New figures: Jews, Muslims face rising levels of religious hate crime in Germany

2017 marked the first year that the German Interior Ministry officially registers Islamophobic (islamfeindliche) hate crimes. The authorities have now released preliminary figures on anti-Muslim criminal activity for the past year.1 950 Islamophobic criminal incidents in 2017 According to these statistics, Muslim individuals or institutions were targeted in 950 separate instances in 2017. This includes…

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Football fans who ripped up the Koran ‘like confetti’ convicted of public order offence

Two football fans who ripped up pages of the Koran, the Islamic holy book, “like confetti” at a game have been found guilty of a religiously-aggravated public order offence. Middlesbrough supporters Julie Phillips, 50, and Gemma Parkin, 18, denied knowing the book was a copy of the Koran. Parkin told Birmingham Magistrates’ Court she was…

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Katy Perry accused of ‘portraying blasphemy’ with Dark Horse video

February 28, 2014   An online petition demanding Katy Perry’s Dark Horse video be taken off YouTube has attracted about 65,000 signatures. According to the petitioners at Change.org, the video is guilty of “portraying blasphemy”, because of the video’s use of a pendant reportedly inscribed with the word Allah. Katy Perry’s Dark Horse clip, which…

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Football fan fined for ripping up Qur’an at match

February 28, 2014   A football fan that ripped up pages of the Qur’an during a match has been fined. Mark Stephenson, a Middlesbrough season-ticket holder, was ordered to pay £235 by magistrates who opted not to impose a football banning order. The 25-year-old from Shrewsbury committed the religiously aggravated public order offence last December…

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Second British pensioner faces blasphemy charges in Pakistan for reading from Koran in public

January 31, 2014   The family of a second British man facing blasphemy charges in Pakistan said yesterday that he is entirely innocent and called for more to be done to allow him to return to the UK. Masud Ahmad, 72, is currently on bail in Lahore after he was allegedly tricked into publicly reading…

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