The nutty Islamist group who planned a march through Wootton Bassett, UK, are to be banned under counterterrorism laws, says the Home Secretary, Alan Johnson.
Islam4UK had planned the protest at the Wiltshire town to honour Muslims killed in the Afghanistan conflict.
The government are said to have already been considering outlawing the group. Islam4UK is also known as al-Muhajiroun.
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I wonder what other secular humanist/ freethinkers make of this ban on Islam4UK?
On the one hand, they are a loathesome bunch with unsavoury connections to convicted terrorists and certainly subscribe to the usual list of primitive Muslim ideas and prejudices.
On the other hand, it's difficult to see why they should be banned, as a group. They cause widespread offence, certainly, including to other Muslims. If they are guilty of violence, or of stirring up hatred against identifiable groups within our society, then fair enough, although individual group members are usually prosecuted in such cases (as with BNP members in the past), rather than the entire group being banned as an organisation.
The occasion of the ban follows their grotesque publicity-seeking plan to parade through the streets of Wootton Bassett, the village where the bodies of heroic British soldiers (of all races and beliefs) return, when they are killed in action in Afghanistan.
Islam4UK claimed it wanted to honour the Muslims killed by our troops, but our troops are PROTECTING and HELPING ordinary Muslims, only setting out to kill the verminous Taliban. Truth be told, it's the Taliban Islam4UK wanted to honour. Note that Islam4UK (or whatever they were called at the time) never organised a "thank you" march for our troops when they were defending Muslims against attacks in Bosnia.
If the criterion for banning organisations is consorting with known terrorists, then why wasn't Ken Livingstone's Socialist Action corpuscule similarly outlawed for its championing of Sinn Fein-IRA? Consistency is all we ask.
I will miss Islam4UK, if only for the reason they were so damned entertaining. Don'tcha just love those comedy beards and ghastly ghoul gowns? No doubt they'll be back soon calling themselves something else like Improvised-Explosive-Devices-R-Us, or Muslim-Menaces-4U, but in the meantime, the Government's decision to ban them just looks like desperate populism to me.
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