100,000 Muslims to vent anger in London at cartoon protest

I wasn't aware that Britain had posted these cartoons. So why are these fools wasting everyone in London's time with this farce?

Just like the Muslims who picketed a Philadelphia newspaper's offices......Don't these people have jobs?

Robert- you left out the bit about those organisers wanting to change UK laws

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4694090.stm

which, co-incidentally enough, is exactly what Hezbollah are demanding:

read the bit at the bottom of this:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1139395375738&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

"Don't these people have jobs?"

no. they feel all victimised because employers wont let them do their 5 times a day prayer thing during normal working hours.

"It is a way of showing the depth of anger that Muslim communities feel about being continually insulted by the publication of these images"

no its not. its you trying to apply pressure on the UK government for NOT passing the religious hatred bill - a bill that was turned down by our Houses of Parliament.

you didnt get your way - and now you're being a big fucking cry baby.

THATS what this is all about, thats why this is being planned for the UK.

As my comment I don't think I can better this letter which I received from the Barnabas Fund about 10 minutes ago. I would urge all JW/DWers to buy their publication Islam in Britain, available from the Barnabas Fund website. Even if you are not British it is an interesting read.

UNITED KINGDOM

09 February 2006

BRITISH MUSLIMS CALL FOR LAWS TO PROTECT MUHAMMAD, AND PROTEST
DANISH CARTOONS

Three hundred Islamic religious scholars in the UK are calling for changes in the law to stop publication of any images of Muhammad the prophet of Islam. They want amendments to the Race Relations Act to give Muslims the same protection as Sikhs and Jews. They also want the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) to tighten their self-regulatory code of practice to prevent the publication of pictures of Muhammad.

The scholars gathered yesterday for an emergency meeting under the auspices of the Muslim Action Committee (MAC) at an Islamic Centre in Small Heath, Birmingham. Chairman, Shaikh Faiz Saddiqi, commented that it was the largest meeting of its kind which he remembered in 25 years living in the UK.

These calls come in the wake of international Muslim outrage about the publication of caricatures of Muhammad in Danish and other European newspapers.

TWO MORE RALLIES PLANNED TO PROTEST DANISH CARTOONS

According to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the MAC are organising a protest rally in London on Saturday 18th February, and expect 20,000 to 50,000 people to attend. A week earlier, on Saturday 11th February, another protest rally, also responding to the Danish cartoons, is being called by Britain's two largest Muslim groupings, the mainstream Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) and the more radical Muslim Association of Britain (MAB). According to the MAB, "non-Muslim groups and figure-heads" will be joining the rally to be held this Saturday under the title "United Against Incitement and Islamophobia".

TWO ALARMING ASPECTS

Dr Patrick Sookhdeo, International Director of Barnabas Fund, comments:
"There are two very alarming aspects of the MAC's demands. Firstly, we all have to accept the possibility of being offended, as part of the package of free speech. Why should there be different rules for Muslims compared with followers of other faiths? If we pass laws or even simply create a new PCC code of practice specifically to protect Muhammad, I fear it could prove to be the thin end of the wedge. From self-imposed censorship we could soon move to more serious situations. In Pakistan there has been a mandatory death sentence since 1991 or "defiling the name" of Muhammad. The irony is that in earlier centuries there were many Muslim pictures of Muhammad, some of which can be seen in museums both in the West and in the Muslim world.

"Secondly, I believe that the cartoons furore is being used as a pretext for another legal battle. It was only nine days ago that the House of Commons unexpectedly voted to pass the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill in a form which does not provide the protection for Muslims which the government had intended. If the MAC are now calling for changes in the Race Relations Act, this seems to me an attempt to get themselves the privileged legal position the government had promised them by another method. It is nothing to do with the cartoons.

"I am totally opposed to attacks on Muslims or anyone else. We must protect people, but not ideas. I am therefore strongly opposed to any changes to exsiting legislation which already protects the whole population. I urge all readers to work to stop these changes from being implemented and to ensure that the level playing field is not tilted."

LETTER-WRITING CAMPAIGN AND MORE INFORMATION

Guidelines on how to write a letter on these issues will be on the Barnabas
Fund website in a few hours time. www.barnabasfund.org

Barnabas Fund will be providing further information as it becomes available.

