Category Archives: Analysis & comment

No show from English Defence League leadership at Weymouth demonstration

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL WeymouthThe English Defence League’s march through Weymouth yesterday in protest against the supposed “entrapment of the youth of Weymouth by extremist Muslims” turned out to be a bit of a damp squib. Given that Muslims comprise 0.3% of the population of Weymouth, and the EDL would be hard pressed to find an adherent of mainstream Islam in the town never mind an “Islamic extremist”, perhaps the organisers should be thankful anyone turned up at all.

No doubt frustrated by the absence of a substantial Muslim community to intimidate, the EDL called off their street protest after only ten minutes and returned to the main business of the day – getting tanked up at Moby Dick’s pub.

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APPG on Homeland Security joins Anthony Glees and the Henry Jackson Society in scaremongering over ‘Muslim extremism’ at universities

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Keeping Britain SafeBoth the Daily Telegraph (“University campuses are ‘hotbeds of Islamic extremism'”) and the Daily Mail (“University campuses ‘a hotbed of Muslim extremism’, claims Parliamentary security group”) have articles covering a new report by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Homeland Security.

It claims to have uncovered “damning evidence” of extremism among Muslim students which the government is urged to tackle with “utmost urgency”.

Looking through the report you’d be hard pressed to find any serious evidence, damning or otherwise, of Muslim extremism on university campuses. The only material provided is a transcript of a lengthy diatribe by Anthony Glees, whose record of irresponsible scaremongering on this issue is well established. A 2008 Cambridge University study by June Edmunds found, contrary to Glees’s unsubstantiated assertions and much to his annoyance, that Muslim students were well integrated and posed no threat to anyone.

The fact that the APPG is prepared to issue these bloodcurdling warnings about Muslim extremism at British universities, based solely on Glees’s say-so, is perhaps not unconnected with the fact that the author of the report is one Davis Lewin. The neocon campaign group the Henry Jackson Society helpfully informs us that Lewin “is a Special Adviser to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Homeland Security and Head of Programmes at the Henry Jackson Society, which serves as the Secretariat for the APPG on Homeland Security”.

The BBC has a rather more critical assessment of the APPG’s report, which quotes Nicola Dandridge of Universities UK as stating:

“There is no evidence to suggest that universities are ‘hotbeds of Islamic extremism’. The experts, including police and counter-terrorism experts, state quite firmly that there is not a major problem with radicalisation or extremism in higher education at present. The issue is that the people most likely to be vulnerable to radicalisation or extremism are young people, many of whom will either be students or former students. Over 40% of young people in the UK will enter higher education.”

Postscript:  Needless to say, this is all grist to the mill of the English Defence League, who posted a link to the Telegraph article for the enlightenment of their members:

EDL post on Torygraph campus extremism article

And here are some of the comments by EDL supporters that it provoked:

EDL comments on APPG Homeland Security report

Choudary calls off royal wedding stunt

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Make their wedding a nightmareMuslims Against the Crusades have, entirely predictably, called off their threatened protest against the royal wedding tomorrow.

This is, of course, the usual method adopted by Anjem Choudary and his sorry little gang of provocateurs.

In October 2009 Choudary said he would organise a “March for Shari’ah” in London and then, having milked this for all the publicity he could – with the Daily Express reporting it under the front-page headline “Now Muslims demand: Give us full sharia law” – he announced that the demonstration would not be going ahead after all.

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‘He’s an Arab’ – Denis MacEoin explains why you can’t trust Gilbert Achcar

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Denis MacEoin, who was responsible for the discredited Policy Exchange report The Hijacking of British Islam among other axe-grinding anti-Muslim “studies”, has posted a “customer review” of Gilbert Achcar’s book The Arabs and the Holocaust on the Amazon website.

Not that MacEoin has actually bought the book, still less read it. But he has no hesitation in warning potential purchasers that Achcar is an unreliable historian, beginning with the charge that “He’s an Arab….” As one of the comments on MacEoin’s “review” points out: “One can imagine the uproar from you and your ilk if the assertion you make was followed by ‘He’s a Jew’.”

