They have done it again.
A couple of days ago Anjem Choudary and friends (representing Islam4UK, al-Muhajiroun, Call to Submission or whoever) announced their plan for a procession through Wooton Bassett to opose the deaths of the people of Afghanistan. As far as I can see their announcement was posted sometime on Friday 1st afternoon.
About 48 hours later, at 5pm on Sunday 3rd the Facebook group opposing it had some 108,000 members. It seems to be growing at about 5,000 members an hour. A simple but provocative post by a group representing only a few hundred Muslims, but which thrives on the oxygen of publicity, has done it again. Their antiwar rhetoric has unleashed up a massive outpouring of anger.
Reports on the responses to date are many: the ITN news report is good; the Times is thorough (Extremist muslim group to march through Wootton Bassett ) and the Daily Mail predictably outraged (Outrage as extremists hijack war heroes' town). The latest report in the Telegraph includes a new open letter from Choudary and a mainstream Muslim denunciation (Muslim cleric Anjem Choudary vows to continue Wootton Bassett march).
The response is not unlike what we saw last year in Luton on March 10th when Sayful Islam, the Luton leader of Choudary's group, demonstrated at the homecoming parade of the Royal Anglian regiment. 14 men with placards provocatively denouncing the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and few women in burqas stirred up the anger of the crowd, and within 30 minutes we had a counter-demonstration of a couple of hundred. Within a few weeks on Easter Monday, April 13th, the so called United People of Luton, mounted a large and ugly gathering in the town centre. A second march six weeks later, on May 24th, resulted in several hundred of them running through the town looking to get to Bury Park, the centre of the Muslim community. On 27th June the movement went national, under the banner of the English Defence League (EDL) and for the rest of 2009 mounted a series of demonstrations across the UK.
[I have been following the process and reported on much of it here in a string of posts (see Seeking Peace in Luton and Multicultural UK). Wikipedia is here; A BBC Newsnight report is good, and there is ain depth radio documentary, File on Four, to be found in various places on YouTube - most recently here in relation to an upcoming EDL demo in Stoke. (This is the first section ,and you will find other to follow it). There is a good BBC page on them here . The most recent newspaper article is from the Daily Mail: This is England: Masked like terrorists, members of Britain's newest and fastest - growing protest group intimidate a Muslim woman on a train en route to a violent demo. The best background work on aspects of the EDL is on Richard Bartholomews blog, Bartholomew's Notes on Religion (search under EDL or Paul Ray).]
Its hard at this stage to predict what will happen with this mass new outpouring of anger at a few Muslim extremists. In my mind it is unlikely that Choudary's group will get to Wooton Bassett. On previous record it is unlikely they will be banned - though the government must surely be coming to reason on the impact they are having. My guess is that common sense will say it is well out of their safety zone and that police would be unable to safeguard the right to free speech they have so far been granted. Based on the comments on Facebook site if they went there I would anticipate a lynching. (When they planned an event in London, apparently to proclaim Sharia law for the UK, in October it provoked the EDL to plan a protest, which was of course followed by Unite Against Fascism, and then at least a couple of moderate Muslim groups. Their work done Choudary withdrew, leaving everyone else to protest.)
Choudary has shown himself to be a masterful tactician and I suspect he has accomplished what he wanted, which is to stir up yet more hatred of Muslims in the nation. The Facebook site wall certainly evidences that. In most peoples minds the EDL are extreme right wing thugs with a tendency to violence, though they have denied that. But frankly the emotions that are being poured out by the thousands in response to the latest provocation are just as angry as the voices on EDL forums - minus the swearing and the crudeness. The EDL have shown an inability to distinguish between a few Muslim extremists and the majority of the community. There is little different in the current analysis.
In a nutshell, Choudary and his colleagues know that the more Islamophobia they stir up the more members of the Muslim community will be inclined to look to them for a lead.
Of course this is not the only thing going on. The events since Christmas day when a Nigerian Muslim, a former student in the UK, sought to blow up a flight to Detroit, have unleashed yet another round of recriminations, and urgent attempts to bolt the terror door more tightly. The need is obvious, but the results are worrying. The Telegraph's offering today for example asks important questions but manages to throw accusations around to enthusiastically ( Revealed: the true extent of Islamic radical influence at UCL) Early information gleaned from the would-be bomber suggests more like him - 25 is his claim. (Bomb Plotter: More like me). And of course everyone knows (or I would prefer to say, thinks they know) that such people come from Luton, as well as Bradford and east London - Luton extremists line up to be suicide bombers.
The extremists are due to return to the UK early in 2010 and, it is claimed, will then await internet instructions from al- Qaeda on when to strike. The 25 suspects, of Pakistani and Somali descent, were radicalised in UK mosques. Some had been to university and studied engineering or computer sciences. Others were former street gang members.
Thus, the last week of 2009 seems to have set the agenda for 2010. More fear, more anger, more hatred. At one level I am deeply saddened. I am also challenged. The issues need to be picked apart and examined, whether the war in Afghanistan, the wider response to terror, and the issues of immigration and multicultural UK. We need to hear the EDL, al-Muhajiroun, and the ordinary people, whether here in Luton or those signing up for the Facebook group (135,00 of them now), and Iraq and Afghanistan. The problem now is that all these issues are politicised in the face of an election.
One thing I do know. Hatred and anger is not the answer. We do not need to respond to Anjem Choudary at a gut level response. We need to do all we can to ignore him and his friends. And we need to seek to do all we can to reach out to the Muslim community and engage with them positively. The same is true of EDL, and all who would indicate a growing fear and hatred of Muslims at this time.
The advice of the Pope and Archbishop in their new year messages is our challenge. "Discovering our own humanity as we honour the human dignity of others."
May we know peace in 2010.
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