Dear Sir,

Amanda Platell in her column, ‘Equality? You must be joking!‘, (Daily Mail 21st May 2009) makes some shockingly inaccurate remarks.

She claims, ‘In March this year, a large group of Muslims in Luton protested in the town with deeply offensive posters vilifying our returning troops, calling them rapists and murderers.’

The group of Muslims involved in the protest numbered no more than 20, something patently obvious from television footage from the day. In a town where Muslim residents number in excess of 25,000, how could 20 possibly be said to constitute ‘a large group of Muslims’?

Ms Platell also writes of Christian festivals being routinely cancelled at Easter and Christmas each year while no similar treatment of Muslim festivals would be conceivable. Stories of the ‘banning of Christmas’ have regularly been shown to be fabrications; the work of imaginative journalists keen to foment mischief between communities.

It is falsehoods such as these that bolster the likes of the far right BNP.

Yours sincerely,
Inayat Bunglawala
Advisor on Research and Policy
ENGAGE