Islamophobia...

Over the past month we have seen all of the country's leading political parties display their plea for the public's vote in the European elections due to take place on the 22nd. This has led to fairly 'interesting' representations coming out that not only are derogatory to Muslims but to anyone who is not a British worker. Not only was there the UKIP campaign urging us to 'TAKE BACK CONTROL OF OUR COUNTRY' but there was the BNP's hideous display of 'patriotism' in their banned T.V advert:


which at best was laughable. The video talks of "All the spongers of the Earth" coming and selling the Big Issue by day and murdering people at night whilst also having time to drive around molesting children in gangs etc. Of course, as if always the way, these "spongers" were all portrayed as Muslims.

Front page of The Sun on 7/5/14

Around a week and a half later 'The Sun' released a headline about Pizza Express using Halal meat in their pizzas although the chain had been using it for a number of years and wasn't a secret. This was a follow up to the outrage caused by Subway's announcement to introduce Halal meat to some of their restaurants in which thousands upon thousands of "Christian believing" Brits decided to take to Twitter in anger.

Do not use the phrase 'religious friendly foods' in association with halal. About as friendly as Ebola. https://t.co/FfyLyXNkta
— Katie Hopkins (@KTHopkins) May 7, 2014  

(Notice how in this tweet she capitalises 'Ebola' but not 'halal'.) 

This was also accompanied by the kidnapping of over 300 Nigerian school girls by the Islamist group Boko Haram (which funnily enough isn't on the BBC's front page of their website today) where again thousands have started the online plea to "#BRINGBACKOURGIRLS".

So for the past few weeks, Islam has been at the front of everyone's mind in some way or another - at least a lot more than it has been in recent years. Whether we are outraged or petrified, or both we cannot stop thinking about the 'Islamification' of our country.

Before we go onto full blown hatred, let us remember that also in the news this week was the story of an MoD investigation into 'trophy photographs' taken of a British soldier in 2012 crouching down over a dead Taliban fighter with his thumb up at Camp Bastion. And let us not forget, put in the words of Russell Brand, "... Michelle Obama posed with a 'free our girls' hashtag thing, someone pointed out that many more girls from neighbouring nations are being killed by drone-strikes authorised by Barack Obama.".

A question I ask myself whenever topics like this come up in the news is 'Are we any better?'. How is a photo over a dead Taliban fighter justified or morally correct? Treating the death of someone as a game, it almost mimics the attitudes expressed in video games such as Battlefield or Call of Duty. Why have these men that took those photos been able to get away with it for two years yet Lee Rigby's killers were captured within hours? In this country we are so quick to point the blame at other nations and accuse them of terrorising us when we have been terrorising them over resources for 20 years now. Where they may kill many innocent people, we do the same and we constantly attack these groups threatening them more and more and so get a bigger retaliation.

The situation reminds me of an anthem at my favourite football team Celtic FC, which was set up by Catholics and so as a team, being of Catholic and Irish decent we have a huge link with what happened in Ireland. The song is called 'The Ballad of John McDonnell' and there lyrics read:

"And you dare to call me a terrorist

Whilst you look your gun

When think of all the deeds that you have done-

You have plundered many nations

Divided many lands

You have terrorised their people

You ruled with an iron hand

And you brought this reign of terror to our land"

I believe the lyrics are intended to be addressed to the English but don't hold me on it. But still the sentiment is the same, we seem to subconsciously attack other nations and beliefs. 

We tell ourselves that we are protecting our Christian morals but are we. Take the Halal meat "scandal", we say that the problem is that Halal isn't humane and goes against Christianity yet the majority of the Christian population don't go to church and more and more people are become Atheist. Also, as Christians, we have no problem eating a battery farmed chicken for our Sunday roast and who says that cutting an animal's throat is cruel, 50 years ago that was the norm, why is it suddenly an outrage now? I have no difficulty believing that these people are not horrified for their religious beliefs, they are horrified because they are Islamophobic and far too sentimental about British culture. 

We live in a society where "Arabs" are portrayed as the ultimate villain and we lap it up. In films, T.V shows, in the controlled media. Recently, I watched a documentary in my Media class called "Reel Bad Arabs" which covered this topic very well. It was based on the book by Jack Shaheen. 

People seem to be unaware that the majority of Muslims who migrate here just want to have a life in another country like the "British" do if they want to move to Spain. And yes, of course terrorism is an awful thing and it kills many innocent people and terrorists should be punished but is fighting terrorism with equal amounts of prejudice and hatred really how we should solve this?

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Feel free to comment, I am always open to feedback!

Here is the whole episode of Russell Brand's 'Trews' series on YouTube where I got his quote from:

(17/05/14) Here is a little update on the Halal situation.