The far-right British National party was yesterday accused of deliberately ramping up racial and religious tensions by launching a leafleting campaign with anti-Muslim messages, including controversial cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. The depiction of the prophet with a bomb as a turban was one of several images that sparked protests across the world earlier this year. The BNP’s move was criticised as a blatant attempt to reignite the controversy. Azad Ali, of the Muslim Safety Forum, said: “This is a deliberate ploy to create huge tensions … and it is adding to the isolation, fear and frustration felt by many people in the Muslim communities.”
The BNP said the leaflet was part of a “coherent campaign to alert people to the Islamification of Great Britain”. It has produced another leaflet on immigration and a second on Islam, which describes the faith as “a threat to us all”. The leaflet was handed out in Sutton in south-west London. Politicians and community leaders said the BNP was trying to exploit a debate about plans to build a mosque in the area.
But the BNP has its supporters. Over at the Western Resistance site, Giraldus Cambrensis writes:
“I am slightly ambivalent about the British National Party, on account of its racist past. Nowadays, under the leadership of Nick Griffin, a skilled politician, the racist agenda has become replaced by an agenda which is highly focused against Islam. With this aspect of its policies, I am in agreement. Islam poses a more serious threat to every aspect of British democracy than anything previously encountered. Under Labour, Britain has allowed wave after wave of unconstrained immigration into Britain. In most cities, as I wrote earlier, indigenous populations are marginalized in favor of those who claim ‘minority status’.”
Back in January this year, when we noted the support given by Western Resistance to Peter Tatchell, we were indignantly denounced by Mr Cambrensis for suggesting that Western Resistance is a right-wing racist operation. We rest our case.
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Jack Straw, the ex-foreign secretary, has angered Muslim groups by suggesting women who wear veils can make relations between communities more difficult. The Blackburn MP says the veil is a “visible statement of separation and of difference” and he asks women visiting his surgery to consider removing it.
The media are trying to whip up anti-Muslim sentiment over the issue of Alexander Omar Basha, a Muslim police officer guarding the Israeli embassy in London who asked to be transferred to another post during Israel’s war on Lebanon, where he has relatives.
David Cameron today vowed to break up Muslim ghettos in Britain’s cities. In the most frank comments on the issue by a major party leader, he used his keynote party conference speech to say Britain had made an error by allowing ghettos to develop.