Tory Councillor Threatened With Decapitation For ‘Islamophobic’ Comments on Mosques

A Bahraini Shiite Muslim man holds his sword as he performs Ashura mourning rituals in Man
MOHAMMED AL-SHAIKH/AFP via Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

A Tory Party councillor claimed that she received death threats after she made supposedly ‘Islamophobic’ statements about British mosques and largely Muslim grooming gangs.

Conservative member of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council, Beverly Dunlop said that a man called her three times last week to threaten to cut off her head in retaliation to her comments.

In response to the threats of decapitation against the Tory politician, the local council said they were “very alarmed” and the police in Dorset confirmed that they are investigating the matter in order to locate the unknown man, according to the BBC.

Last year, a dossier of allegedly anti-Islam comments made by Conservative Party politicians, including Councilor Dunlop, was sent to the left-wing British newspaper The Guardian by an anonymous Twitter user called @MatesJacob.

In a 2016 post, Ms Dunlop reportedly said on Facebook: “I hate to ban anything really but I’d suggest we start with Mosques!”

In another post from 2019, she criticised calls for an inquiry into Islamophobia in the Conservative Party by saying: “How about them calling for an inquiry into Islamist rape gangs grooming underage, underpriveleged white girls [sic]?”

Earlier this month, the members of the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council’s standards committee ruled that her comments did not breach the council’s code of conduct as it was deemed by independent investigator Tim Darsley that her comments were made in a personal capacity.

The council did go on to condemn the “unacceptable” statements from Ms Dunlop, who claimed that her remarks were taken out of context.

In a statement given to the Daily Echo last year, Cllr Dunlop said: “A few sentences from a wider discussion have been removed from the context in which they were written in order to make me appear to be something I am not.”

“The irony – which I thought was obvious in the mosque comment – is that I am well known for my libertarian outlook and very much oppose restrictions of freedom such as bans,” she noted.

“Only someone with a political agenda would view comments about female oppression and abuse and then attempt to denigrate the writer. I am aware of two other comments, which without the surrounding material can and no doubt will be used to convey whatever the publisher chooses,” Dunlop concluded.

A spokesman for Dorset Police confirmed that the force had received a report on Thursday of last week that a woman had “received malicious communications the previous evening”.

The council said in a statement that the chief executive has been in communication with Cllr Dunlop to provide support for her.

“[The] government has recognised the increase in threats and attacks on politicians over recent years and agreed, for example, that the personal contact details of councillors need no longer be published,” the council added.

The threats of beheading against the Tory councillor came less than a week after 18-year-old Chechen migrant Abdoulakh Anzorov decapitated a teacher, Samuel Paty, outside of Paris for showing caricatures of the prophet Muhamed from the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Following the attack, it was revealed that a “Fatwa” video, which detailed the address and identity of the terror victim, had been shared by the leader of the Pantin mosque in Paris, M’hammed Henniche.

“Nobody, really nobody, could imagine, on October 9 when I posted it, that it would end with this killing,” Henniche claimed.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here: @KurtZindulka

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