Welcome to a long hot summer. The English and Welsh Defence Leagues alongside Casuals United are recruiting football supporters to join their street demos against “Islamic extremism”. As is the way of the world nowadays, they don’t claim to be racist, but they are having trouble recruiting Muslims and other efniks to their version of Englishness or whatever. Two of their previous demos in Luton and Birmingham have degenrated into chants of “Muslims out” and random attacks on “coloured” members of the public.
This lot are playing on the wafer-thin line that there is no Islamophobia between anti-Islamism and colour racism — but it keeps breaking down of course, much to the embarassment and consternation of those drawing room and blogosphere types who’ve lived off the distinction for years now.
[Trevor] Kelway [spokesperson for Casuals United] denied the league was racist. “We would march alongside Muslims and Jews who are against militant Islam,” he said. “There were none on Saturday and an all-white group doesn’t look good. But they can join the EDL as long as they accept an English way of life. It is the people who threaten with bombs and violence and threaten and bomb our troops – they don’t belong here.”Kelway said he had recently taken over as spokesman because the previous mouthpiece for the organisation was “Islamophobic”.
A spokesman for the anti-fascist organisation Searchlight said: “There are a number of fascist elements that have attached themselves to EDL and Casuals United, but these groups are not extreme rightwing organisations.”
Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP, has said the events in Birmingham were “nothing to do with us”. The clashes had reminded him “very much of the position just before the £20m riots in Bradford” in 2001 when whites and Asians fought over two nights. He accused the left and the UAF of trying to turn young Muslims “into stormtroopers for their leftist revolution”.
(Source: Guardian)