PRAYER ITEMS

* Pray urgently for British law-makers and decision-makers that they will have wisdom and discernment to recognise the full implications of the issues here.
Pray that liberal British Muslims will lead their community towards an appreciation of genuine free speech and away from seeking special privileges and protections which no other community has.

"The march, on Feb 18, will go from Trafalgar Square to Hyde Park."

More like from Jekyll Square to Hyde Park, if their past self-restraint is any guide.

By the way, whose likeness do you suppose will be perched upon Nelson's column in 50 years? At least we know it won't be Mohammed's.

http://www.barnabasfund.org/islaminbritain.htm

£5.99 +95p P&P

DCWatson…Briton is the softest touch in Europe …that’s why.

Democracy being another ideology is invariably in competition with Islam. Moreover, democracy originated in the West, the land of the "crusaders", all the more reason for jihad. Muslims dwelling in Western societies, including naturalized citizens and their descendants, are very resentful of the West.

Britain has made it really easy for the muslim. In Pak people talk about Britain being *the* choice of country they would most like to settle into.

The lack of will, and the absence of any coherent and effective idea for dealing with the intrinsic problems of Islam is very appealing to Pak muslims.

These marches will guarantee the following:
1) Bowing of the Infidel
2) Banning of Pork and Liquor
3) Passing of Blasphemy laws.
4) Friday decreed a public holiday
5) Loud speakers blasting five times a day, in the wee hours of the morning calling them to prayers

All we have to do is get out 100K peoples on the street and wham…its done.
So much for human rights, freedom of the press of the West.

In early as the 1980s Islamic leaders declared, "In the next fifty years, we will capture the Western world for Islam. We have the men to do it, we have the money to do it, and above all, we are already doing it."

In the name of Islam, many of them have indeed taken up arms against their adopted Western countries and actively seek their destruction. They can't leave you alone because they are aggressive and will soon have nuclear weapons

And as for moderate muslims…they will remain a small minority. They cannot overcome the passionate, suicidal commitment to a dominant, Islamic world that is the core of their belief system and the Koran whether they divorce themselves from the radicals or not.

Hell, it’s taken me 2 years of constant reading…and I’m Ahmadi. You will NEVER get a sunni or shia to invest his/her time like I have.

Once UK is done, you’ll see bus loads, train loads and truck loads of these same people go to Europe….city by city…town by town paralysing the capitals…the train stations….peppered with the odd bomb or two to keep the infidels at bay.

Your spineless leaders will lead you to the European Civil war…thank them for it.

"they said they needed to "channel" growing anger felt by communities across Britain that Muslims were being persecuted and made to feel like "second class citizens".

If they are second class citizens, it is because they refuse to assimilate into British Culture, they refuse to respect the values of that culture,and many of them are reflecting hostility to the British, and western cultures.

They are victims of their own creation through the totalitarian teachings of Mohammed.

Western civilizations have been in fact; way to tolerant with the Islamic Ideology which seeks to rule the whole planet. A line has to be drawn in the sand to stop these suppressors of freedom of expression.

Paying for dial up connection - $29.99

Buying a second hand computer - $250.00

Reading comments by surly
(By the way, whose likeness
do you suppose will be perched
upon Nelson's column in 50
years? At least we know it
won't be Mohammed's.) - Priceless

http://www.barnabasfund.org

they're a christian group in the UK.

good. its looks like *somebody* in the christian sphere is finally waking up.

now if only the U.S. evangelicals could get their head out of their asses, open up their bank accounts and join us in this battle against Islam.

as for the Church of England - utterly lost cause. i wouldnt even bother with them.

Hey DC,
These Islamofeces couldn't hold down a job if you gave them a 5000lbs weight with a vat of gorilla glue. Plus you assume that they're intelligent. The automatic doors at K Mart have more intelligence. And zoo animals at least know when it's feeding time. The Islamofeces are even too stupid to be stupid. I've seen more intelligence come from a head of beer than a Muslim.
I take it back. These Islamofeces aren't stupid. Calling them stupid would mean a step up the evolutionary chain and be an insult to decent stupid people.
I would call them humaniods, but that would be an insult to a yet undiscoverd species of man. And I don't want insult rocks either. What can I call them that would describe them to a tee. I know.
Islamofeces!!!
See what you can do if you try?
"Forever Free!!!"

