Category Archives: Anti Muslim bigotry

This is a cross-post by Shiraz Maher from Standpoint Magazine

I have a forthcoming publication which looks into the role of Commonwealth soldiers in the First and Second World War. Their participation has been underplayed in some commemoration services despite the crucial role they played in helping defend Britain against some of her greatest enemies in the last century.

One of the largest faith-groups in the colonial Indian Army was Muslims who fought, at times, against the Muslim power of their day: the Ottoman Empire. Their letters, housed in the British Library and National Archives, reveal the extraordinary management of their religious and civic identities.

This is a cross-post from Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens

Earlier today, this blog posted a truly shocking video from a recent English Defence League (EDL) rally in Leicester which showed members of the far-right group laying siege to an Asian takeaway full of families. Watch the video now if you haven’t already, words cannot quite describe it.

In the Guardian’s Comment is Free blog, Little Green Footballs blogger Charles Johnson has given a broad overview of the problems within American ‘anti-Jihadism’, highlighting in particular the activities of Pamela Geller, the fear-monger behind the anti-Ground Zero Mosque movement. One of the things he notes is her clear and repeated support for the EDL and other far-right organisations in Europe. Geller’s support for the EDL has been quite extensively covered by the Guardian and Johnson, though it is worth reiterating that she claims to ‘share the EDL’s goals’ and personally invited them to attend her rally on 9/11 to protest the Park51 Islamic centre.

This is a cross-post by Shiraz Maher from the Standpoint ‘Focus on Islamism’ blog

Here is the EDL in all their bigoted glory.

It is an astounding video, revealing the true colours of the EDL and everything you ever needed to know about its members.

This blog takes a robust line against Islamists – it always has. That much is evident from its name. Where we depart from those who like to describe themselves as anti-Islamists is that we oppose fascism and discrimination in all its forms.

It is not enough to say the EDL have been provoked into this by years of woeful inadequacy by the government. Officialdom has undoubtedly turned a Nelsonian eye to the growth of Islamism, as catalogued by this blog along with our comrades at Harry’s Place and the Spittoon. But to dismiss their actions as ‘understandable’ in this context is every bit as disingenuous as those who explain away Islamism as a reaction to ‘Western foreign policy’ or ‘oppression’.