Protester covers Kilroy-Silk in slurry

LONDON (Reuters) - Broadcaster-turned-politician Robert Kilroy-Silk, who lost his television show this year after making controversial remarks about Arabs, has been showered in slurry by a protester who said he was acting in the name of Islam. The BBC said the attack occurred when Kilroy-Silk, a European parliament member representing the UK Independence Party, arrived on Friday night for the radio show "Any Questions?" in Manchester, northern England. A transcript of the radio programme quoted Kilroy-Silk as saying the attacker, who disappeared, had said he was "doing it in the name of Islam". "That's what he said as he covered me in slurry just now," Kilroy-Silk said in reply to an audience question about race hate attacks and his own remarks on Arabs. The attack occurred a month after Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh, a critic of Islam, was killed in Amsterdam by a suspected Muslim militant. Kilroy-Silk quit his BBC television show in January, having already been taken off the air after calling Arabs "limb amputators and suicide bombers". He told the radio audience his remarks had referred to Arab states, not to Arabs generally. The UK Independence Party, which wants Britain out of the European Union, won 16 percent of the vote and 12 seats in British elections to the European parliament in June.

Sorry that this is a few days late. I have only just awoken to the fact that it has made no appearance here. I ask you to imagine a "switcharound" scenario. The disgusting hook-armed mullah Abu Hamza (now imprisoned and not before time) "celebrates" the anniversary of 9/11 with his Muslim congregation on the streets outside his former North London mosque - as he did. Or another mullah makes one of those deprecating remarks aimed at infidels. As a consequence an angry Englishman pours a load of excreta over HIM. Can you even begin to IMAGINE the reaction? The rash of indignant letters addressed to the newspapers calling for severe punishment; representations to Parliament and the whole Islamic parade. Muslims would be in ferment! Not for them the excessively tolerant reaction of the Brits. We have seen and heard far too much from the Muslim activists in Europe over the past few months. I also find it bewildering that Kilroy-Silk's TV career was terminated by the BBC because of (justified) remarks. On the other hand the BBC has never publicly reprimanded or "dropped" the poet and critic, Tom Paulin who features regularly on the weekly Arts Review section of BBC TV's "Newsnight" programme. He was reported by the newspaper Al Aahram (he has not denied the material)as saying that American-born settlers in Israel should be shot dead. Paulin has been a consistently outspoken critic of Israeli conduct towards the Palestinians, and clearly abhorred "Brooklyn-born" Jewish settlers. Paulin, who is a lecturer at Hertford College, Oxford, was then quoted as saying: "They should be shot dead. "I think they are Nazis, racists, I feel nothing but hatred for them." Earlier in the interview, he told the interviewer "I never believed that Israel had the right to exist at all." The director general of the board of Jewish Deputies claimed later these were the words of a man filled with hate and fanaticism. Paulin was also reported by the newspaper as saying that he had resigned from the Labour Party because the Blair government was a Zionist administration! GET THAT B-----D OUT OF THERE!

Why is there not level playing-field here? Why should he be allowed to air his opinions so freely without any official reaction???

Finally I must add that although I am not a CatholicI attended the Requiem Mass held in London yesterday for Margaret Hassan, the abducted charity worker savagely murdered in Iraq. A representative handful of Muslims? Not one that I could see and certainly not an official group. Perhaps they were thronging into the place to make known their regret, but as one contributor to a board here has suggested, most Muslims should be categorized as "Caucasians" - which explains why I failed to notice their overwhelming presence!

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