I was meandering through the Iconoclast which is the blog-side of the New English Review magazine recently when I came across a story that somewhat summed up the idiotic nature of those who govern and administer the United Kingdom. The story was about a report by Staffordshire County Council into the terrorist crimes of Usman Khan, a Pakistani-origin Staffordshire resident, who carried out the Fishmongers Hall attack in London in 2019,which led to the deaths of two students involved in a criminal rehabilitation scheme.
The name of the terrorist Khan is to be removed and redacted by Staffordshire Council from the report which was put together to try to prevent similar terror attacks. The reason for this quite unnecessary redaction was in the words of one councillor not not ‘demonise’ the Pakistani community. The council is also redacting the name in order to not give ammunition to the ‘far right’.
This is a ludicrous decision. We already know who Usman Khan was, how he carried out the terror attack and how he evaded checks to ensure that he was really truly reformed. Nothing whatsoever
The New English Review article said:
The name of a Staffordshire terrorist who killed two people in the London Bridge attacks is to be removed from a council report over concerns, including it could play into the hands of far right extremists. The report was prepared by staff at Staffordshire county council in response to a “prevention of future deaths report”, written by coroner Mark Lucraft KC, which does name Khan.
Usman Khan was responsible for the attack at Fishmongers Hall in 2019. He fatally wounded Prisoner Education Scheme volunteers Saskia Jones, 23, and 25-year-old Jack Merritt at an event to help ex-offenders. He was shot dead by police.
At a meeting of Staffordshire County Council’s Safeguarding Overview and Scrutiny Committee this week, which was receiving the chief coroner’s report outlining how future deaths could be prevented following the inquests of Khan’s two victims, debate focused on the inclusion of Khan’s name in the report.
One member claimed that including Khan’s name and ethnic background could provoke an increase in hate crime, while an opponent said the authority should be wary of “watering down” information that was in the public domain.
At the meeting, Councillor Gillian Pardesi said: “Can I suggest those two details are removed please? My concern is that mentioning the name of this person, who happens to be of Pakistani descent, further demonises the Muslim community and it embeds in people out there a stereotypical profile of what an extremist is.
What utter tosh. Most people are already very well aware that there is an Islamist terror problem that faces the UK. The vast majority of the 40,000+ persons of interest to the security services are Islamic extremists and this is a fact that has been widely and extensively reported in the national mainstream media.
Staffordshire County Council are treating its residents and the rest of Britain like fools. All that redacting this terrorists name will achieve is to make the council look like they are pandering to one community at the expense of everyone else. As for ‘embedding a stereotype of an extremist’ then this stereotype has been created by the dozens of deaths caused by numerous attacks in the UK by terrorists acting in the name of Islam.
We as a society need to have a proper open debate about religious extremism in general and Islamic extremism in particular. This vital and necessary debate is not assisted by idiot local politicians trying to protect one community and one religion from criticism.
The only thing that this redaction of Usman Khan’s name will achieve is to cause people to be suspicious of the local authority. It will create in people’s minds a suspicion that if the council are willing to be dishonest about the name of a terrorist and to do so for dubious reasons, then what else are Staffordshire Council willing to be dishonest about? As a member of the Henry Jackson Society said later in the quoted article, this redaction by the council could ‘backfire’. Dr Alan Mendoza, of the anti-extremism think tank the Henry Jackson Society, said that attempts to “airbrush” the facts could backfire. “Far from reducing the risk of far-right extremism, the removal of Khan’s name could see misinformation spread rapidly online and develop into a false narrative of a ‘cover-up’. Dr Mendoza is correct. If you give people the impression that there is a cover up then it’s more than likely that people will assume that there’s a cover up.
Well, given what has happened in Leicester as well with the pre-determined (i.e. prejudiced) outcome of the not-so independant inquiry into the rioting, I think we are getting close to the point of being able to say that “[insert name] Council panders to one community at the expense of all others”. This is, I suspect, even closer to the truth where Labour run Councils are concerned.
Also is the narrative of a cover-up false? Events surrounding the mostly Muslim child-sex grooming gangs, events like this around the Country where Islamic terror is downplayed, dismissed, ignored or recast as “mental illness” (there is an argument that orthodox Islam produces mental illness in certain individuals of course) are evidence that there is a consistent policy across much of the political spectrum to cover-up Islamic terror, thus the “narrative” of cover-up of Islamic terror is arguably true.
With regards to the Leicester inquiry the Islamopanderer who was initially given the job as inquiry leader was kicked off after pressure from MP’s. Hopefully Leicester council will not be able to get away with such a stunt in future.
You are correct that the continual litany of councils, often Labour led ones, that are linked to cover ups and obfuscation of Muslim grooming gangs and the central govts usual response to Islamic terror attacks where the Islam aspect is downplayed does give credence to the idea that there is a cover up narrative. Sometimes if an entity is not corrupt but gives the impression that it is corrupt then people will believe it is corrupt.