The Australian Liberty Alliance, Australian Christo-Fascism with a Smile


What’s behind the Australian Liberty Alliance?

Australian-Liberty-Alliance

L to R – Christian activist Kirralie Smith, Dutch fascist Geert Wilders, far Right Q Society-linked Debbie Robinson, Roman Catholic homophobe Bernard Gaynor; Smith, Robinson and Gaynor are candidates in the ALA clown car.

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Roman Catholic fascist theocrat and arch-homophobe Bernard Gaynor [pictured far Right], hopes that a divine intervention might plant the seed that will produce an Australian messiah to save us from “the empty, atheistic and crumbling secularist society that is killing Western civilisation.”

Writing on his blog, Gaynor moans:

“I …pray that God raise[s] up a national hero who can save Australia in the same mould as Garcia Moreno, who dedicated his country to Christ the King and achieved great things for Ecuador, before being assassinated for his Catholic faith.”

You may not have heard of Garcia Moreno. I hadn’t. Fortuitously, Encyclopaedia Britannica comes to our aid:

“Gabriel García Moreno, (born December 24, 1821, Guayaquil, Ecuador—died August 6, 1875, Quito), initiator of a church-oriented dictatorship in Ecuador (1861–75). His rule, oppressive but often effective in its reformist aims, eventually cost him his life.”

So what’s behind the Australian Liberty Alliance?

by Patrick J. Byrne

With Dutch politician Geert Wilders planning to help launch the Australian Liberty Alliance, where will this new party sit in the Australian political scene?

Australian Liberty Alliance Q Society links

Serge Trifkovic

In March 2014, Geert Wilders, member of the Dutch parliament and leader of the country’s Party for Freedom (PVV), delivered a message from the Netherlands (via YouTube) to a Stop Islamisation of Nations (SION) conference held in Melbourne, pledging that he would return to Australia in early 2015 to help launch the Australian Liberty Alliance.[1]

The 2014 conference was organised by the Q Society of Australia,[2] which is also behind the formation of this new political party.

The Q Society itself was founded in 2010. It has hosted tours around Australia of a number of overseas anti-Islamic activists and organised campaigns to stop the building of new mosques.

While the Australian Liberty Alliance is yet to be launched and fly its political colours, the Q Society has been closely linked to anti-Muslim activists in the United States and Europe.

Ideological roots

The resources page on its website illustrates the ideological roots of the Q Society of Australia.[3]

First, the Q Society recommends Serbian-American author Serge (or Srjda) Trifkovic’s book, The Sword of the Prophet: Islam — History, Theology, Impact on the World (2002),[4] describing it as “the Swiss Army knife of books on Islam”.

Trifkovic was a high-level spokesman for the Serbian nationalist forces during the Serbian ethnic-cleansing of both Muslim and Catholic Croatians in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia in the Balkans from 1992 to 1995. About 100,000 died in the conflict.

Former Harvard professor Samantha Power — currently U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations — chronicled in her 2002 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, how during the war Serbian forces systematically destroyed villages and towns, and herded local populations into concentration camps not seen since the Nazi camps of World War II.[5]

Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic

Enraged Jewish-Americans, at demonstrations in the early 1990s calling for U.S. intervention to stop the killings, shouted, “Never again!”, the cry of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust.

On August 5, 1992, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Congress placed an advertisement in the New York Times headlined, “Stop the Death Camps: an open letter to world leaders”, in which they declared: “To the blood-chilling names of Auschwitz, Treblinka and other Nazi death camps there seem now to have been added the names of Omarska and Brcko.…

“Is it possible that, fifty years after the Holocaust, the nations of the world, including our own, will stand by and do nothing, pretending we are helpless?… We must make it clear that we take every necessary step, including the use of force, to put a stop to this madness and bloodshed.”[6]

Some Serbian concentration camps were designated rape camps, where Yugoslav troops brutalised and impregnated Bosnian Muslim women, as well as girls as young as 12, in a bid to destroy their dignity,[7] while in the Bosnian town of Brcko (pronounced Bairch-ko) they brutally slaughtered and disposed of the remains of an estimated 3,000 people.[8]

Finally, in 1995, an international outcry over the week-long massacre of around 8,000 civilians in Srebrenica, allegedly on the orders of Serbian general Ratko Mladic, saw NATO forces launch an intensive bombing campaign against Serbian forces and strategic facilities that eventually ended the war.

Gravestones at the Potocari genocide memorial near Srebrenica

Serge Trifkovic has described himself as an “unofficial spokesman” in Europe for Bosnian Serbian leader Radovan Karadzic, president from 1992 to 1995 of the autonomous Republika Srpska (a self-proclaimed Serb republic within Bosnia), and as an adviser to his successor, Biljana Plavsic, known as “the Iron Lady”, who served as president from 1996 to 1998.[9]

In 2001, Plavsic was indicted by the International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) — otherwise known as the War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague — for crimes against humanity and in 2003 was sentenced to prison.[10]

Radovan Karadzic is currently awaiting the judges’ verdict on charges of crimes against humanity before the same court,[11] alongside General Ratko Mladic.

When Mladic was arrested in 2011, Trifkovic defended him and dismissed accounts of the Srebrenica massacre, saying, “The heart of the indictment against him [Mladic], ‘Srebrenica’, is a myth — a genocide-that-never was, a postmodernist exercise in pseudoreality.”[12]

After the Balkans war, Trifkovic migrated to the United States, and transformed himself into an “expert” on Islam, working since 1998 as the foreign editor of the conservative Rockford Institute’s Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.[13]

Samantha Power

Secondly, the Q Society of Australia has Robert Spencer as its international patron and board member.[14] The Society highly recommends his books and blog page, Jihad Watch. Spencer is regarded as the global leader of the anti-Islamic blogger network and is co-founder of the Stop Islamisation of Nations (SION), a global alliance of anti-Islamic organisations.[15]

Spencer has paid lavish tributes to Serge Trifkovic[16] and published Trifkovic on Jihad Watch.[17] Trifkovic, for his part, has responded with glowing endorsements for two of Spencer’s books.[18]

Despite his tributes, Spencer has also declared that Trifkovic is anti-Semitic.[19]

