The Real Extremists Are on the Far-Left

On Monday 23 March, taking up most of its front page, the i blared the headline “Far-right support for Ukip” saying underneath that the paper can reveal an election endorsement by the leader of Britain First.

Nearly as large as the headline itself were the words “Extremists will prove highly embarrassing for Nigel Farage”. To me it seemed a grim indictment of how silent and complicit the media are in hiding the true extremists that politicians cosy up to, something that is far more shocking, newsworthy and of interest to the public than an attempt to get yet another cheap smear on Ukip.

I’m sure the front page of the i will have been of great interest to members and supporters of Unite Against Fascism (UAF) as they are the only people who would remotely care about something like this.

The UAF are, of course, very much an establishment group despite the fact there are countless videos of them beating lone, defenceless people senseless. They are supported by a whole host of “the Great and the Good” including Prime Minister David Cameron and stuffed to the gills with Labour politicians.

This article about a UAF conference, entitled “Ukip must not be allowed to influence politics and immigration” (never mind the fact every poll for years now has found the vast majority of the British public want a hefty reduction in immigration), illustrates how UAF is full of Labour politicians, including employing a Labour ex-MEP as their “Europe officer”.

The UAF’s vice-chair, Azad Ali, stated in 2008 that Anwar al-Awlaki, an al Qaeda member described as “the bin Laden of the internet” who had connections to just about every terrorist plot and attack carried out on Western soil, was “one of my favourite scholars and speakers”.

While a civil servant in the Treasury, Ali blogged approvingly of Muslims killing British soldiers in Iraq and praised Abdullah Azzam, Osama bin Laden’s key mentor as being “few Muslims who promote the understanding of the term jihad in its comprehensive glory” as both a doctrine of “self-purification” and of “warfare.” That was in 2009. A year later, Ed Miliband and Harriet Harman spoke at a campaign meeting with Ali.

This information is freely available on Ali’s Wikipedia page and as I mentioned before, he is vice-chair of UAF. Meanwhile, on Britain First’s Wikipedia page we find the leader’s heinous activities to be being found guilty of harassing the sister of a man involved in the July 7 bombings after accidentally showing up at her house instead of his. Yet to the i, one connection should prove “embarrassing”, the other not. The UAF in general has been heavily criticised for other links to Islamists; One of Lee Rigby’s killers was involved and spoke at a rally.

If the papers want something particularly current to put on their front pages in the realm of extremists, they could try MEND (Muslim Engagement and Development) and YouElect, two groups getting Muslims involved in the political system. Andrew Gilligan has done a fantastic job of exposing them, and it troubles me that his findings are not more widely publicised. The entire article is worth a read as it shows how both bodies have extreme Islamist leanings.

YouElect’s Jamil Rashid, a supporter of CAGE, is the director of the think tank of Haitham al-Haddad, an extremist cleric and Sharia judge who describes democracy as “filthy” and only permissible to return a Muslim majority government in “50 years, something like this”, as “Islam is spreading all over the world” but now appears in MEND’s election videos.

Azad Ali is also working for MEND but his main job now is working for the Islamic Forum of Europe which is working to secure a Sharia state throughout Europe. There was a MEND fringe meeting at last year’s Tory conference which Lynton Crosby addressed which went entirely under the radar because the only extremists in Britain, we are led to believe, are those who wave a St George’s or a Union flag.

Islamists have co-opted the language of the left, batting off criticism with the terms “far-right” or “Islamophobe”. Almost every Tweet on Azad Ali’s Twitter feed contains some iteration of the word “Islamophobe”, including one suggesting someone will be inspired to go on a killing spree by Gilligan’s Telegraph blogs. This was also seen in the response to Eric Pickles asking mosques to help root out radicalism; the Muslim Council of Britain accused the government of “acting like members of the far right.”

These people and groups do not represent all Muslims, yet our politicians have lent them their ear, allowed them into the establishment and they and the media are colluding in their outrageous demands that all criticism of them must be dismissed as “far right”. To elevate Islamists so hostile to our values to such levels of importance is to foster antagonism between British Muslims and Britain.

Coming back to the i and its amazing front page scoop on just how embarrassing it is for Nigel Farage to have been linked to extremists, in order to illustrate the story of how horrific the group are, the paper used a picture captioned “Britain First protesting outside the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters in London.”

How interesting then, that this is the same Islamist Muslim Brotherhood who is designated a terrorist group in most Middle East States, whose former Supreme Guide said in a 2010 Norwegian documentary film that the dream of the Muslim Brotherhood is to establish a unified Islamic state, and that its project was to introduce it in Europe.

It is the same Muslim Brotherhood whose most important theologian, Ken Livingstone’s friend Yusuf al-Qaradawi uttered in 2007:

“The conquest of Rome, the conquest of Italy and Europe means that Islam will return to Europe once again. Must this conquest necessarily be through war? No, it is not necessary. There is such a thing as a peaceful conquest. The peaceful conquest has foundations in this religion. So I imagine that Islam will conquer Europe without using violence. It will do so through predication and ideology.”

What are our leaders doing with these people? They probably don’t know any better. Where’s a real UAF, one who alerts the media, politicians and gets us out on the streets to protest when genuine fascism threatening our country rears its ugly head, as it is doing more and more credibly? Nowhere yet, but when it does it’s certain it will look more like Britain First than its rancid, fascist-infested current incarnation.