The disgraced ‘anti-Islamophobia’ monitor Tell Mama is the gift that unfortunately keeps on giving. Like the sexually transmitted disease Herpes, the mendacious grievance mongering taqiyya artists of Tell Mama always seem to be with us. Now the ‘Teflon Taqiyya Artists’ have come up with yet another story that I shall endeavour to pick apart.
According to an article based very heavily on data supplied by Tell Mama is claiming that since the Islamic murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby in Woolwich, South London in 2013 there has been a rash of attacks against mosques. However when you start to break down the figures and examine the content of the story this tale, like so many others that emanate from the mouths and keyboards of Tell Mama operatives, seems to have less about it than meets the eye.
Here’s the story from the Asian Image newspaper. As is usual policy for this Blog the original text is in italics whereas this blog’s comments are in plain text.
The Asian Image said:
UK mosques have been targeted by 100 hate attacks since the death of Lee Rigby, new figures show.
At first glance that headline figure of 100 attacks does look like a lot but this number should be put into context. Firstly there are roughly 2,000 mosques and Islamic ‘community centres’ in the United Kingdom. If there have been 100 ‘attacks’ on these mosques then it works out to about 33.33 attacks on mosques in Britain per year. This means that for every 100 mosques only three and a third are likely to be the target of an attack of any sort. This is an incredibly low number and is even more so when compared to the growing number of attacks on churches throughout Europe, some of which are linked to Islamic militants or suspected of being linked to them A mosque in the UK is highly unlikely to be attacked yet this doesn’t stop the mendacious grievance mongering taqiyya artists of Tell Mama falsely, as they did in 2013, that there is a rising tide of ‘Islamophobia’ engulfing Britain. It was this false claim along with Tell Mama classifying people saying unkind but often true things about Islam online as ‘attacks’ on Muslims, that caused the UK government to withdraw public funding from the Tell Mama group.
Tell MAMA, the national anti-Muslim hate monitoring group, said there was a spike in reported attacks in the months after the death of the fusilier in May 2013 – with 43 from then until the rest of the year.
There were 21 the following year, followed by 24 in 2015 and 12 up until September this year.
The three main categories of anti-Muslim incident involved criminal damage to mosques, vandalism and actions involving violent extremism.
This section of the Asian Image piece is very interesting. They show that the figures supplied by Tell Mama are on the whole less than the average of 33.33 per year and rounded up or rounded down show that only 1% of mosques in the UK were attacked in 2014, a little over 1% in 2015 and just over 0.5% of mosques were attacked between January 2016 to September 2016. Even the figures that Tell Mama give for their highest year 2013 when tensions were running high because of the Islamic murder of Lee Rigby only represent 2% of British mosques. There is no indication from Tell Mama about the numbers involved in the claimed ‘spike’ following the murder of Lee Rigby but as this period covers when Tell Mama were bullshitting like crazy and claiming off colour comments as ‘attacks’ then I think we can safely assume that this claim may not amount to much. These figures do shock me but they shock me because they are so damned low. Despite Islam being a baleful and often unwanted presence in UK society the vast majority of mosques are left unmolested. Contrast that with how churches and synagogues are treated in Islamic societies and you can see that despite Muslims killing, terrorising and raping across the nation, it’s still incredibly safe to be a Muslim in the UK. In fact it’s considerably safer to be a Muslim in the UK than it is for example to be a Christian or a Jew in an Islamic nation.
Now we get onto the tricky and easily manipulated category of ‘violent extremism’. This is a category which lends itself very readily to skewing as often the perception of ‘violent extremism’ is in the eye of the beholder.
In the latter, the language of the perpetrator indicated rhetoric associated with far right-extremist groups or in some instances graffiti on mosques were also in line with support for such groups, according to anecdotal evidence.
