Category Archives: UK

Lock up Muslims who travel to Syria, says Boris

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Conservative Party Conference ContinuesLondon mayor Boris Johnson devotes his column in today’s Daily Telegraph (“Do nothing, and we invite the tide of terror to our front door”) to the murder of James Foley and ISIS’s success in extending its control over areas of Syria and Iraq.

Johnson asserts that we “need to be far more effective in preventing British and other foreigners from getting out there”.

In order to suggest that this is a specifically British issue, he adds sarcastically: “I am interested to see how many Belgians are there.” Obviously not interested enough to check the figures, though. A report by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation estimated that, as of December 2013, up to 296 Belgians had travelled to Syria to participate in the resistance to Assad. The figure for the UK was 366.

Johnson, however, apparently knows better than the ICSR’s researchers how many fighters from the UK are in Syria. He tells his readers that there are “perhaps five or six hundred Britons currently out there”. Where he gets that statistic from is unclear. Five hundred – the figure suggested by Sir Peter Fahey of ACPO – is at the top of the range of official estimates of the number of people who have gone to Syria to join the opposition forces since the outbreak of civil war there in 2011.

It is thought that half of these individuals have since returned to the UK, while as many as 40 fighters have lost their lives. So the number of people still out there is probably little more than a couple of hundred. Furthermore, there is no reason to suppose that the majority of them joined ISIS rather than the other anti-Assad opposition forces – who have been engaged in armed conflict not just with Assad’s regime but with ISIS too.

The majority of young Muslims who travelled to Syria would have been motivated, not by the desire to join a murderous gang of fanatics, but by the entirely admirable wish to defend the Syrian people against the murderous regime of Bashar al-Assad. It seems likely, therefore, that the number of UK citizens who have joined ISIS is in the dozens rather than the hundreds.

Not that any of this enters into Johnson’s assessment of the situation. He writes: “The police can and do interview the returnees, but it is hard to press charges without evidence. The law needs a swift and minor change so that there is a ‘rebuttable presumption’ that all those visiting war areas without notifying the authorities have done so for a terrorist purpose.”

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Nick Ferrari denounces the ‘creeping tide of treachery’ among British Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

This is the price we have to pay for the years we allowed hate-filled preachers to spread their messages of evil and unrest to vulnerable young recruits outside mosques each week with police just watching and doing nothing more than making up the numbers.

We did nothing as some of our schools were infiltrated to the point where Christmas was banned, non-Muslim children were denied the opportunity to go on school trips and the public address system was hijacked to broadcast the daily call to prayer.

We permitted groups of mostly Muslim agitators to burn poppies in front of horrified former servicemen, carry posters advocating the murder of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, and yell ugly chants with the police again doing nothing more than acting as spectators.

The liberal Left, egged on by a combination of the chattering classes and a supine media led by state broadcaster the BBC crippled with the fear of being seen to be anything less than insanely tolerant, ensured that instead of offering any credible resistance to the creeping tide of treachery, the perverted zealots were as much encouraged as they were indulged.

Everything was done in favour of a tiny and, in some parts, twisted minority, and the rest of us would have to lump it….

Perhaps the most sickening aspect of the lot is that so many of those nursing hate in their hearts and murder in their heads are being funded by our benefit system. They might despise the West and all it stands for but clearly they can suspend the disgust long enough to cash their giros.

Nick Ferrari explains the presence of a British recruit to ISIS in their video of the murder of James Foley.

Sunday Express, 24 August 2014

Bournemouth EDL march attracts counter protest

Posted on by Bob Pitt

We Are Bournemouth counter-protest

Hundreds of people have gathered in Bournemouth for a march organised by the English Defence League (EDL) and a counter protest by its opponents. The EDL said about 200 supporters attended and handed out leaflets to passers-by. The TUC said hundreds also gathered for the “We Are Bournemouth” anti-EDL protest.

Officers from four neighbouring forces were drafted in to help police the protests.

BBC News, 23 August 2014

See also “EDL march through Bournemouth as counter demo for diversity takes place”, Daily Echo, 23 August 2014

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London mosque distances itself from ‘female jihadi’ who worshipped there

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A London mosque has distanced itself from one of its former worshippers after she vowed to become the first female jihadi to kill a western prisoner in Syria.

Khadijah Dare, from Lewisham in south-east London, said she wanted to carry out a copycat killing following the brutal murder of American journalist James Foley.

The 22-year-old Londoner, who moved to Syria in 2012 with her Swedish husband and Islamic State fighter Abu Bakr, took to Twitter to praise the killing. She wrote: “Any links 4 da execution of da journalist plz. Allahu Akbar. UK must b shaking up ha ha. I wna b da 1st UK woman 2 kill a UK or US terorrist!”

Dare, who previously posted a picture of her toddler son posing with an AK47 rifle, is thought to have been a regular at the Lewisham Islamic Centre, which was allegedly linked to Michael Adebolajo, the killer of fusilier Lee Rigby.

On Friday a spokesman for the centre said that, had Dare sought advice before travelling to Syria, it would have dissuaded her from “taking the particular action that she did despite us fully understanding why young men and women may be motivated to travel to Syria because of the tragic human suffering taking place there”.

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Immigration and multiculturalism led to the murder of James Foley, claims Express columnist

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The fact is that extremism has flourished in a climate formed by the twin strategies of mass immigration and multiculturalism. Open borders have led to a phenomenal expansion in Britain’s Muslim population to almost three million, many of the new arrivals hailing from parts of Africa, the Middle East and Asia where Islamic sectarianism is rife.

At the same time the dogma of cultural diversity has become one of the central obsessions of the state. We are constantly told that we must celebrate the vibrant enrichment of our society. But, by its emphasis on cultural differences and its loathing for traditional British values the doctrine of diversity has been a catastrophe for Britain.

