A shop in Tower Hamlets (Mark Kerrison/In Pictures via Getty Images)
The Palestinians flags come in clusters. They may dominate entire streets, hanging high on lampposts out of the reach of a stepladder should anyone be tempted to take them down. Or they gather outside shops, communal buildings and particularly around schools. Come to Tower Hamlets and you’ll soon understand the swirling mess of Britain’s politics. It is here, not Rochdale, that a community has been renamed “Little Palestine”.
When Paul Scully, the former minister for London, claimed this week that there were “no-go areas” in the city’s most deprived borough, he was rightly criticised for hyperbole. But he was tapping into a very real concern. Yes, Tower Hamlets is one of the most diverse local authorities in England, with Muslims, Jews, the white working class, and the odd hipster living cheek by jowl. But in recent months, it has become an increasingly oppressive landscape for many of its residents.
One Jewish resident, who asked to remain anonymous, tells me he is planning to sell his home and move somewhere safer. “I feel this tension all the time,” he says. “My daughter is getting comments at school about her religion and the school is surrounded by pro-Palestine flags. Even the class WhatsApp group has become a place of division and campaigning for Palestine.”
Another says: “Victoria Park is one of the central hubs of Tower Hamlets and is a place where anti-racism demos and concerts have taken place. But now almost every entrance has a Palestinian flag and it just doesn’t fit right with me. It feels like one particular community is staking a claim and the whole area has changed.”
A third resident agrees: “I’ve been here for decades but I am thinking about moving. I have changed so many habits; I’ve even stopped using the hairdressers I’ve been going to for years because there is a flag outside and I don’t want to risk hearing a conversation that will upset me. I have made about 50 calls to the council, but it hasn’t made any difference. The customer-service desk people sometimes hang up; no one wants to remove the flags and stickers.”
Nor is it only Jews who find the atmosphere intimidating. “Stepney Green is my home and I love, or did love, walking around it,” says one non-Jewish resident. “But after October 7, almost overnight, many of the main streets were adorned with Palestinian flags from almost every lamppost, on both sides of the street.
“Flags to me are symbolic of territory and possession. The first thing done, when new land was discovered or captured from another nation was to raise a flag. So now I walk down these streets and it brings a chill to my spine — it is really a physical reaction. I’m suddenly in an area where the very streets are telling me: ‘If you don’t subscribe to this way of thinking, you’re not welcome here, go somewhere else.’.”
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SubscribeThe residents are right. This is an attempt to colonise public spaces, to intimidate opponents and the uncommitted.
The union flag is a unifying object, so its use is to be welcomed. The Palestinian flag is divisive, and intended to signal the cultural dominance of the people behind it.
Taking territory is what this is all about. The “Free Palestine” theme has proved very useful in drawing (often quite ignorant) support from all sides. Forget about the moderate Muslims or any alleged silent majority – our major inner cities are very likely to become increasingly Islamified with extremists and activists as the advance guard. Fellow travellers will include those groups who have long resented White Western culture.
Christopher Hitchens was eerily prophetic about this situation in 2009 – look it up on the Web. He explained how ‘the new term ‘Islamaphobia’ is being introduced to silence your objections, how ‘your religious leaders’ have and will ‘hold open the door’ for Islam. Well, it seems he was correct in every way.
It’s also very much about islamist Jew-hatred and being very publicly bested by second-class dhimmi Jews.
The Union Flag has been used by racist groups such as the National Front, the BNP and Britain First. It is used to signal cultural dominance, and can frighten people. The Palestinian Flag signals solidarity with those under attack and oppression, just like the Ukrainian flag.
FY
Ukraine didnt move into russian territory, rape and behead innocent civilians then run and hide under civilian human shields
An imaginative response would be to tie a Pride flag to every Palestinian flag. What could be more inclusive and diverse?
Very cleaver! Good idea. Then see if the Pride flags get torn down. This would be an interesting experiment to video and then show in a DEI class for discussion.
You first…..
Brilliant idea! And most amusing.
The idea that the Union flag is unifying in the UK is extremely naive. Thatcher and then this last Tory government buried the union.
It was Blair who did that.
Please, anyone who gave this a down tick tell us what is on your mind. These threads are opportunities for debate.
Certainly. The union is alive and well. The idea that a few cultural marxists in Glasgow and Cardiff, now shown to be totally corrupt and inept, could have put an end to it is ludicrous. the common enemy is now within.
Sorry, before I get jumped on by marauding Scots, that should read ‘Edinburgh and Cardiff.’
But isn’t that exactly what David wrote? “The unifying flag is a unifying object.”
BTW, I have family in Scotland, and they fully agree with this statement. I think Victoria was referring to people who believe that the union flag is divisive, and who instead of giving a reason simply gave a down tick.
A few??? You appear to be overrun.
I fear you’re expecting way too much from the “down-tick” crowd. I have learnt that they, for the most part, are neither willing nor capable to make coherent arguments to support their cause(s). I suspect that it’s because many are just people who jump on a popular bandwagon without knowing/understanding the issues at stake. Case in point the “From the river to the sea” slogan shouters who in 95% cannot identify the river with another 50% being unable to identify the sea.