Spencer is on the advisory board of the American Council for Kosovo,[20] which is closely linked to an organisation run by Serge Trifkovic, the Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies. The American Council for Kosovo heavily promotes Trifkovic.[21] The director of the Council, James Jatras, is also on the board of Spencer’s principal organisation, Jihad Watch.[22]

Kejda Gjermani is a Jewish commentator who has worked for the leading U.S. Jewish magazine, Commentary, and written extensive exposés of Spencer and Trifkovic.[23] She accuses Spencer of openly associating “with violent genocide proponents/deniers …” through his position on the advisory board of the American Council for Kosovo and his endorsement of Serge Trifkovic.[24]

Kejda Gjermani

Articles on Spencer’s Jihad Watch blog page dispute the massacre of 8,000 at Srebrenica by Serbian forces in 1995. One of the headlines suggests that the UN and Muslims were somehow responsible for perpetrating the massacre, saying, “UN officials and the Muslim regime in Sarajevo orchestrated the Srebrenica massacre.”[25]

Spencer disputes the idea that there are moderate forms of Islam or moderate Muslims. For example, his Jihad Watch blog’s news editor, Marisol Seibold — presumably reflecting the blog’s official editorial line — declares: “‘Moderate’ is a uselessly relative term, ultimately only defining someone who is somehow less ‘extreme’ than the next guy.”[26]

Spencer is an adherent of the Byzantine-Rite Melkite Greek Catholic Church, making his association with Trifkovic and the Council of Kosovo somewhat curious. During the Balkans war, Serbians not only ethnically-cleansed Muslims, but also Catholic Croatians.

One of the first recorded ethnic-cleansing attacks by Serbian forces was in December 1991 just as U.S. Congressman, Frank McCloskey, was travelling through the Balkans to the Croatian town of Vocin, 70 miles south west of Zagreb. He arrived immediately after the murder of about 40 Catholic Croatians, most of them over the age of 60. Many had been tortured and their bodies horrifically mutilated.[27]

Thirdly, the Q Society of Australia also promotes the anti-Islamic conspiracy theorist, Bat Ye’or[28] (Hebrew for “daughter of the Nile”), the pen-name for Gisèle Littman (née Orebi), an Egyptian-born British writer and political commentator, who currently lives in Switzerland.

Australian Liberty Alliance Q Society links

Five of the six members of Stop Islamisation of Nations (SION)’s ‘president’s council’ at SION’s launch at a conference in Stockholm, August 4, 2012. L to R: Anders Gravers, Pamela Geller, ‘Tommy Robinson’, Robert Spencer and Kevin Carroll (Debbie Robinson is not pictured)

British-Canadian author and journalist Doug Saunders, in his book The Myth of the Muslim Tide: Do Immigrants Threaten the West? (Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2012),[29] has exposed the conspiracy theories that Bat Ye’or expressed in her 2005 book, Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis.[30]

Bat Ye’or claimed that the purpose of the early 1970s Euro-Arab Dialogue was to enable the Muslim takeover of Europe, creating a situation whereby Christians and Jews would be reduced to the protected but subordinate minority communities of classical Islam. They would be made second-class citizens forced to “walk in the gutter”.

In an American radio interview on his book, Saunders said the Euro-Arab Dialogue was nothing more than “a talking shop, a committee or a subcommittee created by the precursors to the European Union … to deal with some of the political and economic tensions around the OPEC oil crisis. And it met a handful of times in the ’70s, … failed and died out by the end of the ’70s.

“It was eclipsed in the ’80s and ’90s and 2000s by other bodies that united Israel and the Arab states and the European Union and so on. It was a bureaucratic nonentity that somehow got inflated in this literature into being this grand conspiracy.…”[31]

Matt Carr, a journalist and author of Unknown Soldiers: How Terrorism Transformed the Modern World (2006),[32] has criticised Eurabia, saying: “In order to accept Ye’or’s ridiculous thesis, it is necessary to believe not only in the existence of a concerted Islamic plot to subjugate Europe, all Arab governments, whether ‘Islamic’ or not, but also to credit a secret and unelected parliamentary body [the Euro-Arab Dialogue] with the astounding ability to transform all Europe’s major political, economic and cultural institutions into subservient instruments of ‘jihad’ without any of the continent’s press or elected institutions being aware of it.…”[33]

Adam Keller, an Israeli peace activist, wrote an open letter to the publishers of the Hebrew translation of Eurabia, comparing it “to Édouard Drumont’s La France Juive (1886), the anti-Semitic tract that provided the ideological underpinnings for the deportation of France’s Jews under the [WWII] Vichy government half a century later”.

Keller says that the informed reading public needs to read “the classical work of a master racist demagogue [Édouard Drumont]” in order to understand “his loyal present-day disciple and successor [Bat Ye’or]”.[34]

Simon Kuper, a Paris-based correspondent for the UK Financial Times, says that Bat Ye’or’s book Eurabia “has been described as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in reverse”.[35]

‘Tommy Robinson’ (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) in a scuffle with British police

On August 31, 1995, Bat Ye’or delivered a lecture, entitled “Myths and politics: origin of the myth of a tolerant pluralistic Islamic society”,[36] to a Chicago symposium on the Balkans war. The symposium was organised by Serge Trifkovic’s Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies and the Washington-based think tank, the International Strategic Studies Association (ISSA).

Bat Ye’or has been criticised over the fact that her lecture didn’t even mention the Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslim civilians by Serb forces the previous month.

Bat Ye’or is regarded as one of the leading ideologues of the anti-Islamic movement. Robert Spencer describes her as “a hero of our age”.[37]

Particularly for those global anti-Islamic agitators who have chosen to involve themselves in Serbian-Muslim affairs, such as Serge Trifkovic and Robert Spencer, it is a moral contradiction to oppose jihadist terrorism but to remain silent on, or be apologists for, or be deniers of, Serbian terrorism against civilian Muslims and Catholics in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia.

Ethnic-cleansing is one form of terrorism. For Trifkovic, it becomes easy to deny Serbian terrorism when he denies that ethnic-cleansing ever happened, labelling such claims merely as an “exercise in pseudoreality”.

