Luton, UK:
Nashville, USA:
I blogged on the top image in October; the graffiti had been sprayed onto the side of an Indian Restaurant supposedly owned by Muslims, and the photo was taken by Paul Ray (who by a remarkable coincidence has a tattoo of the same type of cross). Ray is unconnected with the main body of the English Defence League following a feud, but it seems the EDL liked the photo enough to use it anyway.
The second image shows a vandalised mosque; the cross to the left is a “Jerusalem Cross”. Both crosses in these pictures are particularly associated with Crusaders, and the incidents reflect a wide fetishism for Crusader imagery and iconography among anti-Islamic nationalists.
Think Progress has some background to the second incident:
Last year, the right-wing Christian Action Network and PRB films produced a “documentary” called “Homegrown Jihad: The Terrorist Camps Around U.S.” It claims to expose 35 “Islamic terrorist training compounds” devoted to “radical Pakistani cleric, Sheikh Mubarak Gilani.” (Watch the trailer here.) In February 2009, CBS News reviewed the film and dismissed it as nothing more than “sensationalistic” fear-mongering… Nevertheless, a year later, the Nashville CBS affiliate (Channel 5) decided to give the film legitimacy by conducting an “EXCLUSIVE” investigation into a Muslim community in rural Tennessee called Islamville, which is featured in the movie. “Some believe it is a secret Islamic terrorist training camp,” reads the Channel 5 article…
Just a week after Channel 5’s reports aired, the Al-Farooq Islamic Center in Nashville has been vandalized with anti-Muslim graffiti.
As it happens, I blogged on a interview between the Christian Action Network and members of the English Defence League here.
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