OT, apparently the most "offensive" of those 3 cartoons highjacked by Danish immans from the internet comes from a competitions for the best imitator of animal voices! In other words it was not even Mo portrayed, but some Muslim spotted this contestant's similarity to Mo and went ...balmy. Does anybody know if this is true?
If so it will be ... corpus delicti against thse lunatics....

Hondo,

If we're the ones jumping through the hoops, who are the stupid ones?

Polish faithless one,

It's true. See michellemalkin.com, for one.

Archduke
The Barnabas Fund is interdenominational. As they said when I spoke to them earlier in the week (ordering another copy) they work with all churches to do God's work. However Patrick Sookhdeo is an Anglican priest so we are not all a lost cause.
I heard him and Bat Ye'or speak at Chatham House last year. Very impressive!

Another outfit who have the right idea are these.
http://www.anglicansforisrael.com/
who are constructivly critical from within the Church. And I have heard one sermon in particular which told us that our bishops can get things wrong and that it is our duty to tell them so when they do.

If this march, intended to intimidate the Western world into observing Muslim ideas of what can or can not be printed, in the very heart of Europe, takes place, scarcely more than a few weeks after the head of a mosque, having received asylum and fantastic amounts of British government support, was sentenced to jail, and then his mosque revealed to contain weaopns of every kind and several hundred false passports, and within a year of the bombing by Muslims of the London Underground, and within a few weeks as well of the placards of Musliim demonstrators demanding the heads be cut off of all those Infidels in Denmark (and elsewhere) who dared to depict Muhammad, this should be a clear signal of what is to come.

It says in Luke: "If they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when the wood is dry?"

If they march, by the tens of thousands, through the Infidel capital of Great Britain, at a time when the Muslims should be making every attempt at amend and apology for the behavior of not a few, but of many who have expressed their hystiera and hate, and if they can do this now, when they are only abot 3-5% of the population, what will happen when they grow, and grow, in numbers, as they will, if steps are not taken, the minimum steps, to remove their presence from the Infidel countries?

This "unthinkable" idea has been not only thought, but acted upon repeatedly by the Arab Muslim states, with far less justification. Overnight, Kuwait removed 400,000 so-called "Palestinians" after the Gulf War, because their attitude during the Iraqi invasion was a demonstration of the security risk. Saudi Arabia, within a six-week period, removed nearly 1 million Yemenis (some put the figure as low as 750,000), many of whom had spent their whole lives in Saudi Arabia, for no other reason than that the govenment of Yemen had abstained on a vote at the Arab League, meant to approve the sending of troops to support Saudi Arabia. Libya has overnight expelled hundreds of thousands of Egyptians and "Palestinians."

And of course all over the world this routinely has gone on.

But wait, you say. Should the govenments of the Western world imitate the Arabs and Muslims? Is that what we should become?

No. But at least the evidence adduced shows the utter phoniness of any Arab or Muslim outrage, though in their view the very idea that Infidels have a right to defend themselves is absurd, against nature, against all right. For the world belongs to Islam and to the Believers. That is the world-view that Islam insists upon -- and until Infidels begin to take seriously what Believers believe, they will not be able to defend themselves.

But in 1946, the most tolerant and advanced and liberal state in Central or Eastern Europe, and the first victim of the Nazis, Czechoslovakia, was governed by Tomas Masaryk, the son of the famous Tomas Masaryk who had been the father, after World War I, of the Republic of Czechoslovakia. Masaryk the son was a cultivated man, like his father the scholar of Russian literature. Eduard Benes, too, though not sufficiently attuned to Soviet intentions, was similarly a cultivated product of high European civilization. Yet, after the war, realizing the role that the Sudeten Germans had played in the pre-war period, following Hitler's orders to stage riots that would then be "suppressed" by the Czech police and army, and then those examples of Czech "oppression" would be used, and were used, by Hitler to rant about the "legitimate rights of the Sudeteners" (sound familiar?) and to lure the French and the British (smiling Sir Basil Runciman, who went off on the Runciman Mission to seek a "lasting peace") into bullying the Czechs into yielding the entire Sudetenland. And during the war, as ethnic Germans, the Sudeten Germans were treated by the Nazis as fellow Germans, and many of them behaved in kind, collaborating with the enemy against the occupying Germans.

