Mark Steel: Wife-beating? That's fine – unless you're a Muslim

The Sun newspaper has come over a bit modest. Following a Channel 4 documentary about media reporting of Muslims, the paper accepts some of its stories were "distorted". But they're not doing themselves justice. They weren't distorted – they were entirely made up. For example, a story about a Muslim bus driver who ordered his passengers off the bus so he could pray was pure fabrication.

But if reporters are allowed to make up what they like, that one should be disciplined for displaying a shocking lack of imagination. He could have continued, "The driver has now won a case at the Court of Human Rights that his bus route should be altered so it only goes east. This means the 37A from Sutton Coldfield will no longer stop at Selly Oak library, but go the wrong way up a one-way street and carry on to Mecca. Local depot manager Stan Tubworth said, 'I suggested he only take it as far as Athens but he threatened a Jihad, and a holy war is just the sort of thing that could put a service like the Selly Oak Clipper out of business'."

Then there was a story about "Muslim thugs" in Windsor who attacked a house used by soldiers, except it was another invention. But with this tale the reporter still claims it's true, despite a complete absence of evidence, because, "The police are too politically correct to admit it." This must be the solution to all unsolved crimes. With Jack the Ripper it's obvious – he was facing the East End of London, his victims were infidels and he'd have access to a burqua which would give him vital camouflage in the smog. But do the pro-Muslim police even bother to investigate? Of course not, because it's just "Allah Allah Allah" down at the stations these days.

Maybe Muslim newspapers should retaliate by publishing their own made-up stories. So it will be reported that "Barmy PC teachers in Leicester have banned children from playing Noughts and Crosses, claiming the cross reminds Church of England kiddies of the suffering undertaken by Lord Jesus. A spokesman for the Board of Education said, 'We have to be sensitive. Which is why we've replaced the game with 'Noughts and Hexagons'. We did look into calling it 'Noughts and Crowns of Thorns' but decided Hexagons was more appropriate."

Or, "Doctors have been told that patients are no longer to be referred to as 'stable', as this is offensive to followers of Jesus, who was said to have been born in one. So medical staff have been informed they must use an alternative word, or if they can't think of one just let the patient die."

The most common justification for ridiculing Islam is that the religion is "backward", particularly towards women, as a fundamental part of its beliefs. The Sun's old political editor suggests this as a defence of his newspaper's stance, saying that under Islam, "women are treated as chattels". And it's true that religious scriptures can command this, such as the insistence that, "a man may sell his daughter as a slave, but she will not be freed at the end of six years as men are." Except that comes from the Bible – Exodus, Chapter 21, verse 7.

The Bible is packed with justifications for slavery, including killing your slaves. So presumably the Sun, along with others who regard Islam as a threat to our civilisation, will soon be campaigning against "Sunday Schools of Hate" where children as young as seven are taught to read this grisly book. And next Easter they'll report how, "I saw a small child smile with glee as he opened a Cadbury's egg filled with chocolate buttons. But behind his grin I couldn't help but wonder whether he wanted to turn me into a pillar of salt, then maybe sprinkle me on his menacing confectionary treat."

In his defence of making stuff up, the Sun's ex-political editor spoke about the amount of domestic violence suffered by Muslim women. But there's just as much chance of suffering domestic violence if you're not a Muslim, as one of the 10 million such incidents a year that take place in Britain. Presumably the anti-Islam lobby would say, "Ah yes, but those other ones involve secular wife-beating, which is not founded on archaic religious customs, but rational reasoning such as not letting him watch the snooker."

And finally the Sun's man defends the line of his paper by saying that, after all, these Muslims "are trying to bomb our country". So it's their civic duty to make stuff up – the same as keeping a look-out for spies during the Second World War.

So we should all do our bit, and every day send in something, until the press is full of stories like "Muslims in Darlington have been raising money for semtex by organising panda fights." Or "In Bradford all nurseries have been ordered to convert their dolls' houses into miniature mosques so that Muslim teddies have somewhere to pray."

Independent

Thanks to Anon for the heads-up

Muslim peace conference condemns terrorism

Thousands of Muslims have attended a peace conference in London which has condemned terrorism.

About 12,000 Muslims gathered at Wembley Arena for Islamic group Minhaj-ul-Quran's Peace for Humanity Conference. The conference launched a campaign to get one million people to sign an online declaration of peace by 2012.

Dr Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri said the conference would send a message that 10 years of extremist activity should end. Dr Tahir-ul-Qadri is the founder of Minhaj-ul-Quran and gave the keynote speech at the event, despite having received death threats after issuing a fatwa - or religious ruling - against terrorism last year. The cleric was repeatedly applauded during his address in which he said the "terrible" 9/11 attacks in the US had distorted perceptions of Islam over the past decade.

He told the audience: "In spite of statements and memorandum and condemnation of the terror, the voices of the 99% true, peace-loving Muslims have not been heard, they have been drowned out by the clamour and the noise of extremists. Islam has nothing to do with any act of terrorism. We reject every act of extremism and terrorism unconditionally."

The event, which took one year to organise, was attended by people from across the UK, many of whom arrived in coaches. Those who attended heard a series of lengthy and impassioned speeches, some in Arabic, from Islamic scholars denouncing terrorism and extremism.

Ghazala Hassan al-Qadri, president of the MQI Women's League, told attendees: "Islam teaches love, it teaches compassion, it teaches tolerance, it teaches mercy."

Another speaker - Egypt-based Islamic scholar Shaykh Hassan Mohi-ud-Din Qadri - told the conference: "Islam is a religion of justice, not a religion of injustice...is a religion of manners and co-operation, not a religion of extremism and radicalisation...is a religion of forgiveness and pardon, not a religion of brutality and revenge."

The audience heard pre-recorded messages of support from, amongst others, Prime Minister David Cameron, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, opposition leader Ed Miliband, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams. And there were prayers for peace from representatives from a number of different religions including the Bishop of Barking, the Rt Rev David Hawkins, Jewish rabbis and representatives from the Hindu, Buddhist and Sikh faiths.

The declaration of peace included a call for democracy and good governance in the Muslim world, respect for human rights, and alleviation of poverty throughout the world.

BBC

A solution to a non-existent problem

Kenza Drider, wearing a niqab, leaves a shop in Avignon, southern France

Cynical, desperate electioneering fuels growing Islamophobia in Europe

From the beginning of next month, it will be illegal for a Muslim woman in France to wear a full-face veil (niqab) in any public place. An opinion poll last week suggested that Marine LePen, the new leader of the far-right National Front, could win the first round of next year’s presidential elections in France. These two facts are not unconnected.

President Nicolas Sarkozy is in a panic as the National Front gains in the polls, for his own core vote is also on the right. He has responded by ordering a countrywide debate on Islam’s place in secular France, and he has made it quite clear which side he is on: he wants no minarets in France, he tells journalists, and no halal food in school canteens. But the new anti-niqab law is the centrepiece of his strategy.

It is a solution to a problem that does not exist. There are around five million Muslims in France, about 8 per cent of the population, but only a couple of hundred Muslim Frenchwomen wear the niqab in public. They probably shouldn’t drive, since all that paraphernalia severely restricts their field of vision, but in what sense is their occasional presence in public spaces a threat to society?

There are probably more British women wearing niqab in my small patch of London than there are French women wearing niqab in the entire country. In Camden Town, I see them in the supermarket, on the bus, in the street — and when I overhear them talking to their husbands or their kids, I notice that most of them have London accents.

That’s because most of the niqab-wearers are not immigrants. They are the British-born daughters of immigrants, and the fact they now appear in public wearing this extreme garb — which was not normally worn by women back in Pakistan, or Algeria, or wherever their parents came from — is part of the crisis that always affects second-generation immigrants everywhere.

The men of the conservative older generation are horrified as their daughters absorb the values of the larger society around them, and try desperately to isolate them from those influences. It was a losing battle for Italian and Jewish fathers in New York a hundred years ago, and it’s a losing battle for Algerian and Indian fathers in London and Paris now.

But these things take time to work out, and in the meantime a tiny minority of British Muslim women wear niqabs, and an even tinier minority of Muslim Frenchwomen. So why would a French government ban women wearing niqab from taking a bus, entering a shop, or even just walking down the street, on pain of a 150-euro ($200) fine?

In addition to a fine, the wicked transgressors will be obliged to attend a citizenship class that stresses the egalitarian values of the French republic, including gender equality. This is a very large sledgehammer being used to crack a very small nut. But it will have served its purpose if it gets Sarkozy re-elected.

The right is in the ascendant in French politics, and this has unleashed a wave of panic-mongering over “multiculturalism.” Assimilation of second- and third-generation immigrants is actually proceeding at the normal pace, but in the midst of the process it is possible to believe that the cultural turmoil is leading to a permanently divided society. Most people on the right do believe that.