Some examples of this ‘rhetoric’ would be useful along with examples of this graffiti. I’d also like to add that disliking the ideology of Islam is not only the preserve of the traditional ‘far right’. There are also it needs to be said, those who belong to the traditional Left who also have a bit of a dislike of Islam. In fact I’d say that in my experience a suspicion of Islam encompasses those of diverse political beliefs and those of no specific political belief. This category of ‘violent extremism’ is as I said earlier very easy to manipulate as the definition of ‘extremism’ like the word ‘fascist’ is often slippery and hard to pin down. We also have to take into account the phenomenon of fake hate crimes which conservative leaning organs such as Front Page Magazine have documented. Are these real ‘violent extremist’ incidents or are they fake ones in order to claim a false status of victimhood? This is a question that is sometimes very difficult to answer and there are some cases where despite the Left jumping up and down shouting ‘Islamophobia’ there are grave doubts as to whether or not that really is the case. Finally, when it comes to ‘anecdotal evidence’ we should be really careful, especially when it’s Tell Mama using the term ‘anecdotal evidence’ what could really be the case is ‘somebody made this up’.
The attacks were mostly clustered in areas where there are high concentrations of Muslims and mosques in the United Kingdom.
Well no shit Sherlock! These incidents are highly unlikely to occur in the Outer Hebrides are they? It may be wise at this point to ask why people in areas where there is a lot of Islam may get to the point where they resent it so much that they lash out?
However, there has also been a spate of incidents along the South West coast of England and in the South East along the Kent coast.
Knowing Tell Mama’s record for being ‘economical with the actualite’ I’d advise reading that as ‘alleged incidents’. If Tell Mama’s assertion that there has been a ‘spate’ of incidents in these areas are indeed true then I wonder if they are being done by people who’ve escaped Islamised areas and are angry when Islam sets up shop in their new town or city. I’m not saying that this is definitely the case but it’s something to bear in mind. Also what it is about an ideology that has been linked to a lot of violence, organised gang-style sex offending and of course Jihad, that may make people dislike that particular ideology? I fervently believe that people should be free to believe in whatever deity they choose but when the manifestations of that belief start to cause problems for others then there can be resentment of it and therefore trouble.
Tell MAMA founder Fiyaz Mughal said: “This shows that anti-Muslim hatred is targeted at mosques as visible symbols of Muslim communities in the country and that far-right rhetoric and symbolism is a driver for some of the targeting taking place.
Maybe people dislike Islam for valid reasons and see mosques as citadels of hatred and sedition? This impression is not helped by examples of mosques that produce or tolerate jihadis or make statements saying that sex slavery is acceptable in Islam.
“For years, the far right have been regarded simply as buffoons and not a threat with some commentators taking this position in national newspapers.
The traditional ‘far right’ such as the Mosleyites, the National Front, the BNP and similar organisations are indeed buffoons and have very little power or influence outside of their own groupuscules. Mughal’s comments about ‘newspaper commentators’ shows what Mughal’s true aim really is and that is not to deal with attacks, this is just a tool for him, but to shut down all negative comment about Islam and banging on about ‘hate crimes’ whether real or imagined is one way to do this. I don’t know of any commentator in a mainstream newspaper who who takes an NF, BNP or Mosleyite position in their writing and it is disingenuous of Mughal to try to claim that this is the case.
“They are a threat to all communities and to integration and cohesion.”
What about the threat that Islam poses to other communities such as Christians, Jews, Sikhs and Hindus? Although there are a great number of Muslims who are not supremacist in any way that should not divert us from the fact that Islam is a supremacist ideology and societies that are based on or controlled by Islam are observably religiously un-free with members of other faiths placed in a distinctly secondary or tertiary place on the social ladder. As regards integration then I’m afraid the ball is in the Muslims court on that one. Other faiths have integrated well but Islam all too often creates ghettos and sometimes hostile ghettos at that. Also many people do not fear walking through areas of the UK that have a lot of Sikhs or Hindus or Jews or Pentacostalists, but they do fear walking through Islamised areas and that difference in perception can be laid fairly and squarely at the feet of Islam and the attitudes and behaviour of its followers.
I’m afraid that this article can be safely filed under ‘bullshit’ like so many other statements and communiques from the Tell Mama organisation. Tell Mama’s breathless ‘Oh the calamity’ tone about these alleged attacks doesn’t really fit what in reality is a relatively small number of genuine acts of vandalism against mosques and other Islamic premises. Although acts of vandalism are to be condemned and should be discouraged, the facts are that a maximum of 43 mosques out of nearly 2,000 is a small number and yet again Tell Mama are trying to talk up a small-ish problem into a much larger one.
Link
Asian Image article
http://www.asianimage.co.uk/news/14917532.100_hate_attacks_on_mosques_since_death_of_Lee_Rigby/