March for England meets counter-protest in Brighton

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Brighton demonstration against MfE

The “patriotic” group March for England faced a counter-demonstration from local anti-fascists when they held their fourth St George’s Day march in Brighton yesterday. One report suggests that the march attracted 100 participants, mainly from outside the town. As the picture below shows, the MfE organisers’ assurances that the march was a non-political “family event” from which English Defence League supporters would be banned proved baseless. The familiar EDL chants of “English till I die” and “No surrender to the Taliban” were heard, and one counter-demonstrator concluded that “the ‘respectable’ veneer of March for England was well and truly stripped away. This was without question an EDL march”.

Update:  See “Nationalist march will return to Brighton”, Argus, 26 April 2011

Brighton MfE 2011

Photos by David Nash at Demotix.

The ‘Islamification’ of Tower Hamlets

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Scaremongering about the threat of “Islamification” facing the east London borough of Tower Hamlets has been popular in the right-wing press since Andrew Gilligan’s witch-hunting Channel 4 documentary Britain’s Islamic Republic was broadcast last year. Several papers this week have published articles on that theme.

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EDL returns to Shotton

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL Shotton

The Deeside division of the English Defence League have announced another demonstration against plans by the Flintshire Muslim Cultural Society for a mosque in Shotton, Flintshire. Have these ignorant bigots no sense of shame?

You may recall that the EDL staged a demonstration in January against proposals to convert the disused Shotton Lane Social Club into an Islamic cultural centre. The protest was poorly attended, with a mere 100 people participating, most of them from outside north Wales.

But the EDL’s efforts weren’t entirely wasted. Just over a week later the social club was burned to the ground in what was not unreasonably suspected to be an arson attack, and the building has since been demolished.

But evidently that isn’t good enough for the EDL. Last week Mohammed Munchab Ali, chairman of the Flintshire Muslim Cultural Society, was reported as saying that plans to establish a centre with a mosque in Flintshire remain in place despite the destruction of Shotton Lane Social Club.

So the EDL will be returning to Shotton on 21 May. Or as the EDL Deeside Demonstration Facebook page puts it: “Round 2, Flintshire Muslim Cultural Society get ready for EDL but this time BIGGER & BETTER than before.”

Of course, with the building that would have housed the Islamic centre now reduced to charred rubble, the EDL are deprived of a concrete object on which to unleash their hate. Still, they can no doubt hope that their next public demonstration of Islamophobic hysteria in Shotton will inspire some sort of violent attack on the Muslim community of north Wales.

Update:  The Facebook page “EDL Deeside Demonstration” has now been amended to “(UNOFFICIAL AT THE MOMENT) EDL Deeside Demonstration”.

Could the EDL leadership have concluded that a protest against an Islamic centre that has already been the object of an arson attack might be seen by the public as just a tad tasteless? More likely they have taken fright at the prospect of the North West Infidels muscling in on the event.

NWI Chester

It was reportedly the NWI’s activists (along with their co-thinkers in the North East Infidels) who clashed with supporters of the EDL leadership at the Blackburn demonstration on Saturday, and their presence at the Shotton protest would very likely lead to another punch-up.

Further update:  See “English Defence League supporters plan second Deeside demonstration”, Flintshire Chronicle, 7 April 2011

Mail resurrects ‘smell of bacon offends Muslims’ story

Posted on by Bob Pitt

You may remember the “Cafe owner ordered to remove extractor fan in case smell of frying bacon offends passing Muslims” story in the Daily Mail last October (as you can see from the url, that was the original headline – it was later amended).

The story concerned Stockport Council’s rejection of a retrospective planning application for the retention of an extraction vent to the front of a cafe. This decision was the result of a successful objection by one individual, a Mr Graham Webb-Lee, who lived next door to the cafe and was not himself a Muslim. He stated: “The vent is 12 inches from my front door. Every morning the smell of bacon comes through and makes me physically sick.”

The “Muslim” connection consisted in the fact that Webb-Lee added: “I have a lot of Muslim friends. They refuse to visit me anymore because they can’t stand the smell of bacon.” He also stated that he had “a daughter with an eating disorder” whose health was affected by the odours from the extractor fan and that they made his clothes smell. But the only one among this range of objections that the Mail highlighted was Webb-Lee’s reference to his Muslim visitors.

Richard Bartholomew took the story up at the time, as did Tabloid Watch, and three readers wrote to the Press Complaints Commission objecting to the Mail‘s inaccurate and irresponsible reporting. Predictably, the PCC ruled in favour of the Mail – a decision criticised by Tabloid Watch, Roy Greenslade and Sunny Hundal.