Whoever can more convincingly claim to have the solution for this imaginary problem wins the right-wing vote, and the National Front is drawing ahead of Sarkozy’s Union for a Popular Movement (UMP). Under the leadership of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the National Front came second in the 2002 presidential election; under the leadership of his daughter Marine Le Pen it could do even better.

The recent opinion poll commissioned by Le Parisien newspaper gave her 23 per cent of the vote, while Sarkozy’s party and the Socialists got 21 per cent each. She has ditched the National Front’s neo-fascist and racist rhetoric in favour of a low-key, “common-sense” style that is having a real political impact.

But all she can do is force a run-off second round in which, like her father in 2002, she would be overwhelmingly defeated. French political parties are divided on many things, but they would all unite to keep the National Front from power.

The tide of Islamophobia is running strongly on the European right at the moment. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been trumpeting the failure of multiculturalism for the past six months, and British Prime Minister David Cameron recently added his voice to the chorus. It is only a cynical political stratagem, but it could have real consequences.

Left to their own devices, the various immigrant groups in these countries, including the Muslim groups, will assimilate to the general society in a couple of generations, as immigrants generally do. You can accelerate the process a little with the right government policies, but not much. However, you could stall it entirely by attacking the minority groups and driving them into cultural ghettoes. That’s the game that Sarkozy is playing now.

Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist who is published internationally.

thespec.com

Are Muslims free to follow Islam in Canary Wharf?

“If a person doesn’t know how to drive properly and crashes his car, it’s not the car’s fault. If people are practising religion in the incorrect way, that’s not the fault of the religion.”

So says Viqas Sheikh, a global treasury senior business analyst who has been working at Citi for five-and-a-half years. For him there is familiar ring to the words spoken by David Cameron in Munich recently.

“It’s simply a regurgitation of what Tony Blair and others have said – it’s nothing new,” he says. “The dangerous thing is the debate that he made about multiculturalism and the relationship he’s drawing to extremist ideology. It is a show of confusion on behalf of the government. They blame it on multiculturalism, but the deep-rooted problem is something else.”

Viqas, 29, was born in the UK and lived in Pakistan between the ages of 10 and 18, before returning here to complete university. He considers himself a British Muslim.

“I don’t think the two [British and Muslim] are incompatible. Then there’s the terms moderate or extremist – I’m neither, I’m a Muslim.”

Author, journalist and former Docklands columnist Kia Abdullah also falls outside this simple binary split of Islam.

“I’m what I call a liberal Muslim,” says Kia. “I don’t wear a headscarf or pray five times a day but at the same time I dress relatively modestly, I don’t drink alcohol or eat haram (forbidden) food and I’m quite conservative when it comes to things like promiscuity.”

She shares Viqas’ sense of concern about the Prime Minister’s sentiments.

“It made me feel deeply uncomfortable,” she adds. “He made some valid points about integration, but criticising multiculturalism as a root cause of forced marriage and radicalisation was ignorant and fatuous.

“Britain is known for respecting private freedoms – freedom to wear what you want, say what you want, live where you want, be who you want. Hindering these freedoms to create a nation of ‘vanilla flavoured’ people is not going to solve our problems. We need better integration, yes, but vilifying multiculturalism will not achieve it.”

Viqas, who did not want to be photographed, says there are no such tensions in his Canary Wharf workplace.

“A lot of companies have a facility for prayer [multi-faith rooms] or provision for halal food. And when you have that facility to be able to fulfil the obligations to be a Muslim – beyond that there shouldn’t be any other hardship in one’s day-to-day life. We make sure there is communication between the faiths and there isn’t that gap, which can give rise to animosity.”

While Viqas’ workplace may be harmonious, he’s aware that things don’t always run so cohesively.

“We don’t have it at Citi, but I do mix with a wide range of people throughout the City who feel that, on the basis of their faith, they have been discriminated against. It may well be that are considered high maintenance or their belief system is considered contrary.”

In the workplace Kia says she has not faced discrimination head-on either.

“I think ‘discrimination’ is too strong a word,” she says. “It’s far more subtle than that. When I worked in a management consultancy, I made most of my contacts by networking at after-work drinks at the local watering hole.

“If I didn’t feel comfortable in this type of environment – and many of my Muslim friends don’t – then my career would certainly have been hindered. I would not suggest that these meetings take place elsewhere, because they are part of British work culture, but I think that companies need to recognise that people from certain demographics are at a disadvantage.”

Viqas does not attend after-work drinks because of his beliefs, but he doesn’t consider this puts him at a disadvantage compared with colleagues.

“I don’t go to bars, and my colleagues respect that – you don’t have to take that extra step,” he says. “There are a number of Muslims in the UK who don’t think the way they live their lives is contrary to anything in the British value system. You won’t necessarily go to the pub on the weekend, but is that absolutely essential to being British?”

Kia believes the majority or Brits are tolerant of these differences and questions Baroness Warsi’s assertion that prejudice against Muslims has passed the ‘dinner-table test’.

“I’m not sure I agree with Baroness Warsi,” she says. “I think there are two main groups that carry prejudice against Muslims: those that identify with the EDL and BNP, and those at the other end of the spectrum who are very privileged and super-educated but who may not have any daily contact with Muslims and hence view them as a frightening entity of ‘other’. I don’t think these groups constitute the majority in this country – or at least I hope they don’t.”

Viqas asserts that problems can stem from a tendency for people to want to “formulate a genre of Muslim”.

“There’s a standard I have to follow in Islam; and I’m not going to change that for the convenience of other people. I don’t want to have impressed on me what I have to believe in – and that’s what David Cameron also did in the speech. It’s patronising.”

The Docklands

Thanks to NewsHound for the heads-up

EDL-speech rabbi calls for Chief TV debate

The rabbi who spoke at an English Defence League rally two months ago has apparently challenged Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks to a televised BBC debate on "Is Islam a religion of peace?"

Californian Nachum Shifren was the speaker at the far-right group's October rally outside the Israeli Embassy. He called Muslims "dogs" and criticised British community leaders and rabbis for speaking out against him, saying: "To all my Jewish brothers who have called me a Nazi… I say to them they don't have the guts to stand up here and take care of business."

Now Rabbi Shifren, who lost a bid for a Californian state senate seat, claims he is planning a TV debate with the Chief Rabbi on "the Islamification of Britain, cultural Marxism in western liberalism, multiculturalism and its effect on the host society".

In an email seen by the JC, Rabbi Shifren says he has set rules for the debate structure, to be followed by the Chief Rabbi and the BBC - despite no known interest in such a programme from either party. He demands that the debate should not be moderated or edited, with no "extraneous commentary." He adds: "The programme should not be advertised or announced using such inflammatory labelling as 'far-right 'extremist.' i.e. not served up in terms that suit the Marxist-Islamist agenda of the BBC.

"This is strictly a bout between two combatants from which the listener and viewer may draw their own conclusions." He also requests that no audience be present at the debate to avoid "Trotskyist structures."

No-one from the Chief Rabbi's office was available for comment.

Jewish Chronicle

English Defence League protest leads to 12 arrests

Twelve people have been arrested during a protest which attracted more than 800 people organised by the English Defence League in Buckinghamshire. The EDL, which says it opposes "militant Islam", organised the protest in Aylesbury's Market Square earlier.

A police spokesman said that "on the whole" the protest had been peaceful but there had been "some disorder". Eight of the people arrested were being held on suspicion of carrying offensive weapons. Police said there were fewer protestors than the EDL had anticipated. The group has held demonstrations over recent months in Manchester, Bolton and Derby.

Supt Richard List, of Aylesbury police, said: "We made it very clear to the EDL at the outset that we would not tolerate any disorder on the day and that there would be a significant police presence. The police operation will continue until we are totally satisfied that there are no risks or threats to public safety."

A counter protest was held in Vale Park earlier, but had since dispersed.

BBC

BNP serve to attack Britishness

What a paradox we witnessed last Friday when the most abhorrent political party in our history, the BNP, launched their manifesto on St George's Day.

I am sure that Nick Griffin must be aware that St George is not an "indigenous" Briton. Indeed, St George was most probably born in Eastern Turkey, became a senior soldier in the Roman Imperial Guard before being executed for his Christian beliefs on April 23, 303. He is not only the patron saint of England but the saint of at least seven other countries including Ethiopia, Russia and Georgia.

Under the immigration policy of the BNP, St George may well be our Saint but he would not be allowed into this country. How do they square that circle? The BNP define an "indigenous" Briton as someone whose "...ancestors were the earliest settlers here after the last great Ice Age..." How many people reading this would pass that test? I know I and my family would not.

They also talk about the "Threat to our security posed by Islamism. What a ridiculous view! Terrorism is our enemy, not Islam. The attackers on 9/11 did not differentiate between any religious beliefs...many Muslims lost their lives on that terrible day, just as other Muslims have been killed on other attacks.

