Iranian ministry denies authorising neo-Nazi website

Iran's Ministry of Islamic Guidance and Culture said it has not recognised a neo-Nazi group that recently claimed its website had been registered "according to the laws of the Islamic Republic of Iran".

"The website was only registered [in the ministry's list of approved websites] by an individual," Mehdi Sarami, an official of the ministry, told the Tabnak news portal on Saturday. There was no mention of the neo-Nazi group in the registration form, he said.

The ministry was criticised last week by Tabnak, which is affiliated with the conservative politician Mohsen Rezaie, for unblocking the group's website (irannazi.ir), which discussed Nazi ideology, principles and beliefs and the "Fuhrer's character, thoughts and speeches" in its various forums.

The ministry's censorship body blocked the neo-Nazi website soon after it was created on August 23, unblocked it a month later and has again blocked access since Monday.

The website had published statements by an obscure neo-Nazi group that calls itself Iran Nazi Society. It is the only "significant and reliable Nazi website in Iran", Behrouz, the administrator of the website, claimed in a note on the inauguration of the website.

"Why has the Culture Ministry given permission to the so-called Iran's Nazi Society…. We hope the authorities have an appropriate explanation for that," Tabnak said in an article last week titled "Expansion of Activities of Nazis and Racists on .ir [internet] Domains" and asked whether the activities of "this extremist cult" had been approved by the authorities.

Iran blocks access to millions of websites, including those affiliated with opposition and dissident groups, ones with explicit sex-related material as well as social networking sites such as Facebook.

The authorities have not offered any explanation for blocking the neo-Nazi group's website, but the group believed the country's Jewish community was responsible. After being blocked on the internet in Iran the first time, the group claimed in a statement that it had been blocked "just for insulting religious minorities, ie, the Jews".

"Only 17 days after [the creation of the website] we were targeted by these creatures and got into trouble as a result of personal complaints of Jews," the statement said.

Adherence to Nazism has a long history in Iran. The Iran National-Socialist Workers (Sumka) group was established in 1952 by Davoud Monshizadeh, an Iranian professor at Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, who had served with the SS.

The militaristic, pro-monarch and anti-communist Sumka was strongly opposed to the popular premier Mohammad Mosaddegh, who was ousted by a British-American coup in 1953. The group never went beyond establishing a minor support base among university students. A group calling itself Sumka still exists alongside some other small and obscure neo-Nazi groups but little is known about its membership or activities.

"Neo-Nazis share some traits and beliefs, mainly their denial of the Holocaust and hatred of Israel, with hardliners such as the country's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but there is a big difference between them. Neo-Nazis, who may or may not be religious, hate the Jews as a race but Islamic hardliners direct their anger at Israel and those who support Zionism, but not Judaism as a religion because the Quran recognises them as a legitimate religion too," said a political analyst in Tehran, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

Iran is home to about 25,000 Jews, the second largest Jewish community in the Middle East after Israel. Its history in Iran goes back 2,500 years. Judaism has been recognised as a "legitimate religious minority" along with Christianity and Zoroastrianism in Iran's Constitution. Insulting religious minorities is banned by the country's press law, which applies to internet content.

The small but lively Iranian Jewish community, which has its own representative in the Iranian parliament, strongly protested when Mr Ahmadinejad publicly denied the Holocaust. The atrocities against the Jews during the Second World War were "historical reality", they said in letters printed in the monthly magazine published by the Jewish Association of Tehran.

Iran's religious establishment and Mr Ahmadinejad distinguish between adherence to Judaism as a religion and Zionism, which they say is only the ideology of the state of Israel. The Iranian Jewish community strongly refutes any affiliation to Zionism.

The National

SIX CZECHS SENTENCED FOR RACISM

The Municipal Court in Brno Thursday sentenced six members of the Czech outlawed far-right Workers' Party (DS) to fines and probation over public racist statements they made at the May Day rally in Brno in 2009, state attorney Jan Lata told CTK. The defendants received four to six months' suspended sentences and were fined 20,000-30,000 crowns. Lata said the defendants had incited hatred for immigrants and some ethnic groups, Romanies in particular, with their statements. One of them supported a movement suppressing human rights and freedoms. Former party leader Tomas Vandas said Thursday it was incredible that some people were being tried over expressing their views at a legal public rally. Vandas said the accusations were expedient. At the demonstration last year, Vandas warned of immigration and spoke on behalf of "decent" citizens at the housing project Janov in Litvinov, north Bohemia. Vandas went on to speak about a destructive immigration wave. DS members Jiri Stepanek and Petr Kotab criticised Vietnamese crime.

