Council Spends £150,000 So Muslim Graves Can Face Mecca
THE TELEGRAPH: A council is spending £150,000 to extend a cemetery so that the graves of Muslims can face Mecca.

High Wycombe Cemetery in Buckinghamshire currently has a separate Muslim burial section but this is due to run out of space in 2012.

Muslim graves are required to face North [?] East, so that Mecca, the birth place of the Prophet Muhammad in the Sirat Mountains of Saudi Arabia, is on their right to the South East.

While graves could be placed in the existing plot with Christian graves, the different orientation would mean encroaching on areas currently maintained as lawn sections.

A report by High Wycombe District Council also expressed fears that mixing Muslim and Christian graves could lead to a backlash in public opinion.

The council put in a request for land at the Church of England burial ground at Priory Road, High Wycombe to be deconsecrated for Muslim use but this was refused.

The council have now settled on extending High Wycombe cemetery terracing to form new burial areas, walls, paths and steps for access at a cost of £150,000.

According to the Equalities Impact Assessment carried out, an extension would provide 15 years worth of Muslim burials[.]

One local resident, who did not wish to be named, said that enough money had been spent catering to the needs of the Muslim community.

He said: ''Yet again many thousands of pounds being spent pandering to the local Muslim community.

''Just like when they fenced off all of the Muslim graves in the local cemetery to protect them from vandalism yet left all of the other graves from other racial/religious groups left wide open to vandalism.'' >>> | Friday, June 04, 2010

Donald Stewart-Whyte, Muslim Son of Tory Agent ‘Went Off the Rails’
TIMES ONLINE: The most unlikely defendant in the crowded dock at Woolwich Crown Court was Donald Douglas Stewart-Whyte, son of a former Conservative Party election agent, half-brother of a fashion model and a Muslim for less than five months before his arrest.

Mr Stewart-Whyte, 23, an art student, admitted in the witness box to dealing cannabis and having possession of a Baikal 9mm handgun with ammunition but denied that he was part of any terrorist mass murder plot.

The prosecution alleged that he was a “footsoldier” who had signalled his willingness to take part in a mid-air suicide mission, but he claimed that he knew nothing of the airline plot and had turned to Islam as a route away from anxiety attacks, mental health problems and drug use. Soon after his conversion in March 2006, he wrote and published a leaflet entitled Look at Islam, Not Muslims, in which he argued that Islam and terrorism were not synonymous.

Mr Stewart-Whyte, who lived with his mother, in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, was suffering from panic attacks that kept him away from Amersham and Wycombe College, where he was studying fine art before his arrest. The Crown alleged that his religious mentor was another of the defendants, Umar Islam, also a convert to the Muslim faith. >>> Sean O’Neill | Tuesday, September 08, 2009