St George symbolises all that is great about our country and the way we have always integrated with people of different cultural backgrounds throughout our history.

The actions of Westminster politicians in recent years is disgraceful and we must send them a powerful message at this election, leaving them in no doubt that we are all disgusted by their behaviour. But let's not legitimise parties like the BNP, who, rather than represent the core of all our Britishness, actually attack the very heart of it.

Redditch and Alcester Standard

Five points on the BNP’s 2010 manifesto

Despite the BNP’s proud boast to have produced “one of the most comprehensive and detailed manifestos in its history” there’s very little new in the document they’ve just released.

Some central trends that jump out at first glance:

• They remain the same race based party they always have been. The BNP is keen to emphasise that they would expel illegal immigrants, but reading between the lines there is obviously a much more sinister end goal. There is an ominous mention of a “long-term resettlement programme” for third world nationals (pg 20), the clause-28 proscription against “the promotion of racial integration in schools and the media” (pg 22) remains party policy, and there is an even a suggestion that the BNP regards all immigration since 1997 as invalid, needing to be ‘reviewed’ (pg 16).
• No compromise with the electorate*. We expected the BNP to significantly row back their more extreme, absurd and authoritarian policies in this manifesto in order to try and appear more moderate to the general public. Instead, the vast majority of their policies remain the same. The BNP still want to legalise guns (pg 41). They still want to censor popular television shows (pg 45). The media is still to be put under greater “democratic … control” (pg 43) and the death penalty still brought back (pg 48). There’s even a new one – the BNP wants to create a new penal colony for the worst criminals on the island of South Gerorgia (pg 48).
• The BNP is trying to excite mass anti Muslim bigotry. During this election campaign one of the BNP’s central strategies has been an attempt to cynically take advantage of the fear of extremist Islamic terrorism. In this manifesto, the BNP seem to cross the line into a grotesque, racist and sectarian full out war on Islam, completely at odds with any sense of traditional British tolerance and liberalism. Not only will the burka and further mosques be banned but as “Islam is by its very nature incompatible with… western democracy… Islamic immigration [must] be halted and reversed” (pg 30).
• The manifesto contradicts itself extensively. Is the money for foreign aid to be used for paying for the BNP’s resettlement programme (pg 21) or paying off the national debt? (pg 68) Or is it for ending poverty in Britain? (pg 64) Or perhaps paying for the NHS? (pg 52) If science is so important to the nation (pg 56), then how come the BNP wants to cut off the industries of the future such as biotech or green energy? GM crops are banned on pg 59 and wind farms stopped on pg 62
• None of the numbers add up. The BNP seem to believe that regularly sprinkling in the magic words “revenue neutral” is enough to make their sums work. But with expensive new plans for schools, hospitals and the military, and commitments to cut income tax, council tax, VAT, student loans, car and fuel tax (oh, and the deficit), its not quite clear how this is supposed to work. Despite what the BNP might have you believe, cutting foreign aid will not plug all budget holes – we’ll be looking in more details at their specific numbers later.

In short, the BNP’s platform remains roughly where it was yesterday, with no change from the authoritarian and racialist ideology that puts ordinary families last.

* Or the mainstream. Or sanity.

Nothing British

Griffin launches election campaign by cynically exploiting war dead

Griffin smirks while the bodies of soldiers are brought home via Wootton Bassett

Immediate withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan will be one of the primary themes of the British National Party’s general election campaign. Speaking on BNP television, Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, sets out a blatantly populist stall for the election, which he believes will be called in late February or very early March.

Griffin hopes to exploit what he sees as an “enormous gap” between the views of the public and “politicians” on Afghanistan. The second main issue for the BNP, not surprisingly, will be “mass immigration and Islam in particular”, a subject at which he intends to go “hammer and tongs” to show the public that the BNP has not “gone soft”. He may also have an eye on limiting the damage to his party’s reputation among its racist supporters caused by his decision, forced by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), to open BNP membership to non-white people.

The third theme will be Europe. While recognising that Europe plays a lesser role in the general election in the minds of the public, Griffin explains that it is very important for a section of the public that the BNP aims to attract, namely those voters who are not sure whether to vote BNP or for the UK Independence Party.

As for the economy, the issue on which most people will focus, Griffin dismisses it on the grounds that it is “not feasible for us to get across the fact that a nationalist economic policy is the only way out of the mess”.

In other words, the BNP will go for votes by exploiting policies chosen for that purpose alone, rather than present a serious political programme to the electorate. Griffin appears to dismiss voters as too stupid to understand his economic arguments, though the reality is that the BNP’s mishmash of economic nationalism, fascism and opposition to trade would totally wreck the British economy.

Griffin states that his party is not yet ready for the election, though the main leaflets have been designed. There is also some fundraising to be done, he admits, before moving on quickly to another subject.

Money may well be a problem. The BNP went into the European election campaign in a dire financial state and spent large sums on its misnamed “Battle for Britain”. Before the election last June the party pledged that in the event of victory the party would contest every seat in the country in the general election.

That would commit the party to £325,000 in candidates’ deposits alone, much of which would be lost as the BNP will not overcome the 5% threshold for return of deposits in most constituencies. Probably realising the foolishness of standing hundreds of no hopers, Griffin backtracked, grabbing the opportunity to blame the three-month freeze on recruitment of new party members that he had agreed as a result of the EHRC’s court case.

Exaggerating wildly as usual, Griffin claimed the EHRC had cost the BNP a potential £105,000 in membership fees from 3,000 people keen to join up. “Those lost funds would have allowed the BNP to drive its way through the quiet Christmas period and launch an impressive General Election campaign the likes of which have never been seen in Britain,” wrote Griffin in an email to supporters on 12 December.

“As soon as we did make a breakthrough, the Equalities Commission pounced in what was a carefully calculated effort to make the BNP unable to contest every seat in the country,” the arch conspiracy theorist continued.

As a result the party had to “drastically scale back our General Election plans…If you want to blame someone, blame the tax-guzzling foreigner Trevor Phillips,” said the racist, before going on to appeal to existing BNP members to upgrade their membership to “gold” for “a measly £30” or take out life membership for a more painful £465.

One pot of money readily available to Griffin is the MEPs’ communications allowance for him and his fellow MEP, Andrew Brons. Each has £20,000 to spend on publicity about their work in the European Parliament and their constituency. While careful to acknowledge that the money cannot be used to promote the BNP, Griffin claims that when people hear of the two MEPs’ work, it will “have an effect”. The A3 folded glossy leaflets for the two constituencies will be ready for distribution “early in the new year”, revealed Griffin, providing “some cracking publicity”.

Leaflets will be an important part of the BNP election effort, but the BNP will not do telephone canvassing, Griffin promised, claiming that people do not like it. Instead BNP canvassers “will knock on doors”. Presumably he thinks voters are happier with a bunch of heavies at their front doors. Probably the real reasons the BNP has rejected telephone canvassing are that none of the sources of the necessary data would deal with the racist party and that the party’s canvassers sound even worse on the phone than on the doorstep.

In choosing Afghanistan as one of his election themes, Griffin must hope that voters will overlook the contradiction with the party’s much repeated claims that Islam is trying to colonise Britain and Europe and impose Sharia, and that the Muslim community harbours terrorists.

In his constituency newsletter Griffin denounces the war in Afghanistan arguing that British troops should only be sent to war “when the British people or British interests are being threatened”. Yet the BNP maintains that Islam has been engaged in a war on Western civilisation since its inception. Griffin lumps together the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, ignoring the fact that, unlike the Iraq war, the war in Afghanistan was a direct response to the terror attacks on the USA of 11 September 2001, with the aim, whether or not realistic, of preventing al-Qaeda using Afghanistan as an operational and training base.

Since then, Britain too has come under attack from al-Qaeda. Even where the individual terrorists were born in Britain, they were generally trained in or directed from Afghanistan or the Pakistan border area. There are good cases to be made that the war in Afghanistan may be unwinnable, or that Britain and the US have not committed sufficient resources, or that we should not support the Karzai administration, among other things, but it is unarguable that Islamist terrorism affects British people and British interests.

Islamophobia is one of the guiding principles of the BNP except when it conflicts with the latest attempt to win votes, it seems.

Rather than present a reasoned standpoint, Griffin resorts to emotion. Launching the party’s campaign to “Support our troops, bring them home” just before Christmas, Griffin described a “devastated, grieving mother” who spoke to him “recently” about the death of her “beautiful son” while serving in Afghanistan, and apparently implored Griffin to “help our boys out there or bring them home”.

“These are the words now carved into my heart, the words of a grieving mother, words that I will carry with me to my grave and words that made me take a solemn oath to do every-thing in my power to honour, support and protect our fighting heroes who have been abandoned both on the battlefields of Afghanistan and back here at home,” gushed Griffin.

