An Unholy Alliance

OpenDemocracy ^ | October 23, 2002 | Douglas Murray

[gcruse]

 
    The London march was a demonstration of the ignorant British liberal lying down with
    the unknown Muslim lion. It was a display of ignorance and hatred, intemperance and
    intolerance – one which should turn the stomachs of all those who believe that the rule
    of British law prevails over that of the North London mullah. Call it what you like – but
    don’t call it a demonstration for peace.
 
 

    23 October 2002

    An unholy alliance
    Douglas Murray

    The London demonstration organised by the Stop the War
    Coalition and the Muslim Association of Britain on 28
    September was ostensibly against an attack on Iraq. But
    do the events of the day, and the mixed messages of the
    two organisations, reveal a more sinister agenda?
 
 

    On 28 September a motley crew gathered in central London – a bizarre and unholy
    alliance of people. The public were told that this was an ‘anti-war’ march. It was not.
    What occurred in London that day was a pro-war march and, more sinisterly in the
    present climate, a pro-terrorism march. It was a march that should never have taken
    place and which sullies the reputations of all who participated in it.

    I should, first, admit that I avoided London on the day. In some ways I am now sorry
    that I did not see it for myself. A good number of friends did go, and from them and the
    press reports I have a more than fair idea of what went on. What we should do is start
    at the beginning.

    Upwards of 250,000 people are said to have attended the march and this makes it, by
    any calculations, something of a success. Those who attended were largely attracted by
    the publicity – on posters and in the press – informing them that the event was a protest
    against military action in Iraq under the slogan Not In My Name. This is what a lot of
    people attending the march thought they were there to march about, yet what they
    attended was no peace rally. Rather, what every marcher on those streets was
    (knowingly or unknowingly) supporting was war. Not war against Iraq – that really
    would be wrong. What they were supporting was incitement to war and the blessing of
    terrorism against the Jewish State. If you marched and didn’t know this, then you
    should have found out what you were doing before you left home.

    Two groups, two stories

    Two groups organised the event. One was a sprawling organisation calling itself the
    ‘Stop the War Coalition’, which includes many pacifists. They claim that they planned
    a march for the 28th that would attempt to make the case for ‘peace’. This group is
    spearheaded by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), an organisation
    which, though ‘not a stated pacifist organisation’, has never, as far as I can see,
    supported any war. I suppose that given their recorded stance it is theoretically possible
    that CND might one day support a war, but going on its track record it hardly seems
    likely.

    If CND had had their way on these matters, then Kosovar Albanians would be history,
    and the Taliban would still rule in Afghanistan. That is their stance and you can agree
    with it or disagree with it as your conscience takes you. But what, I wonder, did this
    organisation think they had in common with the Muslim Association of Britain
    (MAB)? This is where the matter really gets murky.

    I have spoken to both organisations about how the march ended up coming together
    and one of the few things they agree on is that since they had both planned marches for
    28 September they conferred and agreed that they should combine in their common
    cause. Which was? Protesting against war against Iraq – well, that’s what CND told
    me. The MAB had a rather different story.

    Their spokesman, a spirited and talkative young man called Anas Altikriti, stated
    perfectly clearly, that his organisation’s plan to march on the 28th, a plan settled for
    some months, was ‘to mark the second anniversary of the Intifada’. Just in case you
    don’t know what this means, the Intifada is the name of the process in which young
    Palestinian men and (now) women, pack explosives around their waists, walk into busy
    shopping areas and restaurants and kill Jews. Quite a long way from the Reverend
    Dick Sheppard and the ‘Peace Pledge Union’, I think you’ll agree.

    Now some people may think that ‘that’s all very well, but the march didn’t end up
    being about that’. Some friends of mine told me that, on coming out of the station to
    join, they immediately realised the error they had made – not finding out more about the
    intentions of the march before going to it.

    They immediately came face to face with a group of young chanting Muslims ‘whose
    whole demeanour was violent.’ An isolated case? Well then, take the three Jews who
    wrote to the Guardian (1 October) recording that they had gone on the march in order
    to express their concern for human rights issues only to find themselves feeling
    ‘confus[ed] and uncomfortable’ by being surrounded by ‘hate-filled chanting…[and]
    anti-Israel and anti-Jewish imagery’.