Point proven! Thank you.
The Islamic God doesn’t debate nor do his followers. He’d have just nuked Sodom and Gomorah. Lot would have got nowhere negotiating/discussing with that God as to how many just men might be the ‘saving grace’.
It isn’t going to end well.
Should not the people who put up these flags be arrested, tried and jailed for 2 years like Samuel Melia
The Law isn’t simply an Ass nowadays, it is not concerned with Justice. Justice, like Prudence has been done away with and there isn’t a party in Westminster who will do anything to change it. The only good news is that Net Zero will bring the country to its knees before Islam does. About 18 months if the figures I’ve been reading are correct.
Are you talking about the Union Jack? If Scotland wants their freedom, don’t give the referendum to them, give it to England. Scotland would surely get their independence then!
Islam mandates that once its faithful have prayed in a space, it is muslim. Hence their praying in our streets and public spaces.
I imagine Israeli flags would not last long but presumably if the Council was sincere in its protestations that it it all about inclusivity then Jewish individuals who wanted to display their support for Israel should be permitted to do fly them from public buildings too.
Curious no one wants to hang a Yemen flag because they are against innocent lives being taken there.
Also curious how many councils were gung ho about flying Ukrainian flags in 2022. I don’t recall seeing any Afghan or Iraqi flags back in the noughties.
The UK is being far too tolerant of its anti-Jew/Israel Muslim minority citizens. In the USA you can demonstrate all you want but foreign flags and paraphernalia are considered to be insulting to the host country. If you live in and have settled in the USA you do not insult your host country, you assimilate or are denigrated.
Muslims being reflexively anti-Jewish is par for the course in Islamist thinking. Islam may have its enlightenment one day, but not in my lifetime I’m afraid.
The Enlightenment was a product of changes in Christianity. These changes in Christianity were an attempt by increasingly literate Christians to return to the type of church Jesus led. Of course, Jesus didn’t have a formal church at all. It was this idea that finally broke the all-encompassing control of the established church, giving rise to many varieties of churches in the European countries. The strife this caused eventually forced an accomodation that leant towards tolerance of religion and tolerance of ideas in their own right.
I fear we are seeing an Islamic enlightenment. A return to the roots of Islam, to follow more closely the life of the prophet, would look altogether very different to the Christian enlightenment. It would be expansionist and intolerant, demanding the islam, submission, of everyone.
Throughout the 19th century the Christian scriptures were subjected to historical and literary criticism that seriously damaged the credibility of these foundational documents. What other religion would allow that?
Partly as a consequence of this and the development of science and democracy, by the end of the 19th century Christianity in England had largely come to be seen solely as social improvement.
If there was ever an inclusive Christianity in the ancient world it was created by the Apostle Paul. Paul insisted that his converts were no longer Greek or Jew, male or female, slave or free but a new creation. Not only something never seen in the world before but certainly not diverse.
The tolerance and thoughtful moderation of the Church of England that the Prime Minister praised in his Friday Downing Street sermon was created through place and a shared history. Did the PM mean to imply that these qualities of the C of E were supplied by it to a multi-faith society because the other religions that are present lacked them?
As described by the Prime Minister in his summation, the Church of England is now in the strange position of upholding every faith but its own.
As for Tower Hamlets, it’s vibrant.
This comment is so ill informed it beggars belief. There is complexity and diversity within every religion and cherry picking things that support your own underlying biases is nothing special. With regards to the Semitic religions go, Islam accepts the validity of Judaism and Christianity ( Jesus is considered to be a great prophet in a continuous tradition that goes back to Abraham, just not divine), which is why Jews were able to live in the Middle East for centuries without fearing the insane persecution they experienced in the so called enlightened West where 6 million of them were murdered post-enlightenment. The Israeli-Palestine conflict is essentially about land and no one is saying it’s not hideous and hasn’t generated a lot of hatred but to assume the West’s age old and irrational form of anti-semitism is what we are seeing here, js a good example of the autistic discourse of some in the West which E Said talked about.
The problem is not Islam, which is just a religion followed by about 1.8 Bn people around the world, without needing to commit extreme violence. The problem is Islamism, which is a political movement based on the more extreme and violent passages within Islam. Ie it is not the book but how some people exploit the book to gain and exert power exactly the same happened in Christianity centuries ago.
There is no such thing as ‘let he who is without sin cast the first stone’ in Islam. It’s a supremacist ideology that explicitly legitimises violence. We need to be truthful about these things even when it hurts people’s feelings.
So how come so much evil was done in the name of Christianity in the past?
Same reason so much evil was done in the name of socialism I imagine. People are like that.
So we seem to agree the problem is with people exploiting it for political gain.
I would venture a guess that only 1% of the flags were put up by people who care enough about the people of Gaza that they would take them into their own home as refugees.