Terrorism is terrorism. It should be loudly condemned and strongly resisted, regardless of whether it is perpetrated by the Islamic State on Shia Muslims, Christians and other minorities, or by Serbian nationalists on civilians.

The duplicitous stand by these writers on terrorism helps radical jihadists discredit the genuine opponents of all radical ideologies and terrorism.

Fourthly, the Q Society of Australia is one of the founding bodies of Stop Islamisation of Nations (SION) — that is, Robert Spencer’s international anti-Islamic umbrella organisation, which was formed at a conference held in Stockholm, August 4, 2012. Spencer listed the names of the six inaugural members of the SION “president’s council” on his Jihad Watch blog.[38]

News Weekly reproduces below the names of these individuals, together with their backgrounds:

1)        Robert Spencer, president of Stop Islamisation of Nations (SION);

2)        Pamela Geller, president of Stop Islamisation of America (SIOA), and founder, editor and publisher of the blog, Atlas Shrugs[39] (named in honour of the Russian-American right-wing atheist philosopher and amphetamine addict, Ayn Rand[40]);

3)        Debbie Robinson, 2013/2014 president of the Q Society of Australia, Inc.;[41]

4)        Anders Gravers, Danish anti-Islam activist and leader of Stop Islamisation of Europe (SIOE);

5)        “Tommy Robinson” (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon), co-founder and former spokesman and leader of the extreme right-wing English Defence League (EDL); and

6)        Kevin Carroll, co-founder and former deputy leader of the EDL (and a cousin of Yaxley-Lennon).

Both former EDL leaders have had court convictions, Yaxley-Lennon for violent assault, and Carroll for hurling abuse at Muslims.[42]

On April 18, 2005, “Tommy Robinson” (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) was sentenced to 12 months’ prison for kicking in the head of an off-duty police officer who had intervened to stop a domestic incident between Yaxley-Lennon and his partner, Jenna Vowles.[43]

On November 3, 2011, Yaxley-Lennon was given a suspended prison sentence for headbutting one of his own supporters at an EDL rally in Blackburn.[44]

The EDL has been notorious for its violent demonstrations and has encompassed a number of organisations, including some whose members have been photographed at EDL rallies giving the Nazi raised-arm salute.[45]

In October 2013, Yaxley-Lennon and his cousin Kevin Carroll — only a year after joining SION at its 2012 conference in Stockholm — both quit the EDL.[46] Then, last year, Yaxley-Lennon landed in prison for fraud.[47]

The Q Society of Australia, by aligning itself with SION, has identified itself with the controversial views of Spencer, Trifkovic and Bat Ye’or, among others.

False demonisation of all Muslims

Spencer, SION and the global anti-Islamic network have a propensity to reduce all the diverse streams of Islam into one monolithic hostile political force. They demonise all the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims as being part of an ideology committed to the subjugation of non-Muslims. At worst, many anti-Islamic agitators treat all Muslims as apologists for, or supporters of, violent jihadists.

Just as early 20th-century anti-Semitic ideologues portrayed Judaism as a “cosmic evil”, many anti-Islamists portray the whole of 21st-century Islam as a “cosmic evil”,[48] an inveterately hostile political ideology, the “new communism”.

On the contrary, Paul Gray, former editor of News Weekly, explained in his book, Nightmare of the Prophet: Why the Next Century Could Be Our Most Violent Yet (2004) that such a portrayal of the whole Islamic world is as false as claiming that the Klu Klux Klan is representative of the whole Christian world.[49]

The U.S. Jewish human rights group, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), has warned about the views of Spencer in language similar to that of the critics of Bat Ye’or.

Writing in The Washington Post (July 29, 2011), the then ADL national director, Abraham H. Foxman, condemned the vitriolic Robert Spencer and other anti-Islamic agitators over their “intellectual influences” on the Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, who massacred 77 people in 2011.

Foxman warned that the writings of these authors “promote a conspiratorial anti-Muslim agenda under the pretext of fighting radical Islam. Because of the reach of the Internet, these ideas float freely across borders and are reinforced by like-minded bigots”.

He continued: “This belief system goes far beyond anti-Islamic prejudice based on simple religious or racial grounds. In a sense, it parallels the creation of an ideological — and far more deadly — form of anti-Semitism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries on the backs of the previously dominant cultural and religious forms of anti-Semitism.…

“In America, the polarisation, vitriol and fear engendered by anti-Islamic activists must be replaced by reasoned and civil debate. We must rally the voices of reason to overcome the voices of intolerance before it is too late.”[50]

Timely warning

The Anti-Defamation League and other critics of extremist anti-Islamic agitators offer a timely warning for Australia.

It is necessary to expose extremist forces threatening politically-vulnerable emerging states in the Arc of Instability stretching from China, across Asia to Africa. In this unstable region, many countries are going through the tumultuous process of overthrowing their anciens régimes on the long and often dangerous road toward democracy, human rights and free enterprise economies.

However, the demonisation of all Muslims in language that Jewish writers liken to vitriolic, early 20th-century anti-Semitism is divisive, dangerous and counter-productive.

For example, it is sensible to call for radical clerics who incite terrorism to be expelled from Australia; but it’s dangerous and counter-productive to prevent moderate Muslims from building mosques. First, it is a violation of a person’s right to freedom of association and freedom of worship. Secondly, selective denial of religious freedom is the guaranteed way of driving some young Muslims into the arms of extremists.

If the aim of such a policy is to stop the radicalisation of young Muslims, it’s a mistaken policy.

David Irvine, director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) from March 2009 to September 2014, told an audience in Perth (March 4, 2014) that most of those being radicalised are being radicalised not in mosques, but via the internet and on social media.[51]

Demonising the whole of Islam as an inveterately hostile political ideology is de facto a declaration that all Muslim countries are hostile states. Pursuing a foreign policy based on such a premise would have far-reaching consequences.

Indonesia is the world’s largest Islamic nation, and Australia’s near neighbour. Imagine if the Commonwealth government were to treat Indonesia as a hostile state. It would put Australia on a collision course with its largest neighbour, damage bilateral trade and risk the denial of access to Australia’s most important trade routes through the Indonesian archipelago.