Greenslade quoted the bigoted comments that the Mail‘s misleading report had provoked on its website. Some examples:

“Well how about, you go back to your own country and we can eat our food in peace” … “Absolutely ludicrous! If Muslims are affected let them ‘pass by on the other side of the street!’ I’m fed up of hearing about the possibility of offending Muslims in this God forsaken country!”… “If the Muslims don’t like our way of life they know where the airport is. Sick of listening to whinging religious fruitcakes.” And so on.

Greenslade also reproduced a comment on the Mail‘s report by Mr Webb-Lee himself:

“This vent is affecting my children’s health and that is why the council denied planning! Yes, I have some Muslim friends who it offended, but nothing was said about my English friends who avoid my house within opening hours of the shop! Shame on you Daily Mail. You have stirred up lots of racial tension in my area now, so for you its ‘mission accomplished’.”

Today the Mail has returned for a second bite at the cherry with a story headlined “‘A victory for common sense’: Cafe owner wins extractor fan appeal after neighbour claimed ‘smell of bacon offends Muslims'”. It begins, with characteristic disregard for accuracy: “A cafe owner was yesterday celebrating victory after a six-month legal battle to fry bacon triggered by Muslim complaints.” (The original version read: “A cafe owner who was ordered to tear down an extractor fan because the smell of bacon offended Muslims was celebrating a ‘victory for commons [sic] sense’ today.”)

And, again, the Mail‘s misrepresentation of the facts has fuelled the predictable outburst of anti-Muslim bigotry. Exposing racism and intolerance online has provided a screengrab of some of the Facebook comments by supporters of the English Defence League.

EDL Daily Mail bacon offends Muslims

See also the Sun, which reports: “A café boss ordered to tear down an extractor fan as the smell of her frying bacon offended passing Muslims has won her appeal against the decision.”

And for a critical view of the press coverage, see “There’s a nasty smell about this story”, www.MethodistPreacher.com, 31 March 2011

The failure of multiculturalism and how to turn the tide – according to Geert Wilders

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Geert Wilders extremistGeert Wilders was invited to deliver the annual lecture at the Magna Carta Foundation in Rome on 25 March. His speech can be found on the PVV website, and has been enthusiastically reproduced at Jihad Watch, Atlas Shrugs, Winds of Jihad and other rabidly Islamophobic blogs. The British National Party in London are fans too, as indeed is the BNP’s former legal adviser Lee Barnes.

Most of the content of Wilders’ speech is predictable. You know the sort of thing. Islam is plotting to conquer Europe (“Islam strives for world domination. The koran commands Muslims to exercise jihad and impose shariah law”) and the left has made a conscious decision to facilitate this takeover through its embrace of multiculturalism. According to Wilders:

“Leftist multiculturalists are cheering for every new shariah bank, for every new islamic school, for every new mosque. Multiculturalists consider Islam as being equal to our own culture. Shariah law or democracy? Islam or freedom? It doesn’t really matter to them. But it does matter to us. The entire leftist elite is guilty of practising cultural relativism. Universities, churches, trade unions, the media, politicians. They are all betraying our hard-won liberties.”

And not just the left. According to Wilders, “the establishment parties of the Right still harbour their belief that Islam is a religion of peace on a par with peaceful religions such as Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and others”. Whereas, in Wilders’ opinion, “the truth is that Islam is evil, and the reality is that Islam is a threat to us”.

Wilders offers his solutions. “First, we will have to defend freedom of speech” (except of course when freedom of speech is used to attack Wilders himself). We must abandon cultural relativism, resist the encroachment of sharia law, “forbid the construction of new mosques” and strengthen the powers of the nation state in order to “stop immigration from Islamic countries”, while existing communities of recent migrant origin “must assimilate and adapt to our values”.

One proposal that hasn’t been heard from Wilders before, so far as we know, is to support and celebrate Muslims who decide to renounce their faith. Wilders states:

“An International Women’s Day is useless in the Arab world if there is no International Leave Islam Day. I propose the introduction of such a day in which we can honor the courageous men and women who want to leave Islam. Perhaps we can pick a symbolic date for such a day and establish an annual prize for an individual who has turned his back on Islam or an organization which helps people to liberate themselves from Islam.”

