23 January 2013

Not what you'd expect


The NPR article by Eyder Peralta with the headline London Police Arrest Two In 'Muslim Patrol' Incidents seemed to indicate Brits were out harassing Muslims, when it's actually British Muslims harassing British Muslims:
Over the past week, London has been hit by a series of incidents in which a group of self-styled vigilantes have accosted Londoners for not adhering to what they say are Islamic standards.
The men posted videos of their Muslim patrols on YouTube. In one video posted by BBC World (above), the men appear take an alcoholic beverage from a pedestrian and pour it out. They tell him that alcohol is not allowed in a "Muslim area." Later in the video, the men tell a young woman wearing a skirt to cover up. "We don't respect those who disobey God," they tell her.
The woman tells them she is "appalled. This is Great Britain," she says, to which one of the men responds that they are "vigilantes implementing Islam upon your necks."
This week, after another video— this time showing the men accosting another man for being gay— surfaced online, Scotland Yard made two arrests.
The Guardian reports:
"The Metropolitan Police said that two men were arrested in connection with a series of incidents that took place over the course of 12-13 January in east London. Videos of the incidents were later uploaded onto YouTube.
A 22-year-old man was arrested in Acton while a nineteen-year-old man voluntarily attended an east London police station.
Metropolitan Police spokesperson said: 'The pair were arrested on suspicion of GBH and Public Order offences and have been bailed to return to an East London police station on a dates in February and March pending further enquiries. The Metropolitan Police Service takes these incidents very seriously, and is pursuing various lines of enquiry with a view to identifying and prosecuting the individuals concerned."
In the early video, the men say they are standing in front of a mosque. According to the East London Mosque, they were in front of their building but, in a statement, they called the patrols "utterly unacceptable and clearly designed to stoke tensions and sow discord".
"We wholly condemn them," the statement went on. "The East London Mosque is committed to building cooperation and harmony between all communities in this borough. The actions of this tiny minority have no place in our faith nor on our streets."
Ethnic and religious tensions have always existed in the UK. It was those tensions that fueled the 2011 riots in Birmingham.
In a op-ed in Britain's Independent, Hasnet Lais writes that stunts like these play right into the hands of those who oppose Muslims. He says that incidents like these are rare, but they make the fear of a Shari'a state stoked by extremists seem real to regular Britons. "In my experience, far from advocating Shari'a squads, most ordinary mosque-goers would be sickened at the sight of co-religionists pontificating about morals to non-Muslims," he writes.
Rico says it could happen here (at least until the Texans get their gubs out)...

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