I think it’s more that the problem is utopianism of any kind. The belief that the society is perfectible, which is ridiculous in itself, leads to self-righteousness and intolerance. At least Christianity encouraged its followers to examine their own imperfections first before seeking scapegoats – as do all the other utopian superstitions.
Jews were never able to live in the Middle East without fearing persecution. There were regular pogroms, massacres and dispossessions – even in supposedly multi-cultural Andalusia. That’s why every Jew in, for instance, Morocco, left as soon as they had somewhere to go.
The founder of Islam massacred a jewish tribe, took its women as sex slaves. Modern day muslim in the UK reference the battles he fought against jews as they march for Palestine.
Nell’s use of the term Enlightenment is strange but her wider point is right on the money. The rise of Islamist violence is a terrifying and global phenomenon and does echo early Islam’s brutal expansionism. Where Jesus ministered to the meek and Buddha meditated Mohamed was a war lord.
The new anti-Semitism, just the same as the old anti-Semitism.
“I fear we are seeing an Islamic enlightenment. A return to the roots of Islam, to follow more closely the life of the prophet, would look altogether very different to the Christian enlightenment. It would be expansionist and intolerant, demanding the islam, submission, of everyone.”
Precisely!
The irony is that the “Christian” West often funded the more extremist Muslim sects to train up generations of jihadis to attack the West’s secular rivals; eg, the socialist regime in Afghanistan, Assad in Syria, Ghaddaffi in Libya.
Well done us.
The Enlightenment has very little to do with Christianity, as wee see today. Modernity, the descendant of the Enlightenment is moving more and more away from religion overall.
Anthony, we have already seen various reforms in Islam driven by a desire to return to the roots. One such example is Wahhabism, which I would hardly describe as enlightened. The history of Christianity and Islam cannot be compared. The biographies of Jesus and Mohammed provide ample evidence to that extent: one was a preacher and storyteller who never engaged in armed conflict, whilst the other one was a ruthless warlord with a desire for converts and territory. I am one of those who does indeed fear a return to Islam’s roots, because that doesn’t bode well for the rest of us. Having just returned from Vienna a few weeks ago, I had plenty of opportunity to visit the sites where the Ottoman Turks had besieged the city in the 16th and 17th centuries. Thankfully, they were defeated, and their captured cannons were turned into the biggest bell of St Stephen’s Cathedral, the mighty “Pummerin”. I don’t know how well we’d fare today with an aging, pacifist population that considers the use of wrong pronouns a punishable offence.
Western Christianity was also viciously intolerant and violent and. It is just historical denial or complete ignorance to claim otherwise. The Jews, the Cathars, heretics, atheists ( a few of them existed ) the “wrong” kind of Christian etc.
The difference, of course, is that the wrongs you describe did not arise from behaviour mandated by the text.
Here in the US there is really only one rule about flying a foreign flag: it must be flown below the US flag on a flagpole. But plenty of different ethnicities fly their flag here, hang it out of windows, wrap themselves in it, put stickers of it on their cars, or wear it as clothing. Our post-October 7 demonstrations are filled with Palestinian flags, just as our pro-immigration rallies are filled with the flags of just about every country in Central and South America, especially Mexico. And coming up soon, we’ll be seeing lots of Republic of Ireland flags wrapped around people staggering around dead drunk on St. Patrick’s Day! No one here minds that much because so many Americans still identify with their country of ancestry.
Oh yeah, the West has been soooo welcoming to the Jews…
History lesson. When no one wanted the Jews, Muslims took them in. And they lived in harmony. What a slap in the face to be taken over and treated like second class citizens and now to have your home taken away from you and be murdered on mass. Shame on Isreal!
Islam then and Islamism now are not the same thing. The Palestinians are not being “murdered en mass”. There would be no Israeli military action were it not for the atrocious 7 October attacks. Were the Germans being murdered en mass in World War 2, would you say?
History lesson #2: Jews lived in what is today known as the Middle East long before Islam existed (Islam is an appropriation of Jewish culture, which they then twisted and used as a weapon against us), and as the Muslims colonised large areas of the world, they often “allowed” Jews to continue living (i.e. didn’t kill them like they killed the “infidels”) since they were considered “People of the Book”. But in most of those Muslim lands, for most of the time, Jews were second class citizens, and were allowed to “live in harmony” as long as they towed the line. It is of course true that when Europe threw out it’s Jews, some found a new home in Arab controlled lands. By the way, some Jews made it to India and the Americas, etc’. The war in Israel/Gaza now, is harsh and I truly hope ends soon, but the history of this war begins way before 1948. The history of Jewish/Muslim relationship goes back centuries – and part of what some Muslims find to be intolerable is that Jews refuse to continue being docile Dimi.
And they lived in harmony.
That’s a myth I’m afraid. Jews were just as badly treated by Muslims as they were by the Cossacks.
Uh do you actually live here? What you are describing was prevalent about 60 years ago. Certainly not happening now.
Enok Pouell, haha….
Pouell is where the Enoks live. It’s the sister moon to the forest moon of Endor where the Ewoks live.
Is he Irish?
