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Hate Parade
Plenty of soul-searching but very little action has followed the protest in London by several hundred Muslims, many of whom were carrying placards and banners glorifying terror attacks.
Among the protestors was one man dressed as a suicide bomber, while another carried placards calling the 7 July murderers "the Fantastic Four'. Others praised the 9/11 massacres, warning Europeans of future attacks.
One woman carried a poster (above) that managed to simultaneously deny the Holocaust and threaten Europeans with another. Another carried a baby who wore a "I Heart Al-Qaeda" headband (who makes these things? Who sells them?)
And what of the families of those Britons murdered in the Islamist terror attacks in July? How must they feel, to see maniacs celebrate these mass murders in the very streets where they took place?
Much of the outcry involved the police's decision not to arrest those marchers carrying signs which were clearly incitement to violence. The police did, reportedly, caution several passers-by who complained about the hate march. Indeed, the police arrested two men on Friday - both of whom were counter-protesting by handing out leaflets.
Some reports suggest that the men - neither of whom is British - were carrying illustrations of Mohammed. If this is the case, then yes, they needed locked up both for their own safety (the idiots) and because they risked inflaming an already dangerous situation.
For their part, the march organisers saw nothing wrong with the banners - and claim that "senoir officers" felt the same way.
Anjem Choudary - one of the organisers - told the Times that the banners had been inspected by the same police who accompanied the march. He added that no-one on the protest advocated violence, in which case his understanding of what does and doesn't advocate violence is Jesuitical in its complexity.
Why didn't the police respond to the clearer threat? Police sources said that they didn't want a street battle on their hands, arguing that the protestors would have liked nothing better than scenes of violence outside the embassy.
This demonstrates the protestors were in possession of a sophisticated understanding of the media - the march was not the work of spontaneous thugs, but was organised by jihadis who calculated that scenes of British cops beating Muslim protestors would be broadcast globally by sympathetic media.
There's even been a sensible leader in The Guardian. Entitled "Threats that must be countered", the leader argues that while home secretary Jack Straw's shoulder-shrugging pragmatic response to the protests were all very well - not least because Labour ministers want to cling on to the Muslim vote - "Serious things happened in our midst on Friday - and even more serious things are happening to Danes around the world."
"Ministers do nobody any favours by appearing to imply that the best thing is just to muddle through," the newspaper argues,"these threats are real, present and serious, and if ministers put their heads in the sand they will lose the argument."
It praises Conservative Party front benchers who called for criminal charges to be brought against the marchers, echoing David Davis' call to deport those who are eligible for deportation.
"So far the police appear to have held off taking stronger action against the fanatics because of the fear, which may have been well-judged, that it would make an already ugly situation even worse. But no society can allow the threats that were made on Friday's march to pass without further action. Those who threatened to kill should answer for their threats. They should be arrested, cautioned and placed under surveillance. If appropriate, the authorities must not be afraid of bringing charges."
"...public order and confidence require stronger recognition that limits of acceptable protest and public discourse have been crossed. White racists are rightly arrested and charged for their hate campaigns. Muslim fanatics have to face similar severity for their no less repulsive actions.
"Ours is a tolerant way of life; we must be robust in defending it against its enemies."
The Guardian also praises "moderate Muslim leaders" who condemned the protestors, adding that "much more" moderation from the same would be welcome.
In its leader, the Telegraph highlights the far more innocuous protests that have led to the arrests of others. Pensioners and anti-war protestors have had their collars felt for far less than calls to behead Europeans:
"We live in a country where you can be arrested for reciting the names of dead soldiers at the Cenotaph, heckling at a Labour Party conference or making slighting remarks about Osama bin Laden. We live in a country where a pensioner can be charged with "racially aggravated criminal damage" for scrawling "free speech for England" on a condemned wall," the newspaper argues.
"When these Islamist protesters dress up as suicide bombers and revel in the "magnificent" attacks of 9/11, they are not engaging in a harmless daydream: they are encouraging murder," it adds. The newspaper draws links between the protestors contempt and the police establishment's unwillingness to react, arguing that British "self-loathing" turns some Muslims against their country. This hand-wringing mentality was further illustrated yesterday, it says, by Jack Straw and former top cop Lord Stevens, who seemed to be more upset by the cartoons in Jyllands-Posten than by "the fact that a tiny minority in this country seems bent on the murder of the rest of us."
The time for hand-wringing is over. The government and police have had a weekend to consider how best to respond to Friday's fanaticism. We're waiting for an answer.
