Gavin Boby | |
---|---|
Born | 1964or1965(age 59–60) |
Nationality | British |
Occupation | Lawyer |
Known for | Anti-mosque litigation |
Gavin Boby (born 1964or1965) [1] is a British anti-mosque lawyer. A self-declared "mosque-buster", Boby advices and campaigns against planning permits of new mosques in the United Kingdom. [1] [2] [3]
As director of the Law and Freedom Foundation, Boby helps "local neighbourhoods to resist planning applications for mosques". [4] As of 2023, he takes credit for the rejection of 58 out of 95 planning applications for UK mosques which he has contested in the preceding decade. [5] Some councils have however disputed that he has been instrumental in blocking the development of local mosques, instead attributing them to other issues. [1]
In order to legally oppose mosque constructions, he cites issues such as "non-regulation number of parking spaces", [6] and gives advice centring on arguments such as "parking congestion", "disturbance" and "community relations". [1] In speeches in opposition to mosque constructions, he has however referred to mosques' historical uses as "fortresses" and "places of executions", and added that "terrorists form plots in mosques" where "they cannot be detected". [7] His organisation's logo features a mock-up of the movie Ghostbusters , with the ghost in the logo exchanged for radical former UK-based Muslim cleric Abu Hamza. [1]
Boby has additionally provided advice abroad to Australian anti-mosque activists such as the Q Society of Australia and to the Bendigo mosque protesters. [4] He has also spoken to activists in Canada, [8] and been interviewed by Erick Stakelbeck on CBN News in the United States. [9]
In an initiative called "Never Shall Be Slaves", Boby also offers pro bono legal support for victims of British-Pakistani child exploitation gangs. [10] On his YouTube channel, he has called for "mass repatriations" of immigrants from the UK. [5]
He has been considered a part of the counter-jihad movement, [10] [11] and was a speaker at the 2012 counter-jihad conference in Brussels, Belgium. [12] He has also spoken at a Pegida rally in Dresden, Germany, [13] and to For Frihed (formerly Pegida Denmark). [14]
Robert Bruce Spencer is an American anti-Muslim author and blogger, and one of the key figures of the counter-jihad movement. Spencer founded and has directed the blog Jihad Watch since 2003. In 2010 he co-founded the organization Stop Islamization of America with Pamela Geller.
The English Defence League (EDL) was a far-right, Islamophobic organisation active in England from 2009 until the mid-late 2010s. A social movement and pressure group that employed street demonstrations as its main tactic, the EDL presented itself as a single-issue movement opposed to Islamism and Islamic extremism, although its rhetoric and actions targeted Islam and Muslims more widely.
Stop Islamisation of Europe (SIOE) is a pan-European counter-jihad organisation with the stated goal of "preventing Islam from becoming a dominant political force in Europe". It is a political interest group which has been active in Denmark and has conducted anti-Islamic protests in the United Kingdom. The group originated out of the joining of the Danish group Stop Islamisation of Denmark with English anti-Islam activists.
The Al-Fourqaan mosque is a Salafi Islamic mosque in which is part of Al-fourqaan Islamic Center in Eindhoven, Netherlands, established in the 1990s.
Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon, better known as Tommy Robinson, is a British anti-Islam campaigner and one of the UK's most prominent far-right activists. Since 28 October 2024, he has been serving an 18-month prison sentence for contempt of court.
Counter-jihad, also known as the counter-jihad movement, is a self-titled political current loosely consisting of anti-Muslim authors, bloggers, think tanks, street movements and so on linked by beliefs that view Islam not as a religion but as an ideology that constitutes an existential threat to Western civilization. Consequently, counter-jihadists consider all Muslims as a potential threat, especially when they are already living within Western boundaries. Western Muslims accordingly are portrayed as a "fifth column", collectively seeking to destabilize Western nations' identity and values for the benefit of an international Islamic movement intent on the establishment of a caliphate in Western countries. The counter-jihad movement has been variously described as anti-Islamic, Islamophobic, inciting hatred against Muslims, and far-right. Influential figures in the movement include the bloggers Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer in the US, and Geert Wilders and Tommy Robinson in Europe.
