A rightwing group, which has promised a summer of demonstrations against British Muslims, was in disarray today after its first significant protest ended in violence and 35 arrests.
The English Defence League staged a march near the Bullring shopping centre in Birmingham this weekend but its small band of supporters was drastically outnumbered by anti-fascist campaigners and riot police. The protest ended in violent skirmishes and running battles through the city’s busy shopping streets on Saturday evening.
Members of the League resorted to bitter in-fighting today as supporters labelled the organisers “ridiculous” and the event a “shambles”.
At least three people were injured as hundreds of police, some in full riot gear, broke up fights between anti-Islamic protesters and anti-fascist groups who came to disrupt the demonstration. At one point officers were forced to seal off New Street with a steel barrier.
Emily Bridgewater, who was shopping when violence broke out, told the Birmingham Post: “It kicked off very suddenly and there was stampeding and screaming.
“We ended up being herded into Primark, where they brought the shutters down to protect us. It was very frightening.”
The League publicised its demonstration in the weeks leading up to the march and claimed that another would be held in Luton on August Bank Holiday weekend.
Despite efforts to promote the event, fewer than 100 were thought to have gathered. Left-wing groups including Unite Against Fascism were alerted to the march and were able to organise a counter demonstration.
One member of the League’s online forum, registered as Adder, wrote: “I support you guys but yesterday was a shambles and you made us English look like an embarrassment. What exactly happened to supposed 'In the high hundreds' who were supposed to turn up? I saw the video and it seemed like there was barely 70 of you.
“Holding it such a high profile public place, ridiculous idea [sic]. That's just asking for normal civilians minding their own business to get attacked.”
Neil Edy, another member of the website, said: “I went to the march ... the turn out to the event wasnt good enuf only a few of us were there supporting the cause.”
Another sympathiser, calling himself Bill, said that he had not been able to find the others: “We were in the City most the afternoon, but then left as we had no one to contact and meet with, and we werent the only ones.”
Despite the failure of the first large event, the League insists it will continue to hold demonstrations. Comments on the group’s website, and the affiliated football hooliganism site Casuals United said that the next one would be bigger.
One message on the Casuals United site read: “We will arrange it via the Inner Circles secret forums, so we will arrive unnanounced and neither the police or the scum will know any details.”
Some members may find it more difficult to travel to future demonstrations after West Midlands Police said that they were studying footage of the violence and would consider applying for injunctions against troublemakers.
A police spokesman explained that the English Defence League had not informed local police of their intension to march but said that officers had no power to prevent a demonstration.
The English Defence League claim not to be a racist group and say that they have no ties with the British National Party. One of the websites linked to the League is believed to have been set up by a known BNP member, but that has now been taken down in an apparent attempt to conceal any link.
Nick Griffin, the leader of the BNP, insisted that there was no link with the group. He said: “It’s a potentially very dangerous development. I understand it mainly comes from Luton ... which is a tinderbox.”
The group, which organises events on its website and through a Facebook group with 198 members, plans to hold its next large official gatherings in Harrow and Luton in August and then in Manchester in October.
The Times
Showing posts with label Paul Ray. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paul Ray. Show all posts
10 August 2009
7 August 2009
Dispersal orders issued ahead of anti-Muslim demo
Anti Muslim protestors and their anti fascist counterparts planning to gather in Birmingam on Saturday will be greeted by draconian dispersal orders, warning them that the police can move on any gathering of two people or more if they believe they have good cause.
There has been no advance publicity about the decision to invoke the powers, which are presumably based on anti-terror legislation, but warning notices have already started appearing on lamposts around the city centre. The powers will also remain "live" for several weeks after the event.
The threat to the civil liberties of ordinary peace-loving Brummies is being compromised, it seems, to allow a group of far-right rabble rousers to have a march on the busiest shopping day of the week - a privilege recently denied to pro-Palestinian marchers protesting against Israel's invasion of Gaza.
Free speech is of course a precious right - but the police also have the job of upholding the law which, last time we looked, forbids incitement to racial hatred.
West Midlands Police were unavailable for comment last night.
The Stirrer
There has been no advance publicity about the decision to invoke the powers, which are presumably based on anti-terror legislation, but warning notices have already started appearing on lamposts around the city centre. The powers will also remain "live" for several weeks after the event.
The threat to the civil liberties of ordinary peace-loving Brummies is being compromised, it seems, to allow a group of far-right rabble rousers to have a march on the busiest shopping day of the week - a privilege recently denied to pro-Palestinian marchers protesting against Israel's invasion of Gaza.
