Local paper, Wakefield Express, reports on another alleged incident of anti-Muslim hate crime in the Leeds area with two men arrested at the weekend on “suspicion of criminal damage after a window was smashed at the mosque on Agbrigg Road.”

The local paper reports that a further two people, a man and a woman “have also been arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit criminal damage.”

Officers from the neighbourhood police team are investigating damage at the mosque.

The Independent and Daily Mail today both cover the twitter messages posted by a Fox News presenter, Erik Rush, in response to the bomb blasts at the Boston Marathon on Sunday.

Rush, in a reactionary move, appeared to be blaming Saudis for the attack tweeting:

“@erikrush Everybody do the National Security Ankle Grab! Let's bring more Saudis in without screening them! C'mon! #bostonmarathon.”

Responding to a tweet asking if he was blaming Muslims, Rush replied:

“Yes, they’re evil. Let’s kill them all.”

Rush also responded to tweeters whom he considered ‘Islamist apologists’ writing:

“It's nice to see all the Islamist apologists standing up for those who would waste them in a heartbeat.”

The Independent draws attention to other articles written by Rush, including one titled ‘Yes, Islam is an enemy’ from September 2012 in which he wrote:

“Islam has never played well with others, and this is because it is a worldview with a creed, dogma and religious aspects, rather than a religion per se. All of these militate against its tolerance of divergent societies and cultures.

“This is truth: Both the political left and Islamists in America have been exploiting the First Amendment and Americans’ generous nature in order to conquer us.”

CAIR has urged its readers to contact Fox News urging that Rush be dropped from their scheduling. That Rush has continued in his post so long is perhaps an indication of how diligent Fox is in screening individuals invited onto its channel.

In the aftermath of Anders Breivik’s attacks in Norway in 2011, media coverage – including a Sun front page declaring ‘Norway’s 9/11’ – was quick to point the finger of blame at Al-Qaida linked terrorists. The hashtag ‘blamethemuslims’, created by Sanum Ghafoor, partly in response to media coverage of Breivik’s attacks, intelligently mocked the rush to presume Muslims as guilty of all such atrocities.

Glenn Greenwald in The Guardian referred to the “rush, one might say the eagerness, to conclude that the attackers were Muslim was palpable and unseemly, even without any real evidence.

“The New York Post quickly claimed that the prime suspect was a Saudi national (while also inaccurately reporting that 12 people had been confirmed dead). The Post's insinuation of responsibility was also suggested on CNN by Former Bush Homeland Security Adviser Fran Townsend ("We know that there is one Saudi national who was wounded in the leg who is being spoken to"). Former Democratic Rep. Jane Harman went on CNN to grossly speculate that Muslim groups were behind the attack. Anti-Muslim bigots like Pam Geller predictably announced that this was "Jihad in America". Expressions of hatred for Muslims, and a desire to do violence, were then spewing forth all over Twitter (some particularly unscrupulous partisan Democrat types were identically suggesting with zero evidence that the attackers were right-wing extremists).”

Noting that the perpetrators could well turn out to be Muslims, but just as well not, Greenwald makes a pertinent point in raising the lasting consequences of uninformed, finger-pointing for Muslim communities:

“[T]he damage from this relentless and reflexive blame-pinning endures”.

In research published last year, Tung Yin explored the tendency to ‘blame the Muslims’ for terrorist incidents in knee-jerk fashion. Yin argued that the “undue temptation” to assume that perpetrators of any new apparent act of terrorism are probably Muslims reinforces racial profiling prejudices and leads to Muslims paying a “racial tax” as a result of such biased perceptions.

Terrorism is not owned by any one ideology or creed, as the facts and successive analyses makes clear. Perhaps it is time for those responsible for shaping public discourses and policy on terrorism to question the dangerous implications of their simplistic, biased assumptions.

You can contact Fox News with your views on Erik Rush via email on - This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

ITV News reports on the attendance by members of the English Defence League of a protest outside Radstock Town hall at the weekend after newspaper reports last week claimed that the local council had removed the St George’s flag from flagpoles on civic buildings for fear of ‘offending Muslims’.

Despite the leader of the Council scotching the false reports, ITV News notes that protestors ‘from as far away as Newcastle’ travelled to the town in Somerset to protest the council’s ‘decision’.

The incident, much like false newspaper reports of town councils ‘banning Christmas’ for fear of ‘offending Muslims’, shows the terrible consequences of poor press reporting on popular perceptions of Muslims as well as the the far right’s exploitation of manufactured grievances.

Ben White on Liberal Conspiracy writes of the recent judgment by an employment tribunal in the case of Ronnie Fraser vs University and College Union (UCU).

Fraser challenged UCU over its refusal to adopt a particular definition of anti-semitism and was claiming ‘unlawful harassment’, claims which were roundly dismissed by the employment tribunal.

The tribunal saw a roll call of witnesses for the plaintiff, Fraser, including a blogger from Harry’s Place, Booker Prize winner and Independent columnist, Howard Jacobson, as well as representatives from the Jewish Leadership Council and the Community Security Trust.

Chair of the APPG on anti-semitism, John Mann also appeared, as did former MP Denis MacShane. Of their testimony and the tribunal’s ruling, Jews Sans Frontieres observes, “I hope other MPs take note that false allegations of antisemitism don't fare so well in a forensic environment.”

A point of great significance in the ruling is the judgment that "a belief in the Zionist project or an attachment to Israel" is "not intrinsically a part of Jewishness" and therefore should not be conflated with claims of anti-semitic behaviour.

In a statement, UCU’s barrister, Anthony White QC, argued:

"The respondent [UCU] is a democratic organisation with a campaigning role. Internal debate on political issues of interest and concern to its members is central to the existence and functioning of the respondent.

"The fact that he [Fraser] (and others) disagreed with a number of motions which were passed by the respondent's congress, or with statements made by participants in the debates, or with certain opinions expressed by members of the respondent, does not mean that those motions or statements or expressions of opinion amount to harassment."

The tribunal in its ruling on the case stated:

“Lessons should be learned from this sorry saga. We greatly regret that the case was ever brought. At heart, it represents an impermissible attempt to achieve a political end by litigious means. It would be very unfortunate if an exercise of this sort were ever repeated…

“We are also troubled by the implications of the claim. Underlying it we sense a worrying disregard for pluralism, tolerance and freedom of expression.”

You can read the full judgment here.