Stop Islamisation of Denmarkda is a Danish anti-Islam organisation founded in 2005. The group was founded by Anders Gravers Pedersen who began the development of the activist part of the counter-jihad movement.
The Q Society of Australia Inc. was a far-right, anti-Islam and homophobic organisation that opposed Muslim immigration and the presence of Muslims in Australian society. Q Society described itself as "Australia's leading Islam-critical organisation" and stated that its purpose was to fight against the "Islamisation of Australia". The Q Society was so named because it was founded at a meeting in the Melbourne suburb of Kew in 2010.
Liberty Great Britain or Liberty GB was a minor far-right British nationalist political party founded and led by Paul Weston that described itself as "counter-jihad".
Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West, abbreviated Pegida, is a German, anti-Islam, far-right extremist political movement. Pegida believes that Germany is being increasingly Islamicised.
Islamophobia in Australia is distrust and hostility towards Muslims, Islam, and those perceived as following the religion. This social aversion and bias is often facilitated and perpetuated in the media through the stereotyping of Muslims as violent and uncivilised. Various Australian politicians and political commentators have capitalised on these negative stereotypes and this has contributed to the marginalisation, discrimination and exclusion of the Muslim community.
Lutz Bachmann is the founder and leader of the Pegida movement, a far-right German political organisation linked to the anti-Muslim counter-jihad ideology. As leader of Pegida, Bachmann has led marches of tens of thousands of people against Muslim immigration. Bachmann has a long history of criminal convictions, and was banned from entering the United Kingdom in 2018.
Paul Golding is a British political leader who has served as the leader of Britain First, a far-right political party in the United Kingdom. He grew up in Erith.
Pegida UK was an anti-Islam group in the United Kingdom established by Tommy Robinson in 2016. It was named after the German group Pegida – Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes.
Anne Marie Dorothy Waters is a far-right politician and activist in the United Kingdom. She founded and led the anti-Islam party For Britain until its dissolution in 2022. She is also the director of Sharia Watch UK, an organisation launched in April 2014. In January 2016, Waters launched Pegida UK in conjunction with activist Tommy Robinson and far-right politician Paul Weston.
René Stadtkewitz is a German former politician. A former local Berlin state representative for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and anti-Islam activist, he co-founded the German Freedom Party in 2010, which he led until 2013. He has later been deputy chairman of the Citizens' Movement Pax Europa.
Michael Stürzenberger is a German counter-jihad activist, blogger and critic of Islam. He was the leader of the German Freedom Party from 2013 to 2016, and has been active for many years with his public speaking and protests against Islam with groups such as the Citizens' Movement Pax Europa and Pegida. He has been convicted of several criminal offences, including incitement to hatred. He is an active YouTuber and contributor to the blog Politically Incorrect, and was observed by the Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution for anti-constitutional extremism from 2013 until 2022.
Erick Stakelbeck is an American author, and television host and presenter of The Watchman on TBN and The Watchman Newscast on YouTube. As a Christian Zionist, the show is sponsored by Christians United for Israel, Stakelbeck being the director of its Watchman Project. Stakelbeck has also been noted as an investigative reporter and author on radical Islam, and is TBN's news director.
For Frihedda is a Danish organisation that supports free speech, and opposes what it sees as Islamisation and fundamentalist Islam in Denmark. The organisation was originally part of the Pegida movement, and is part of the broader counter-jihad movement.
Nicolai Sennels is a Danish psychologist who founded Pegida Denmark in 2015. Sennels has for several years prior been noted for his views on Muslims and crime, including the assertion that inbreeding over several centuries has damaged the Muslim gene pool and that Muslims are raised to exert aggressive behaviour.