And that is why, in 1946, the Benes Decrees were issued. According to those decrees, more than 3 million ethnic Germans were expelled, together with their goods, from the Sudetenland, that is from Czechoslovakia. The execution of the measures were not always done perfectly. And the measures themselves were overbroad in that they included some who clearly were not a security threat before, during, or after the war (some anti-Nazi Germans, including German Jews, may have been included -- it is unclear).

But no one argued that the principle was unsound or illegitimate. A people, a country, a civilization, have a right to defend themselves from a mortal threat. If we see the slow, or fast, transformation of parts of the Western world because of a Muslim presence, and Muslim demands that are not, by Muslim lights, illegitimate but perfectly natural, then what should we do? Should we simply be prevented from acting, and undertaking what, a generation or two ago, would have seemed perfectly natural? Were Masaryk and Benes wrong? No one in Czechoslovakia thought so at the time; no one in Czechoslovakia has thought so since. No other leader in the Western world -- not Churchill, not Truman, not De Gaulle, not Paul-Henri Spaak, not Alcide De Gasperi, not Jean Monnet, not Mendes-France, not Forlani, not any of others whose names one dimly recalls from the 1940s and 1950s, when European leaders were chosen from among those who had experienced the war, and knew what it was all about, ever found fault with the Benes Decrees. Of course, there were similar, but less dramatic measures, taken by Poland and other countries, determined to rid thesmelves of a large-scale domestic threat of a community that had given evidence of being loyal to pan-Germanism rather than to the Polish or Czech or Hungarian state. And note that when Czechoslovakia did this, Germany itself lay in ruins. It was divided into different spheres. It was impossible to suggest that there was an imminent threat -- merely that there was a permanent threat, as the Czechs saw it. Perhaps they were wrong, perhaps they were right. But they had certain evidence for their actions that everyone in Czechoslovakia, and everyone outside Czechoslovakia, found nothing to quarrel with. And no one looks at Jaroslav Seifert, General Svoboda, Dubcek, Vaclav Havel, and others, not one of whom has taken issue with what fears prompted, and justified, the Benes Decrees (though to an Austrian audience, Havel -- possibly to please his audience -- did say that the Benes Decrees were not above criticism, which is not the same thing as criticizing them, for he seemed to think that they may have been executed in a fashion that was not without fault, not that the Benes Decrees themselves were morally wrong).

Does anyone wish to deny that Islam inculcates in Muslims the idea that loyalty is to Islam and to fellow Muslims, to the umma al-islamiyya and not to Infidels in the same nation-state? The fact that a very few Muslims may choose to ignore this does not mean that we, the Infidels, can ignore this notion, so central to Islam. Does anyone doubt, imagining a war pitting this or that Infidel country against either a Muslim country, or what would be perceived as Muslim interests, that the world's Muslims -- and the Muslims within that same country or perhaps an alliance of Infidel countries -- would work in every way to further the cause of Islam? Why wouldn't they, when that is what Islam teaches them to do? And if they didn't do it, they would be disloyal to Islam itself, and that is far worse than mere disloyalty to an Infidel nation-state, or to Infidels, who in any case have reserved for them the natural, the right fate of eventually succumbing to Islam, so that "Islam must dominate and is not to be dominated."

All one asks of Infidel governments, the press, the people, is that they not preach about what Islam means, not assume that it cannot possibly mean what, if they will only take the time to read Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, and study a bit of history, they will see what it so clearly means, reinforced at every point.

To wit:

The keyu division of the world is between Believer and Infidel.

That part of the world where Islam prevails and Muslims rule is Dar al-Islam. That part of the world where Islam does not yet prevai, and Infidels still rule, is Dar al-Harb (there is a further, miinor dividison: Dar al-Sulh, the Domoain of the Truce, but that is essentially a name for part of Dar al-Harb on its way to becoming Dar al-Islam).

There can be nothing but uncompromising hostility between Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb, sometimes involving open warfare, but often the aims of Muslims can be achieved through other means, including demographic conquest and the slow undermining of the will of Infidels. It does not take an absolute Muslim majority to islamize a country; all of the MIddle East and North Africa, and Sassanid Persia, and even India, were conquered by relatively small numbers of Muslims, who then enforced the Shari'a and, while they did kill many Infidels, also managed to create a situation so onerous that, over time, many Infidels in order to avoid their status as dhimmis simply converted to Islam. It could happen in Europe, it could happen here. Only a failure of imagination, and a failure of intellect, and laziness about studying Islam instead of merely pontificating about it, prevents more Infidels everywhere form seeing what is hardly hidden from view -- most of the relevant immutable texts are a keyboard click away.

