Extremism as ITVs programme showed last week is not exclusive to the Islamic faith. The instant connection which is made by most would only link it to the religion of submission, however as the Exposed programme showed it is evident but less fashionable to report and bring to book on other ideologies.What the programme showed was the inconsistencies in dealing with these notions in the aftermath of the programme ‘Charities Behaving Badly’. Mark Austin the presenter only caught up with Imran Ibn Mansur more commonly known as Dawah Man on YouTube to explain what they deemed were opines that were anti-semitic.
Dawah Man defended his stance saying to say ‘Zionist’ is not anti Semitic as it refers to a ideology and not a religion and he had not committed or incited any hate crime. They might be views that people might not agree with or find distasteful but illegal they are not.
However on the other scale the Steadfast Trust and the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh UK (HSS) who held views which were equally if not more virulent than Dawah Man or the members of the Global Aid Trust ( the Islamic charity investigated), Mark Austin didn’t personally go out and find in particular the teacher and interrogate him on why he held those inferences in person and why he felt it was necessary to champion them when his organisation allegedly stands against them by the nature of statements given by them in response.
The HSS clearly advocated supremacist dirge allied to Hitlers Youth and these exchanges supporting this were clearly shown on film ‘To destroy the Hindu history is the secret conspiracy of the Christians.’ and if Muslims posed the biggest problem in the UK today the teacher replied ‘Yes. For everybody, for everybody.’
So clearly a disposition that clearly has no inclination to show liberalism or the coexistence of other religions. The teacher went further on to add “See if it comes to Islam they are the World’s worst religion and they don’t have common sense to find out what is humanity and all that.” If this was said by someone of the Muslim doctrine they would be handcuffed and be up before the beak the very next day.
Despite this and many other anti Islamic tendencies clearly shown the HSS said ‘The depiction of us as anti any other religion is wrong and counterproductive to the positive work HSS has done in building interfaith relations.’
What interfaith relations can be built when you hold every other faith with disdain and a total lack of respect is a anathema to me.
The pernicious aspect of particularly the HSS, is its adherents are predominantly impressionable adolescents and therefore like the young Jihadis we keep hearing about being brainwashed surely this is the same but just in a different dogma.
The Steadfast Trust which is a charity ‘which undertakes work specifically for the English community’ by its very nature has attracted a particular type of ‘English’. Those allied to the Far Right brand of politics. Again maybe it just isn’t fashionable but nobody was really collared and brought to book for giving Nazi salutes, chanting ‘white power’ and ‘victory to the Aryan race’, using references to Hitler, not only that wanting to ‘burn mosques down’ and finding it perfectly acceptable to constantly utter the ‘n word’ with regards to a couple with a mixed race child. No effort was made to track these people down.
However in commending the Charities Commission its’ charity status had now been revoked as they felt ‘In this case it was not clear that the Trust’s beneficiaries, described as ‘members of the Anglo-Saxon community living in England’, could be identified or are a sufficient section of the public, as required in charity law’. Subsequently one of the members shown to have extreme views has been suspended.
We know these beliefs are held by a certain section of every community what needs to happen is the same level of vilification, admonishment and exposure. Everybody has to be similarly outraged. The force of the law has to be equal in its punishment of those holding these sentiments regardless of where they are coming from be it from a Hindu, Christian, Jewish or Muslim standpoint.
Extremism should not be tolerated from anywhere and should not be ring-fenced to one particular group, it is prevalent in all.