Rampant Islam? As opposed to the rampant Christianity prevalent there already of course.

Zealots are acceptable, so long as they are ‘our’ zealots. Not those foreign nutters.

I dunno – I think this is one of those cases that too much analysis leads to paralysis. The letter is such a mish mash of confused intention that any point in there has lost all validity and therefore leaves the reader scratching their head thinking WTF is he on about? The Wooton Basset vigils have been organic, understated, solemn and heartfelt whereas Choudary is on a public wank mission.

If their intention was truly to highlight the disgraceful loss of life of the Iraquis & Afghanis and held in such veneration as death rightly merits, without pomp, without the motive of publicity and with a true and mounful heart then free speech could be justified but this ejeet is pissing on the graves of the innocents for his own ends. It’s similar to the drunk student who wazzed on the cenotaph after a pub crawl – that lad was lucky to stay out of jail.

He’s a vain glorious, stupid, insolent, heretical, opportunistic wazzock.

Of course he is, but the fact is Middle England doesn’t like Islam because the media says it’s strange and alien. Yet we surround ourselves with no less a kind of zealousness than the likes of Choudry do. Look at how often the phrase ‘our boys’ is used. They aren’t ours at all; they are people (often too young) signing up to be the tools of government on the world stage. If they were representative of us they wouldn’t be in Afghanistan or Iraq at all. Yet anytime there is criticism the jingoistic nonsense comes in full force accopmpanied by the latest parade through Wootton Bassett.

@martin – a thought not widely expressed in public but you’re quite right. I feel apologetic in stating the obvious but I get a bit irritated with the term ‘hero’ – does dying make one a hero? Don’t think so really. I’m not disputing that there is heroism but by simply treading on an IED doesn’t exactly give one courage. These wars are disgusting and I guess the MSM are tautologically unable to state the bleeding obvious as they cater for the masses – these chaps aren’t Tommy Atkins – they signed up, they’re volunteers.

It is interesting to raise the story about the kid who peed on the cenotaph. So many media nodes were tapped by that one picture which, had it not been taken, no one would have been any the wiser. Given the current media driven climate he was lucky to stay out of jail, but prison is the absolute last place to put someone for doing something harmless and stupid, especially as a student. Given him a mop and a bucket and forget about it.

Chowdry is playing the media at their own game. I have no idea whether this march will go forward or even if it’s intended to. But as ever he’s done his job and people have Fallen hook line and sinker. Better to just ignore him. But then, at the same time, we don’t honour the fallen unless they are ‘our’ fallen. There are no parades to honour the civilian casualties for instance.

Surely Yemen’s a hoax?

The whole issue is getting quite twisted.

On one side we have the Sun giving this obnoxious Choudary guy a massive publicity platform– which has surely more resonance than 20,30 or even 100 of his followers demonstrating for a couple of hours somewhere. But to say that the Sun is irresponsible is as obvious as the notion that water is liquid.

On the other side, however, I detect a default tendency to shrug off the views of Choudary & co. as irrelevant, trollish, even amusing. There I don’t agree much.
Once the damage of an article/interview in the Sun is done, we have to condemn in the strongest most unequivocal way, “views” like Choudary’s.

There is one aspect that I find specifically distrubing. Islam4UK repeatedly point at “the thousands of Muslims who have died” as a result of the West.

Yesterday I posted a comment somewhere, pointing at the number of innocent civilians (the totality of which were Muslims) killed by suicide bombers in Pakistan in the name of “Islam”. 1,037 civilians in 2009 – in Pakistan alone.

So the question is: do those lives suddenly lose their value if mangled by a fellow Muslim?