Go ahead. Click.

"The march, on Feb 18, will go from Trafalgar Square to Hyde Park. Mr Saddiqi said that only banners and placards issued by the committee would be allowed."

As an American, I don't always understand British rules regarding regulation of speech. I hope a British JW/DWer can answer a couple of questions regarding the above quote. At a rally of 100,000, what exactly gives this Mr. Saddiqi the right to determine what banners and placards will and will not be allowed? What happens if someone violates Mr. Saddiqi's dictates? Can Mr. Saddiqi have that person arrested? Will that person be beaten or have his head cut off for violating Saddiqi's orders? I find it a bit curious that Saddiqi is able to delegate so much power to himself, but maybe that is the British way.

No, Saddiqi is just trying to present himself as not one of the "small minority of extremists"
He may have some moral authority over his own organisation, he has precious little over anybody else. If and when things go wrong he hopes to be able to show that he has kept his nose clean.

years ago during the Berkeley Ca, 'Peoples Park' riots, I read where authority had developed a riot ending gas. When inhaled it caused the inhaler to poop their pants...right now. I dont know if it was ever used, but what a way to end muslim/demonstrations. It would prove to them that they are 'full of it'.

All those busloads and trainloads of The Sons of Allah, that Naseem was refering to, could be srayed also. The trucks would be abandoned on the side of the road and all the warriors would be off in the bushes. The trains would stop running for 'technical' reasons. I think that gas might be the ultimate weapon...non-lethal, easy to apply, and 100% effective...can you imagine the spectacle...100,000 muslims all trying to get into one small rest room...and it's already too late...

Surly,
The Islamofeces are the stup. Just caught myself. You almost got me.
And who said that we were jumping through hoops? Not me. It's the Islamofeces that are trying to navigate through hoops. Note I said trying. The lying imans are the ones holding the hoops. And the whole world is the audience that is watching this cosmic travesty take place. These Islamofeces are deserving of being lied to and being mislead.
I would say "like sheep to the slaughter," but that would be an insult to the sheep. No, the Islamofeces are more like the zombies from "Night of the Living Dead"!!! Just walking around dead attacking any thing living that comes into their line of sight. No thought, no ideas, no soul. Just the instinct to feed off of anything living. No matter the nutritional value. Not creating, just devourring any and everything.
Yeah, this describes the Islamofeces to a tee.

There are three things possibly wrong or misguided about Hugh's Benes Decree-type proposal:

1) what justified the original Benes Decree (and continues to justify it) in the eyes of all those eminent people Hugh cites was a mind-bogglingly soul-wrenchingly cataclysmic hot war in which millions and millions died and were mass-murdered, led by a uniquely megalomaniac German leader of an astonishingly hideous regime bent, in alliance with two other world megalomaniacs in Italy and Japan, on literal world conquest;

2) Hugh oversimplifies the complex sociology of Islam into a solid monolith bent on world conquest;

3) Hugh tells us to fear not only Islamic physical violence against us (a legitimate fear), but also an Islamic conquest by osmosis sans any physical violence to back it up (a curious, unverifiable fear).

Hugh's #2 and #3, in juxtaposition probably with an entirely understandable frustration at the lack of resolve and action on the part of the West to deal effectively and proactively against the problem presented by Islam, leads him to propose a Benes Decree-type measure against Muslims.

As for #1, we are not now in a hot war with Islam, nor are we in the smoking aftermath of a hot war with Islam -- let alone anything remotely comparable to that globe-bogglingly and stupendously colossal hot war that moved people to accept a Benes Decree originally. If Western governments and their parallel institutions got their shit together, we could handle the threats that emanate from Islam, since it is obvious that Islam is not a monolith bent on world conquest (if it were, we would already have seen hundreds of millions -- not just teens & twenties here and there -- of Muslims storming Western and non-Western capitals and mass-murdering hundreds of thousands of Infidels over this cartoon "insult" (and over the Iraq War, and over the urination on the Koran, etc. etc. etc. etc.).