Jewish commentator Kejda Gjermani concludes her 2009 detailed critique of Trifkovic and Spencer, “Robert Spencer’s connections: The Serge Trifkovic file (Srjda Trifkovic)”, warning that such anti-Islamic agitators make it easy for radical Islamists and their apologists to discredit and attack genuine critics of militant Islam.[52]

The Q Society of Australia endorses and promotes extremist anti-Islamic agitators with “compromised backgrounds”. The Q Society is behind the formation of a new political party, the Australian Liberty Alliance, with consequences yet to be worked out in Australian politics.

Australians should consider the people and causes involved with the Q Society of Australia and its political progeny before lending them support.

 


Endnotes

[1] Peter Law, “Perth surgeon Anthony Robinson a director of new political party Australian Liberty Alliance”, Perth Now, October 5, 2014.
URL: www.perthnow.com.au/news/western-australia/perth-surgeon-anthony-robinson-a-director-of-new-political-party-australian-liberty-alliance/story-fnhocxo3-1227080218488

[2] 1st International Symposium on Liberty and Islam in Australia, Melbourne, March 7-10, 2014, Q Society of Australia Inc in association with SION and SkipnGirl Productions P/L.
URL: http://qevent.org/1stSymposium2014/

[3] Q Society of Australia, Inc: resources page (accessed February 1, 2015).
URL: www.qsociety.org.au/links.html

[4] Serge Trifkovic, The Sword of the Prophet: Islam — History, Theology, Impact on the World (Boston: Regina Orthodox Press, 2002).

[5] Samantha Power, A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 2002), Chapter 9.

[6] Ibid., p.278.

[7] Ian Black, “Serbs ‘enslaved Muslim women at rape camps’”, The Guardian (UK), March 21, 2000.
URL: www.theguardian.com/world/2000/mar/21/warcrimes.balkans

See also the Wikipedia entry, “Rape during the Bosnian war”.
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_Bosnian_War

[8] Michael R. Gordon, “U.S. says up to 3,000 Muslims died in Serbian-run detention camps”, New York Times, September 26, 1992.
URL: www.nytimes.com/1992/09/26/world/us-says-3000-may-have-died-in-serbian-run-detention-camps.html

[9] Kejda Gjermani, “Robert Spencer’s connections: The Serge Trifkovic file (Srjda Trifkovic)”, Kejda Gjermani: Her Miscellaneous Musings (New York), February 23, 2009.
URL: www.kejda.net/2009/02/23/robert-spencers-connections-the-srjda-trifkovic-file/

See also: Trifkovic’s testimony before the International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia (ICCY), in Part 1, Breivik, Trifkovic and Radical Serb Ideology, a 12-page monograph published on July 25, 2011, by Michael A. Sells, the John Henry Barrows Professor of Islamic History and Literature at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago.
URL: http://home.uchicago.edu/~msells/documents/Breivik-Trifkovic-and-Radical-Serb-Ideology.pdf

See also the exchange between Serge Trifkovic and Stephen Schwartz, “Apology and correction”, FrontPage Magazine, January 15, 2003.
URL: http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=20283

[10] “Biljana Plavsic”, International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia (ICCY).
URL: www.icty.org/sid/221

[11] Julian Borger, “Radovan Karadzic tells war crimes trial there was no ethnic cleansing in Bosnia”, The Guardian (UK), October 1, 2014.
URL: www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/01/radovan-karadzic-war-crimes-trial-no-ethnic-cleansing-bosnia

[12] Serge Trifkovic, “The Mladic puzzle”, The Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies, June 10, 2011.
URL: www.balkanstudies.org/blog/mladic-puzzle

[13] Srdja (Serge) Trifkovic: author, editor, professor.
URL: http://trifkovic.mysite.com/

[14] Q Society of Australia, Inc: resources page (accessed February 1, 2015).
URL: www.qsociety.org.au/links.html

[15] “International ‘counter-jihadist’ organisations”, Hope Not Hate: For a modern, inclusive Britain (London), 2012.
URL: www.hopenothate.org.uk/counter-jihad/organisations/Stop-Islamisation-Network

[16] Brian Lamb, “Q&A with Robert Spencer”, video and transcript, Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network [C-SPAN], (Washington, DC), August 20, 2006.
URL: www.c-span.org/video/?193778-1/qa-robert-spencer

[17] For example, Srdja Trifkovic, “PC self-censorship at the American Foreign Policy Council”, Jihad Watch, April 15, 2011.
URL: www.jihadwatch.org/2011/04/trifkovic-pc-self-censorship-at-the-american-foreign-policy-council

Also see the number of results you get from entering the name “Trifkovic” in Jihad Watch’s search engine.
URL: www.jihadwatch.org/search_gcse?q=trifkovic

[18] “Testimonials: What they’re saying about Robert Spencer”, Jihad Watch.
URL: www.jihadwatch.org/testimonials

[19] Robert Spencer, “Robert Spencer responds to Aymenn Jawad”, The American Thinker, March 6, 2011.
URL: www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/03/robert_spencer_responds_to_aym.html

[20] List of members of the Advisory Board, American Council for Kosovo (Washington, DC).
URL: www.savekosovo.org/?p=1&au=advisory

[21] For example, James Jatras and Serge Trifkovic, “U.S. Kosovo policy is bad for Israel”, November 7, 2007.
URL: www.savekosovo.org/?p=4&sp=356

James Jatras (Trifkovic’s co-author) is director of the American Council for Kosovo.