Free speech is of course a precious right - but the police also have the job of upholding the law which, last time we looked, forbids incitement to racial hatred.
West Midlands Police were unavailable for comment last night.
The Stirrer
4 August 2009
Far-right talks up violence threat
Far right groups staging a demo against Muslim “extremism” in Birmingham on Saturday are already talking up the prospect of violence – no doubt hoping that it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
A previous demo in the city last month was organised by the English and Welsh Defence League, who had links to the BNP – while spokesman Paul Ray argued in a radio interview that all devout Muslims are “at war with our country”.
He's now taking a backseat in organising the campaign, having passed the mantle to a group called Casuals United who describe themselves as “ex football lads united against extremists”.
They claim not to be racists or Nazis, but their site talks unashamedly about “removing Islam”. The group also says it’s liaising with West Midlands police about a march from the Bull Ring to the “council offices”.
The choice of date of their visit may or may not be coincidental (the eighth of the eighth has been linked to the eighth letter of the alphabet, giving the initials HH for ‘Heil Hitler’) but in any event it spells trouble for Brum.
One posting on the racist Stormfront website yesterday, talks up the prospect of aggro. It says: “This could well be the turning point, if it all descends into violence we must not lose, our future depends on it!
“They will not be up for a bout of 'fisty cuffs', they will be armed. So be prepared (how 'prepared' is up to you).
”Have your cameras ready, as when the police come wading in on OUR PEOPLE, you need to film the severe beatings they dish out, and also the grace with which they treat the opposition. This could prove priceless later!
”Suggest that a splinter group meet outside Zavvi's at 5pm and 'introduce themselves whole heartedly' to the reds, before the reds have the luxery [sic] of police (liebour stormtrooper) protection.”
There have been suggestions that Muslim youths and anti-fascist protestors might be on hand to provide a “welcoming committee” – which would no doubt be just what these agitators would want.
The question now has to be asked whether the right to free speech is outweighed by the threat to public safety and the likelihood of disorder in a city which is proud of its multi-racial heritage.
The Stirrer
A previous demo in the city last month was organised by the English and Welsh Defence League, who had links to the BNP – while spokesman Paul Ray argued in a radio interview that all devout Muslims are “at war with our country”.
He's now taking a backseat in organising the campaign, having passed the mantle to a group called Casuals United who describe themselves as “ex football lads united against extremists”.
They claim not to be racists or Nazis, but their site talks unashamedly about “removing Islam”. The group also says it’s liaising with West Midlands police about a march from the Bull Ring to the “council offices”.
The choice of date of their visit may or may not be coincidental (the eighth of the eighth has been linked to the eighth letter of the alphabet, giving the initials HH for ‘Heil Hitler’) but in any event it spells trouble for Brum.
One posting on the racist Stormfront website yesterday, talks up the prospect of aggro. It says: “This could well be the turning point, if it all descends into violence we must not lose, our future depends on it!
“They will not be up for a bout of 'fisty cuffs', they will be armed. So be prepared (how 'prepared' is up to you).
”Have your cameras ready, as when the police come wading in on OUR PEOPLE, you need to film the severe beatings they dish out, and also the grace with which they treat the opposition. This could prove priceless later!
”Suggest that a splinter group meet outside Zavvi's at 5pm and 'introduce themselves whole heartedly' to the reds, before the reds have the luxery [sic] of police (liebour stormtrooper) protection.”
There have been suggestions that Muslim youths and anti-fascist protestors might be on hand to provide a “welcoming committee” – which would no doubt be just what these agitators would want.
The question now has to be asked whether the right to free speech is outweighed by the threat to public safety and the likelihood of disorder in a city which is proud of its multi-racial heritage.
The Stirrer
1 August 2009
A hot August?
In February 2001 senior British National Party officers and activists from the North West gathered in Oldham for a regional conference. The local organiser greeted them with the words “welcome to Oldham, the front line of the race war”.
The words were ominous. By May Oldham was burning after racist provocations and attacks drove a des-pairing Asian community onto the streets to defend itself. Two months later Bradford was ablaze. The scenario was the same: goad and abuse people in the streets, in their homes and shops, and sooner or later they will defend themselves.
