not of one community set against another
- Faith community leaders, spokespeople, workers and activists should be seeking ways to join with professionals, working across faith and cultural boundaries to protect young and vulnerable people of all communities
- The faith communities and organisations, individually and collectively, have a responsibility to take heat out of the situation via platforms within communities including their own media, mainstream media, social media, broadcast and print media in community languages
- There should be regular, frequent meetings between collective representatives of faith communities an organisations with police, the first of these being in a month's time
Closing the meeting, Cllr Manjula Sood (Chair of Leicester Council of Faiths) assured all those present that our prayers and thoughts are with those who were injured in the incident, their families and friends.
This afternoon I'd been twice by BBC Radio Leicester, with a request to go live on air tomorrow morning to speak for the Council of Faiths about the East Park Road incident and about this meeting with Leicestershire Police. Given the sensitivity of the issue, I couldn't help thinking that it might be better for an Executive Officer of the Council of Faiths to appear on the radio this time. I'd sent an email to the officers before this meeting voicing my concerns and asking that we make a decision, so that I could get back to the station with the name of the person who would speak. At the end of the meeting, our Chair, Vice Chair, Secretary and I agree that I should do it. Rob, Fayyaz and I put our heads together for five minutes and agree the general content and tone of what I should say. I phone Radio Leicester just after 2200 and set up an interview by phone for just after 0800 tomorrow morning.
As we're leaving, Fayyaz passes me a draft statement about this evenign's meeting which will be useful in dealing with the media and other interested parties:
"Leicester Council of Faiths facilitated a meeting with faith leaders, the local community and police representatives. The meeting unanimously condemned the criminality involved in the incident and all have agreed to work to communicate with their grass roots communities that everything should be done to support the police investigation. They also agreed to dispel any myths and rumours among the public. The group agreed to meet regularly and assist each other in keeping Leicester united against hate and crime."
Tuesday, 15 January 2013
LEICESTER LGBT CENTRE LAUNCHES MULTIFAITH SUPPORT GROUP
The purpose of the group is to provide a friendly meeting place for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people who may feel excluded from their personal faith to come together and share experiences without prejudice.
Members, active or lapsed, of all faiths are welcomed. Its aim is to enhance understanding of its members’ spiritual and cultural similarities by acknowledging differences and identifying commonalities. This can only be done by sharing differences of opinion honestly but respectfully with an open voice.
Members, active or lapsed, of all faiths are welcomed. Its aim is to enhance understanding of its members’ spiritual and cultural similarities by acknowledging differences and identifying commonalities. This can only be done by sharing differences of opinion honestly but respectfully with an open voice.
Group facilitator Paul Fitzgerald states, “Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people of faith often feel marginalised or excluded from their faith due to discriminatory practices or outdated views. We intend to provide a space where we can share ideas and values to promote good welfare among our communities and even reconnect with our personal faiths. The Leicester LGBT Centre is a perfect venue for this as it is centrally located, unattached to any particular faith and purposeful in its desire to support LGBT peoples’ differences.”
For further information contact Paul Fitzgerald: paul.f@leicesterlgbtcentre.org or call 01162547412. Information will also be updated on the Centre’s website.
Friday, 11 January 2013
THIS WEEK'S VISITORS (1,681)
Regular update on the number of pageviews received from different parts of the world in the week just ending.
- United Kingdom 596
- United States 365
- Russia 323
- Ukraine 97
- France 80
- Germany 66
- India 55
- Poland 48
- Spain 33
- Canada 18
This week's total: 1,681 (last week: 1,707). These are aggregates of figures from the top ten countries only. Blogger's analytics doesn't show the numbers of pageviews below the tenth-ranking country and they don’t show the cumulative total including those additional countries, which is undoubtedly larger than the number shown above.
The world map at the top of this post is the graphic that I see on the stats page. The darker the green, the more pageviews from that country. I can see different versions of that map for "now" (i.e. in the last two hours), "today", "this week", "this month" and "all time". They're updated each time I look at them.
PROTESTER WHO TORE UP KORAN HAS CASE DROPPED AT LEICESTER COURT
This article appears in today's Leicester Mercury:
Protester who tore up Koran has case dropped at Leicester court
A man who was put on trial after staging an anti-religion protest by ripping out pages from the Koran in front of Muslims has had the case against him dropped.
A jury at Leicester Crown Court failed to reach a verdict in the case against Peter James Crawford last month.
The Crown Prosecution Service reviewed the evidence and a decision was made not to continue with a fresh trial.
The case was dropped against Mr Crawford, 52, when the prosecution offered no evidence against him at a hearing – a move described by Mr Crawford's advocate as "sensible".
During the trial in December, Mr Crawford was alleged to have torn pages from his own copy of the Koran and thrown the holy book on the ground next to a stall run by the Islamic Information Centre, near the Clock Tower, in Leicester, on May 12 last year.
He told Muslim volunteers at the stall that he disagreed with their religion.
Mr Crawford, of Mere Road, Spinney Hills, Leicester, claimed in interview he was expressing his disagreement with religion of any kind, saying it was all "b******t".
He told police he would have done the same with a Bible as he did not understand either holy book and "hated" all religion.
"I'm not against the people, just their religion," he said.
James Bide-Thomas, prosecuting, said in his opening address to the jury last month that freedom of speech was "tradition in this country" and "people are entitled to say what they want, as long as it's not illegal in relation to the law which prevents people going out to cause harassment, alarm or distress by insulting behaviour".
He said: "It's for you to decide whether what he did was insulting or whether it was a legitimate piece of freedom of speech being exercised, or whether what he did was deliberately calculated to upset the people from the Islamic Information Centre."
The jury told the judge there was no prospect of them reaching either a unanimous verdict or one on which at least 10 of them agreed.
Mr Crawford had denied causing religiously aggravated intentional harassment, alarm or distress, by demonstrating hostility based on membership of a particular religious group.
Speaking this week, Mr Crawford's defence advocate during the trial, Steven Newcombe, said: "I think the prosecution made a sensible decision not to have a retrial in the light of the jury being deadlocked.
"There were other ways of dealing with this matter, rather than attempting to prosecute Mr Crawford in a crown court.
"He has learned a lesson and I'm sure he will conduct himself with a greater degree of sensitivity."
A spokesman for the Crown Prosecution Service said: "When jury cannot decide on a verdict, the prosecution must decide whether to seek a retrial on the basis of the same evidence.
"A number of factors must be taken into account, including the likely penalty if the defendant is found guilty, the time delay in securing a date for the retrial, the views of the victim, judiciary and police and the likelihood of another jury reaching a decision."
Mr Crawford was not available for comment.
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