Right wing groups like the English Defence League are turning parts of Britain into recruiting grounds for Islamic extremists, police have said.
The EDL emerged last year and has held demonstrations in a number of towns and cities against radicalisation.
But the West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit has told BBC Radio 5 live there is evidence EDL events can encourage extremists. … They are worried about radicalisation inside prisons as well as colleges and universities, and they also fear that groups with an anti-Islamic message, particularly the English Defence League, are acting as a recruiting sergeant for Muslim extremists.
Many EDL demonstrations and counter-demonstrations have ended in violence, and Det Supt John Larkin tells me that they have witnessed signs of radicalisation afterwards.
“They look for the hook to pull people through and when the EDL have been and done what they’ve done - perversely they leave that behind,” he explains.
{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
Al 11.19.10 at 9:51 am
EDL a recruiting sergeant for extremism?
Another way of looking at this might be: Islamic extremism a recruiting sergeant for EDL.
But then, that would run counter to the BBC’s editorial policy of continuous appeasement towards Islam and Islamic extremism.
“I always think that impartiality is in our DNA - it’s part of the BBC’s genetic make-up.” – Helen Boaden, Director BBC News, 18/9/2010
Hollow laughs…
Richard 11.19.10 at 10:52 am
There’s some truth in what you say Al. Fear and hatred breed. The EDL peddle both.
Earl 11.19.10 at 1:30 pm
Never heard of edl. Don’t know a thing about them. But, if they are anything like the kkk, etc., then the claim that they breed anything except disgust is bogus. The same use of emotion, half-truth, stereotype, etc., are used by partisans of all persuasions. The bbc affirmation that the bbc is impartial or at least objective is as persuasive as protest by extremist groups that they are not extremist.
Paul Martin 11.19.10 at 1:40 pm
KKK surely breed disgust Earl.
And give me the BBC before Fox any day.
How’s life on Planet Earl these days?
Al 11.19.10 at 2:31 pm
Well yes Richard, the EDL do peddle fear and hatred.
But then so also do the UAF, MAC and all the other Islamist extremist organisations that rarely, if ever, attract the scrutiny and oppobrium meted out to the EDL by the BBC and other supposedly impartial news organisations.
Another example: The BBC was all over the supposed BNP-takeover-in-Barking story like a rash, but has been stangely silent about the actual takeover of neighbouring Tower Hamlets by the Muslim supremacist Islamic Forum for Europe, whose members believe in violent jihad and the imposition of sharia law in Britain.
My point is that if you’re going to oppose fascism, oppose it in all its manifestations. There is willful blindness in much of the media (and indeed elsewhere, for example in the Methodist Church) about the fear and hatred peddled by Islamist extremists in Britain.
I hope you take this point on board and look forward to some more even-handed postings from you in future.
Kim 11.19.10 at 3:18 pm
The EDL doesn’t need Islamic extremism for its recruitments drives, it only needs Islam.
Impartiality? There is no view from nowhere. The very selection of news items is an interpretive act. “The news,” as Walter Cronkite once said, “is what I say it is.” But when it comes to selection and presentation as intellectual and ethical nutrition, Fox is to the BBC as a Big Mac is to a steak (or, for Richard, a nut cutlet).
Al 11.19.10 at 5:17 pm
What the fox has Fox got to do with any of this? The BBC is more impartial than Fox? France 24 is far more impartial than BBC World, and Reuters is more impartial than France 24. So what?
It is still an unfortunate fact that the BBC cannot be trusted to cover Muslim-related issues in an even-handed manner. As a journalist and a license-fee payer, that really grinds my gears.
Kim 11.19.10 at 7:24 pm
Whenever you hear someone banging on about “the facts”, as if he is only giving us “the facts” and “the facts” speak for themselves, you can be sure there’s a ventriloquist in the room. It is a well-tried, well-failed rhetorical ruse for privileging the position of the speaker, for making him the infallible arbiter of the contributions to a conversation. What are we to think of such foxy intellectual bullying? Check out Gradgrind in Dickens’ Hard Times.
Richard 11.19.10 at 8:24 pm
Something that might have been said in several recent threads, Kim.
Zack 11.19.10 at 9:29 pm
Hey Al the BBC is often described as a hot bed of Islamist supporting, lefties or a Zionist organ of state control depending on your particular outlook.
I tend to think it’s somewhere in the middle ….. reasonably impartial.
Kim 11.19.10 at 10:29 pm
Ad rem, Richard. But wait … What’s that sound? … I hear the music from Jaws.
Al 11.19.10 at 10:31 pm
No Kim, facts are items of provable truth.
It is a fact that, as I mentioned above, the BBC coverered the BNP in Barking story ad nauseam in the run up to the election.
It is also a fact that the takeover of neighbouring Tower Hamlets by the Muslim supremacist Islamic Forum for Europe, has hardly been covered at all.
You can check this very easily by searching on BBC Online.
That this might be outside your comfort zone is obvious. But we do have to change our point of view when the facts tell us we may be wrong.
Richard 11.19.10 at 10:56 pm
“The takeover of Tower Hamlets” sounds like a classic bit of scaremongering.
Al 11.19.10 at 11:20 pm
Of course it does, Richard, because it’s outside your wishful thinking about the massive wonderful rainbow brilliance that Islam is bringing to Britain.
Search Andrew Gilligan and IFE on the Telegraph, Evening Standard, or Channel Four websites to learn about what is happening in Tower Hamlets.
And when you’ve done that, could we please have a bit of honesty about what you have discovered?
Richard 11.19.10 at 11:41 pm
Or because it is in fact scaremongering.
Al 11.19.10 at 11:46 pm
Why not just do the search to find out if it is scaremongering or not? Why does any alternative view threaten you so much? What are you so frightened of?
Richard 11.20.10 at 8:29 am
It’s funny. A day or two ago it was being implied that I am some sort of jack-booted fascist. Now, apparently, I’m a cowering librul.
Ian Howarth 11.20.10 at 8:16 pm
I do sense an inconsistency in the response of liberal Christians on issues like this. Dogmatic, fascist extremism is wrong whether it comes from the EDF or radical Islam., as is homophobia, gender discrimination etc.
The EDF incites Islamic extremism, Islamic extremism incites the EDF. Moderate people of all faiths and none, need to speak truth and love to all intolerant hatred whoever it comes from
Al 11.21.10 at 12:01 am
Richard, what a weird response.
No-one, as far as I can see is accusing you of being a jack-booted fascist or a cowering liberal.
All I asked you was, in the light of your posting of the BBC piece about the EDL was to look at the issue from a slightly different angle. The EDL are deeply crap, obviously, but some nasty little Islamofascist groups also worthy of occasional condemnation too?
Instead, I get Kim’s stock “I’m too thick to understand the facts of the case you’re trying to make, but you’re using unfair rhetorical devices so everything you say is bollox”.
And then from you, Richard, nothing at all. Just creepy two line whispers that say nothing.
malc 11.23.10 at 3:35 pm
Apart from Andrew Gilligan (who did both the C4 programme and The Telegraph articles) no-one, including Lutfur Rahman and the Islamic Forum for Europe seems to believe there is any conection between the two. Well, anyone who isn’t agaist Lutfur Rahman on the grounds he is a Muslim that is. I’m sure that the EDL website is full of Islamic conspiracies of their take-over of this country….
modernity 11.23.10 at 5:53 pm
Rev. Hall,
A timely post, completely agree.
The EDL are hatemongers, and violent racists.
They are led by ex-BNPers, white power freaks and neo-Nazis.
I have covered their activities fairly extensively.