Category Archives: Analysis & comment

Islamophobic hoax exposed

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Birmingham Islamic plot

Tahir Alam – who has been the target of an Islamophobic campaign, originating in the Sunday Times and subsequently taken up by a number of other media outlets including BBC News, which claimed that there was a “Islamic plot” to take over Birmingham schools and even that this was a case of “terrorism in the UK” – has issued a press release refuting the allegations.

Responding to the “leaked” letter outlining the supposed plot, Tahir Alam condemns “the baseless and false assertions that have been made in this anonymous, unsigned and undated document, the authenticity of which any decent and fair-minded person would question and quite quickly conclude as a hoax”.

Indeed, as even the most cursory read through the document will confirm, it is quite obviously faked. The fact that it has been taken seriously in the news media is a worrying reflection of the extent to which anti-Muslim prejudice in the UK today has destroyed journalists’ capacity for critical thinking when it comes to evaluating spurious Islamophobic propaganda.

Update:  See also “Times discovers that ‘Trojan horse’ letter is a crude forgery”, Islamophobia Watch, 11 March 2014

Plot to ‘take over’ and run schools on strict Islamic principles is described as ‘malicious fabrication’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Birmingham city council is investigating an alleged plot to oust headteachers in the city, replacing them with people who will run their schools on “strict Islamic principles”.

A letter, passed to the Birmingham city council late last year as well as various schools in the area, outlines a plan dubbed “Operation Trojan Horse” and claims up to four schools in the city have already been “taken over”. The West Midlands counter-terrorism unit said it was aware of the letter and was working with the council to identify whether a police investigation is warranted.

A copy of the undated and unsigned letter, seen by the Guardian, offers a five-step plan to take over schools in communities with large Muslim populations with the help of what it calls “hardline” parents who follow the strict Salafi branch of Islam. However one of the alleged plotters, Tahir Alam – a former chair of the education committee of the Muslim Council of Britain – told the Guardian on Friday evening that the letter was “a malicious fabrication and completely untrue”.

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Thatcham says ‘there’s no place for EDL here’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Newbury Weekly News EDL protest reportA demonstration in Thatcham town centre by English Defence League members and supporters has been condemned as “vigilantism”.

Newbury MP Richard Benyon condemned the incident at the weekend, saying: “In this country we don’t operate by the rule of the mob”. Meanwhile, shopkeepers and civic leaders told the far right organisation to “stay away from our town”.

For weeks, EDL members are said to have been leafleting and fly-posting in Thatcham. Matters came to a head last Friday evening when a group of EDL members and supporters, some claiming to hail from Bournemouth and Southampton, descended on Thatcham town centre.

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Boris throws more red meat to Tory supporters

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Boris Johnson at ELM
Boris, friend of the Muslim community – Johnson on his visit to the East London Mosque in 2009

Possibly taking his inspiration from yesterday’s Daily Star Sunday front page, London mayor Boris Johnson proposes in his Telegraph column today that Muslim children considered to be under threat of “radicalisation” by their parents should be taken into care.

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EDL anti-mosque protest in Grantham

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL Grantham anti-mosque protestThe English Defence League held a demonstration in the Lincolnshire town of Grantham on Saturday, in opposition to plans to build a new Islamic centre there.

It drew an estimated 160 protestors, though the EDL itself, with predictable exaggeration, claimed that the turnout was between 200 and 250. Around 100 of the EDL’s opponents joined a counter-demonstration organised by Grantham Solidarity Network.

The Grantham Journal disgraced itself by publishing what was little more than EDL propaganda, with reports headed “Mixed race woman on EDL march in Grantham says group ‘are like family'” and “EDL say Grantham protest rally was ‘brilliant'”.

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Bristol EDL declares independence

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Bristol Defence League patriotism is not racismLast month the English Defence League leadership – now a committee known as the Management Group, which is composed of the regional organisers – issued what was on the face of it a stern warning to EDL members against involvement with the various far-right splinter groups that have emerged from the movement over the past few years.

Accusing these rival groupuscules (quite accurately) of being “openly White Pride and racist”, the Management Group emphasised (albeit not very coherently) that “we will not stand with groups that do discriminate and are racist such as the Britain First/SEA/NWI/NEI/EVF/BNP/NF/C18 & White Pride or such like minded openly discriminating against any creed, race, colour other than white”.