He went on to accuse “Brown, Cameron and Clegg” of being “evil leaders … liars and con artists [who] started and backed the illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan …”. That none of Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg were leaders of their respective parties in 2001, and that Clegg has consistently opposed the war in Iraq, must have passed Griffin by in his excitement over a new cause for an appeal for money.

Announcing a “daring and innovative strategy to expose the hypocrisy, lies and cover-ups relating to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,” Griffin promises “a wave of activism, publicity material and direct action” which “will send shockwaves through the old parties and the traitors within the media”.

It will consist of four phases. Firstly a “full-colour well-designed 12-page brochure, detailing the crimes against our soldiers” will be sent to “every MP, MSP, MLA, and AM as well as every member of the House of Lords and also every registered journalist in the UK”. Secondly, the BNP will send “10,000 brochures to each key town and city in every one of The BNP’s 12 regions”.

The third stage will be, wait for it, a “nationwide truth tour” using “our very own ‘bought and paid for’ professional advertising lorry”. That’s the “truth truck”, better known as the lie lorry, a vehicle that the BNP does not own but leases from the hardline anti-abortion campaigner Jim Dowson. The tour will be followed by BNP TV films.

Anyone who thinks they have read this before would be right. The campaign has been recycled, almost word for word, from the BNP’s “Racism cuts both ways” initiative of autumn 2008. The 12-page outrage-ously Islamophobic brochure on that occasion listed 167 people whom the BNP alleged had been murdered as a result of anti-white racism, although only in a handful of the cases was there any clear indication of a racial motive and in several the perpetrator was white not black.

The BNP claims to be different. Too true. No other party would go into a general election on the back of racism, Islamophobia, a recycled clapped out campaign, nothing to say on the issues that really concern the electorate and a lead policy selected solely to pull votes from the UKIP.

Searchlight

Children create cross-cultural harmony

Where's the best place to fight the attitudes of the BNP? Why, in primary schools, of course

The children of Shirley Manor, a primary school in a run-down part of Bradford, an area far-right activists call a powerbase, are stunned. They have just returned from a visit to a school in another part of Bradford, where almost every pupil is Asian. "But actually, they like pizza," the children report. "And they watch television. And one has an Xbox!"

Almost all these children are white British; some of their parents have played a part in the British National party's electoral successes in Bradford. For most of them, it has been their first social interaction with British Muslims. Barriers came tumbling down as representatives of the two schools began to list the things they had in common. Friendships were formed. "When are we meeting them again?" is the question ringing in teachers' ears.

Shirley Manor is one of a host of primary schools across Britain emerging as an unexpected frontline in the fight to stem rising support for the BNP. As battle lines are drawn for local and national elections, schools in areas with BNP councillors, or where BNP candidates are finding support, are taking radical steps to change the hearts and minds of future generations of voters – and their parents.

Predominantly white schools in deprived areas as far apart as Bradford, Solihull and Essex – all regions where the BNP has gained a presence on local councils over the last decade – are initiating programmes of exchange visits with inner-city schools that are predominantly non-white. The visits provide stimulus for public art projects and performances, to which parents are invited, celebrating diversity in Britain and condemning racism.

The action is not nationally co-ordinated. A series of independent schemes have come to life during the current academic term, most aiming for completion before the mooted May elections.

For example, this job advert was found in November on the internet noticeboard artsjobs, for a creative practitioner to work on a project with pupils at a primary school in Solihull, West Midlands: "The school is in an extremely mono-cultural area of high deprivation ... The area has a BNP councillor." The project? To oversee a series of exchange visits with a Birmingham school that is "100% Muslim", then help pupils to create a piece of "outdoor/environmental art or sculpture", to go on public display by May 2010.

The school is located at the centre of a large estate in an area of Solihull called Chelmsley Wood. The ward's BNP councillor won his seat in 2006 and is due for re-election in May.

This year's school development plan at a primary school in Epping Forest, Essex, where seven BNP members now sit on the district council and where around 90% of the school's population is white British, stated: "[In] 2008/2009 there was a rise in the number of recorded racial incidents. We need to raise levels of tolerance for all children…". The school is forging links with a primary school in Enfield described as "mainly Turkish".

Both the Solihull and the Epping Forest schemes are new; the content is still being negotiated and organisers are treading softly – as one commented, "wary of upsetting the parents", in other words, the parents whose support enabled the BNP to gain a foothold in the first place.

In Bradford, Shirley Manor was running exchange programmes as long ago as 2004 – the year a BNP councillor won a seat in the ward of Wyke, where the school is located. "Our pupils never really mixed with Asian children," says Hannah Brown, a year 4 and 5 teacher who has overseen the exchange programme. "They think they're from another planet." She says some pupils arrive at her school with "some" racism entrenched, but also considerable confusion: "They hear words bandied about and aren't sure what they mean."

Shirley Manor is at the beginning of a new relationship with Thornbury primary, a considerably larger school nearer the city where most pupils are of Pakistani heritage and nearly all are learning English as an additional language. The schools have been brought together by the Schools Linking Network, an organisation based in Bradford that is now rolling out its services across Britain. With funding from the Department for Children, Schools and Families the SLN is underwriting the cost to both schools of managing an exchange programme, paying for additional staff and coaches.

The two schools will first come together in a community centre for a day of games and activities. Everything is designed to let the children discover parallels in their lives, such as a game where you have to perform a certain action if, say, you have two brothers. "By lunchtime you see groups forming," says Brown. "Like boys who support a certain football team. It's never forced."

She makes a point of discussing discriminatory language with the children before the trip, and will encourage them to ask the Thornbury pupils: "Is this word offensive to you?"

The pupils will meet again in subsequent weeks when they visit each other's schools. In previous years, deep connections have formed. Brown tells the story of two girls crying at the end of the final visit; they later met up outside school. Many continue to correspond by email. One legacy of these exchanges is wall displays that line the corridors of both schools. Pupils create cut-out paper dolls of each other. The multiracial dolls will be mounted side-by-side, their hands touching.

Previous exchange visits have changed children's outlook, says Brown, citing an activity in which pupils define what makes someone British. When first asked, the children of Shirley Manor tend to say you are British if you are born in Britain and speak English. Following the exchange visits last year, year 5 worked together to word a new conclusion: "If you are prepared to follow rules and be a good citizen, you deserve to be British."

Angus King, headteacher at Thornbury, says his predominantly Asian population can be as monocultural pupils as in Wyke. The implicit danger is militant Islam. "Extremism can exist in any group," he points out. "It comes from a lack of knowledge and understanding. The children at my school don't normally meet white British kids en masse. I think the big thing is to give children the opportunity to meet other children."

Brown says it is essential that this work is conducted at primary level. "If it's left too late, the views of those around them are imposed," she says.

But politics is never mentioned. "The project gives the children information and encourages them to make decisions," says Brown. "We would never say, 'You mustn't vote BNP'."

She is now making plans to hold an adult "linking night" next year, in which the parents of children at the two schools will meet each other for the first time.

Guardian

Cradley Heath mosque burnt to the ground by arsonists

Cradley Heath’s Muslim community is appealing for help after its mosque was burnt to the ground by arsonists

A fire engulfed the Cradley Heath Mosque and Islamic Centre in Plant Street on Boxing Day destroying the building and the religious countless books inside. It is the second time in five years that the building has been targeted by arsonists and police are hunting the culprits.

The West Midlands Fire Service first reported that the blaze on Plant Street had destroyed 'industrial units' in Plant Street but when the smoke cleared it became obvious the building was a mosque.

The mosque was a thriving part of the community with 400 worshippers using it and classes of children being taught there. The worshippers are now trying to find a new place to worship as the new Mosque they have being building alongside the old one will not be ready for use for several years.

Basharat Ali, secretary of the mosque and education centre, said: “This is not the first time we have been targeted, there was a similar attack four or five years ago. The building has been completely destroyed and all the books we use with the children have been damaged by water.”

He added: “The new building is under construction, it is a shell inside and it is due to open in a few years.”

Halesowen News

What's in a minaret?

A minaret isn't much to get worked up about. It is a tall, ornate tower appended to a mosque, which is sometimes used to broadcast calls to prayer. Yet, in the arguments of those who wished to ban the construction of minarets, thereby singling out Islam for restriction and opprobrium, they amount to a form of 'colonisation'. Whether that 'colonisation' is identified as a threat to conservative or left-wing values depends on the audience. Some members of the Swiss Socialists justified their support for the minaret ban on feminist grounds, and the feminist writer Joan Smith has attempted to lend this appalling stance some respectability. The Lega Nord, meanwhile, calling for a similar move in Italy, justifies the campaign on the grounds that Italy must remain, like Switzerland, Christian and white. Conservative writers like Michael Burleigh claim that it represents a stand against alleged infringements on European 'democracy'.