[22] Robert Spencer, “Kosovo’s top Islamic leader asks Detroit Muslims for support”, Jihad Watch, April 29, 2007.
URL: www.jihadwatch.org/2007/04/kosovos-top-islamic-leader-asks-detroit-muslims-for-support

[23] Kejda Gjermani, “Robert Spencer’s connections: The Serge Trifkovic file (Srjda Trifkovic)”, Kejda Gjermani: Her Miscellaneous Musings, February 23, 2009.
URL: www.kejda.net/2009/02/23/robert-spencers-connections-the-srjda-trifkovic-file/

Kejda Gjemani: “Robert Spencer’s connections: The James Jatras files”, Kejda Gjermani: Her Miscellaneous Musings, August 8, 2008.
URL: www.kejda.net/2008/08/08/robert-spencers-connections-the-james-jatras-file/

Kejda Gjemani: “JihadwatchWatch: Robert Spencer’s amorous flit with European Fascism”, Kejda Gjermani: Her Miscellaneous Musings, November 7, 2008.
URL: www.kejda.net/2008/11/07/jihadwatchwatch-robert-spencers-amorous-flirt-with-european-fascism/

See also: Michael Sells, Part 1, Breivik, Trifkovic and Radical Serb Ideology, a 12-page monograph published on July 25, 2011.
URL: http://home.uchicago.edu/~msells/documents/Breivik-Trifkovic-and-Radical-Serb-Ideology.pdf

[24] Kejda Gjemani: “Robert Spencer’s connections: The James Jatras files”, Kejda Gjermani: Her Miscellaneous Musings, August 8, 2008.
URL: www.kejda.net/2008/08/08/robert-spencers-connections-the-james-jatras-file/

[25] Robert Spencer, “UN officials and the Muslim regime in Sarajevo orchestrated the Srebrenica massacre”, Jihad Watch, June 30, 2011.
URL: www.jihadwatch.org/2011/06/un-officials-and-the-muslim-regime-in-sarajevo-orchestrated-the-srebrenica-massacre

[26] Marisol Seibold, “Maldives: Thousands demonstrate against ‘un-Islamic’ activities like allowing direct flights to Israel”, Jihad Watch, December 24, 2011.
URL: www.jihadwatch.org/2011/12/maldives-thousands-demonstrate-against-un-islamic-activities-like-allowing-direct-flights-to-israel

[27] Samantha Power, op. cit., p.254.

[28] Q Society of Australia, Inc: resources page (accessed February 1, 2015).
URL: www.qsociety.org.au/links.html

[29] Doug Saunders, The Myth of the Muslim Tide: Do Immigrants Threaten the West? (Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2012).

[30] Bat Ye’or, Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis (Madison, New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005).

[31] “Debunking the ‘myth of the Muslim tide’”, interview with author Doug Saunders, WMRA Public Radio (Harrisonburg, Virginia), September 22, 2012.
URL: http://wmra.org/post/debunking-myth-muslim-tide

[32] Matt Carr, Unknown Soldiers: How Terrorism Transformed the Modern world (London: Profile, 2006)

[33] Matt Carr, “You are now entering Eurabia”, Race & Class (Institute of Race Relations, London, UK)), Vol. 48, No. 1, July 2006.
URL: http://rac.sagepub.com/content/48/1/1

[34] Adam Keller and Gush Shalom, “Drumont’s Jewish disciple”: an open letter to the Shocken Publishing House (Jerusalem), published in Kibush: Occupation Magazine (Israel), June 2, 2008.
URL: www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=28774

[35] Simon Kuper, “The crescent and the cross”, Financial Times (UK), November 10, 2007.
URL: www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/2ba1c9c0-8f31-11dc-87ee-0000779fd2ac.html

[36] Bat Ye’or, “Myths and politics: Bosnia-Herzegovina and the origin of the myth of a tolerant, pluralistic Islamic society”: an address delivered on August 31, 1995, at a Symposium on the Balkan War (Ramada Congress Hotel, Chicago), hosted by the Washington-based think tank, the International Strategic Studies Association (ISSA).
URL: http://emperors-clothes.com/bosnia/bat.htm
URL: www.srpska-mreza.com/History/pre-wwOne/Ye_Or.html

[37] Robert Spencer, “Bat Ye’or on Geert Wilders: Does defending Western values constitute ‘inciting hatred’?”, Jihad Watch, February 16, 2009.
URL: www.jihadwatch.org/2009/02/bat-yeor-on-geert-wilders-does-defending-western-values-constitute-inciting-hatred

[38] Robert Spencer, “Announcing the SION President’s Council: the fruit of Stockholm”, Jihad Watch, August 5, 2013.
URL: www.jihadwatch.org/2012/08/announcing-the-sion-presidents-council-the-fruit-of-stockholm

[39] Pamela Geller’s background.
URL: http://PamelaGeller.com/about/

[40] Jennifer Burns, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 144, 274.

[41] “Revealed: The secretive Q Society’s battle against Islam”, News.com.au, June 26, 2014.
URL: www.news.com.au/national/revealed-the-secretive-q-societys-battle-against-islam/story-fncynjr2-1226967668515

[42] Martin Beckford, “English Defence League leader to stand as police commissioner”, The Telegraph (UK), July 31, 2012.
URL: www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/9442258/English-Defence-League-leader-to-stand-as-police-commissioner.html

[43] Nick Lowles and Simon Cressy, “The BNP past of the EDL leader”, Searchlight Magazine (UK), June 25, 2010.
URL: http://standuptohate.blogspot.com.au/2010/06/bnp-past-of-edl-leader.html

[44] “EDL leader facing jail after assault in Blackburn”, Lancashire Telegraph (UK), September 29, 2011.
URL: www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk

“EDL leader Stephen Lennon convicted of assault”, BBC News, September 29, 2011.
URL: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-15117961

“EDL leader sentenced for headbutting fellow protester”, The Guardian (UK), November 4, 2011.
URL: www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/nov/03/edl-leader-sentenced-headbutt

[45] For example, see: “The EDL and Nazi salutes”, EDL Review: Reviewing and Exposing the EDL (UK), May 6, 2012.
URL: http://edlreview.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/edl-and-nazi-salutes.html

[46] “EDL leader Tommy Robinson quits group”, BBC News, October 8, 2013.
URL: www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-24442953

[47] “Tommy Robinson, former EDL leader, jailed for fraud”, BBC News, January 23, 2014.
URL: www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-25862838

[48] Bernard Lewis, “The new anti-Semitism: First religion, then race, then what?”, The American Scholar, December 1, 2005.
URL: http://theamericanscholar.org/the-new-anti-semitism

[49] Paul Gray, Nightmare of the Prophet: Why the Next Century Could Be Our Most Violent Yet (Melbourne: Freedom Publishing Company, 2004), pg. 169.

[50] Abraham H. Foxman, “Norwegian attacks stem from a new ideological hate”, Washington Post, July 29, 2011.
URL: www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/norwegian-attacks-stem-from-a-new-ideological-hate/2011/07/28/gIQAhxy8hI_story.html

[51] Personal report from John Barich of Western Australia, who attended David Irvine’s talk.