You might wonder whether this opens up the possibility of co-operation between Wilders and Maryam Namazie, who has played a prominent role in the campaign to encourage Muslims to abandon their faith. At any rate, it looks to me like Namazie and her Council of Ex-Muslims would be worthy recipients of Wilders’ prize. Wilders could also consider approaching Johann Hari, who might well be interested supporting this initiative – particularly if it involves his hero Ehsan Jami, who was expelled from the Dutch Labour Party for co-authoring an anti-Islam article with Wilders and has since joined the PVV.

England First Party to contest council seats in Stoke

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Mark CotterillThe implosion of the BNP can be expected to open up some political space in which other right-wing xenophobic parties will be able to grow.

While the main beneficiary will probably be UKIP, small parties of the far right may also find their political prospects have improved with the decline of effective competition from the much larger BNP. In that context it is worth noting a piece by Tony Whalley on the Stoke-on-Trent blog Pits n Pots about two former BNP members who are are expected to stand for the fascist England First Party in the local elections in Stoke this May.

The EFP was founded in 2004 by Mark Cotterill (pictured), the former chairman of American Friends of the BNP which served as a financial conduit to the BNP from its supporters on the US far right. After being banned from the US and forced to return to the UK, Cotterill fell out with the BNP leadership and left to join the White Nationalist Party, before breaking from that too and launching the EFP. His party had some initial political success in Lancashire and managed to get Cotterill and another EFP candidate elected to Blackburn With Darwen council in 2006. In the 2010 council elections, however, the EFP was able to stand onlyseven candidates nationally, three of them in Stoke-on-Trent.

One of the prospective EFP candidates for this year’s council elections in Stoke is Mark Leat, who was elected as a BNP councillor for the North Longton ward back in 2004, winning 956 votes and narrowly defeating Labour. In the general election the following year he was the BNP parliamentary candidate for Stoke-on-Trent South where he got 8.7% of the vote. By 2007 Leat had left the BNP for reasons that remain obscure and in 2008 he stood for re-election in North Longton as an independent. However, the BNP put up their own candidate and the far-right vote was divided, allowing Labour to regain the seat.

Leat subsequently joined the EFP (denounced by Nick Griffin as a “Searchlight-run phoney nationalist party” whose objective was “to split the BNP vote in Stoke”). He contested the same North Longton ward in 2010 as an EFP candidate, but with the turnout boosted by the general election he lost heavily to Labour, although he still managed to come third with 606 votes (10.3%).

So Leat does have a public profile in Stoke-on-Trent as a result of his earlier electoral activity and therefore possesses some sort of political credibility among that not insignificant section of the white majority population there who have shown themselves willing to vote for a far-right party in the form of the BNP.

The other individual to feature in the Pits n Pots piece, Craig Pond, was the Stoke BNP branch secretary before breaking away two years ago to launch his own far-right group, the innocuous-sounding but politically poisonous Potteries Community Federation. In September 2009 Pond announced that he had finally “resigned from the BNP over Griffins [sic] ruinous behaviour” and had joined the EFP, on the grounds that it is “an already founded party which has in place all the basics, but is small enough to be molded and shaped into a nationalist fighting machine”.

While Pond may lack Leat’s political profile – his one foray into electoral politics was when he stood unsuccessfully for Stoke city council in 2008 – he far outdoes Leat in the vehemence with which he expresses his racist views, particularly with regard to Muslims. The favourite quote on Pond’s Facebook page reads “Extreme islam is an insane death cult. Moderate islam is the trojan horse that will bring it to your door” and among his list of activities and interests we find links to such causes as “NO MORE MOSQUES IN BRITAIN” and “Fck the asylum seekers give the british citizens in need a hand!”.

Tony Whalley quotes from a couple of the anti-Muslim rants that have appeared on Pond’s Potteries Community Federation blog, but even worse is to be found on Pond’s other blog, that of the EFP Stoke-on-Trent Division. Here the response to the arson attack on a Stoke mosque in December last year was to applaud the perpetrators: “If the politicians will insist on withholding our rights to democracy, then people will take matters into their own hands, and bloody good on ’em!” The establishment politicians so hated by Pond were also threatened: “these lying, thieving deceitful gits that masquerade as leaders either give us our entitlement under the rules of democratic principles, or they can expect a lot more of this kind of behaviour, some of which will hopefully be targeted at them!”

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