The language of 'colonization' is very important in the racist right's lexicon. These Lega Nord posters remind people that 'immigration' to the Americas resulted in Native Americans living in reservations - seriously implying, therefore, that white Europeans might become the victims of a genocide. It is also a language that the BNP is given to use, and of course, it was dramatically pictorialised in the icons of the anti-minaret campaign in Switzerland, with minarets depicted as black missile-like objects covering a Swiss flag, with an ominous looking woman wearing a burqa in the foreground. One cannot help but notice the 'bad faith' involved here. Muslims tend to be so targeted precisely because where they are least likely to be assertive, most isolated, and least in a position to defend themselves. They are targeted as a minority, with poor resources for mobilising on their own behalf, not as a colonial power. While we're about it, might we also notice the militarist implications of such a language? For if Europe is supposedly being colonised, in a way that threatens a fate akin to that of the injuns, then a war of liberation is surely the implied solution. The thugs marching on mosques across Britain, and the fascists who think they don't go far enough, understand this perfectly well.

A corollary implication is that those who do not rally to the war against 'Islamic colonisation', 'Islamic imperialism' or the 'Islamification of Europe', as it is variously called, are traitors. Now you might think that such language is the preserve of fascists and nutters, ultra-reactionaries, racists, EDL thugs, the BNP, etc. You would be wrong. For example, The Express, expostulating about its phoney 'revealations' about government funding for "fanatics who want to kill us", takes the logical step from its fabrications and fulminates: "It does not take a brilliant detective to work out what is going on here, just an ordinarily observant person: Britain's cultural identity is being systematically dismantled by a government of traitors." It is true that the Express takes the most extreme racist line toward Muslims of any of the tabloids, but this is an unabashed plagiarism from the pages of the British Nationalist. As it happens, the charge against New Labour is not only wrong on the facts, but it is politically perverse. No mainstream party has done more to capitulate to racist ideology than the one presently in command. Gordon Brown's dog-whistling about 'local houses for local people', following his tremendously successful 'British Jobs for British Workers' gambit, has been followed by more 'tough but fair' language and promises of concrete measures to deal with immigration. Brown is particularly concerned, after all, about 'Britishness' and 'British values'. Nothing saddens him more than the idea that we can't take some pride in the achievements of the empire, and of Anglo-Saxon culture in general. The allegation that this government is insensible of "Britain's cultural identity" (which appears to consist of being white, Christian, bigoted, ignorant, full of shit, and proud of it) is nonsense.

The main thing that vexes the Islamophobes, supposedly, is violence. If pressed, some of them will readily concede that any violence by Muslims is practised by a negligible minority and by no means incriminates the majority. (Do not even bother asking them to weigh it against the colossal violence of Anglo-American imperialism, which has incited such relatively miniscule violence as has taken place on the European continent.) The majority, though, will insist that such violence, even if practised by a minority, is driven by their commitment to doctrines that are mainstream in Islam. Thus: 'we are not against Islam, just extremism - but then, isn't Islam itself extreme'? Their attention to violent 'extremism', though, and that of the media and political class in general, is severely curtailed by their obsession with Muslims. Tell me if this sounds familiar. A man is found in possession of explosives, guns, ammunition, and other weapons. He is arrested, charged with terrorism offenses, and is convicted. But he is not a Muslim. He is white, and a BNP member, so his case doesn't grab the headlines. No one notices that the BNP has a demonstrated propensity for churning out terrorists. Let's try another one. A pair of students are severely beaten after attempting to defend a woman from a threatening gang. Suppose the gang is a Muslim gang, leering at a white woman, and the students are Ben Sherman wearing Brits on their way to play darts or something equally ridiculous. You would expect headlines from that. Predictably, of course, that isn't the case: the students are Muslims, as is the woman they were defending, and the attackers are white racists who were taunting the woman for wearing a hijab. So, it's not much cop, especially since most newspaper editors have it in their heads that wearing a hijab is itself a culpable and subversive act, which can at best be 'tolerated'. Incidents of both type are increasingly routine, as is their general oblivion in the welter of competing, largely fabricated, stories about the menace of Islam.

Given the pace of reaction across Europe, and the growing hold of this specious, essentialist garbage about Islam, it is unsurprising that an innocuous and sometimes rather beautiful structure can, if the PR is effective, become so suffused with peril and portent for so many. But the minarets are just the start of it. No Islamophobe would be content with what is, at the moment, a symbolic gesture, a super-sized fuck-you. There will be numerous intermediate steps. Sarkozy and his allies may be next with the idea of a ban on the 'veil'. Someone else may take up the original intended issue of the Swiss reactionaries, and try to outlaw halal butchery. But if the intended effect is to intimidate Europe's Muslim population and ultimately reduce their numbers, then it can only be a matter of time before 'peace walls', ghettos, and forcible expulsion are on the agenda - presuming no one lifts a finger to protest in the meantime. Some Swiss anti-racists have already taken to the streets. They are, at the moment, small in number. But they could not possibly be as small in stature, as pathetic, as ridiculous, as paltry in almost every respect, as that majority of Swiss voters who cast such a petty and vindictive vote.

Lenin's Tomb

Can the BBC shirk its responsibility if anti-Muslim attacks increase?

I was glad to see the panellists and members of the audience confront British National Party (BNP) Leader, Nick Griffin, head on during the BBC Question Time, with regards to his despicable views of the Nazi Holocaust and ethnic minorities earlier this month. However, I was equally raged when asked about his views on Islam, he was left to openly preach hate and ignorance without any challenge whatsoever from neither the panellists nor members of the audience. A sad sight indeed.

While most commentators are consumed with how he came across long after the programme, with his unchallenged remarks on Islam, it will inevitably lead to more and more attacks on British Muslims. In recent months the so-called English Defence League have openly been demonstrating throughout the country against British Muslims. We have witnessed attacks on mosques in Luton, Sunderland, Woolwich and recently in Bishops Stortford. The national press are also at it. Recently the Daily Express ran with the headline, ‘Now Muslims Demand Full Sharia Law’, clearly an exaggeration. The alarming rise in Islamophobic attacks on British Muslims, sadly fanned by some parts of the media, is flourishing unchallenged by politicians as well as security forces alike.

Under the current climate it was clearly a serious error of judgement on the part of the BBC to give the BNP a national platform. Today the situation facing British Muslims is identical to that of the American McCarthyite era in the 1950s. We are merely seen through the prism of security; surrounded with suspicion and continuously faced with claims of disloyalty that our way of life is incompatible with the British way of life.

No. We are part and parcel of this society and our contributions speak for themselves - not least the Muslim soldiers who fought for Britain during the First and Second World Wars. Yet we are always misunderstood. Yes, there are a handful of Muslims who wrongly, for example, call for Shari’ah Law in the UK. But one bad apple should not equate an entire community.

The BNP and far-right fascists are concealing their true colour under a veil by attacking British Muslims and Islam (because we are an easy target), but they will soon move to the rest of the “non-indigenous” population. By allowing Griffin a seat on their flagship political programme, the BBC has given the once convicted criminal his much craved legitimacy and recognition.

Many commentators have said that ‘the only way to defeat the BNP’s ideas is by having them out in the open and properly contested’. Of course we all agree. But don’t give them a national platform with 8 million viewers. It was completely the wrong setting. If he is to be robustly challenged, let it be in local community centres up and down the country; not a short debate on a panel alongside real mainstream panellists. It has created an unprecedented interest in the BNP which the recent YouGov poll in the Daily Telegraph clearly shows. 22% of people questioned now “seriously consider” voting the BNP. The taboo of voting for the BNP vanished overnight. The BBC cannot shirk its responsibility.

During the summer I was travelling as a Global Fellow of the Prime Minister: learning about culture in India. Every Indian I spoke to said how brilliant, open and free they thought Britain was: as one student said, “The UK is the real land of opportunity.” While there, the Indian media and public were gripped by reports of racist attacks on Indian students in Australia. One student where I was teaching said: “We should cut all ties with Australia until they act.” The image of Australia is now tainted in India. Sadly, I think the image of our country will now be tainted internationally too.

As a young British Muslim, I feel the saga surrounding the BNP and Question Time marked a dark period in our country’s history. A dark week in fact for democracy. Because democracy is not about giving a platform for one to openly preach hate and vilify a whole community without debate. It sadly marked a grave period for mainstream political opinion and a rise for far-right extremism. At the end of the day: there is only one community who will suffer: the Muslim Community.

I, as well as many British Muslims up and down the country, feel let down. Let down by the silence on the panel and in the audience of the unchallenged Griffin attack on Islam, and let down by the BBC for allowing the media hype. As the Guardian wrote, it was “a once in a generation PR opportunity.”

