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  1. Politics
2 November 2009updated 11 Feb 2013 12:33pm

Lord Pearson’s anti-Muslim rant

Islamophobia and Ukip

By Mehdi Hasan

Islamophobia and Ukip

I have blogged before about the odious Lord Pearson of Rannoch, the Ukip peer and front-runner for the leadership of that EU-obsessed party. But is Europe its only obsession? The Telegraph’s Ed West says that “Lord Pearson told me that, if elected, he will make the threat of radical Islam the major focus” of the UK Independence Party.

Defenders of Pearson would argue that his fear is of Islamism, or “radical Islam”, and not mainstream Islam as a whole, or all Muslims. However, this disingenuous defence falls apart on examination of this video on the News of the World website, in which the Ukip peer, aside from railing against the “growing threat of Islamism” and “the threat that faces us from violent Islam”, argues that the Britain is under threat because “the Muslims are breeding ten times faster than us”. He says: “I don’t know at what point they reach such a number we are no longer able to resist the rest of their demands.”

His true colours have been revealed. It is not “violent Islam” that exercises him; it is the presence of Muslims — all Muslims! — in Britain. And I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that his alarmist and ill-informed predictions about the Muslim birthrate, and the demonising and dehumanising language (“breeding ten times faster than us”; “resist their demands”), mirror the language employed by the far right about the Jews in the 1920s and 1930s.

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Even more sickening and depressing is that most of the commenters in the thread below the NoTW piece agree with Lord Pearson’s outburst — as I am sure they will below this post even here on the NS website. Islamophobia is alive and well in Great Britain!

Note: Before the Muslim-hating trolls in the blogosphere descend on this post to rant about my own video infamy, I would point you in the direction of this post, and this article, which make my own views quite clear.

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