Those arrested from the local Asian community were treated harshly and with some haste. Despite the firm evidence of involvement of the BNP and other nazis, racists and football thugs, justice was dealt out to them much later. The convictions upheld what we had been saying all along: a conspiracy involving disparate sections of the far right but led mostly by known BNP activists, who had helped plan and orchestrate the “race war”.
Despite continued pronouncements from Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, about a coming “civil war” (race war), the authorities have been looking in only one direction for terrorist threats. Until last year they failed to wake up to the ample evidence of far-right efforts to set this country ablaze this summer, unchanged by the BNP’s European success.
The BNP’s declared enemies, Muslim communities, are the target. And the BNP has had a growing influence on other far-right extremists who want a war in our streets against not only Muslims but anyone of Asian origin.
Many of those responding to the call of several different groups looking for a fight with Islam are unaware of who is jerking their strings. Unless the Home Office and the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) intervene directly, there is a danger of serious violence spreading across the country this month and beyond.
The accompanying diagram focuses on some of the key groups and players to whom officers of the BNP are offering political and physical assistance. The BNP will not be able to wriggle off the hook, but action after the event is not good enough; prevention is needed.
Two outbreaks of violence in Luton earlier this year wrong-footed the police. The situation was not helped by the failure of the local council to ask for Home Office intervention. As a result the police have stepped up infiltration and disruption of some of the key groups.
The far right were looking for a catalyst for action and found it on 10 March as troops from the Royal Anglian Regiment, known as “The “Poachers”, were to be welcomed home from Afghanistan with a parade through the streets of Luton.
Eight members of a Muslim extremist group, already disowned by the local Muslim community and told to stay away from the Luton mosque, put on an appalling display of hatred towards the troops, calling them child killers and butchers.
It would have been no problem for the large number of police stewarding the local people who had turned out to greet the troops to arrest these fanatics for race hate offences. Instead two people ended up being assaulted by the angry crowd. Only one was one of the Islamists – a former local leader of the fanatical al-Muhajiroun group. The other victim was the former mayor of Luton, a Sikh who was there to greet the troops.
Paul Ray, a Dunstable-based Islamophobe who blogs under the name “Lionheart”, applied for local authority permission to stage a St George’s day parade but was turned down. However he had already attracted the attention of the BNP and a series of anti-Islam groups including the United British Alliance (UBA) and March for England (MFE), both of which had been visible outside the notorious Finsbury Park mosque when Abu Hamza, the terrorist-linked extremist preacher and his followers had seized control.
After Abu Hamza was expelled from the building, he would preach hate to his followers in the street every Friday, until he was imprisoned in May 2004, and the UBA and MFE would turn up to jeer. These encounters were overwhelmingly non-violent, except when the National Front (NF) turned up and were driven away by the UBA and MFE.
The UBA and MFE appeared to draw large numbers of young men including some black people and even a couple of Jewish football supporters from Surrey. Many were former soldiers and former football hooligans. They were frighten-ingly disciplined. Hundreds marched to the Regents Park mosque in that period.
While these largely overlapping groups have kept up an internet presence, it was not until the events of 10 March in Luton that they suddenly reappeared on the streets.
Denied the opportunity to heat things up in the name of St George, Ray was attracting interest from Chris Renton, a BNP activist from Weston-super-Mare, and several other BNP activists from around the country including Marlene Guest from Rotherham, whose main claim to fame is her statement in Sky TV’s BNP Wives programme that some good had come out of the Holocaust in the form of dentistry and plastic surgery.
Tom Holmes, the NF leader, called on his troops to turn out against Islam at the earliest opportunity, which came on Easter Monday, 13 April, when the police decided to stop the progress of an anti-Islam demonstration in Luton.
The police struggled with a large crowd and even the use of horses did not disperse them. They included familiar faces from the pro-nazi football crews from the time when the nazi terror group Combat 18 was active in the 1990s. Only when police reinforcements from London arrived were they able to disperse the demonstrators.
Separate from the MFE and UBA are the English and Welsh Defence League (EWDL) and Casuals United, run by the Welsh football hooligan Jeff Marsh. They all used to work together until recently when Ray turned against Dave Smeeton, leader of the MFE.
On 24 May the EWDL produced a bigger turnout with football hooligan support for a march that had been given the green light by Luton Council and the Bedfordshire Police. The result was a disgrace as Islamophobes, hooligans and fascists broke away from the local marchers and tried to storm the Muslim area of Luton. Shops and cars were damaged and 150 young Muslims prepared to fight to safeguard their homes and families. It was beginning ominously to look like the fascists were achieving their aim of a repeat of the Oldham and Bradford riots.