Make no mistake. British Muslims will be left picking up all the pieces of the BBC’s decision. And frankly, from anger, the sentiment amongst British Muslims is now turning to more alienation, disenfranchisement and mistrust with resulting negative implications for our society. No one seems to be challenging the fact that the Far Right are using Muslim extremism as a pretence to gain mainstream following. It appears our politicians and the media alike do not seem to appreciate the real threat the BNP and other far-right fascist groups are posing to British Muslims and for that matter our society.

Tragically, Griffin’s appearance on the Question Time has played into the hands of those who seek to demonise Islam and its teachings. By leaving Griffin’s attacks unchallenged, the BBC has recklessly added fuel to an already ignited fire. And for that the BBC should be held responsible, if as I suspect, there is a rise in anti-Muslim attacks.

Kawsar Zaman is Vice-Chair, Youth Committee, Muslim Council of Britain

The Muslim News

Prey for the BNP

The Sikhs who join in the hatred of Muslims are deluded if they expect to avoid racial exclusion

Rajinder Singh, a British Sikh with an extreme dislike of Muslims, is, according to the BNP, "the kind of immigrant you want if you're going to have them". And if, as expected, the party members vote to allow ethnic minorities to join, Singh will be the first to be conferred this "honour". Sikh organisations have dismissed him – and fellow BNP wannabe "Ammo Singh" (a pseudonym) – as unrepresentative, and it is easy to write them off as self-hating lunatics or pranksters. But to do so is to obscure the larger realities of how race, religion and hate operate.

What has been lost in the storm over Nick Griffin's BBC appearance and the debate over the freedom to voice hatred in the guise of "white rights" is that modern racism survives through a parasitical alliance of vicious groups and ideologies, each of which thinks it is superior to and more entitled to preservation and growth than the others. What they share is a commitment to delusions of absolute racial or religious grandeur and purity even as they compete for victim status.

The two Sikhs' hostility to Islam is strong enough for them to overlook the contempt in which the BNP ultimately holds all racial minorities. Communities in Britain with links to the Indian subcontinent have, over time, seceded from their rich shared heritage and the assertive "Asian" banner under which they fought successfully for their rights in the 1960s and 1970s. Dispersed into the sectarian religious identities of Sikh, Hindu and Muslim, they have all but forgotten how to mobilise together against the threat of an opportunistic ethnic majoritarianism that does not, ultimately, make fine distinctions among those it perceives as outsiders.

Generalising labels like "Asian" may have their drawbacks but, as Arun Kundnani of the Institute of Race Relations notes of Sunrise Radio's bizarre decision to drop "Asian" from its banner under sustained pressure from extremist groups like the World Hindu Council, the hope underlying such disaffiliation is that "racist whites could be persuaded to exclude Hindus and Sikhs from their hatred, and focus instead solely on Muslims". A 2006 Runnymede Trust survey claims that as many as 80% of Hindus and Sikhs in Britain wished to be seen as specifically distinct from Muslims. "Don't Freak, I'm a Sikh", urged T-shirts printed after the 7 July bombings.

Griffin's assertion that "many" Hindus and Sikhs support the BNP is a wild exaggeration. But we need to face up to the messy reality of a society where ethno-religious fragmentation and tensions between minority groups work to the advantage of majority chauvinism. Kundnani points out that as early as 2002 the BNP was able to persuade a tiny Sikh faction called the Shere-e-Punjab to participate in its anti-Muslim campaign. Even if such collaborators are a tiny fringe, minority communities need to be aware of the ways in which their participation in divisive categories and separatist communal warfare only strengthens the positions of the racists who seek to subordinate them entirely.

Anti-immigrant views among migrants are not new, but what extremisms also share is an exaggerated fear that other groups are numerically overwhelming theirs. When Sikh-Muslim gang fights broke out in Slough, the language used mimicked the defensive territorial language of the BNP. "Muslims run Slough," one gang member insisted at the time. "Why are Sikhs coming from outside?"

Ammo Singh told the BBC, which has made a habit of using fringe groups as representatives of entire communities, that Islam was planning to take over Britain through "a combination of immigration, high birth rate and conversion".

Rajinder Singh, like many Hindus and Sikhs, has invoked the 1947 partition of India, in which he lost his father, as the cause of his enmity towards Muslims. This selective emphasis conveniently obscures two facts. The first is that it was the British empire and its policies of divide and rule which culminated in the partition that was its last official act. The second is that all three communities are fully responsible for the horrific butchery, bloodletting and rape that followed. Rather than mourning the tragedy of partition, men like Rajinder Singh seek to re-enact it in Britain, once again under the aegis of British racial supremacism.

The time has come for us to recognise racial and religious hatred in all its manifestations for what it is and take a stand against it – alongside right-thinking whites – not only when it is directed at us, but also when it is undertaken in our name. The colour line hasn't disappeared yet, but the real struggle is between fascist hatreds and humane solidarity.

Comment is free

Southampton fans targeted in English Defence League recruitment drive

A far-right group is attempting to recruit Saints fans to its ranks, a Daily Echo investigation has uncovered.

The English Defence League (EDL) last month launched a recruitment drive in Southampton to enlist football fans to march against “Islamic extremism”. The league, whose demonstrations in London, Luton and Birmingham led to violence, has infiltrated supporter’s online forums and the terraces of St Mary’s Stadium. Concerned Saints bosses have condemned the group and brought it to the attention of Hampshire police, Southampton City Council, Hampshire FA and football’s antiracism campaign Kick it Out.

Southampton Itchen MP John Denham, who is in charge of promoting inter-faith harmony for the Government, last night branded the group “troublemakers” and said he was confident most fans would have nothing to do with them.

The Echo can reveal Saints this week ordered Facebook to remove the club’s crest from an EDL campaign group founded on the social networking website. By yesterday 175 people had signed up to the “Southampton FC branch of the EDL”, which claims it wants to peacefully protest against “militant Islam within our shores”.

Desperate to disassociate itself from the fringe group, Saints were last night seeking legal advice to have the name Southampton FC removed from the website page.

A Saints spokesman said: “Southampton Football Club wholeheartedly condemns this type of racist activity. We were made aware of this group, and immediately took the relevant steps to ensure that any implied affiliation was eradicated. Further to this, we have notified members of the club’s Racism Just Ain’t Saintly committee of our concerns, and asked that these are passed on to the Premier League and Football League to make other clubs aware of these activities. This is something the club will be monitoring in the future as it clearly conflicts with our principles of a united, cohesive and integrated community.”

The right-wing radicals, whose emblem is a St George’s Cross emblazoned on a shield, hit the headlines in recent months after they fought running battles with anti-fascists protesters.

Saints fans were first invited to join the newly formed group on September 17 by a local organiser who goes by the online name of “Bigtonsfc”. In a posting on the supporter’s website saintsweb.co.uk he said they were a “fast expanding” group who “have had enough of Muslim extremists being allowed to shout about murdering British people and ruining our soldiers’ homecomings”.

It sparked an online debate about the pros and cons of the league that has continued for the past two weeks, however most fans appeared to dismiss the approach.

On the EDL’s own website, members have discussed the desire to organise a demonstration in Southampton. One poster also said a “few Southampton lads” were going to march in a protest planned for Manchester next Saturday.

A spokesman for United Against Fascists, (UAF) which has clashed violently with the EDL over the past two months, described the league as a “threat” and said news that Southampton FC was being targeted was a “very worrying development”.

“They claim they are not racist, but all of the evidence points in the opposite direction. There is no doubt that these are a group of hooligans who have decided they are going to go round multiracial areas to stir up trouble and attack Muslims,” the spokesman said.

Southern Daily Echo

Militant Islam and Militant Fascism

The English Defense League (EDL) that organized an anti-Islam demonstration on Saturday September 5, profusely denies being a fascist group. The motto that they proclaim is “peacefully protesting against militant Islam” and they advertise themselves as a universal body for anyone who opposes “those who wish us harm” and the group invites “people of all colors, faiths, all Citizens of England and the UK” to participate in their activities.

It almost sounds admirable. Who wouldn’t oppose harm-doers? Unfortunately, the issue it is not that simple.

A militant means someone who is combative, particularly in the name of a particular cause. I am the first person to oppose attacks such as those on September 11 in the US or July 7 in the UK. But we are being conned into believing that there is only one type of militancy. Why is it that there is no such term as Christian militancy? The acts of the US government in Iraq are militant. So why is it that we should oppose so-called “militant Islam” alone? Either we support militancy or we do not. If we condemn it then it should be condemned universally, regardless of who is committing the action.