From a New Zealand perspective you guys in UK are a racist bunch of extremists – you’re either with us or against us – no rational or respectful debate. I joined UnHerd a year or so ago thinking I was tapping into some useful counter opinion. But having followed the discussions on Ukraine and Gaza it’s pretty clear that the UnHerd audience are as extreme as the silly government you’ve appointed. I guess that’s as good as western democracy is in this century.
Have you been to South London or to the UK? Elaborate please. Screaming ‘waaaycist!’ isn’t good enough and just you makes you seem like the sort of judgemental fool you consider yourself above.
You sound just like champagne socialist, a regular pseudo-commentator here. Are you by any chance related?
You have nothing to offer on a discussion about mass-immigration or Islam. New Zealand barely has any of either relative to England. If you think the progressive Tory party that legalised same sex marriage are extreme then you are beyond hope.
For all their protesting and flag displays, have they changed anything on the ground in Gaza ? Doesn’t sound like it.
They don’t give a stuff about Palestinians. If they did they’d have gone over there and fought like the mujahideen in Afghanistan
How right you are, R. Wright! Empty vessels?
Look at the contrast with Denmark and Singapore. If you allow the percentage of foreigners in an area to reach critical mass this is what happens. It should never have been allowed to get to the stage of colonialism.
In fact it could be termed “reverse colonialism”.
No, it’s just colonialism.
People coming from a foreign land and imposing their way of life using violence.
You don’t have to be white European to be a coloniser.
No doubt you are against it then?
Can you clarify what you mean? You mean how the Chinese took over Singapore from the muslim Malay population? But what’s the issue re Denmark?
“I feel like the council is encouraging this.” That’s because the council is muslim dominated too.
These muslim communities are way beyond critical mass: they will never assimilate; they will never integrate; and they will never share our values. In fact, they do the opposite.
I can forsee a future where the (currently democratic) West will have to fight hard against Islamification or succumb. Multiculturalism has been the thin end of a very big wedge and it is simply a delusion to talk, as Nicole Lampert does, about broken communities being brought back together. It should be obvious that multiculturalism imports community divisions.
Multiculturalism does not and never will succeed; we live in a multi-racial society, a very different animal indeed.
I’m pretty sure that’s what was said about catholic Irish communities up to the 1970s. S. Asian Muslim communities are more different to be sure.
Nope, the Irish were not trying to take over the whole UK , they were trying to take the top bit of the Island they lived on. Mind you I find it rather ironic that Sinn Fein is now make the Republic considerably less Irish having killed to many in the North and UK to make it more Irish!
Critical mass, yes. They prod away until they discover they’ve reached that point. Then they do more than prod, and never step back.
Chief among their victories, alongside the flags, was the successful “school walkout for Palestine” in November, when 300 children marched through the borough’s streets chanting “Israel is a terrorist state”
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Oh, you already have your own Hitler Youth. I suspected that this might happen, but I never expected that a country that created the Magna Carta and whose parliament is seven and a half centuries old would so quickly turn into a proto-fascist state
There’s no testosterone in British men it seems. They stand round wringing hands and telling everyone to wake up but not much beyond it.
At last, an article that mentions the role of the SWP in the various protests and demonstrations.
They are poisonous: they have destroyed many positive social movements, etc, they tolerated rape,and even gave the perperator money for a PHD. They ‘brand’ worthwhile protests with their placards,(try and take them down, you will get a fight) they are very well funded by bequests, etc, and maybe the secret state. I also recall going on Palestine demos, and being given blatantly A/S leaflets by Islamists, on handing then to the narch organisers, the SWP in this case, they basially shrugged, saying,m ‘we don’t know what is like in Palestine, and unbelievable making out the protesters were a bit simple.Oh,and one of their late C/Committee members signed the Cairo Declaration on SWP/Globalise Resistance(another front) behalf.
What is a no go area ?
If a hate crime is something that you perceive as being hateful (the law) . Then is a “no go area “a place you do not feel safe in after dark ?
“The subject of Palestinian flags and their erection/removal within the borough is a matter of community tension and safety and certain information being released into the public domain is likely to contribute to issues of community safety and tension which could lead to the endangering of individuals.”
“Last week, an independent inquiry into the legality of the flags commissioned by the council confirmed they were illegal but, says the councillor, “they still don’t know what to do about them. I had a long meeting with council officers and they still wouldn’t say if they were going to take them down.” Tower Hamlets did not want to comment on this.”
Please can someone remind me why Lee Anderson was “wrong”.
Lee Anderson is wrong because he went for the wrong mayor, he should have exposed the mayor of Tower Hamlets, whose known for pandering to Islamists.
Ah yes Lutfur Rahman….charlatan and grifter in chief. He should have been banned from holding any public office for life.
Khan has enough form for Anderson to be right.
Can anyone explain why vast numbers aren’t being prosecuted for hate crime and criminal damage? Only last week IIRC an Englishman was sentenced to 2 years for exactly these ‘crimes’ BUT as far as I’m aware, there wasn’t the same level of criminality nor was there threats of violence. It ain’t going to end well IF you keep stuffing the indigenous population – when all said and done, they are the majority. The fact that the usual constituency of the military, white working class, are no longer ‘flocking to the colours’ should be VERY worrying to our ruling class.
