England: an Anatomy of the Counterjihad and Lessons from France

To date the activity of the anti-Islamisation and counterjihad movement in England has concentrated on marches, static demonstrations and public speeches. In terms of electoral politics, those wishing to vote against Islamisation have been limited for choice, for Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens are all keen advocates of Islamisation. If you happen to live in Scotland or Wales, the Scottish National Party (SNP) and Plaid Cymru are both fully paid-up supporters of Islamisation.

The party with the most robust attitude towards tackling Islamisation is the British National Party (BNP). Next comes the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), as Lord Pearson is certainly aware that Islamisation is a problem that needs to be tackled, but the snag is that last autumn he offered to dissolve his party if Cameron would agree to hold a referendum on EU membership. Given that Cameron and the majority of the parliamentary Conservative party advocate Islamisation and support Unite Against Fascism (UAF), I therefore think that whatever Pearson’s personal beliefs UKIP are an unreliable proposition. That’s not to say that the BNP doesn’t have problems, what with seemingly interminable infighting and an unwillingness to adopt the measures that I have previously outlined as necessary for its survival and emergence as a credible moderate nationalist party. It’s a sad state of affairs, but the BNP needs to reform itself otherwise it is heading nowhere other than the penumbra of British politics where it will continue to attract the bilious outpourings of the occasional NUJ hack but little else.

We need to act quickly to stem and then seek to reverse the process of Islamisation. Underpinning its rapid advance are four primary factors: a Muslim demographic explosion predicated upon high differential birth-rates and mass immigration; a lack of awareness amongst influential sections of our indigenous population as to the true nature of Islam (i.e. the misplaced belief that it is just a religion like any other); a pro-Islam political establishment and official media broadcaster (the BBC) which share an ideological commitment to multiculturalism and a practical desire to pander to target voters and audiences in the hunt for votes in marginal seats or market share, and finally, a legislative framework that protects and privileges Islam as well as Muslim immigrants (legal or otherwise).

What can we practically do? The first step, which both you the reader (unless you happen to be a Muslim or someone with pro-Muslim sympathies) and I the writer have undertaken is to acquaint ourselves with the reality of our ideological enemy and how it operates. Awaken friends, family and the general public (if you happen to blog) to the reality of Islam, but be careful not to become a monomaniacal bore on this subject lest you run the risk of turning people off. Drip feed information over a protracted period so that you manage to effect a gradual alteration in people’s consciousness and attitudes. Ensure that you challenge your interlocutor’s use of vocabulary whenever they use the following terms routinely employed in an attempt to stigmatise us: “Islamophobia” (and all the variations thereof); “racist”; “far-right”; “fascist”; “extremist”. Get them to define what they mean when they use these words and deconstruct their definitions, showing up the logical absurdities of the manner in which they have been applied to the critics of Islam. Then point out that these very terms “extremist”, “far-right” and “reactionary” apply to Islam and not to those who oppose it. Unless they’re a member of the Socialist Workers' Party or some kindred leftist sect, the scales ought to fall from their eyes.

So much for what can be done on the personal level, but what can be done beyond this? People have come to the counterjihad movement from a variety of ideological perspectives which have manifested themselves in a number of different organisations and campaigns. Putting aside the party political opposition to Islamisation found in the BNP and UKIP, we have the following main movements and campaigns in England: the English Defence League (EDL); One Law for All (OLFA) and Stop the Islamisation of Europe (SIOE). Each of these attracts a different type of membership and support, although these do to a certain extent overlap and possess complementary agendas. In terms of broad ideological orientation we can characterise these groups as follows: EDL – English nationalist; OLFA – traditional universalist progressive left/Marxist-Leninist; SIOE – Classical Liberal/Libertarian/Western Culturalist.

The EDL’s base of support is drawn predominantly from the English working class who have been increasingly politically marginalised in recent decades. Understandably, it draws upon the one spontaneous popular manifestation of working-class culture that has not been taken over and controlled by the middle classes: football hooligan firms. The EDL has undoubtedly been successful in mobilising large numbers of supporters in acts of popular protest up and down the country, whereas its sister organisations the Welsh Defence League (WDL) and Scottish Defence League (SDL) have exerted less appeal in their spheres of operation. This is due to the fact that it is England that has experienced the brunt of Islamisation, whereas Wales and Scotland have to date largely escaped its impact. The focus of the EDL is very much upon dealing with Islamisation in England, and thus forms the core of its popular moderate nationalist stance. However, it expresses solidarity with the counterjihad movement in other countries and with Israel.

OLFA is co-ordinated by Maryam Namazie, an Iranian émigré and Spokesperson for the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain as well as a Central Committee member of the Worker Communist Party of Iran (WCPI). It draws together a disparate range of organisations and individuals, receiving support from the National Secular Society, British Humanist Association, women’s rights and gay activists. Notable figures who have supported OLFA rallies include the philosopher AC Grayling and the human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell. Its focus has been narrowly channelled at opposing the introduction of sharia into the UK, as well as opposition to sharia in other states, particularly Iran owing to the significant presence of WCPI members within the organisation. It lacks the mass presence and support of the EDL, but is seen by the media as the (barely) acceptable face of the anti-Islamisation movement (although the media do not use this term). It is internationalist and cosmopolitan in orientation and predominantly middle class.