If a nation carries out militant acts then it can only expect that it will face a militant resistance. For fear of being misunderstood, this is not an excuse for terrorism; it is simply logical that if violence is used by one party, the other side will react similarly. In the war-hungry world that we have created, violence is seen as a quick solution to everything, but is actually a lazy attempt, which more often than not achieves little. Violence begets violence. If the English Defense League wants to eradicate militancy then we ought to condemn it universally. This is the first mistake the EDL makes. It targets one group of militants as opposed to militancy in general.

Another problem with the EDL is that it advertises itself as universal, almost as if it wants to seduce Muslims into joining them because the EDL considers that “Islamic Fundamentalists” and fascists “use the banner of Islam to hide behind thus deforming and defacing the religion.” Hold up. According to eyewitnesses, this is the very same group that was chanting anti-Mohamed slogans at their protest. Hardly pays tribute to the true nature of Islam that they are ever so concerned with preserving. Indeed this attempt at connecting to the Muslim community is frankly offensive. Their feeble attempt at appearing decent seems as if it is straight out of Islam for Dummies. Excuse the language class for a minute and think about it: the very term fundamental means “relating to the foundation.” The EDL states that they want to “remove Islamic fundamentalists from our streets.” By classifying Islamic fundamentalism as evil is to imply that Islam is inherently evil. So either they completely oppose Islam and are therefore fascists or they have no understanding of the subject of their discontent.

In addition to this, maybe it is just the cynic speaking, but it is hard to believe that the EDL are actually not fascist. No, it is not because their spelling is painfully dire, although it doesn’t help. It’s because, during their recent protest against militant Islam in Birmingham, England, eyewitnesses saw the members of the EDL “charging down Bennett Hill (an area of Birmingham) throwing beer bottles at young Asian lads.” One can only assume that there must have been a telepathist amongst the EDL supporters, for as a “non-racist organization,” naturally, they would never have dared to assume that simply because the youths were Asian that they were therefore Muslims.

Whichever way you look at it, the EDL are racist. They attacked the group of Asians under the assumption they were Muslims. That is psychological and violent racism. Militant racism, one might say. If that is not convincing enough, then why would “non-racists” do a sieg heil Hitler-salute?

The EDL proclaims to be “non-racist” and “non-fascist” because that is what keeps it alive. Preaching white supremacy will hardly gain them any moderate support. That appears to be what they are attempting to do; appealing to the masses in order to get a psychosomatic stronghold on the British mind. Thank goodness that Britain is a land of cynics and that fascists like the EDL are a very small, albeit ever-increasing, minority.

Solving the problem of the EDL is easy: Get together as many Muslims, anti-fascists, Jews, immigrants and any other characters that the EDL would find unsavory and convince them all to join the English Defense League. Hijack their protests and their meetings until we drive the 100 or so of their hardcore members to the ground. If we join them, they will either be forced to beat us up, thus revealing their true colors – no pun intended – or the group will disappear into oblivion.

Bikya Masr

Report exposes lies behind BNP’s anti-Muslim rhetoric

The BNP is deliberatly misreading Islamic texts in order to depict Muslims as inherently violent and backward accordning to a new report.

The extreme right wing party has taken the decision to see the acts of Islamist extremists as representative of all British Muslims and have gone out to portray the acts of individual Muslims - for instance, criminal acts by Muslim individuals - as symptomatic of Muslims in general says the report, ‘In Defence of British Muslims.'

The paper, produced by counter -extremism think tank, Quilliam, details the BNP’s anti-Muslim rhetoric and how the BNP’s arguments rely on the actions of fringe Islamist extremists, including al-Muhajiroun, in order to justify their hatred of Muslims in general.

The paper also argues that if the BNP’s anti-Muslim arguments are not publicly challenged, this will make it easier for Islamist groups to rally and recruit British Muslims under the guise of defending Islam and Muslims.

Author of the report, Lucy James said: "In recent months we have seen an alarming rise in far-right attacks on Muslim communities in the UK – most recently with racist groups sending death threats to Salma Yaqoob, a Birmingham councillor. Just as al-Qaeda terrorism is fed by Islamist ideologies, white-supremacists are fed by the BNP’s ideology. Failure to tackle the BNP’s messages of hate will only further damage national cohesion.

"Nick Griffin and his party have made a conscious shift in rhetoric away from attacking Britain’s blacks and Jews towards attacking Britain’s Muslims. To do this, they have sought to portray a minority of violent Islamists as being representative of all Muslims. This needs to be challenged by all those who cherish living in a free, liberal and secular society."

Asian News

The BNP’s real concern is race, not Islam

Here’s what I said in a recent piece for eGov monitor that is causing a lot of fuss in certain quarters:

"There are a number of factors involved in the rise of the BNP as an electoral force, and I do not think that a sudden conversion of large numbers of white Britons to hardline racist sentiment is one of them. The question of Islam is one factor. Recently, I have been accused by the usual suspects of not bothering to properly examine the BNP’s anti-Islamic rhetoric because I don’t take anti-Muslim bigotry seriously enough or don’t really care about it. At worst, it has been implied that I am an anti-Muslim bigot myself or, to use the catchphrase, an ‘Islamophobe’.

This approach indicates a complete failure in understanding of the true nature of the BNP’s anti-Islam campaign, and the fact that writers who are supposedly anti-fascist should choose to attack a report aimed at exposing racism is disappointing to say the least. The reality is that Griffin and co don’t really care about Islam. Griffin may be an odious figure, but he’s not a complete idiot, and he knows very well that Britain is not on the verge of turning into an Islamic State.

Following his strategy for making the BNP electable, Griffin has tried to steer the party towards populist issues, picking up on fears and resentment among the electorate in an attempt to use such issues as a Trojan horse for his underlying racist agenda. The truth is that the BNP hates Muslims because they are predominantly brown skinned. In ‘white nationalist’ ideology, everything ultimately boils down to an obsession with race."

Just to clarify for those who seem to think the babbling of Bob Pitt and iENGAGE should have made me change my position, let me reemphasise the fact that I still stand by it. I have written on this topic on a number of occasions so I feel no need to ‘justify’ myself, but for ease of understanding, here’s how I see it:

Imagine you’re a ‘white nationalist’ leader who has spent his entire ‘political’ career in the wilderness. You’ve tried and tried to make white people see the ‘evils’ of ‘race mixing’ and the hidden hand of ‘the Jew’, but have had no success. Finally, you realise that the only way to get any chance of power is to tone down the rhetoric and rebrand yourself as a populist nationalist. In order to shake off the ‘fascist’ label and thereby to hopefully win votes you decide to start using words like ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ instead of writing about your love of the SS and talking about using ‘well-directed boots and fists’. In order to appeal to white Britons who are worried about the effects of immigration but who are not ideologically racist, you stop talking about ‘racial purity’ and start talking about ‘identity’ instead.

This doesn’t get you very far and you really need an ‘issue’ around which to campaign. Nothing is forthcoming but then comes 9/11 and then 7/7. You note the rise in hostility towards Muslims and you also notice that on a parallel track a hatred for asylum seekers is becoming more common. Now, you’ve decided that the only way to get power and to ‘ethnically cleanse’ Britain through a process of mass deportation of non-white citizens is to appear more moderate and in touch with ordinary people’s concerns. So, with the rise of anti-Muslim feeling, you decide to jump on the bandwagon.

“But,” your old comrades say, “the Jew is the real enemy, not Muslims.” You try to reassure them that the new tactics are the only way forward and that for now the anti-Semitism needs to go back into the closet. After all, you tell them, “The proper enemy to any political movement isn’t necessarily the most evil and the worst. The proper enemy is the one we can most easily defeat.” You go on to tell these fellow ‘white nationalists’ that “there is a piece of plain realpolitik that those who attack the BNP stance on Islam should also take into account,” which is that:

“They are perilously close to entrenching themselves in political dead ground from which there can be no escape. Instead of working to take advantage of the biggest crisis that the genocidal multi-culti ‘experiment’ has ever faced, they are in danger of turning themselves into a despised, powerless and doomed cartoon caricature - a composite of Tokyo Rose, Lord Haw Haw and Jane Fonda. Truly, they are living examples of the old adage that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, and then as farce.”

You find some success with this approach, and you also note how successful anti-Islam campaigning is turning out for other neo-fascists on the Continent who have had a similar ‘conversion’ to ‘moderation’. For tactical reasons, you bite the bullet and reach out to Jews - “They can’t call me a Nazi then,” you think, “plus, they control the media anyway so I may as well try to please them.” In addition to this, you think, by adopting a superifically pro-Jewish stance you can also make use of the very language that has haunted you all your life - ‘anti-Semite’, ‘Jew hater’, ‘fascist’, ‘Nazi’ - and throw it at Muslims. After all, who could think that you’re the bad guy when you’re sticking up for the Jews and defending Western civilisation against those who would destroy it?