The problem is they aren’t acting like they are the majority. They can’t arrest everyone if everyone decides enough is enough.
Generally speaking religions reduce their influence the more the adherents learn to read and write. When only Priests could read Greek and Latin the Church ran things. The preachers were powerful.
Once the bible could be read in English their power waned. This happens to all religions once the high priests stop having a monopoly of knowledge.
Most muslims cannot read the Quran. Muslims are not allowed to read it in any form other than the original archaic Arabic, which most arabs and almost all non-arab muslims cannot understand. They learn the sounds by rote but cannot read for meaning. They are like Christians in the middle ages, who could not read Latin and so relied on the priests to tell them what the Bible said. Fundamentalist imams preach the most hateful versions of a text that already contains a good deal of intolerance and violence.
In theory, yes, you’re absolutely right, and that’s what happened in Europe. I doubt that this will be the case in the Islamic world? Why? Well, many people there can already read and write, the problem is that the Quran cannot be easily understood even by those who are native speakers of Arabic. If you follow the established thinking of most scholars, the Quran is written in Classic Arabic, which is not spoken anymore today. Personally, I am of the opinion that it was composed in a hybrid Aramaic-Arabic language. The people who lived in Mecca in the 7th century spoke Syriac, not Arabic, and I find it impossible to believe that their language did not influence the texts that came to form the Quran. There are too many similarities with Christian Syriac texts. Knowledge of that language has mostly disappeared, which means that there is much room for misunderstandings. I am sure you remember the debate about white grapes versus virgins! I gleefully envision some martyr getting a bowl of grapes rather than his expected harem! To further compound the issue, Islamic scholars insist that the Quran can only be read and studied in Arabic and not in translation. I fear that literacy will not change the way of thinking in those countries. I am not sure what will.
This is a variant of the idea that mass education brings liberal democracy with it. There is indeed a loose coupling between the two, but Nazi Germany, Putin’s Russia and Xi’s China show that the relationship is not immediate. Muslim countries have actually gone backwards with respect to liberal values — you can find photographs of young women in Egypt and Iran in the 1950s looking like the young women of Europe at that time. Not now.
Since all major British political parties in effect support mass Third-world immigration, both legal and illegal, and since the birth rate of the indigenous population is below replacement level, it’s a simple problem of mathematics to work out the future date of the end of Britain. Nice while it lasted.
IF that is the case, then there may be a large number of illiterate Muslim NHS staff
First we had to swallow “tolerance”. Now we have to choke down “diversity”. These concepts, forced on a populace by our so-called betters (who wouldn’t step foot in any of these Edens of human mingling), are obviously disastrous. When we had civil enclaves of ethnicities – “Little Italy”, “Chinatown”, etc., we enjoyed other cultures on their own terms.
Birds of a feather will never change, and it’s not an insult to others to prefer commonality.
It’s obvious that this whole “Palestine” thing is bought and paid for by those who would have the realities in the actual region be fought on foreign soil. Lord knows the Egyptians, Syrians, Lebanese, and Saudis want nothing to do with their fellow Muslims in Gaza. They’re more than happy to fund silly Western childrens’ galloping, ignorant narcissism.
Diversity is a is indeed forced on us by our so-called betters. But tolerance is a basic human virtue which we should all cultivate. The trouble is, it works both ways. If the tolerated refuse to tolerate their tolerators, where does that leave us?
Tolerance is a peace treaty, not an absolute. The people who we tolerate may not want to tolerate us, but they have to if we are going to tolerate them.
If, and I sincerely hope it doesn’t, the indigenous population resorts to violence or pogroms against Muslim communities, a large part of the blame will fall on people like Luther Rahman. He has run Tower Hamlets like a fiefdom. It is not just Jews who have beeb targeted but gays and Christians. Unless all groups show more tolerance and integrate fully there will be bloodshed. That this should even be a possibility is an utter disgrace.
If the indigenous population does not do something very soon then there will be civil war or islamification of the UK.
No there won’t. Powell prophesied rightly, 56 years ago, that the non-British (ethnically) population would increase significantly [ though Islam is actually still only at 6% in the UK at the 2021 census ] but he was wrong, as have all the other doomsayers that the Tiber would foam with blood. British people tend to get along with things. We heard the same nonsense re Jews in 1900s re the Irish before that and till the 1960s and about those from the Caribbean in the 1950s and 1960s and generally things have worked out. It will be harder with some muslim communities due to Islamism but we’ll just have to work at it.
When has any area experienced the mass importation of Muslims and been the better for it?
