Protesters disrupt Muslim vote card launch
Protesters have disrupted the launch of the Muslim Council of Britain’s strategy for the general election.
Around 15 demonstrators stormed the Regent’s Park Mosque where the council was highlighting ten key questions to be asked of all parliamentary candidates.
The men, believed to be former members of the extreme group Al Muhajiroun, were chanting anti-Western slogans and calling members of the council Kafirs (non believers).
They were eventually removed by security guards.
Inayat Bungwala, a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Great Britain, told politics.co.uk that the rowdy behaviour of the men showed their ethics to be closer to that of “hooligans” than that of Muslims.
He described them as a “cancer within the Muslim community, and a cancer that needs to be excised”.
When order was restored, the council explained that unlike the open letter from prominent Muslim figures published in The Guardian newspaper today, which calls on Muslims to vote Labour, it wants Muslims to make up their own minds.
It has launched a voter card urging Muslim voters to ask questions of candidates, including whether they support the publication of a timetable for the withdrawal of British forces from Iraq.
It also calls upon them to ask about equal protection for Muslims from discrimination, measures to make incitement to religious hatred illegal, and whether candidates oppose measures that comprise the rule of law.
Earlier, Mr Bungwala told BBC Two’s Daily Politics: “What we say is that we list the ten key issues facing British Muslims and we ask Muslims to make up their own minds on May 5. They will not be lectured to by anybody.”