You continue to lead a dual campaign. On the one hand, you appear largely obsessed with Islam and ridding Britain of Muslims, but on the other, you maintain your true racial beliefs. The fact is, you are still ‘wholly opposed to any form of racial integration between British and non-European peoples’. You see Muslims and asylum seekers as easy targets to begin with. With them, you can talk about culture and tax payers’ money being wasted. You don’t have to try to explain your ideologically racist worldview which revolves around beliefs about a well planned conspiracy by ‘international Jewry’ to destroy the white race through immigration and the promotion of race mixing.

Through this strategy you eventually find yourself elected as an MEP. Many white people who are not ideological racists or fascists have bought into your anti-Islam message. Many of these people are unaware of the fact that you want to start by deporting Muslims and then move on to deporting all non-white people from Britain. And lots more of them know about your past but think you’ve changed: “Look at the website, look at the magazines, it’s not about race any more,” they say.

The funny thing is, it’s not just your voters who think that. Even some left-wing and Muslim writers start to believe it, too.

Edmund Standing writing at Harry's Place

BNP's Griffin: Islam is a cancer

As the BNP struggles for right-wing support in the European Parliament, leader Nick Griffin tells Cathy Newman he believes there is "no place in Europe for Islam"

The BNP leader Nick Griffin has described Islam as a “cancer” that should be removed from Europe by "chemotherapy".

In an interview with Channel 4 News, Mr Griffin, who has just been elected to the European Parliament, said there was "no place in Europe for Islam". He added: "Western values, freedom of speech, democracy and rights for women are incompatible with Islam, which is a cancer eating away at our freedoms and our democracy and rights for our women and something needs to be done about it".

The BNP leader said he agreed with a candidate for the Flemish far right party, Vlaams Belang, who had declared: "We urgently need global chemotherapy against Islam to save civilisation."

The remarks will fuel controversy over the BNP’s success at the European elections last month. The party’s two winning candidates - Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons - take up their seats in the European Parliament next week.

Mr Griffin has been holding talks with other far right parties in Europe such as Vlaams Belang and Jobbik, from Hungary. The BNP had hoped to team up formally with a range of European rightwingers, giving them access to up to €1m of public money to spend on staff and offices. However, those talks have ended in failure.

The BNP will still work together informally with Jobbik, with both parties saying they share common ground on issues such as law and order. Jobbik has formed its own militia, the Hungarian Guard, which wears Nazi-style uniform and marches across the country to tackle what it calls “gypsy crime” by Roma travellers.

Mr Griffin told Channel 4 News that he believed Britain had “got a problem with Romanian gypsy crime”. Jobbik’s use of the term has led to accusations that it is seeking to criminalise an entire ethnic group. The BNP leader said: “There are two sorts of gypsies in Britain. There are the old fully-established anglicised Romanies who have been here for generations and who when they go to an area, when they leave it, it is spotlessly clean and you can not see they have been there. We have got no issue with that.

"And on the other hand there are the travellers - mainly from Ireland - and the Roma gypsy beggars and pickpockets in London. And while the liberal elite may say it is politically incorrect to say so, I would say that they have a very high level of criminality."

One of Jobbik’s MEPs, Krisztina Morvai, has been accused of anti-Semitism after text she wrote on an online forum. Questioned by Channel 4 News about the remarks, she did not deny writing them, but said she did not want to make any comment. She then terminated the interview.

Although Jobbik still sees the BNP as an ally, Vlaams Belang distanced itself both from Mr Griffin and the call by one of its candidates for "global chemotherapy" against Islam. One of its MEPs said he did not agree with comparing "people to diseases".

Channel 4

The tendency to go to extremes

After this month’s elections, two of Britain’s representatives to the European Parliament in Brussels will be members of a white supremacist organisation that had previously experienced electoral success only at the local council level.

A few days after this regrettable result emerged, an elderly white supremacist walked into a Holocaust museum on the other side of the Atlantic and shot dead a security guard. There is no evidence of a causal relationship between the two events, but there is at least a casual connection.

It emerged last week that James von Brunn, the 88-year-old who claimed an innocent life at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, had attended meetings of the American Friends of the British National Party, a body set up to collect funds for the BNP from American donors. Whether or not he contributed to the BNP’s coffers, his empathy with British fascism is not particularly surprising.

After von Brunn was shot and wounded by other guards at the museum, a search of his car yielded a handwritten note that read: ‘The Holocaust is a lie. Obama was created by Jews. Obama does what his Jew owners tell him to do. Jews captured America’s money. Jews control the mass media.’ The BNP, in its quest for electability, lately began to couch its propaganda in terms that stopped short of overt racism, but its leader, Nick Griffin, received a suspended two-year prison sentence in 1998 for incitement to racial hatred after publishing a Holocaust-denialist tract.

Griffin, who is one of the BNP’s new members of the European Parliament, has also been quoted as claiming that British Asians were colonisers rather than immigrants, and he once defended a BNP leaflet that declared non-white Britons should be described as ‘racial foreigners.’ The party has in the past supported the involuntary repatriation of immigrants and the sterilisation of non-white women, and Griffin has described Islam as a ‘vicious faith.’

Griffin will be accompanied to Brussels by Andrew Brons, who was once responsible for the election manifesto of an overtly Nazi group known as the National Front — a document that, back in 1983, called for global apartheid, saying that the alternative, ‘multiracialism, envisages an extinction of the white man.’ He also put his name to anti-Semitic articles and was closely associated with one of the Front’s leading Holocaust deniers.

The BNP does not use the word apartheid, but support for a system along the lines of what was once considered the norm in South Africa is implicit in its racist platforms. It is therefore not altogether surprising to discover that Griffin’s leading advisers include a veteran of the South African far right: Arthur Kemp, who is in charge of Excalibur, the merchandising wing of the BNP, was arrested back in the 1990s in connection with the assassination of the exemplary African National Congress leader Chris Hani, which was clearly intended to derail the post-apartheid transition. Kemp wasn’t charged, but it turned out he had indeed drawn up a list of potential targets. Hani was number three on the list. At number one was Nelson Mandela.

The octogenarian terrorist who slew a Holocaust museum guard in Washington is evidently among those Americans who have been driven over the edge by Barack Obama’s election. There is thus far no good reason to question the assumption that an African-American presidency will broadly help to diminish racism in parts of the US where it remains a dominant factor. At the same time, it was inevitable that the phenomenon would infuriate white supremacists of the Ku Klux Klan variety — and these tend to be groups that have historically made little distinction between non-whites and Jews.

Not all of the groups on the far-right fringes of US politics are necessarily white-supremacist, but at least in some cases there is a bizarre phenomenon whereby political support for Israel exists side by side with anti-Jewish prejudice, the idea being that aggressive policies on the part of the Jewish state will facilitate Armageddon.

Another intriguing contradiction in the same general context is that Islamist fanatics with anti-Semitic and Holocaust-denialist tendencies share many of their prejudices with extremists of other confessional persuasions, but the likelihood of them making common cause is gratifyingly small. One can never be too sure, though; after all, the Bush administration was prone to lining up with conservative Muslim states, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, at international conferences on what are euphemistically known as ‘women’s health’ issues.

However, the historically anti-Semitic far right in Europe nowadays tends to be vehemently Islamophobic as well. Britain is by no means the only country where the European Union elections yielded gratifying results for elements that have few qualms about flirting with fascist tendencies, with their electoral support frequently based on visceral opposition to immigration — although in former Eastern Bloc countries such as Hungary, it has been fed by appalling attitudes towards the Romany minority (it’s easy to forget that the Nazis’ spectrum of hatred encompassed Gypsies as much as Jews).

Notwithstanding the tendency, demonstrated by the BNP, of global connections between white supremacists, it remains to be seen whether the extremists voted in across Europe this month can sufficiently overcome their nationalistic predilections to form a bloc in Brussels. There can be little doubt, however, that their success does not reflect kindly on the supposed social democrats at whose expense they have done so well.

To a large extent, this is because European social democracy in recent decades has had trouble distinguishing itself from conservatism and Christian-democracy. Perhaps nowhere is this more true than in Britain, where the price is now being paid for the success of Tony Blair’s project of reinventing the Labour Party in the image of the Conservatives. The betrayal of the working class paid electoral dividends in the short term, but the result is that voters no longer know what the party stands for.

Although the BNP’s good fortune was not based on an increase in its support, the protest vote presages a Labour wipeout at next year’s British elections. And the sleaze factor epitomised by the recent expenses scandal is a symptom rather than a primary cause of Labour’s misfortunes amid the present economic woes. Gordon Brown appears to have survived a revolt within Labour’s Blairist ranks, but the electorate will likely be unforgiving, or at best apathetic.

In the US, the extreme right’s excesses hint at its desperation. In Britain and the rest of Europe, the neo-fascist resurgence is in large part a consequence of social democracy’s suicidal tendencies. And it suggests that, however unpalatable the status quo, the future may well be considerably worse.

Dawn