This is a guest post by Edmund Standing
‘NOW MUSLIMS DEMAND FULL SHARIA LAW’ screams the Express headline, as yet again the British tabloid press act as a proxy media outlet for Anjem Choudary’s cult.
Martyn Brown of the Express writes:
A RADICAL Muslim group sparked outrage last night as it launched a massive campaign to impose sharia law on Britain.
The fanatical group Islam4UK has announced plans to hold a potentially incendiary rally in London later this month.
And it is calling for a complete upheaval of the British legal system, its officials and legislation.
Once again, we see a headline that blandly talks of ‘Muslims’, leading the casual observer to conclude that Al-Muhajiroun somehow represents ‘Muslims’ in the UK as a monolithic group. The hyped up introduction is equally deceptive. Choudary’s ‘Islam For The UK’ outfit – which in real terms is a website and a handful of fascist Jihadist oddballs – has supposedly launched a ‘massive’ campaign. ‘Massive’ apparently now means ‘has posted on a website’.
Then there’s news of a ‘rally’. Last time Choudary’s goons tried to organise a big Shari’ah event we saw the pathetic ‘March for Islam’. Look at these morons – they’re hardly on the verge of storming 10 Downing Street and hoisting up their much vaunted ‘flag of Islam’.
Naturally, this hyped up story has been another gift to the BNP, with blogging bigots such as Paul Morris and Elizabeth Waltonlapping it up.
We’ve seen this before. When the Al-Muhajiroun front ‘Followers of Ahl us-Sunah wal-Jamaa’ah’ decided to turn out to insult returning British troops in Luton, the BNP website claimed:
The shocking anti-British army protest by a group of Muslims in central Luton earlier today is a portent of what is to come unless the Islamification of this country is halted, the BNP’s defence spokesman has warned.
“The disgraceful sight of Muslim protestors carrying posters saying ‘Anglian Soldiers Go to Hell’ while parading through town after tours of duty risking their lives is the inevitable consequence of the colonisation of this country by Third Worlders,” Mr Peter Mullins said.
[…]
“Only the BNP will bring an end to this madness,” he concluded.
Two months later, BNP European election material promised that the party would ‘ensure that British soldiers are not abused on the streets of our cities by Muslims’. Note that as with the Express headline, the BNP wrote simply of ‘Muslims’, not Jihadist fascists.
More than anything, the Luton incident was also what led to the founding of the EDL, and they are far from an answer to Islamist extremism.
There are two key problems here:
1. The British media love reporting on the sick antics of Choudary’s cult, giving the impression that he represents ‘Muslims’ as some kind of monolithic block (at least this time the Express quotes an Islamic Society of Britain spokesman as saying that ‘99.999 per cent of Muslims despise these people. This only serves to fuel racial tensions’.).
2. The current Government has failed to properly deal with these provocative loud mouths. Hopefully, the Tories might do better – at least they’re talking seriously about the problem.
Yet again, Anjem Choudary and the British media are recruiting for the BNP. Meanwhile, peaceful law abiding Muslims find themselves falsely associated with a wannabe Islamist dictator and his ‘rage boy‘ style jihad posse.
