May 22. Religious advisers at the Masjid Ramadan mosque in Dalston, east London, said that bitcoin, the cryptocurrency, is halal (permissible according to Islamic law) for donations if it is “transacted in a lawful manner.” The mosque, also known as Shacklewell Lane Mosque, will accept donations in two different cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and Ethereum. Zayd al Khair, a religious adviser at the mosque, said: “Any money or currency is neither halal, permissible, nor haram, impermissible. Guidance is about the value which it represents. If money is transacted in a lawful manner then it is halal. We do not always know the source of cash donations, but we take these in good faith too.”
May 22. Farooq Rashid, 43, of Bradford, was sentenced to two years in prison for possessing and sharing jihad-related material online. “Terrorist groups such as Daesh [ISIS] rely heavily on their propaganda being shared online to encourage support, radicalize, and provoke individuals to carry out attacks abroad and in the UK,” said Martin Snowden, the head of Counter Terrorism Policing in North East England.
May 23. A mother who forced her daughter to marry a relative almost twice her age was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison. It was the first time a forced marriage case was successfully prosecuted in an English court. Forced marriage has been a punishable offense in Britain since 2014. Birmingham Crown Court heard how the woman duped the then 17-year-old into travelling to Pakistan to wed the man, who was 16 years her senior. Years before the ceremony, the girl was entered into a “marriage contract” with the man and became pregnant aged 13.
May 23. The Daily Mail reported that Amazon, the online retailer, was selling terrorist recruitment material and bomb-making manuals: “Many of the books, which have radicalized thousands of international terrorists, are available for next-day delivery. Some can be downloaded instantly as Kindle editions anywhere in the world. The inflammatory titles are sold by third parties using Amazon’s platform, allowing them global reach and lending them an aura of legitimacy.” Labour MP John Mann said: “This is Amazon giving assistance to terrorists and putting lives at risk. We’ve just had the anniversary of the Manchester bombing. They need to be held to account. Amazon is allowing terror material to circulate. Free speech arguments don’t apply when it comes to terrorists trying to recruit. There must be a full police investigation into Amazon.”
May 24. Baroness Cox and other members of the House of Lords called on the British government to “respond urgently” to a 2015 review on Sharia courts by drafting a law to protect vulnerable Muslim women. Lord Elton said that the problem of Sharia councils “seems to me bigger and more urgent than Her Majesty’s Government are giving it credit for.” Baroness Flather accused Whitehall of not taking the issue seriously. Baroness Cox asked whether the government “will make it a priority to respond urgently with appropriate legislation.” In April 2015, Baroness Cox authored a 40-page report — “A Parallel World: Confronting the Abuse of Many Muslim Women in Britain Today” — which documented how Muslim women across Britain are being systematically oppressed, abused and discriminated against by Sharia law courts, which treat women as second-class citizens. The report warned against the spiraling proliferation of Islamic tribunals in the United Kingdom.
May 25. Tommy Robinson, a 35-year-old anti-Islam activist, was arrested and jailed for contempt of court after livestreaming footage of participants in a criminal trial outside Leeds Crown Court. The trial involved members of a Muslim pedophile gang charged with sexually exploiting young girls. Outrage ensued after Judge Geoffrey Marson ordered a media blackout on Robinson’s arrest and incarceration.
May 29. A Pew Research Study found that 73% of Britons identify as being Christian, but only 18% attend church. In the UK, 45% of church-attending Christians say Islam is fundamentally incompatible with British values and culture, as do roughly the same share of non-practicing Christians (47%). Among religiously unaffiliated adults, 30% say Islam is fundamentally incompatible with their country’s values. The poll found that 69% of those who identify as Christian were in favor of reducing the levels of immigration, compared to 32% of non-affiliated adults.
May 29. A couple was convicted of forced marriage for luring their 19-year-old daughter to Bangladesh in an attempt to force her to marry her first cousin — so that he could obtain a British visa. Leeds Crown Court heard how the girl’s parents had told her they were going on a six-week holiday to Bangladesh to visit relatives. Just days after arriving, however, she was told by her father that he had found a husband for her. The victim, who was not named for legal reasons, told the court: “He said, ‘I have planned this for years, the guy is really suitable, I’ve given him money for university, and he’s a really attractive guy for round here.’ He was trying to get me to say yes, but at no point did I say yes. I thought it was disgusting because it was my first cousin and stood my ground.” She was rescued by British authorities before the marriage took place. The judge told the two defendants that they should expect an “immediate imprisonment” when they are sentenced on June 18.
May 29. The trial began of Anthony Small, a 36-year-old former boxing champion who converted to Islam in 2007, for terrorism offenses. Prosecutor Karen Robinson told the Old Bailey that Small “implored Muslims to take violent action against the West.” On his YouTube channel, Small described himself as “a former professional champion boxer who now works to take mankind out of the oppression of democracy and liberating themselves with Islam/Sharia.” In the video, he spoke out against McDonald’s and Coca Cola and other symbols of Western culture. He said the choice was to “either accept the flame-grilled burger or we are going to flame grill you from the sky.”
May 30. The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) called on the Conservative Party to conduct an inquiry into allegations of Islamophobia within the party. At least five Tory candidates have been suspended in recent weeks for making so-called Islamophobic comments. On April 17, for example, Alexander van Terheyden, a council candidate in Hackney, was suspended after, on social media, he called Islam, a “violent political ideology” comparable to fascism and communism. In response to allegations of Islamophobia, Van Terheyden said: “I’ve stated Islam is a violent political ideology. Note the word ‘political’ and not religious. Note I do not refer to Muslims, I refer to the political ideology. My views have always been public. If you mean the fact that I’m happy to voice my discontent for communism, fascism, Islam and other extreme political ideologies there is no secret to this.” In December 2015, a government report found that the MCB is “secretly linked” to the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic fundamentalist group committed to a “civilizational jihad” aimed at undermining liberal democracies in the West.
May 31. Khurram Javed, 35, of Rotherham was sentenced to two years in prison for sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl. The trial was part of the National Crime Agency’s Operation Stovewood, which is investigating child sexual exploitation and abuse in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013.
May 31. Husnain Rashid, 32, of Lancashire, pled guilty at Woolwich Crown Court to three terrorism offenses, including one in which he called for an attack against Prince George, son of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and third in line to the throne. Rashid will be sentenced on June 28 for the offenses spanning from October 2016 to April 2018.
May 31. Mohammed Aslam Rabani, a 61-year-old twice-married former imam at a mosque in Nottingham, was sentenced to five years in prison for sexually assaulting a teenage boy in the mosque’s attic. Rabani repeatedly assaulted the boy between June 1990 and June 1993, when the victim was 12 years old. The victim, who is now married and a father, said: “He was a father figure to me and everyone. Not even my own family would believe what he was doing to me. I was scared, because beatings at home and at the mosque were commonplace in our community. Children just did as they were told and adults were always right. As a result, I didn’t speak out. Additionally, I thought it was normal, because I also believed that Rabani should be trusted. I assumed that because he was the imam, that whatever he did was right and that he was closest to God.”
Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute.
