Recently there was a very interesting article published on the website of the Voice of Russia that was partly about everyone’s least favourite mendacious grievance-mongering Taqiyya artists, Fiyaz Mughal’s Tell Mama group.
A researcher quoted by the VoR report by Carmen Cracknell, said that Tell Mama and others who are claiming that there has been a massive rise in the danger to Muslims from the nationalist far-right that: ‘“TellMAMA is an Islamic group with its own agenda and you have to treat it with caution. We need hard data. There is no evidence the far right is on the rampage.’
What is interesting about this story is the similarity of the allegations of the unamed Home Office counter-extremism worker, quoted in a recent BBC news report, and those made by Tell Mama. The anonymous Home Office senior advisor works for the government’s ‘Prevent’ strategy that, during the Labour years, had been heavily penetrated by Islamists and other Islamic ‘non-violent’ extremists.
The effects of this penetration can be seen in the mealy-mouthed style of the preamble to the Home Office policy documentation on ‘Prevent’, which now doesn’t mention ‘Islam’ specifically. Even though Islam is the main problem that ‘Prevent’ need to deal with. The only way a casual reader would guess that Islam is a problem would be the mention of the names of the regions and nations that are the main focus of Prevent’s activities . The Prevent document mentions ‘far right’ terrorism of which there has been very, very little when compared to that coming from Islam. That statement itself is testament to how deeply the Home Office may have been penetrated by those whose political outlook can be summed up by the phrase ‘Islamic oppression, there’s nothing to see here, now move along.’
The Voice of Russia article is a welcome bit of honesty about the grievance-mongers and others who have agendas, that are at heart, much more foul than fair. It is considerably more realistic about the threats that we face, and the entities that want to play down those threats. The Independent newspaper for example, is trying to say that the nationalist far right is a comparable danger to the UK as the Islamic terrorists. That claim is so far from being truthful as to be laughable, if it was not so worrying a distortion.
The Voice of Russia said on the subject of an alleged ‘backlash’ against Muslims:
“The comments by the anonymous Home Office source chimes with figures from the reports of an organisation called TellMAMA that measures anti-Muslim attacks in Britain, with the vast majority of abuse being committed online. TellMAMA also reported a rise in incidents following the murder in Woolwich of Lee Rigby.
They claim the number has increased since the Rotherham scandal involving the abuse of over 1400 children in Yorkshire between 1997 and 2013 by mostly South Asian Muslims.
Rumy Hasan, a senior lecturer at the University of Sussex, who has written extensively on multiculturalism, believes the media is scaremongering. He told VoR:
“TellMAMA is an Islamic group with its own agenda and you have to treat it with caution. We need hard data. There is no evidence the far right is on the rampage. We don’t have a party like Golden Dawn. To my knowledge no Muslim has been killed in this country since 9/11 because of Islamophobia.
“It’s dangerous fear-mongering and it’s very worrying. There are hardly any white far-right groups thankfully. They hardly exist. The BNP has practically imploded”.
Anne Marie Waters, director of Sharia Watch UK, says the media miscommunicated the perpetrators’ identities.
“They made a huge mistake labelling these men Asian rather than Muslim. I don’t think there were any Japanese men involved in this. Calling them Asian is actually a racial slur when actually ideology is what we should be looking at here.”
Between late 2012 and 2013, TellMAMA received over £200,000 a year from the Department for Communities and Local Government to monitor anti-Muslim attacks in Britain.
The Telegraph journalist Andrew Gilligan later revealed the organisation’s grant had been removed, and heavily criticised the group for skewing its figures, saying it had not made clear that most abuse cases were online and not in person.
Bharath Ganesh, a researcher for TellMAMA, told VoR the rise in derogatory language aimed at Muslims signals a rise in the far right.
“On the far right it was framed as – these are Muslim rapists, whereas in the mainstream media it was seen as Asian ‘gangs’ that were committing child sexual exploitation. Sure they were predominantly of one ethnic or even religious group. It’s a problem when the far right starts putting all Muslims into one box and labelling them all as taking part in child exploitation”.
But Rumy Hasan says Muslim communities in Britain are responsible for how they are perceived:
“The Islamic groups in this country have long been part of the problem in my view, because they want to preserve their separate rights and status, so they have been part of the problem in ghettoising Muslim communities, demanding separate rights and exceptions to the law and we saw this in the Trojan Horse scandal in Birmingham schools. They don’t talk about the Muslim far right. The IS people are more far to the right of anything anywhere in the world.”
Hasan say public opinion is clear on the matter: “In 2011 the most populous opinion poll did the largest survey on identity and extremism in the UK. They got a shock because 52 percent said they thought Muslims cause problems in the UK – more than half. This is not the far right. The annual British attitudes survey finds out the only religion that gets a negative reaction is Islam. Rather than brushing it under the carpet find out what and why.”
Far-right groups have gained ground across Europe and did well in the European elections in May. Parties like Golden Dawn in Greece and Jobbik in Hungary are overtly xenophobic and have been violent towards ethnic minorities.
Anne Marie Waters believes there is too much political correctness in the media and in local government.
“I sometimes wonder if they genuinely believe this so-called rise in Islamophobia – whatever that means – is more important than protecting little girls from rape?”shesays.
“I wonder about this entire far left wing nonsense that dominates the public sector, BBC and local government, clearly. When they talk about the rise of the far right, what do they mean? What I would usually think of is actual racists and skinheads, characterised by violence, misogyny and anti-Semitism. Most of that is coming not from skinheads but from extremist Muslims. If we really want to tackle the far right we’ll have to tackle the Islamic far right which is a much bigger problem.”
The British government has a strategy in place called Prevent that works with all forms of extremism, both far right and religious.
There has been increasing focus on both the rise of the far right and on Islamism in Britain, but clearly the appeal of the ideology remains, at least for some.”
Anne-Marie Walters is correct in her assessment of the greater danger. The nationalist far right in the UK is small and likely to remain so unless something huge happens that both increases their support, or increases their credibility. The nationalist far right is tiny, but the Islamic far right is a growing phenomenon that needs rooting out of our society before it becomes even more of a danger than it is at present.
I’d like to conclude this article with this observation. That it takes a Russian media outlet to give an honest assessment of the political situation re Islam in the UK is a damning indictement on the quality and trustworthyness of British newspapers and other media. When I think of all the huge stories of the past that have been published by British newspapers such as those concerning thalidomide, the paedophile information exchange, the Iraq supergun scandal and the Profumo affair, it is beyond disgusting that they are parroting pro-Islam propaganda from the likes of Tell Mama. Instead of reporting on the true problems, the British media is just lying to our faces.
Links
Voice of Russia article original source.
Home Office Prevent strategy web paage
https://www.gov.uk/government/policies/protecting-the-uk-against-terrorism/supporting-pages/prevent
Artlicle about ‘rise in far right extremism’ from the increasingly Islamopandering Independent newspaper.
BBC article on the alleged ‘far right backlash’.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-29204170