[52] Kejda Gjermani, “Robert Spencer’s connections: The Serge Trifkovic file (Srjda Trifkovic)”, Kejda Gjermani: Her Miscellaneous Musings, February 23, 2009.
URL: www.kejda.net/2009/02/23/robert-spencers-connections-the-srjda-trifkovic-file/

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Hate Peddlers Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller’s Link to Neo-Fascist Thugs and Criminals


EDL Boss Stephen Lennon aka Tommy Robinson Arrested For Using A False Passport To Enter USA And Speak At Pamela Geller NYC Anti-Islam Rally.

LUTTON Published on Monday 22 October 2012…English Defence League leader Stephen Lennon has appeared in court this morning charged with entering the US on a false passport.  Lennon, who goes by the name Tommy Robinson, appeared at Westminster Magistrates Court and was remanded in custody, according to an EDL spokesman. He travelled to New York in September to speak at a Pamela Geller conference. A Metropolitan Police spokesman said the unemployed 29-year-old had been charged with having “a false identity document with improper intention contrary to Section 4 of the Identity Documents Act 2010”.

EDL Leader Tommy Robinson Faces Trial for Passport Allegation after 9/11 US Speech for Pamela Geller. The leader of the far-right English Defence League (EDL) could face extradition to the US on criminal charges. Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was arrested amid reports that he entered the US illegally in September.

EDL leader Stephen Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson), appeared at Westminster magistrates’ court charged with possession of an illegal identity document. Yaxley-Lennon was remanded in custody until January to stand trial at Southwark crown court. He claimed on his Twitter page that his arrest stemmed from an invitation he accepted to speak in the US to mark the anniversary of 9/11 terror attacks.   Additional arrests came ahead of a planned march by the EDL in Walthamstow, east London, on October 27th, 2012.  Robinson used social media to publicise the event, revealing he intended to hold a viewing there of the inflammatory film Innocence of Muslims – which mocks Islam and portrays the prophet Mohammed as a paedophile.

As Per Islamophobia Watch: The EDL members released on bail after being arrested on Saturday October 20th, 2012 – apparently en route to the East London Mosque – didn’t include EDL leader Stephen Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson), who has been remanded in prison on a charge of entering the United States illegally. This arises from his visit to New York City last month to speak at the so-called International Freedom Defense Congress organised by Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer’s Stop Islamization of Nations (SION).

Stephen Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) had previously been refused entry to the US when he tried to attend a demonstration (also organised by Pamela Geller and Spencer) against the “Ground Zero mosque” in September 2010. So it was always pretty obvious that he must have got through US customs to attend last month’s conference by using a false passport. It is difficult to believe that his hosts Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer were unaware of this, and hopefully the US authorities are investigating that aspect of the case too.

It appears that Lennon’s arrest over the New York trip wasn’t exactly unexpected. Back on 10 October he was asking Pamela Geller to contact him to discuss problems arising from his appearance at her conference.  Stephen Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court today and was remanded in custody until January 2013. The EDL confirms that the offence he has been charged with is passport fraud.

AFP reports that Stephen Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) has been charged with “possession of a false identity document with improper intention” and quotes a Met police spokesman as saying: “The case relates to allegations that a man tried to travel to the US in September using another person’s passport.” In addition, Stephen Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) faces the prospect of being extradited to the US to face charges there.

British Fascism | EDL Riddled With “Nazis Within”


Roberta Moore Steps Down from EDL Jewish Division; Complains of “Nazis Within” EDL

As Darcy Jones notes, Roberta Moore of the English Defence League Jewish Division has decided to step down, complaining about “Nazis” in the EDL:

Dear all, I have been made a great offer yesterday and therefore I am stepping down from the Jewish Division in order to take up that offer, which will take most of my time. While we are aware that the EDL is doing a fantastic job, but there are elements within that have hijacked the EDL for their own Nazi purposes…

I do wish the EDL the best of luck in this fight, as they surely need it. And I sincerely hope that the leaders will get the strength to squash the Nazis within, for they will destroy this movement if allowed to remain, and thus lose the fight against the Islamization of their countries…

It should be noted that the main EDL’s relationship with its “Jewish Division” has been strained for some time, ever since Moore made links with Victor Vancier’s Jewish Task Force.

On Saturday, Moore was due to speak for the EDL Jewish Division in Strasbourg alongside Pam Geller and Robert Spencer’s Stop Islamization of America;  the SIOA website has the details:

The human rights organizations Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) and Stop Islamisation of Europe (SIOE) will hold their first-ever transatlantic summit in Strasbourg, France, on July 2.

…The confirmed list of speakers at the summit includes Pamela Geller, the popular blogger and columnist who publishes the acclaimed AtlasShrugs.com blog… Robert Spencer, a bestselling author and internationally renowned Islamic expert; the noted activist SIOE Director Anders Gravers; Roberta Moore of the Jewish Division — EDL; Conny Meier of the German human rights group Pax Europa; frontrunning Bulgarian presidential candidate Pavel Chernev; and others to be announced soon.

So, should the “transatlantic summit” (a) stick with Moore, who now apparently represents no-one except herself; (b) ask for an alternative EDL speaker, despite Moore’s claim that the movement has been “hijacked” by “Nazis within”; or (c) now decline any association with either Moore or the EDL?

Back in December, Moore promoted the theory that “Satan’s face” can be discerned within the marble patterning on the Dome of the Rock.

UPDATE: Geller has announced that she has ditched the EDL:

I am sure regular Atlas readers have noticed that some time ago I stopped covering their events — I was waiting to see how things would shake out. I was waiting to see if the forces of good would recapture the heart and soul of the group. Alas, it was not to be.

Now that the person whom I most trusted in the EDL, Roberta Moore, has resigned, as she was increasingly uncomfortable with the neo-fascists that had infiltrated the administration of the group, I too am withdrawing my support from the EDL.

As ever, Robert Spencer is following her lead.

UPDATE 2: Geller’s support for the EDL is back on:

…I spoke to Tommy Robinson at length; he issued his statement to SIOA. Considering his statement, I am not withdrawing my support for the EDL, but I continue to be deeply concerned and will be watching how events unfold.