EDL members were told: “If you wish to have unity with these groups then you have the option to leave the EDL as a supporter and join one or all of these groups. The splinter groups have minimal numbers and need unity with the EDL to make their numbers up not the other way. If you choose do so then we wish you good luck.”

However, for all their pious condemnation of racism and fascism, the Management Group was not actually proposing a general ban on EDL members participating in the protests organised by these splinter groups: “If any EDL supporter wishes to attend any of these other groups demos then all that we request is that you do not wear EDL colour’s or state you are in attendance as an EDL supporter.” In other words, the EDL leadership has no principled objection to its members’ active involvement with white supremacist, antisemitic and homophobic organisations – just as long as the EDL’s name is kept out of it.

Neverthless, as EDL News reported at the time, this provoked defections by a number of EDL divisions. One of them is in Bristol, where the leadership took badly to being given instructions by the national leadership. Leading local EDL activist Chelsea Anne White posted an indignant response to the new orders, complaining on the EDL Support Group’s Facebook page that “when i joined the EDL 3 years ago i was led to believe it was a street movement not a dictatorship”. According to White: “Good leadership dosen’t tell people what to do…..it is there to offer knowledge, assistance and support.”

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‘Moderate Muslim’ wants family fun day cancelled

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Under the headline “EDL to target Legoland after Muslim HATE preacher hires park for day out”, the Daily Star Sunday has thrown its weight behind the campaign to pressurise Legoland Windsor into cancelling a booking by the Muslim Research and Development Foundation, who have hired the theme park for a family fun day on 9 March. According to the Star, Legoland’s decision to “has outraged ­moderate Muslims”.

Now, which “moderate Muslim” do you suppose would be so vicious and embittered as to want to deprive Muslim children of a harmless day out at Legoland? No prizes for guessing that it’s Taj Hargey. He tells the Star: “I would ask Legoland that if they are happy to let his group hire the park, then would they be happy to let the BNP and other extremist far-right groups hold their family fun day there? Both groups spread hatred and intolerance.”

An English Defence League supporter applauds the role that Hargey is playing: “Legoland can cancel the booking without losing face by saying that they have considered the opinion of sensible Muslims like Dr Hargey and thus etc etc.”

Bloodworth embraces the HJS

Posted on by Bob Pitt

James BloodworthLess than a year ago James Bloodworth, the editor of Left Foot Forward (“a political blog for progressives”), wrote a hard-hitting article for Comment is Free entitled “Labour should cut its ties with the illiberal Henry Jackson Society”.

Taking his cue from a Left Foot Forward article by Marko Attila Hoare, with the even more forthright title “Labour’s shameful links with the anti-immigration right”, Bloodworth wanted to know why 11 Labour MPs were prepared to sit on the advisory council of an organisation that had as an associate director an individual like Douglas Murray who is notorious for his “anti-Muslim and anti-immigration views”. Bloodworth complained that he had written to the MPs to raise his concerns about the HJS but had received no response.

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Cambridge News discovers ancient anti-mosque petition

Posted on by Bob Pitt

More than 1,400 people have signed a petition against a planned £17.5 million Cambridge mosque in another attack by the English Defence League (EDL). The latest bid to stop the construction of the mosque in Mill Road comes after a protest group was criticised for a legal application to block it being built in which they claimed it could be “a front for terrorism”.

Now an online petition launched by a Cambridge resident and EDL supporter named ‘Phillip Cufc Jackson’ has gathered 1,498 signatures on US based website causes.com. The ‘Stop construction of mosque on Mill Road, Cambridge’ petition claims it was launched “because us Cambridge people do not want this super mosque built on our doorstep and we have been lied to on the actual amount of opposition to this project”.

Cambridge News, 13 February 2014

It is difficult to see how this qualifies as news. It is quite misleading to state that the anti-mosque petition is the “latest bid to stop the construction of the mosque in Mill Road” and “comes after” Gash and Webra’s legal challenge. The petition was launched by Jackson – a supporter of the EDL and member of the East Anglian Patriots – back in August 2012, with a target of 3,000 signatures. Over the course of 18 months it has attracted just over half that number, and judging by the dates of the accompanying comments had become pretty well moribund, though the report in the Cambridge News will now no doubt give it a bit of a boost.

Update:  See the petition welcoming the mosque which has been signed by Richard Howitt MEP along with local councillors, trade unionists, community groups and others.