DR Peppoer from above:we could handle the threats that emanate from Islam, since it is obvious that Islam is not a monolith bent on world conquest (if it were, we would already have seen hundreds of millions -- not just teens & twenties here and there -- of Muslims storming Western and non-Western capitals and mass-murdering hundreds of thousands of Infidels over this cartoon "insult" (and over the Iraq War, and over the urination on the Koran, etc. etc. etc. etc.).

Naseem from above: Once UK is done, you’ll see bus loads, train loads and truck loads of these same people go to Europe….city by city…town by town paralysing the capitals…the train stations….peppered with the odd bomb or two to keep the infidels at bay.

No matter who is right, I think we need some of that spray I posted about above...

DR Pepper...I forgot to mention Mahdi. He is supposed to appear and lead the vast Islamic army to world victory for Allah. He will wipe out 'injustice' as muslims see it. The beasty boy from Iran believes in this , and so do the rest of them, except maybe Sunni's , but they can be convinced. If that plan is not representative of a monolith bent on world domination, I'm not sure what is. I dont believe in any supernatural Mahdi, but I think someone will be appointed to the post.

I wonder if that spray can be put in a small spray can for individual use. Could be a hot seller on E-Bay...Just think how much fun you could have with that around the office, or Mosque...

So the non-muslims have been given notice of a future march. Are the non-muslims planning a counter protest.... with your own peaceful messages? If not.........WHY NOT?

When RADICAL ILLEGAL MEXICANS protest in America.....we try to have a peaceful counter protest. That way if the LIBERAL MEDIA wants to be fair......they will have access to both sides of the protests to write or talk about in their news media outlets.

I think until RADICAL GROUPS see counter protests in the streets...they get empowered by their boldness and the weakness of their enemies or target groups.

Perhaps some brave brits.. will dress in 11th century crusader armor, or wear a pig suit, or give free ham snacks to the onlookers.

Let the peaceful faith see how many blocks it can march before exploding.

"And as for moderate muslims...they will remain a small minority. They cannot overcome the suicidal commitment to a dominant Islamic world..." post by Naseem.

Another poster once commented that he thought that perhaps Naseem was really more than one person. Different people must log in under the same name, the posts can be so different. She can go from being teasingly triumphalist (1.2 billion and rising) to amazingly insightful, such as the above post.

I just heard on the radio this morning (haven't heard it anywhere else) that a massive bomb was set off on a Shia gathering in northwest Pak. Could this have affected some sentiments?

If it was in Lahore it could. If the Shi'a are "Rafidite dogs" to many Sunnis in Pakistan, what do you think the Ahmadiyya Muslims are?

"leads him to propose a Benes Decree-type measure against Muslims..."
-- from a posting above

I did not propose a copy-cat version of the Benes Decree(s). I presented evidence that many Arab countries, for reasons that are sometimes flimsy, did not hesitate overnight to move outside their countries people who shared the same basic assumptions (and were not raised up to hate them), because of a purporsted security threat.

I presented the Benes Decrees to show that a tolerant and liberal government believed it had sufficient reason to be alarmed about the threat posed by people who, though their ancestors had lived in the area for hundreds of years, had retained their identification with, and loyalty to, the German state, the idea of Deutschtum, and before and during the war had shown loyalty to the German side, not to the Czechs.

Demonstrating that certain things have been done by reasonable people behaving with reasonable prudence, is not the same thing as "endorsing" it. It does mean that one ought to keep levels of perceived threat in mind, of ways that others have used in dealing with such a threat, and what posterity has thoughht of such measures.

There is a difference in pointing out historical examples, and discussing them, and suggesting that these are the ones that should be taken.

I did the first. I did not do the second.

If anyone objects to the demo they can expect a response like this from the Londonistan's Police
http://www.zippyvideos.com/4829773093644486/dhimmicop2/
http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f39/turnipcheese/LIBERALBAN.jpg

As promised earlier in the thread. More from the Barnabas Fund.

* * * *

UNITED KINGDOM

09 February 2006

LETTER WRITING CAMPAIGN IN RESPONSE TO BRITISH MUSLIMS CALL FOR LAWS TO PROTECT MUHAMMAD

Three hundred Islamic religious scholars in the UK are calling for changes in the law to stop publication of any images of Muhammad the prophet of Islam. The Muslim Action Committee want amendments to the Race Relations Act to give Muslims the same protection as Sikhs and Jews. They also want the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) to tighten their self-regulatory code of practice to prevent the publication of pictures of Muhammad.

