My in-laws have just come back from touring many parts of India.

Without them bringing up the subject they said that most of the local people they met where 'Islamphobes'...and that all had a healthy fear and loathing of Islam...irrational of course...IDL???

I wonder what kind of lefty think tank or media outlet in India might start to castigate these people and tell them they are wrong to fear Islam and that they are misguided? They must be linked to far right parties out there?? INP?

Sigh....what would be more open and honest is that black is black, white is white and the fear of Islam and all it entails is felt by people all over the world. That what we feel is real and not a phobia or something imagined. That we who are fearful of Islam are not bad people and not intrinsically racist or bigots. On the contrary we are freedom loving people who don't

On the contrary we are freedom loving people who don't want there lives ruled or violated by Islam in any sort of way.

Best artcile I have read about how sad and pathetic these groups are.

If no one writes about them, they have no publicity and will become a mere stain, hidden away in the back pages of the history books.

I agree with you that all these pathetic little groups, like MAC, and fringe parties, like EDL, seek is publcity; no publicity and they simply fade away. The sooner we all stop writing about them the better. But Theresa was right to ban them; if they change their name, then ban them again.
But we should also be careful of an over excessive display of PDC which is counterproductive.

@Ian

"I have have heard it all before"

clearly that is a patent lie. you had no idea that the overwhelming majority of the Muslim world condemded 9/11.

then i show you the evidence, and you deny its relevance.

weird and intellectually dishonest of you.

@Jerry G

"It is quite obvious what these MAC islamo-fascists have in mind with their poppy burning."

yes it is rather obvious, isn't it.

"If they can provoke some EDL hoodlums to burn some Korans in revenge, the MAC can then start a nice little Jihad war"

no, no, no. that's just too fantastical and unrealistic. their desire is far more mundane and dreary; they just want to be noticed and stir the pot a little. make people big them up, and fear them. in a nut shell; to have our society over-react as much as possible. (the gist of the article as it happens)

so why give them that satisfaction....?

There are always going to be bad people. Just because a few muslims decide to burn some poppies your going to think that all muslims do that? I for one do not agree with what they did but that doesn't mean that all muslims are terroists or want everyone but muslims to burn in hell. You really think that muslims want to be feared? Muslims just want to live in peace why would people want to carry on living in a war?

Lot of misconceptions there.
Indias Muslims largely fought for the British Allies, along wth the Gurkas and Sikhs in WWII, and they should be remembered too on Remembrance Sunday. Same goes for Malaysia and Singapore and the Middle East largely under French and British control at that time.
The vast majority of Muslims here simply do not support Chowdry but are too reluctant to speak out openly against for their own personal reasons.
And Pakistan is not an apartheid State; it is a failed State.
The Balkan countries like Croatia and Serbia had their own vendettas against both their Jews and Muslims.
The strong communist hand of Tito certainly helped stamp out ethnic cleansing there, until of course the fall of communism and all hell broke out.

The vast majority of Moslems DO support Chaudhry because Racist Islamism is no different from the islamfofascism of Chaoudhry. Pakistan ethnically cleansed millions of innocent Hindus and Sikhs and butchered about a million to create the Moslem supremacist state of Pakistan. They ethnically cleansed all Jews in the late 1940's from Lahore and Karachi. Today they kill Christian politicians, they sentence Christians to death for 'blasphemy' and they ethnically cleanse them. If Pakistan is not a racist apartheid state I don't know what is. Pakistan has no right to exist. it is Moslem-occupied Indian land.

Let me first say that burning poppies and marching through Wootton Bassett are extreme measures that, whatever you may believe about the justness or not of the West’s wars, cruelly and unnecessarily hurt the wrong people: The families of our war dead, who seem like a soft target for MAC’s scorn.

Mr Baxter is correct in his assumption that these provocative measures are an attempt at getting publicity, but one could say the same about the Occupy movement. The Occupy protesters could’ve marched peacefully through London (or New York or wherever) along a pre-planned, Met-endorsed route, but we wouldn’t be talking about them now, would we? Pitching tents outside St Paul’s is surely as provocative as burning poppies, which is why the Occupy movement has garnered so much support. How many writers at NS would criticise this tactic?

MAC’s unfortunate strategy has severely backfired, partly because most people seem to hate them, but mainly because the press have spent more column inches on the poppy burning and the proposed march than they have discussing the issue MAC are trying to publicise. But then this is a standard approach in our news media when evading an issue.

I cannot bring myself to endorse MAC for the reasons outlined in my first paragraph, but I can’t help wondering: Don’t they have a point?

good article.

a few years ago i coined the slogan "Death To Intolerance" exactly for such perceived crisis of free speech.

catchy no?

@ John Woods

'When are we gonna send these goatfuckers back to whatever shithole they came from?'

Welling? There are actually some nice parts there. I've been.

@SUE

Choudrey is from Welling.

Actually there was a counter demonstration by moderate Muslims planned against the MAC dolts had it gone ahead.

Just sayin'

Sue - good point/

MAC are just one small part of the extremist Muslim continuum that is Islamic fundamentalism,Islamism or Islamofascism, call it what you will

They are small in number, but have the support of large numbers of UK Muslims, a third to a half of whom support the imposition of sharia law in the UK, the key demand of MAC.

Other extremist Islamic groups such as FOSIS, Islamic Forum of Europe, Muslim Association of Britain etc are equally dangerous..

So yes it is good to ban them, but what is very sad is that so many Muslims tacitly support them and refuse to condemn them utterly.

google in Charlene Downes. Islamic respect for women, eh?

"Kev Con: I doubt very much that the views of most could in any way be reconciled with the likes of MAC."

But where is this voice of the most? Where is the loud opposition from within the Muslim population? either non existent or terrorised by this so called minority. It really is time for them to come to the fore,,, I'm beginning to doubt their existence... I do recall the response in Gaza to 9/11.