Tommy Robinson's Rochdale Speech 9 June 2012

The two videos below were shot outside of Rochdale Town Hall yesterday at the EDL demo. In them, Tommy Robinson/Stephen Lennon attacks the failure of the social services and the police in acknowledging and facing up to the problem of Muslim paedophile gangs, differentiating between the rank-and-file police officers, who he thinks do a good job, and their politically correct superiors who have prevented them from effectively protecting young girls from this pattern of abuse not only in Rochdale, but in many other towns and cities across England.

A tweet by a BBC journalist yesterday led to unfounded rumours about Lennon setting fire to a Qur’an. Instead, he initially held it aloft in a plastic bag “because supposedly, I’m not worthy enough to touch it. You can pass 47 of our youth around your community and rape them and abuse them, but I can’t touch this book.” He then proceeded to remove it from the bag and hold it next to a cigarette lighter, stating that children are being brainwashed by schools into believing that Islam is a religion of peace. Given that allegedly only 3% of the population is Muslim, why is it then that are 80% of grooming cases are perpetrated by Muslims? “Why are they so overrepresented when they are raping our youth?” He made reference that another nine men had been arrested in connection with the Rochdale case, but stating “That is the tip of an iceberg.” He stated that 60 girls in Derby and 100 in Blackpool had been victims of such crimes, and that cases had also occurred in Huddersfield, Rotherham. In “[e]very single city that has an Islamic community, they are raping, pimping and abusing our youth.” He then went on to state that “There is a court case next month in Oxford with another seven Muslim men and another 50 of our kids aged 11 to 14.”

Following this enumeration of cases of Muslim paedophile grooming, members of the crowd chanted “burn it”, urging him to set light to the Qur’an. However, he desisted from doing so, citing as the reason his unwillingness to offend decent, peaceful Muslims belonging to sects such as the Sufis and Ahmadiyyahs who wish to coexist with us. An Ahmadiyyah EDL supporter named Abdul was then invited to join him in front of the crowd: “We accept that there are some Muslims who are proud to be British” stated Lennon, who also pointed out that Abdul found verses such as Surah 4 Verse 3 objectionable. Instead of burning the Qur’an, Lennon urged supporters to read it so that they could become acquainted with its negative content, reiterating that you can hate a religion and an ideology, but not a group of people.

One surprise that emerged from the speech (perhaps some readers will already be aware of this) is that Lennon claims to have a Muslim second cousin who was also a victim of multiple rape.

In closing, he drew attention to the fact that Muslim gangs targeted all non-Muslim girls, not just English girls, for such a pattern of abuse has occurred with young Sikhs being targeted. Lastly, he stated that “we have to form a movement in every town and city where we can defend ourselves.”