“The Bethnal Green and Bow result is the single most damaging threat to race – properly, religious – relations since Enoch Powell’s river of blood speech and the rise of the NF in the 1970s. Those of us who seek to show that Muslim extremists are the exception, not the rule, and that mainstream Muslims pose no threat to Western democracy, have been dealt a severe blow.
“Until Galloway’s result – based on demagoguery and the idea that there is indeed a fundamental split between the Muslim way of thinking and that of non-Muslims – it was possible to argue convincingly, as I have sought to do, that maintream Muslims had nothing in common with the extremists.
“But the Bethnal Green and Bow result makes that argument very difficult. Galloway did not win because he was supported by a small number of Muslim extremists – those who clearly pose a threat to the West and have to be imprisoned. He won because of support from precisely those mainstream Muslims whom I, and others, have argued did not support their militant brothers.”
A hysterical rant by Stephen Pollard against Muslim voters in Bethnal Green & Bow.
Stephen Pollard’s weblog, 6 May 2005
Needless to say, this assessment is endorsed by Melanie Phillips.