In the run-up to 24 May Luton mosque had been the target of an arson attack.
At this point these various groups decided to spread their message of hate to other parts of the country.
Now there were signs that police infiltration was succeeding. A call to march through central London evaporated after intelligence was passed to the Metropolitan Police anti-terrorist command SO15. Then a mysterious figure called Dave Shaw called for EWDL supporters to gather at a Wetherspoon’s pub near Trafalgar Square on 27 June to go on to an activity outside the East London mosque in Whitechapel. Only a few turned up to be greeted by a large police presence and no sign of Shaw.
The EWDL began to realise it was a police sting operation and most of them decided to go drinking in Convent Garden instead. The police told the rest they could go to Whitechapel but only with a massive escort. Reports suggest that only eight to ten made it and were filmed, photographed, shoved around and told to behave on the tube journey.
The following weekend, on 4 July, the EWDL picketed a “Life under the Shari’ah” Islamic road show in Wood Green, north London, organised by the Islamist extremist Anjem Choudary, to find the police clamping down on both them and the Islamists.
On the same day the EWDL staged a voluble protest in Birmingham’s Bull Ring “against muslim extremists that interrupted a British soldier’s funeral”. Again prompt police action prevented any real trouble.
One of the nazis present was Mike Heaton, “Wigan Mike”, the violent leader of the small but crazy British Freedom Fighters, not deterred by being charged with racial hatred after his arrest outside the BNP victory rally in Blackpool in June.
The Islamophobes intend to return to Birmingham for a “march against sharia law” on 8 August. The date was fixed for before the start of the Midlands football season. Luton Town plays its first match on that day but the demonstration starts at 6pm, giving fans plenty of time to get there.
Interest in going to Birmingham may be growing. One Luton Town supporter noted that the EWDL had recently changed its booking from a 25-seat to a 52-seat bus. One nazi noted how it was the eighth day of the eighth month which, for nazis, translates as the eighth letter of the alphabet: “HH” or “Heil Hitler”.
Three whites from the extreme left in Birmingham have tried to recruit and incite Muslim teenagers to respond by taking to the streets with racially abusive language and slogans. Perhaps two political extremes are seeking confrontation in the city.
Now Martyn Page, the Hitler-saluting treasurer of the BNP’s Broxtowe group, is organising forces intent on setting the country ablaze, offering to bring in some heavy lads from his area. The target is Luton and the date is 30 August.
Searchlight
The words were ominous. By May Oldham was burning after racist provocations and attacks drove a des-pairing Asian community onto the streets to defend itself. Two months later Bradford was ablaze. The scenario was the same: goad and abuse people in the streets, in their homes and shops, and sooner or later they will defend themselves.
Those arrested from the local Asian community were treated harshly and with some haste. Despite the firm evidence of involvement of the BNP and other nazis, racists and football thugs, justice was dealt out to them much later. The convictions upheld what we had been saying all along: a conspiracy involving disparate sections of the far right but led mostly by known BNP activists, who had helped plan and orchestrate the “race war”.
Despite continued pronouncements from Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, about a coming “civil war” (race war), the authorities have been looking in only one direction for terrorist threats. Until last year they failed to wake up to the ample evidence of far-right efforts to set this country ablaze this summer, unchanged by the BNP’s European success.
The BNP’s declared enemies, Muslim communities, are the target. And the BNP has had a growing influence on other far-right extremists who want a war in our streets against not only Muslims but anyone of Asian origin.
Many of those responding to the call of several different groups looking for a fight with Islam are unaware of who is jerking their strings. Unless the Home Office and the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) intervene directly, there is a danger of serious violence spreading across the country this month and beyond.
The accompanying diagram focuses on some of the key groups and players to whom officers of the BNP are offering political and physical assistance. The BNP will not be able to wriggle off the hook, but action after the event is not good enough; prevention is needed.
Two outbreaks of violence in Luton earlier this year wrong-footed the police. The situation was not helped by the failure of the local council to ask for Home Office intervention. As a result the police have stepped up infiltration and disruption of some of the key groups.
The far right were looking for a catalyst for action and found it on 10 March as troops from the Royal Anglian Regiment, known as “The “Poachers”, were to be welcomed home from Afghanistan with a parade through the streets of Luton.
Eight members of a Muslim extremist group, already disowned by the local Muslim community and told to stay away from the Luton mosque, put on an appalling display of hatred towards the troops, calling them child killers and butchers.