I am eagerly awaiting a response to this question, too. I cannot recall a simple example, and if somebody brings up the supposed Golden Age again, I will counter that the Golden Age was mostly driven by Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, etc. It did not occur in a vacuum, but in existing cultural hubs where knowledge had been valued for many centuries. Back then, just as today, Islamification was not an instant process, but actually took centuries from first contact to full conversion. The Golden Age lasted about 300 years, which happens to coincide with the time it takes for a culture and people to completely absorb Islam. That’s precisely when scientific advances and tolerance came to grinding halt. And no, this is not a coincidence, but a direct consequence of Islam becoming the mainstream dogma.
I like to remind people that it was the radical Islam of the Almoravids and Almohads that destroyed the so-called Convivencia, not the Christian Reconquista.
The only Golden Ages of Islam where when the secular authority stomped on the religious one when they went too far. Ask Iranians what type of Government they’d prefer.
Take it the bombings in the UK are just teething problems in integration. Taken in context the Manchester bombing only killed 27 people. Small change and easy to work on then. A couple of beheadings nothing to see really work in on it
But who do they target ? Women and young girls. There is something VERY VERY wrong with Islam. Or are the 70 something odd virgins waiting for each martyr not female at all?
And what makes the Muslim immigrants different from Jews, Irish and Afro-Caribbean immigrants? Their refusal to integrate and their belief in a religion which glorifies violent jihad in order to achieve its goals.
Tbc, much of the left would be on the barricades with the Islamists, though many are too old.
Leicester isn’t just Muslim, there are Hindus there, and that kicked off not so long ago. Try Bradford too. I was once passing through and stopped to fill up when I watched astounded at a group of Islamic youths harassing a very attractive young Hindu woman. Fortunately I was at the next pump, once she had left they seemed unhappy that I had offered help to the girl as she tried to sort her car and keep an eye on the youths. What is it with Islam that they hate women and girls? It that why Labour and the Left ally with them. They too appear to have women and girls.
We all know which group shows zero tolerance. The same group does not and will not integrate and same group resorts to violence. How they are still allowing these intimidation marches every Saturday is beyond comprehension. They are an utter disgrace.
The author is complaining about people using their right to free speech and self expression, using Islamophobic tropes and dog whistles. Many people are rightly angry that our government is supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza. People are hanging Palestinian flags outside their own homes to show solidarity with people who are being slaughtered, Just like many people hung Ukrainian flags outside their windows after Russia invaded.
I find it very sinister the way the pro Israel crowd are complaining about people being allowed to express different opinions, in a country that prides itself on being a democracy, and have been using dog whistle racism against immigrants, and the children and Grand children of Immigrants. Ironic, since most Jews are descended from those who found sanctuary here after fleeing Russian pogroms and later the Nazis.
The Palestinians and have been being ethnically cleansed for the past 76 years and are now being slaughtered in the thousands, and many people Christians, Muslims, Atheists and JEWS are outraged that our government is enabling this.
Frank supports people who gouge out eyes and lop off heads. He is also wrong about ethnic cleansing or else ‘the joos’ are just really bad at it. The problem that Frank and anyone else who whines about the war that Hamas started is that the Jews aren’t going to step onto those cattle cars as easily this time.
So, how can Paul Scully’s comments be hyperbolic? Sounds very much like a no-go area to me!
It sounds like people in this part of the UK will fly any country’s flag but their own. Oikophobia?
Surprise, surprise. Ukrainian flags good; Palestinian flags bad. Good grief, so tediously predictable.
Very few Islamists in Ukraine, and a government that isn’t a terrorist death cult, or hadn’t you noticed the difference?
Why am I paying to read this drivel? Cancelling sub now.
As a Scot everytime I view ‘ The Butchers Apron ‘ Union Jack flying my basic instinct is to tear the bloody thing down
You are like an Islamist. Happy to take our money but not a shred of gratitude or loyalty.
Every time I see the Saltire I say cancel the Barnett Formula and arrest the SNP for treason.
The chickens have come home to roost; what did the politicians honestly expect to happen? When will it end? It won’t as long as large Muslim communities are empowered and allowed to manipulate and populate political levers of power. The Establishment has been caught sleeping at the wheel and is burying its head in the sand. The people who will pay the price, as they always do, are the working class stuck on the bottom having to muddle through multiple languages, an intolerant faith and all the while being told they are racist and part of the populist problem. It’s done.
How is it that a permanent ban for election fraud isn’t available?
How do you know it’s fraudulent? Bring enough in to replace the voters with ones who share their values all legal like
This is the loss of a nation’s territory. It is reverse colonization. This proves the idea that Moslems want to replace white people. The elite are not defending the common people.
“The elite are not defending the common people.” Of course not.
Look to Ireland for what will happen if we keep voting for the current Westminster parties. 20% of their population is now migrant. Mind you if the “Independents” 2007 report based on a major supermarket database was true (and having worked on such databases I expect it was) the population of the UK in 2007 was between 77 and 80 Million. So much for the Official figure today of 68Million.
‘enflaming’? Oh apparently Mirriam Webster says it’s OK but they’re American and we don’t generally use their spelling by preference.
“Flags to me are symbolic of territory and possession. The first thing done, when new land was discovered or captured from another nation was to raise a flag. …: ‘If you don’t subscribe to this way of thinking, you’re not welcome here, go somewhere else.’.”