In place of integration it has promoted division and separatism. We are a land increasingly without a mutual sense of belonging or shared national identity. It is little wonder that, according to one recent survey, 26 per cent of Muslims here said they feel no loyalty to Britain.

Enthusiasts for multi-culturalism love to blather about tolerance, yet it is richly ironic that their pernicious creed has promoted intolerance, misogyny and reactionary oppression. In predominantly Muslim areas diversity means the triumph of the burka, sharia law, fundamentalism in state schools and a reluctance to speak English.

A typical rant from Leo McKinstry in the Daily Express, 22 August 2014

Khalid Mahmood helps right-wing press whip up Islamophobia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Times and Express front pages

These are the front page headlines from two of today’s newspapers.

The Times headline parrots an earlier Newsweek article entitled “‘Twice as many’ British Muslims fighting for ISIS than in UK armed forces”. The source for this claim is Khalid Mahmood MP, who is a member of the Political Council of the neoconservative Henry Jackson Society and has a record of scaremongering over extremism within the Muslim community, most recently during the so-called “Trojan Horse” witch-hunt of schools in Birmingham.

Mahmood told Newsweek that at least 1,500 young British Muslims have been recruited by extremists fighting in Iraq and Syria over the past three years, whereas there are only 600 Muslims serving in the armed forces (the official figure is in fact 640).

There has been a systematic campaign by the British media to exaggerate the threat posed by young Muslims who have left the UK to fight in Syria, but nobody other than Mahmood himself, who offers no evidence at all to back up his claim, has ever suggested there are anything like 1,500 of them.

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Muslim women defy threats, violence to wear hijab

Posted on by Bob Pitt

When youth worker Sumreen Farooq was abused in a London street, the 18-year-old decided it was time to take a stand – and she started to wear a headscarf.

Farooq is one of many young Muslim women living in Britain who have, for various reasons, chosen to adopt the headscarf to declare their faith to all around them, despite figures showing rising violence against visibly identifiable Muslims.

For despite a common view that young Muslim women are forced to wear veils by men or their families, studies and interviews point to the opposite in Muslim minority countries where it is often the case that the women themselves choose to cover up.

“I’m going to stand out whatever I do, so I might as well wear the headscarf,” said Farooq, a shop assistant who also volunteers at an Islamic youth centre in Leyton, east London.

Reuters reports.

EDL set to march through Bournemouth on Saturday

Posted on by Bob Pitt

We Are BournemouthThe English Defence League is planning to march through the centre of Bournemouth on one of the busiest weekends of the year.

The march, planned for this Saturday, is billed as a demonstration against Islamic extremism and could be attended by hundreds of people. In response, members of unions, the National Pensioners’ Convention and the Labour and Green parties have organised an alternative rally to celebrate the town’s diverse culture.

The EDL march will start at 12.30pm outside the Moon in the Square pub and go past the BIC to Pier Approach and up to West Cliff. The counter-protest, involving a number of groups co-ordinated by Unite the Union, plan to meet at Horseshoe Common, taking a proposed route that finishes at Bath Road South car park.

Some disruption is expected between midday and 2pm, although this will be for short periods of time while the marches move through different areas.

Adnan Chaudry, chief officer of the Dorset Race Equality Council, accused the EDL of racism. He said: “We recognise that the EDL is a racist organisation whose main activities are street demonstrations against Muslim communities. They deliberately seek to whip up tension and violence between communities. We’re not going to allow them to divide our communities in Bournemouth.”

The EDL says that it is not a racist organisation and that it is only against “extreme components of Islam”.

David Stokes, Labour’s Parliamentary candidate for Bournemouth West, will take part in the alternative march. He said: “We are using the slogan ‘We Are Bournemouth’ for our march and rally because we are trying to highlight the fact that Bournemouth is a peaceful multi-cultural place where we welcome people from around the world.”

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Fascists unite to oppose mosque in New Addington

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BNP New Addington mosque meetingNotice announcing the cancellation of the BNP meeting, and Richard Edmonds addressing the audience with Cliff Le May looking on

Last week Labour and Conservative politicians in New Addington, including local Tory MP Gavin Barwell, united to issue an admirably firm statement opposing an anti-mosque campaign by the far-right British National Party. The fascists were not happy. They accused the statement’s signatories of “putting ethnic minority groups before the indigenous Brits” and setting aside their political differences to “conspire on an issue they all very much agree on – the Islamisation of Britain”.

The joint statement was important for its exposure of the BNP’s central role in the anti-mosque campaign, which has reportedly been run by the party’s Croydon & Sutton organiser John Clarke. The BNP itself has tried to play down its involvement, claiming that it was merely responding to a local initiative, having been “approached by concerned residents seeking the BNP’s knowledge and experience in dealing with proposed mosques popping up in every town and village in our green and pleasant land”.

As one of the BNP’s opponents told the Inside Croydon blog: “They are pretending to run a community campaign, claiming it’s not political. They are leafleting, knocking on doors, as well as running a street stall once or twice per week.”

The culmination of the BNP’s fraudulent “community campaign” was to be a public meeting on Sunday at the Addington Community Association centre. However, the ACA cancelled the booking, apparently in response to pressure from Croydon council, leaving the BNP without a venue. But they arrived at the ACA anyway and held their meeting outside the building, self-righteously complaining that they were the innocent victims of an attack on free speech.

Very few of those mythical local residents who had supposedly turned to the BNP for leadership actually turned up for the meeting. Considering that the party claimed to have persuaded two thousand people to sign its anti-mosque petition, and had invited them all to attend, the level of support was derisory. Inside Croydon estimated the numbers at “fewer than 30”. Nor were any “concerned residents” represented on the platform, which consisted of just two speakers, both of them notorious fascists.

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