It would have been no problem for the large number of police stewarding the local people who had turned out to greet the troops to arrest these fanatics for race hate offences. Instead two people ended up being assaulted by the angry crowd. Only one was one of the Islamists – a former local leader of the fanatical al-Muhajiroun group. The other victim was the former mayor of Luton, a Sikh who was there to greet the troops.
Paul Ray, a Dunstable-based Islamophobe who blogs under the name “Lionheart”, applied for local authority permission to stage a St George’s day parade but was turned down. However he had already attracted the attention of the BNP and a series of anti-Islam groups including the United British Alliance (UBA) and March for England (MFE), both of which had been visible outside the notorious Finsbury Park mosque when Abu Hamza, the terrorist-linked extremist preacher and his followers had seized control.
After Abu Hamza was expelled from the building, he would preach hate to his followers in the street every Friday, until he was imprisoned in May 2004, and the UBA and MFE would turn up to jeer. These encounters were overwhelmingly non-violent, except when the National Front (NF) turned up and were driven away by the UBA and MFE.
The UBA and MFE appeared to draw large numbers of young men including some black people and even a couple of Jewish football supporters from Surrey. Many were former soldiers and former football hooligans. They were frighten-ingly disciplined. Hundreds marched to the Regents Park mosque in that period.
While these largely overlapping groups have kept up an internet presence, it was not until the events of 10 March in Luton that they suddenly reappeared on the streets.
Denied the opportunity to heat things up in the name of St George, Ray was attracting interest from Chris Renton, a BNP activist from Weston-super-Mare, and several other BNP activists from around the country including Marlene Guest from Rotherham, whose main claim to fame is her statement in Sky TV’s BNP Wives programme that some good had come out of the Holocaust in the form of dentistry and plastic surgery.
Tom Holmes, the NF leader, called on his troops to turn out against Islam at the earliest opportunity, which came on Easter Monday, 13 April, when the police decided to stop the progress of an anti-Islam demonstration in Luton.
The police struggled with a large crowd and even the use of horses did not disperse them. They included familiar faces from the pro-nazi football crews from the time when the nazi terror group Combat 18 was active in the 1990s. Only when police reinforcements from London arrived were they able to disperse the demonstrators.
Separate from the MFE and UBA are the English and Welsh Defence League (EWDL) and Casuals United, run by the Welsh football hooligan Jeff Marsh. They all used to work together until recently when Ray turned against Dave Smeeton, leader of the MFE.
On 24 May the EWDL produced a bigger turnout with football hooligan support for a march that had been given the green light by Luton Council and the Bedfordshire Police. The result was a disgrace as Islamophobes, hooligans and fascists broke away from the local marchers and tried to storm the Muslim area of Luton. Shops and cars were damaged and 150 young Muslims prepared to fight to safeguard their homes and families. It was beginning ominously to look like the fascists were achieving their aim of a repeat of the Oldham and Bradford riots.
In the run-up to 24 May Luton mosque had been the target of an arson attack.
At this point these various groups decided to spread their message of hate to other parts of the country.
Now there were signs that police infiltration was succeeding. A call to march through central London evaporated after intelligence was passed to the Metropolitan Police anti-terrorist command SO15. Then a mysterious figure called Dave Shaw called for EWDL supporters to gather at a Wetherspoon’s pub near Trafalgar Square on 27 June to go on to an activity outside the East London mosque in Whitechapel. Only a few turned up to be greeted by a large police presence and no sign of Shaw.
The EWDL began to realise it was a police sting operation and most of them decided to go drinking in Convent Garden instead. The police told the rest they could go to Whitechapel but only with a massive escort. Reports suggest that only eight to ten made it and were filmed, photographed, shoved around and told to behave on the tube journey.
The following weekend, on 4 July, the EWDL picketed a “Life under the Shari’ah” Islamic road show in Wood Green, north London, organised by the Islamist extremist Anjem Choudary, to find the police clamping down on both them and the Islamists.
On the same day the EWDL staged a voluble protest in Birmingham’s Bull Ring “against muslim extremists that interrupted a British soldier’s funeral”. Again prompt police action prevented any real trouble.
One of the nazis present was Mike Heaton, “Wigan Mike”, the violent leader of the small but crazy British Freedom Fighters, not deterred by being charged with racial hatred after his arrest outside the BNP victory rally in Blackpool in June.