Prior to this, some of Geller’s “counter-jihad” associates had denounced her for having rejected the EDL; an “open letter” appeared on the Gates of Vienna, signed by the likes of “Eeyore” of Vlad Tepes, KGS of Tundra Tabloids, Diana West, and Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff:

…To help heal the damage that has been done, we insist that you apologize in a public forum to the English Defence League. Its leaders and members are heroes, and their organization is widely considered a beacon of hope in Europe. All Europeans who resist the Islamization of their countries look to the EDL for inspiration, and all of them stand in solidarity with it in its struggle.

We strongly request that you reconsider your deplorable words and withdraw them.

Geller responded to this aggressive demand in kind:

Ned May, who is “Baron Bodissey” of Gates of Vienna, is the Machiavellian plotter behind this attack on me – and he himself described himself as such in the EDL forum/channel.

… he has even gone so far as to include peoples’ names who never agreed to be on the list. Holger Danske and Henrik Raeder Clausen of Europe News wrote me to assure me that their names were ill-used: they had never agreed to sign on. I am told that Hans Erling Jensen, whose name also appears on it, is angry about this Open Letter also.

One who did sign on voluntarily, however, was KGS of Tundra Tabloids. I was genuinely surprised when I saw that he had added his name to the list. To me, this is particularly galling. Without going into details, I took a lot of heat covering for KGS and maintaining confidentiality back in 2009 when “Baron Bodissey” began falsely accusing of violating that confidentiality. But I kept silent so as not to expose KGS. And this is how I am repaid.

Then there was a revealing incident, in 2010, when the “Baron” and many of the signers of this Open Letter falsely accused Spencer and me of being responsible for YouTube’s deletion of a video. They had taken video from our inaugural AFDI conference at CPAC in 2010 of Allen West’s speech and subtitled it in various European languages. They had taken the video without the knowledge or consent of the person who filmed it, Pamela Hall – who thereupon complained to them…

British EDL Fascists Cozy With Canadian Jewish Fascists


EDL Makes Link with Jewish Defence League in Canada
Posted on January 12, 2011 by Richard Bartholomew

News from Toronto:

Several protesters were arrested and a police officer sent to hospital with a broken rib after a protest against a right-wing British organization in Toronto Tuesday night.

The protest was sparked by a meeting to hear a webcast of a speech by the founder of the English Defence League… The meeting at the Zionist Centre was organized by the Jewish Defence League, to hear a live speech broadcast via the Internet, from English Defence League founder Stephen Lennon, who goes by the name Tommy Robinson.

An earlier report has some background:

Meir Weinstein, national director of JDL Canada, said he was visiting Israel when he met someone connected to Mr. Lennon. The two later got acquainted on the phone.

Back in 2009 I noted that the EDL-linked Casuals United website had included a prominent link to the Jewish Defense League in the USA – however, this was taken down shortly after I noticed it. Nachum Shifren, the California-based “Surfing Rabbi” who addressed the EDL in London in October, used to be JDL founder Meir Kahane’s driver, although he was “excommunicated” from the JDL in 2005 for supporting Pat Buchanan. Israeli flags have been prominently dispalyed at EDL events, both to counter accusations of neo-Nazism and as a sign of vicarious identification with the country and its conflicts.

Kahane, of course, is remembered as a belligerent extremist, and Kahanist groups have been associated with acts of violence. Weinstein, however, has tried to create an impression of distance – as was explained in a Canadian radio report in 2009:

Bernie McNamee: There’s another twist tonight in the George Galloway saga. The controversial British MP was refused entry to Canada because of his alleged support for the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Now it turns out the man claiming credit for tipping off immigration officials is Meir Weinstein. Galloway’s supporters say Weinstein himself was a spokesperson for a Jewish extremist group on Canada’s list of banned terrorist organizations. Our security correspondent Bill Gillespie has the story.

[Bill Gillespie] …In 1994 he was identified in a Canadian Press article as a spokesperson for the Kach Party, also known as Kahane Chai. A Kach member in Israel had just massacred more than 50 Palestinian worshippers. Weinstein refused to condemn the attack. He doesn’t deny making the statement but he denies ever being a member of Kach.

Meir Weinstein: I’ve never been a member of Kach or Kahane Chai.

According to reports from the time, Weinstein stated that “our organization does not condemn the attack. It condemns the Israeli government for not providing adequate protection for settlers.” Another JDL spokesman, Brett Stone, has since said that the massacre had been “preventive measure” that had “saved lives”.

Gillespie: Canada, the US, and the European Union later put Kach and Kahane Chai on their list of banned terrorist organizations. Weinstein denies any connection between Kach and his present group, the Jewish Defence League of Canada. But left-wing bloggers who support Galloway point out that the logos of both groups – a clenched fist in an embedded Star of David – are almost identical. Weinstein says Kach stole the logo from the JDL.

Meir Weinstein: Um, that’s the logo of the Jewish Defence League so they took it from the Jewish Defence League but again I don’t dictate to them what they’re going to do or anything like that.

Gillespie: But bloggers also discovered a link on Weinstein’s Facebook page to a chat group called “Death to Arabs”. Weinstein says the link was sent to him in Hebrew and he added it not knowing what it said. He has since deleted it. But despite his best efforts he didn’t succeed in keeping Galloway from his speaking engagements in Canada.

This exchange has been transcribed a Canadian blogger named Firebrand, who adds some pertinent and mocking commentary:

Kach stole the JDL’s logo? Come on Meir, why not give the actual explanation which is that the JDL was founded in 1968 in New York by Meir Kahane who moved to Israel in 1971 where he founded the Kach Party a few years later…. As for there being no connection between Kach, Kahane Chai and the JDL – that’s just a bald-faced lie. Apart from having the same founder and leader in the person of Kahane, even after Kahane’s death his successor as JDL leader, Irv Rubin, raised funds for Kach/Kahane Chai and promoted the terrorist group.

…Weinstein has been an observant Jew, by his reckoning, since the late 1970s and even claims to have served in the Israeli military but he can’t read Hebrew? I have to give him credit though, this was somewhat more believable than Weinstein’s original explanation which was that the Iranians somehow planted the link on his page.

