Trevor Kavanagh takes the opportunity to use the Algerian gas plant attack and the conflict in Mali in order to paint the British Muslim community as a terrorist threat:
Britain is a melting pot of nationalities and faiths, home to hundreds of thousands of Malians, Iraqis, Syrians, Somalis, Kenyans, Nigerians, Yemenis and Pakistanis.
Not all are grateful. Indeed, many are becoming outspokenly defiant. Some have colonised suburbs in major cities. One London borough is so staunchly Muslim it has become known as the Islamic Republic of Tower Hamlets.
Last week, hooded gangs of self-appointed religious police [in reality, probably just two individuals – ed.] roamed Muslim-populated suburbs ordering women to cover up and confiscating liquor. Police are investigating YouTube clips which show the men branding mini-skirted white girls as “naked animals”.
MI5 claims thousands of young British-born Muslims have been radicalised – some of them trained in bomb-making and terror tactics in the badlands of Pakistan. That number has certainly grown in recent years.
The security forces have done a remarkable job in keeping a lid on this threat at home. It is now more than seven years since the 7/7 London bombings and the terrorists have been silent. But Mali and Algeria should remind us of Gerry Adams’ chilling warning about the IRA: “They haven’t gone away.”
Now, as David Cameron warned yesterday, we face a global threat which could take “years, even decades” to resolve. He might have added, “if ever”.
See also Rob Ford, “Knee-jerk Islamophobia: why Trevor Kavanagh is wrong about British Muslims”, New Statesman, 21 January 2013
Ford writes: “This kind of evidence-free, stereotype-laden assault on the British Muslim community has got to stop. In an era when all the relevant evidence is available at the click of a mouse, it is not acceptable for a senior journalist at the nation’s most read paper to make demonstrably false claims about one of its largest minority communities. Kavanagh’s article is irresponsible rabble-rousing of the worst kind.”
Update: See “Algeria hostage crisis and ‘knee jerk Islamophobia'”,ENGAGE, 22 January 2013
This also takes up a another similar scaremongering article by Melanie Phillips in the Daily Mail.