British Muslims Welcome Arrest of Extremist BNP Leader

Hoping that the arrest of Nick Griffin will lead eventually to a ban on the BNP altogether, British Muslims hoped that police would indict the anti-minorities politician on his blatant slurs against Islam, Reuters news agency reported.

“The BNP has been trying to develop a more polished image and a more sophisticated discourse but the BBC documentary showed that behind that facade, the ugly reality is still the same,” Spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) Inayat Bunglawala told Reuters.

Griffin, 45, was detained and then released on bail on Tuesday, December 14, by West Yorkshire Police on hatred incitement charges as part of an investigation into the BBC documentary Secret Agent, which was broadcast in July.

The program included footage of Griffin giving a speech in the northern town of Keighley in which he described Islam as “wicked, vicious faith has expanded through a handful of cranky lunatics about 1,300 years ago until it’s now sweeping country after country.”

The same documentary, watched by some four million viewers, shows another BNP member expressing a wish to blow up mosques with a rocket launcher and machine-gun worshippers with “about a million bullets.”

It drew ire and strong condemnation from political parties and the Muslim community leaders.

Earlier in the month, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said that Islam’s tenets were “frequently distorted and taken out of context,” which helped make up the term “Islamophobia.”