That is why the flags outside public buildings carry such potency.
Googling, one example: “London has centres of worship for many faiths. According to the 2021 Census, the largest religious groupings are Christians (40.66%), followed by those of no religion (27.05%), Muslims (14.99%), no response (7%), Hindus (5.15%), Jews (1.65%), Sikhs (1.64%), Buddhists (1.0%), and others (0.9%)”
Are we to abandon London, Luton, the M62 corridor because 70-85% non muslims agree with this state of affairs?
When the handguns and improvised weapons start to appear (similar to the ULEZ protest) what then? Galloway achieved traction in Rochdale with 40% of a 39% turnout. 15.6%.
The activists aren’t winning, the rest are giving England away. ‘X’ is a powerful tool but only if we use it.
Our political class wants to look away in case the BBC criticises them as racist.
Hi people you are missing the bigger picture the Muslim extremists are no different from the Zionist Jewish extremists and the right-wing white UK extremists. What is the issue here is the Genocide in GAZA and the West Bank and ALL moral and human rights UK citizens Black White Asians Indians Coloureds should all be on the streets demanding a ceasefire to the murder and genocide taking place by the Israel Apartheid Zionist Jewish state. ANY caring person with children a wife how can you support this murderous genocide?? The vast majority of UK citizens abhor our government 650 complicit murderers. Sanctions on Russia? the human rights atrocities being committed by this Apartheid Zionist Israel state are no different than the Nazi upon the Jews in 1939? SANCTIONS no fly zone why not? 1200 Israel deaths, by Hamas? NO more like 400 max. most killed by the IDF FACT!! the IDF helicopters massacring their own FACT, HOSTAGES which hostages? the Palestine hostages 12/15000 or the 150 various national hostages??? The western media financed by the Jews propaganda the best!! Look beyond the trees follow the money always BUT HERE IN THE UK, the masses all colours all ethnic groups want our government to listen to the masses NOT what their views are otherwise DEMOCRACY no more. So, Nicole stop stoking the racial divisions, the Muslims are now part of the UK vast numbers born here so when they see their own government send bombs guns munitions from Cyprus to Israel to kill and murder more innocent children and women then of course there will be consternation as to WHY? If the English were bombing Glasgow Edinburgh killing innocent women and children would not the Scottish living in the UK be on the streets with Scottish flags demonstrating against the crime of human rights for all that we preach and believe in, or are human rights for only those that support the murdering of women and children by complicity of the UK if not human rights don’t apply?? I think Nicole you need to look back in history and you will then realise what an Apartheid Israel Zionist state has done to the Palestine nation, they are copying Hitler and the west are complicit also all the ARAB nations who have taken the 30 pieces of silver. For them hopefully Mohammed will be waiting for them when they try to enter the pearly gates!!
Nascent no go areas or not ?
This is a problem of the Labour Party’s making, having cultivated “diversity,” and multi-culturalism for decades as a stick with which to beat middle-class conservative Britain into submission. Having achieved their goal of coaching Islamists to assert their dominance in communities throughout the country, they will now have to confront the fruit of their efforts after Labour get in: Islamists may still tolerate the SWP in their unholy alliance, but will cast them off as they build their own Islamic party.
Thank you, Tony Blair.
One more thing that man will have to answer for in hell.
Limbo – I doubt the Devil would want him.
Import muslims and you import aggressive radical Islam….Islam doesn’t integrate of compromise. It’s a take over. It’s the battle of Tours by a million cuts….but France has already fallen….Calais has become a bridgehead and Britain is next. Basically, we need a complete moratorium on immigration and 100 years of aggressive assimilation policies….the re-assertion of our Christian heritage in culture, and the deportation of anyone who refuses publicly to affirm the central principles of democratic life (e.g. that insulting Mohammed or Christ is a legal freedom that should be upheld with every power of the state)….We should start by banning any reference to Islamophobia in public (school, civil service, university, NHS) documents in place of a more universal reference (if necessary) to stirring up hate against particular groups of people. Criticizing an ideology or a lifestyle is perfectly legitimate. It’s culture war we need against Islam, against progressive ideology….and if the Tories are not up for the job then another party will come through, eventually. It may well be too late by then.
Christopher Hitchens, 2009 on Youtube and talking of the ‘new’ word ‘Islamophobia’ was terrifyingly prescient.
Understand that the idea of tolerance is not something anyone feels so passionately about that they would fight and die for it en masse. The Christians of old felt much passion in their faith and visions.
What the council is saying is that they’re scared too
OR their bosses are Islamists?
At least the flags are not that ‘far-right’ symbol the flag of St. George or the imperialist Union flag which are so triggering to students, BBC journalists, Guardian readers and our political class.
“Tower Hamlets is one of the most diverse local authorities in England”
How’s that working out? Diversity is tossed out as if it’s an end unto itself. It isn’t. I’m starting to think its only value is the food choices that are introduced.