Two more rallies have been planned in response to the Danish cartoons to take place on 11th February and 18th February next. Some 20,000 to 50,000 people are expected to attend the rally on 18th February.

Barnabas Fund is asking concerned Britons to write to their MP and/or the Press Complaints Commission to urge them to preserve our hard won freedoms of speech and expression.

WRITING TO YOUR MP ABOUT THE PROPOSED CHANGES TO THE RACE RELATIONS ACT

. If you do not know who your MP is or which constituency you live in you can find out by going to http://www.locata.co.uk/commons/
. Please send letters to the MP at:
House of Commons
Westminster
London, SW1A 0AA

. Be polite, brief and clear.
. Urge your MP to stand firm and not succumb to any pressure to change the law.
. Use as many of the points set out below as you wish. It is more effective if you can use your own words rather than reproduce what we have written.
. Ask your MP to bring your concerns before the appropriate department and to reply to you telling you what he or she has done. Please let us know their response.
. The Muslim Action Committee has not specified how it wants the Race Relations Act to be changed but has indicated that its aim is at the very least to protect Muhammad. The suggested points below are made on this basis.

Letters are much more effective than email. However, if you wish to contact your MP by email you can find out the address via
http://www.parliament.uk/directories/hciolists/alms.cfm

WHAT DO I SAY?

. Make it clear that you are very concerned that the Government will be pressurised by the Muslim Action Committee and other Muslim organisations into reopening the debate on freedom of speech and changing the law again.
. Say that the Racial and Religious Bill (passed on 31st January) strikes a right balance between maintaining freedom of speech and protecting individuals. You can make the point that the Bill was debated at length and all views were taken into account.
. Say that there should not be different rules for Muslims. All faiths should be treated equally.
. Make the point that if Muhammad's image is protected by amending the Race Relations Act it could lead to the suppression of any form of criticism of Muhammad and Islam with the imposition of legal penalties in the event of a breach. This could have severe repercussions for scholarly debate, preaching Christianity and other non-Muslim faiths and making known the needs of persecuted Christians.
. The Race Relations Act has nothing to do with religion. It protects Sikhs and Jews (and other people) against discrimination on the basis of their race. It does not prevent theological criticism of Sikhism and Judaism. It has nothing to do with religious protection of faiths from caricature. Therefore it is inappropriate to try to use this law for protecting Muhammad from insult.
. Because the Press Complaints Commission takes account of parliamentary comment, you may wish to raise some of the points below with your MP.

WRITING TO THE PRESS COMPLAINTS COMMISSION (PCC) TO ASK THEM NOT TO AMEND THEIR CODE OF PRACTICE

. Please send letters to the Press Complaints Commission at:
1 Salisbury Square
London, EC4Y 8JB

. Be polite, brief and clear.
. Use as many of the points set out below as you wish. It is more effective if you can use your own words rather than reproduce what we have written.
. By way of information, the aim of the Code is to protect the rights of individuals and the right of the press to know. It is self-regulatory and performs two functions. In the PCC's own words it"gives the industry a firm set of principles to guide it; and it gives the Commission a clear and consistent framework within which it can address complaints from members of the public".

Again, whilst letters are much better than email, the PCC's email address
is complaints@pcc.org.uk

WHAT DO I SAY?

. Say that the Code of Practice already includes guidelines relating to religious discrimination whereby the press "must avoid prejudicial or pejorative reference" to an individual's religion.
. Urge the PCC not to change its self-regulatory Code of Practice in order to protect Muhammad; say that Muslims should not be treated differently from those of other faiths.
. Say that the PCC makes it clear on its website that it does not want to act as a censor. On that basis the Code of Practice should not be tightened up as to do so would create self-censorship and favour one religious community over the rest.
. Say that the Code of Practice as it stands provides a successful self-regulatory system.

IF YOU HAVE TIME.

If you have time please also write to any contact you may have in any political party, the Press or anywhere else you think would have influence and urge them also to put pressure on the Government not to back down.
Please see above for examples of what should be said

"100,000 Muslims to vent anger in London at cartoon protest"

..I just hope nobody leaves any luggage lying about causing Haj style stampedes..with all the concomitant tramplings..