“Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, leader of the Muslim Council of Britain, has the cheek to compare modern Britain to Nazi Germany. ‘Every society has to be really careful so the situation doesn’t lead us to a time when people’s minds can be poisoned as they were in the 1930s. If your community is perceived in a very negative manner, then Muslims begin to feel very vulnerable,’ he says.

“Hang on. How vulnerable do the rest of us feel hearing that at least 2,000 of our fellow citizens are involved in terrorist activity? In Nazi Germany, Dr Bari may recall, it was Jewish children who were rounded up to be killed. Not the Jewish children who were trained to do the killing.

“Still, I’m glad to see Dr Bari is worried about minds being poisoned. Maybe he is familiar with the poetry of Samina Malik, a 23-year-old self-styled ‘lyrical terrorist’. Say what you like about Pam Ayres, she never wrote a poem called How To Behead: ‘It’s not as messy or as hard as some may think/It’s all about the flow of the wrist. No doubt that the punk will twitch and scream/But ignore the donkey’s ass/And continue to slice back and forth.’ Miss Malik shared her charming light verse with other like-minded people on the internet, before being arrested and convicted a few days ago under anti-terrorist laws.

“The news that Samina Malik held down a job at WHSmith at Heathrow on the air-side, for crying out loud, proves just how insanely tolerant Britain is, despite the intolerable provocation of men like Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari.”

Allison Pearson in the Daily Mail, 14 November 2007

Update:  See “Comparisions with the 1930s”, MCB press release, 15 November 2007