Lastly but not least we have SIOE, which grew out of the furore surrounding the publication of the Mohammed cartoons by Jyllands-Posten in the autumn of 2005 and the attempts by Muslims across the globe to get them banned. SIOE was thus founded by those seeking to uphold the most precious values of Western civilisation: freedom of speech and freedom of expression. SIOE recognises that Islam is completely incompatible with these values and is thus implacably opposed to our way of life and must be removed from our societies. In this respect, SIOE is the most ideologically purist of the strands of counterjihad present in the UK today. Its stance can be characterised as robustly civic nationalist and culturist in the countries within which it has a presence, but it also recognises the essential need of moderate nationalists in different states to work together to oppose Islamisation.

SIOE may be comprised of a comparatively small number of intellectual activists, but its clout and international networks that reach beyond Europe help to shape and define the direction of the counterjihad movement. Unlike OLFA, SIOE is willing to team up with the EDL where their agendas are complementary. European parties to which it possesses close ideological affinities are the PVV, Vlaams Belang and the Sweden Democrats. In the UK there could be said to be some ties to the English Democrats and UKIP. SIOE like the EDL is a proscribed organisation for BNP members. The SIOE’s main presence is in cyberspace through its network of counterjihad bloggers.

As you can see, the counterjihad movement in England and the UK more widely is fragmented but growing. It has displayed a diverse range of tactics including marches, rallies, speeches, petitioning, blogging and international conferences. However, the EDL, OLFA and SIOE have all been meeting increasingly vociferous and violent opposition from Islamists and their leftist confederates in UAF and the SWP. Although the existence of the EDL is now quite widely known of amongst the general public, the NUJ have deployed their arsenal of pejorative terms in order to try and place it beyond the pale of respectability. OLFA has attained a certain profile with a particular type of Radio 4 listener, but SIOE remains practically invisible for most of the public and misunderstood and deliberately misreported by the mass media.

So, returning to the question of what more can be done to counter Islamisation, I would like to draw your attention to some imaginative initiatives in France. Most recently we had the apero geant pork sausage and wine party/protest in Paris organised by Sylvie François, Bloc Identitaire, Riposte Laique and a coalition of assorted political groups and bloggers. Although the prefecture banned the protest from taking place in the Goutte d’Or as originally intended, over 1,000 people turned up for a good-natured protest in central Paris. This demonstrated the power of social networking, in this instance using Facebook, to arrange a novel mode of protest that captured the popular imagination and drew the French public’s attention to the fact that certain areas of Paris are now de facto and de jure no-go zones for non-Muslims.

Here in England we have witnessed an increasing number of businesses making themselves halal-compliant by phasing out pork products and introducing items produced using cruel halal slaughter techniques. This has led to calls for boycotts of KFC, Asda and Tesco amongst others. These have had a limited degree of success, but KFC has at least had to conduct a superficial PR exercise by abandoning its halal-only menu in a small number of its outlets, so it is to a certain extent sensitive to the loss of public reputation and trade that such boycotts can bring about. In France earlier this year, protesters in Lyon organised by Rebeyne! Les Jeunes Identitaires Lyonnais reacted to the introduction of halal-only menus at one of their fast-food outlets – Quick – by turning up en masse at a local branch of Quick wearing pig masks, singing songs and chanting “we are all pork eaters” (it probably loses some resonance in translation!). See what happened in the video below:



Now, I am not suggesting that here in England we should carry out carbon copies of these French examples, but what they illustrate is an imaginative way of promoting the anti-Islamisation message. Given that people with dogs, including the blind, have been told that they cannot get onto buses or into taxis because either the driver or one of the passengers is a Muslim (see this story from the Daily Telegraph) how about organising a protest involving dogs? The British are renowned as a nation of dog lovers, so a mass dogwalk in a park that has been Islamised would be one way of reclaiming our public space in a good-natured fashion. Let guide-dogs lead the way! If we could combine this with an alcoholic tipple and sausages and bacon, so much the better.

We need to continue spreading our message and to gain a momentum that becomes unstoppable. The advocates of Islamisation are already mounting a risible effort to persuade us that Islam is wholesome and benign through the Inspired by Muhammad campaign, and only today the BBC devoted a good proportion of its Sunday morning programme The Big Questions to debating the question “does Islam need better PR?” This is unsurprising given that the BBC’s controller of religious programming is a Muslim, and the programme audience and panel had been selected to reflect a pro-Islam bias. Disgustingly, the New Statesman and Guardian journalist Mehdi Hassan was on hand to proselytise for the Islamic cause (for his dehumanising views on us atheists listen to the clip below).



We must not cease in our unwavering campaign of awareness raising to ensure that the gains that Islam has made within our shores are ultimately uprooted and that the process of Islamisation is thrown into firm reverse. Nothing in history is inevitable. We can be the makers of our own destiny should we choose to fashion a better future. In our societies we can turn Islam into what it should be: a historical footnote.