Tag Archives: British Muslims for Secular Democracy

A Tale of Two Protests

This Saturday, amid massive tabloid hype, al-Muhajiroun (AM) were supposed to be marching through central London calling for their vision of Shari’ah to be imposed in the UK. Under the name Islam4UK (a name they’ve admitted is simply associated with a website front-group for AM), al-Macaroon managed to grab headlines with their mocked up images of Buckingham Palace converted into a mosque and the fountains of Trafalgar Square converted to be used for ritual ablutions prior to prayer. This provoked a number of Muslim groups into organising counter-protests in Piccadilly Circus.

Then AM abandoned their plan to march in central London and instead held a rally in Walthamstow. Predictably, the Express covered this protest and incendiary comments made at it by AM’s current leader Anjem Choudary (referred to by the article’s author, James Fielding as a “Sheikh” despite the fact that Anjem doesn’t even know basic Arabic) but omitted to mention any counter protests.

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A Good Day For Democracy

Shaaz Mahboob has a good article on Saturday’s demonstration by the BMSD against Al-Muhajiroun.

Anjem Choudary’s chums abandoned their own demo, of course, and the field was left open to the supporters of liberal democracy. But to be precise, when I say “open”, I am ignoring the identity politics played by the organisers of the Mulsims4UK counter-demonstration, who made it a point to distance themselves from the Secular Democracy message of the BMSD counter-demo.

As Shaaz mentions:

Sadly, we were not joined by the Islamic Society of Britain and Inayat Bunglawala’s group, Muslims4UK, who called off their own counter-demonstration. Also, disappointingly, we discovered that Inayat Bunglawala had formally requested that the police set up a separate pen, so that they would not have to stand with pro-democracy and anti-sharia Muslim groups such as us. This sort of sectarianism is incredibly damaging, not only to Muslims, but Britain as a whole.

Posted in Activism, Anti Fascism, Secularism | Tagged | 11 Comments
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