It’s articles and media like this that help corrupt governments all over the world to stoke racial tension. Thus enabling them to committ war crimes with the consent of their citizens. War and murder are wrong whether your Jewish, Palestinian or other. Everyone should be angry and protest against mass murder.
Thousands of people (Jewish, Palestinian, Ukranian and Russian) have been murdered by corrupt world leaders and their institutions. The people need to stand together and (for the majority) that’s what these protests are about. The Palestinian flag now represents more than religion or race, it is symbol of atrocity.
Notions of right and wrong are simple. Articles like this serve only to corrupt moral judgement.
“I had a meeting recently with a Detective Superintendent about the stickers calling for an ‘intifada’.” He claims the police officer pushed back at the idea that this could be a hate crime, ”
Elsewhere in England a man has just been jailed for 2 years for producing stickers such as ‘it’s ok to be white’ and ‘whites will be a minority by 2050’. No outright calls to violence note.
Two tier policing is too obvious to not notice at this point.
Look on the bright side, we aren’t yet the US, despite now having a ‘Supreme Court’ that appears able to tell parliament to ‘take a hike’ when it suits them.
What are you talking about??
Islamization of Britain?
A new colonisation of Britain?
So it’s intimidating to be against genocide? To fly a Palestinian flag to end the mass killings? It’s disgusting what Isreal is doing.
It’s disgusting how the likes of you forget the depravity of October 7th AND believe every word coming out of the mouths of Hamas.
Talk about making an issue when there isn’t one. I lived in London for over 20 years. Sure it has its problems like most big cities. But I’m visiting Tower Hamlets right now. Have been walking round the streets for the last 3 days. Haven’t come across anything. If there’s anyone stoking the fire of hatred, it’s the person who wrote that article.
Curiously Adolf never had a problem walking around most German Cities either.
Thank god I no longer work in tower hamlets!
It is not just Palestians, muslims, asians, etc, it is the liberlal Left/far left: i am constantly bombarded with emails, for demo’s, pickets, fund raisers, etc. Its as if there are no other issues in my city, such as the rapid gentrification which is seeing older, poorer, and the young, pushed out not just to the periphery, but into some of the more salubrious and rough areas outside. I would say for many of the older cohorts of the left its like a religion, and has certainly replaced their loyalties(which was existent but never as much as they thought) for the old working class. Btw, i do support the cause and oppose the horrendous massacre of children, etc, but i am also aware that supporting wider nationalist causes can be a dead end: i supported Ortega, ANC , etc in my youth, what have they done for the poor..
It sounds like England has been the object of a ‘soft’ invasion. No bullets were fired, no planes bombed cities, but areas of ‘English’ country and town have been successfully invaded, taken, and held. A curious fate for a once-proud nation …..
We are more tolerant than Dubliners and the Irish, BUT, once it kicks off here, then there will only be one winner AND it won’t be the Left and Islam.
Not at all. This was not an inside job, not an invasion.
I can’t speak for the hold-out cockneys in Tower Hamlets and Hackney but the pearl clutching from rate-paying left raises a wry smile.
The first Bengalis that arrived in the East End were almost all fastidiously decent, law abiding, conservative and respectable people. They were schooled in radicalism by the Flaneur Left who colonised the district from the late 70’s until the 90’s.
The same Bo-bo left which now feels so uncomfortable in its town houses off Victoria Park adored and lionised Bengali-Muslim militancy when it’s targets were the NF and the BNP and latterly Mrs Thatcher the Conservative Party and ‘Racism’ in its most general and nebulous sense. They pioneered, incited and fomented extra-parliamentary agitation. Squatting, sit-ins, rent strikes, performative radicalism, civil disobedience, autonomism and the creation of a parallel state-within-a-state in Tower Hamlets. It was the left which handed this constituency the ‘anarchists cookbook’ of local activism.
Now they find that what was long considered a client minority has its own voice and its own priorities which no longer align with the liberal-progressive ‘inevitablities’ cherished by the ageing radical they recoil in horror. Well –
“in the hand of the Lord there is a cup … the dregs thereof, all the wicked of the earth shall wring them out, and drink them”
The Palestinian flags are as much a statement of fashion to define and proclaim a muslim identity. In Bradford likewise you see kasmiri flags albeit latterly not so common. The Palestinian flags are not a new phenomenon – what differs now is the sheer propensity – and I’ve always felt it was a counter statement to the flag of St George at the time of the World Cup etc. That’s the point, a statement of being anything other than English.
Notable also that in Bradford it was Galloway himself who encouraged them, as much a revolutionary statement as a red flag with a hammer and sickle. As a Bradford resident I can at least see the positive benefit of Galloway being elected as MP for Rochdale. It means he won’t be returning to challenge a Bradford seat in the near term although will remain an inspiration for some.
It already has, long ago. Remember Lutfur Rahman?
I have read this article for the first time, scrolled to the comments and see loads of green recommends on comments as though I had clicked the thumbs up. I didn’t. They also all show as zero thumbs up. Whats going on with this website? Lately it is frequently failing to load, timing out, showing zero comments or thumbs up/down?