    In her article on the march Rosemary Bechler talks of the ‘peaceful message of the
    march as a whole’ after acknowledging the presence of swastikas and anti-semitic
    sloganising. She tells us that ‘Hitler references were mainly directed at Sharon,’ as if this
    were whimsical or even uninteresting. During the march, people were encouraged by
    the general message to carry banners equating the Israeli government with the Nazis
    and to carry posters placing the star of David alongside the swastika. ‘But not
    everybody did that.’ Maybe not, but a sizeable number of people did and a quarter of a
    million Brits marched ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with them on the streets of London in
    broad daylight.

    Words and deeds

    I asked CND about this little matter. Their spokesman told me that they would ‘utterly
    condemn’ such sloganising, and told me that his organisation was behind only a
    ‘negotiated peace’ across the Middle East. Mr Altikriti had a rather different message.
    I asked if he too would condemn those carrying banners equating the Israeli state with
    the Nazis and Ariel Sharon with Adolf Hitler. He said he could not, adding that these
    similarities were ‘absolutely’ there and, indeed, that this message ‘didn’t come out as
    strongly as we’d have liked it to.’ I asked him whether, like their co-organisers the
    ‘Stop the War Coalition’, the Muslim Association of Britain was largely pacifist. He
    conceded that they were ‘anti-war in terms of waging war against innocent people’.
    Well isn’t that good of him. The only problem is that the MAB spokesperson turns out
    to have an odd view of innocence. It was an ominous conversation from the moment he
    told me that the election of the ‘abhorrent’ Sharon ‘says a lot about Israel’.

    I asked the MAB spokesperson if he could find himself able to condemn suicide
    bombers – the scourge of Israel and, now, the world. He told me that he would ‘find it
    wrong’ to do so. Again, he said ‘I cannot bring myself to condemn suicide bombing.’
    Later in our conversation he let slip and referred to ‘so-called suicide bombing’ and
    further in still he told me that what people seem to forget in this matter is the ‘tragedy’
    of young Muslims who ‘give up their promising young lives’ in these attacks.

    As I listened to Mr Altikriti, the thought kept occurring to me that if I were the head of
    CND or the ‘Stop the War Coalition’ I would have phoned this man up and spoken
    either to him, or anyone else in the MAB, in order to distinguish their aims. Perhaps
    CND and the ‘Stop the War Coalition’ hadn’t got their number. Oh but they had,
    because they told me they’d spoken. Well, maybe they had just had a casual chat
    about street routes and platform speakers.

    There is all the difference in the world between a stance which says you disapprove of
    war on principle and a stance which says you disapprove of war in case X but want
    more of it in case Y. I wonder how many of the crowd knew what they’d been brought
    out for. It would be impossible to say. But this event demonstrates a lot about the
    condition of Britain.

    Muslim lion, British liberal

    For years now terrorism has been a problem for the Israelis. Now the problem belongs
    to everyone. Suicide bombings, whether in New York or Tel Aviv, are the world’s
    problem, and they could strike anywhere. I wonder whether the hundreds of thousands
    who marched on the streets on 28 September will do so again once the first attack
    takes place on mainland Britain? Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot – they were marching against a
    war in Iraq, not against organised terrorism. Did they think so? Well they should have
    spoken to their leaders.

    What happened in London was another demonstration by British Muslims and their
    curious left-wing bedfellows. It was a march in favour of the Palestinian people and a
    march against the Israeli people. If we wanted to state it plainly, we could say that this
    was a march against Jews. That would be controversial, and I don’t think particularly
    helpful. But when people like the MAB spokesperson tells me there is no anti-semitism
    in his plans, then forgive me if it rings a bit hollow. Some of us have never understood
    why you can say what you like about Israel and it’s not about Jews, while the Muslim
    lobby thinks any attack on an Islamic country is automatically a war on Islam. Perhaps
    they ought to think this one out.

    The London march was a demonstration of the ignorant British liberal lying down with
    the unknown Muslim lion. It was a display of ignorance and hatred, intemperance and
    intolerance – one which should turn the stomachs of all those who believe that the rule
    of British law prevails over that of the North London mullah. Call it what you like – but
    don’t call it a demonstration for peace.
 

[swarthyguy]

It's been building for a while. At a march last november in London, there was a chilling picture of muslims with Palestinian, and green and black jihadi flags praying while a contingent carrying hammer and sickle adorned red flags stood next to them.

[Salman]

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