Meir Weinstein is also known under other names: he was born as Marvin Weinstein, and he has also used the names Meir Halevi and Meir HaLevi Weinstein; a 2002 posting on Kahane.org mentions “Meir HaLevy from the Kahane Movement in Toronto” as due to take part in an “Annual Kahane Memorial Dinner”. This website was run by Michael Guzovsky (numerous spelling variations), and was closed down in 2003 after Kahane Khai was designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by US authorities; various court documents about this can been seen at Kahane Net. Guzovsky has featured on this blog previously: he later moved to the West Bank, and, as Yekutel Ben Yaacov, he enjoys friendly links with WorldNetDaily‘s “Jerusalem correspondent” Aaron Klein (Klein’s whitewashing of the Israeli far-right is notorious).

Firebrand also draws attention to a blog called BigCityLib, which tells us that the JDL’s recent EDL event was also supported by a group called Canadian Hindu Advocacy; the group’s director, Ron Banerjee, is an enthusiast both of Israel and of the BJP, and he and Weinstein appear to be long-standing allies. According to Banerjee:

…the Hindu pro-Zionist movement includes the main opposition political party (BJP) and affiliated social service organizations (VHP, RSS) with an estimated 50 million members. This constitutes the world’s largest concentrated block of Zionist support on the planet.

Fascist, Neo-Nazi Rabbi Wants Debate with Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks


Posted on January 1, 2011 by Richard Bartholomew

From the Jewish Chronicle:

The rabbi who spoke at an English Defence League rally two months ago has apparently challenged Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks to a televised BBC debate on “Is Islam a religion of peace?”

…In an email seen by the JC, Rabbi [Nachum] Shifren says he has set rules for the debate structure, to be followed by the Chief Rabbi and the BBC – despite no known interest in such a programme from either party.

The JC saw the email because it was sent to them; the text was published on 23 December on a blog devoted to the Rabbi’s exploits:

Dear Sir,

I, Rabbi Nachum Shifren, Director of The California Security Council, who,having been the first person in the history of England to be banned from excercising [sic] freedom of speech at the home and pivot of British free speech at Speaker’s Corner in London, Hereby challenge Rabbi Lord Jonathon [sic] Sacks; Chief Rabbi of the Hebraic congregations of The United Kingdom and the British Commonwealth, to a one hour televised BBC debate on a number of topics including “Is Islam a religion of peace?” The Islamification of Britain. Cultural Marxism in Western liberalism, Multiculturalism and it’s [sic] effect on the host society; education, religion, laws and culture.

This is the first time I’ve seen Shifren complain that he was supposedly “banned” from Speaker’s Corner; a video of his appearance there merely shows him arguing with a Muslim about how “fags” can’t be executed in Judaism because there is no religious court in Jerusalem where they can be put on trial. The only people who seemed to be keen for him not to continue in this vein were his EDL handlers (I blogged on the incident here, and on Alan Lake’s response to my post here).

The blog where the “challenge” was published has the encouraging name of Newworldorderuk, but there is no information about who runs it or how the message was passed to them; presumably the blog owner is someone with a personal link to Shifren. However, given that Shifren has a background as a schoolteacher in California, the spelling is strangely poor, and one wonders if he has actually written it himself.

There is also a list of conditions for the debate, including  the demand that

The programme should not be advertised or announced using such inflamitory [sic] labelling as ‘far-right, ‘extremist.’ i.e. not served up in terms that suit the marxist-Islamist agenda of the BBC.

Further:

That the usual practice of selecting a carefully chosen hostile audience to the guest deemed to be ‘politically-incorrect’ according to BBC Trotskyist strictures [sic – the JC misquotes this as “Trotskyist structures”] be avoided by having no audience at all, ditto questions from emails or phone-ins.

Of course, this is transparent publicity-seeking – it’s a common crank strategy to demand a public debate with someone who has a higher profile, and then to insist, when the “challenge” is ignored or rebuffed, that this is clearly evidence that the crank views cannot be refuted.

Newworldorderuk has some commentary of his or her own – the writing style is the same as that of the challenge itself:

Rabbi Sachs [sic] has not responded to the challenge. Though the Chief Rabbi often makes important statements against secularism and the atheist attack on religion he inevatably [sic] risks a second Holocaust by supporting the Islamification of Britain, something which does not much worry the mass of the British political and religious class, still basking in the heritage of Bolchevism in the land where Karl Marx lived and died, wrote Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto, and where Marx’s grave in Highgate cemetery remains a holy shrine. The land whch has been a socialist state since 1945.

…It appears that as is normal with all news emanating from the EDL or other opposition to the one party state, Rabbi Shifren’s challenge was referred to either Yasmin Alabhai Brown or Mehdi Hasan, the ‘Anti-fascist enforcers’ for the Communist National Union of journalists, where one of these two distinguished British Muslims has slapped a ‘No Platform’ on it’s [sic] publication across all British print and televised media.

U.K. Rightists Recruit Jews, Gays


In the Independent in Britain, Robert Verkaik writes, Jewish? Gay? Join us, white Rightist extremists say:

A white extremist organisation is forging links with Jewish, Sikh and gay communities to fuel prejudice and fear and hatred of the Muslim community, it was claimed today. The English Defence League (EDL), which was formed last year in protest at Islamic extremist activity, has also reached out across the Atlantic to build close ties with the American right-wing group, the Tea Party.

Hundreds of EDL members are planning demonstrations in Nuneaton and Preston today to protest at the building of mosques and what they claim is the growing influence in the UK of Sharia law. But a new report, written by Professor Nigel Copsey of Teesside University, warns that the growth of EDL membership will spread Islamophobia in communities sharing a perceived “historical angst” against Muslims. … As well as aggravating religious tensions, the EDL has established a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Division to “defend” gay people from Sharia law.

There are also specialist divisions for women, soldiers and disabled people. The report warns these communities to be vigilant against “selective racism” and the EDL’s attempts at manipulation. … Founder and director of Faith Matters, Fiyaz Mughal, said: “The EDL’s main aim is to increase tensions, raise hate and divide communities. Their attempts to portray themselves as a legitimate and open movement cannot disguise their violent, anti-Muslim agenda. This hate can easily mutate against another community.”