Prague Monitor

MUSLIMS IN FRANCE FACING JOB DISCRIMINATION, STUDY SHOWS

Muslims in France have a lower chance of being hired than Christians, a study published by the Washington-based National Academy of Sciences showed. “We have established a clear, albeit uncomfortable, finding,” the study, carried out by researchers at Stanford University, Paris I Pantheon - Sorbonne University and University of California-San Diego, said in its conclusions. “Muslims have faced barriers to economic integration in France that are higher than they would have been if everything about them were the same save for their religion.” Researchers mailed 275 pairs of resumes, all identical, except for the names, to companies based in France. They sent the resume of a fake Senegalese Christian called Marie Diouf and of her fictitious counterpart, a Muslim Senegalese named Khadija Diouf. For every 100 positive responses Marie the Christian received, Khadija, the Muslim, got 38. That’s 2.5 times less. “This is in fact a low estimate,” Marie-Anne Valfort, an assistant professor at the Sorbonne university said in an interview. “Had the candidate been a man, the discrimination may likely have been bigger.” She said Senegalese identity had been chosen for both fictitious candidates in order to help eliminate the race factor as a reason for discrimination.

Muslim Population
Muslims residing in France -- both foreign nationals and French citizens -- comprise an estimated 6.3 percent of the population, or about 4 million people, according to French authorities. The figure is an estimate because statistics on race and religion are forbidden in France, a practice long regarded as a bulwark of the republic’s concept of “equality” among its citizens. French citizens of Arab descent face discrimination, according to past studies. Today’s report, published by the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the first that studies job discrimination against Muslims. France’s statistics office, Insee, showed in a Nov. 12 study that the employment rate of French men of North African descent, of whom at least one of the parents is of immigrant origin, is 21 percentage points lower than the average national rate of 86 percent. For North African women, the rate is 18 percentage points lower. A May 2006 study by the government’s High Authority Against Discrimination showed that 40 percent of all discrimination in France is based on a person’s origin and 45 percent happens at the workplace.

‘Prison’
President Nicolas Sarkozy enacted a law this year that bans the wearing in the streets and in public places of the burqa, a Muslim full-face veil. He pledged to safeguard the “values” of France and said “we don’t want” veiled women in France in a televised interview Nov. 16, calling the veil a “prison.” “There are 2,000 Muslim religious sites in France, but no minarets and no muezzin for the prayers,” Sarkozy said in the televised interview. “Everyone can live their religion but we want an Islam of France and not Islam in France.” The National Front, the anti-immigration political party, launched an ad campaign last month that shows a map of France, with minarets and a fully veiled woman, with the caption: “No to Islamism.” One of the party’s leaders, Marine Le Pen, has also used radio interviews to criticize increased sale of halal meat in France.

Bloomberg

Fears grow over EDL city protest (UK)

Police patrols are to be stepped up around Preston’s mosques on Saturday as around 1,200 protesters head into the city to take part in two demonstrations.

Chief Supt Tim Jacques, head of Preston Police, revealed the plans ahead of the demonstration by the English Defence League and counter demonstration by Unite Against Facism and the Trade Union Council.

The protests coincide with the PNE v Millwall game at Deepdale.

Police officers’ days off have been cancelled and specially trained public order officers are being drafted in from other parts of the county to support the policing operation, which will see the mounted branch, road police and other units taking to city centre streets.

The two groups of demonstrators will be in the city’s Flag Market with temporary low level fencing to separate them.

Today Chief Supt Jacques said it would be one of the biggest police operations seen in Preston in recent years but insisted the city was “open for business as usual” on Saturday - the fourth week before Christmas and the first official Christmas shopping weekend.

He also moved to calm fears of violence that has been seen in similar demonstrations in other cities.

He said: “We are working with the community and police officers are going to be in the areas where the mosques are on Saturday to reassure people.

“We have had lots of meetings with the mosques and are working with the demonstration organisers in terms of minimising the impact. There are no planned demonstrations outside any mosques but it is in our minds.

“Our number one priority is keeping people in the city safe and to minimise disruption on a busy Saturday before Christmas.”

He said the force would be making a proportionate response to any threats and added: “There’s no doubt there will be a lot of police officers in Preston and in surrounding areas. All the information we have suggests we can facilitate two lawful and peaceful demonstrations.

“It will be one of the biggest operations seen in Preston in terms of planning but on terms of what we are dealing with it is smaller - in the past we have dealt with 6,000 Premier League fans coming into the city.”

We have to look at the context of where we are as a city - some of the backdrop of the places of previous demonstrations are different. Preston is a pretty cohesive city so our starting point is different to other places.”

Lancaster Evening post