The Islamophobes intend to return to Birmingham for a “march against sharia law” on 8 August. The date was fixed for before the start of the Midlands football season. Luton Town plays its first match on that day but the demonstration starts at 6pm, giving fans plenty of time to get there.
Interest in going to Birmingham may be growing. One Luton Town supporter noted that the EWDL had recently changed its booking from a 25-seat to a 52-seat bus. One nazi noted how it was the eighth day of the eighth month which, for nazis, translates as the eighth letter of the alphabet: “HH” or “Heil Hitler”.
Three whites from the extreme left in Birmingham have tried to recruit and incite Muslim teenagers to respond by taking to the streets with racially abusive language and slogans. Perhaps two political extremes are seeking confrontation in the city.
Now Martyn Page, the Hitler-saluting treasurer of the BNP’s Broxtowe group, is organising forces intent on setting the country ablaze, offering to bring in some heavy lads from his area. The target is Luton and the date is 30 August.
Searchlight
7 July 2009
Protestors - "Brit Muslims are all extremists"
The far right group responsible for Saturday’s demo against Islamic extremism in Birmingham has revealed its opposition to all Muslims practising their faith in Britain. In an interview with Stirrer editor Adrian Goldberg on Talksport last night, spokesman Paul Ray also admitted their links with the BNP.
As we revealed yesterday, the protest was organised by the English (and Welsh) Defence League.
Despite the group’s claim to be non-political, it’s emerged on Indymedia that their website was set up by Chris Renton, a BNP activist who lives in Weston-super-Mare.
When EDL spokesman Ray was quizzed about this, he acknowledged Renton’s involvement, but insisted, “people’s political views are their own affair.”
During the course of the interview, it became apparent that Ray’s own view of Islamic extremism isn’t limited to suicide bombers and hook handed preachers of hate.
He argued that the Qu’ran teaches all its advocates to wage jihad or holy war in non-Muslim countries, and acknowledged that on this basis, all devout or practising Muslims in Britain, are – in his words – “at war with our country.”
When pressed, he said: “They’re ultimately engaged in converting our country to an Islamic state…that is the religious mandate of the Qu’ran that all Muslims must adhere too.”
So what of Muslims living here? Should they be banned from practising their faith – or would be they be deported?
“That’s a question for the politicians…” replied Ray, who was once investigated for 18 months by police in Bedford for allegedly inciting racial hatred on his blog Lionheart – although he was never formally charged.
He boasted that the Birmingham demonstration – and a similar event in London’s Whitechapel on the same day – marked the beginning of a new movement.
“This is only the start of people coming together to fight back against Islamic extremists on the streets”.
With the group planning a further visit to Brum on August 8, it will be interesting to see what action – if any – the Police take.
Inciting religious hatred is, of course, a crime – and an organisation which claims that every active member of a mainstream religion is waging a battle against their own country is, at best, flirting with the limits of free speech.
The Stirrer
As we revealed yesterday, the protest was organised by the English (and Welsh) Defence League.
Despite the group’s claim to be non-political, it’s emerged on Indymedia that their website was set up by Chris Renton, a BNP activist who lives in Weston-super-Mare.
When EDL spokesman Ray was quizzed about this, he acknowledged Renton’s involvement, but insisted, “people’s political views are their own affair.”
During the course of the interview, it became apparent that Ray’s own view of Islamic extremism isn’t limited to suicide bombers and hook handed preachers of hate.
He argued that the Qu’ran teaches all its advocates to wage jihad or holy war in non-Muslim countries, and acknowledged that on this basis, all devout or practising Muslims in Britain, are – in his words – “at war with our country.”
When pressed, he said: “They’re ultimately engaged in converting our country to an Islamic state…that is the religious mandate of the Qu’ran that all Muslims must adhere too.”
So what of Muslims living here? Should they be banned from practising their faith – or would be they be deported?
“That’s a question for the politicians…” replied Ray, who was once investigated for 18 months by police in Bedford for allegedly inciting racial hatred on his blog Lionheart – although he was never formally charged.
He boasted that the Birmingham demonstration – and a similar event in London’s Whitechapel on the same day – marked the beginning of a new movement.
“This is only the start of people coming together to fight back against Islamic extremists on the streets”.
With the group planning a further visit to Brum on August 8, it will be interesting to see what action – if any – the Police take.
Inciting religious hatred is, of course, a crime – and an organisation which claims that every active member of a mainstream religion is waging a battle against their own country is, at best, flirting with the limits of free speech.
The Stirrer
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