Happy Eid
The BBC reports that, following last month’s Birmingham riots involving Asian and black youths – sparked by a claim that a 14-year-old black girl had been raped – Pakistani Moslem graves have been desecrated.
Dozens of Muslim grave stones have been smashed and pushed over in a cemetery in Handsworth in Birmingham.
The desecration was discovered on Friday morning by relatives visiting the Muslim part of the cemetery.
Leaflets were also scattered with insults against Muslims, from a group calling themselves Black Nation.
Last month riots involving Asian and black youths took place in nearby Lozells, sparked by a claim that a 14-year-old black girl had been raped.
West Midlands Police are at the scene collecting the leaflets and taking statements from those who found them.
Between 35 and 45 grave stones had been desecrated, it was reported.
It seems someone would like to drive a wedge further between not only Black and Asian Britons, but between different flavours of Islam. In whose interests is it that the minority ethnic communities in the UK be so violently split? I have no evidence at all to back up this hunch, but I would not be at all surprised to learn that this was the work of local neo-nazi agent provocateurs, anxious not to miss any opportunity to foment racial division.
I might be entirely wrong and it may well have been a radical Black Moslem group ( but don’t expect me to apologise for thinking the worst of neonazis) – but any way you look at it, it’s a deliberate provocation in the current climate of deep Islamophobia, when anyone non-white is automatically suspect. It’s a provocation deepened by the fact that many of those visiting the desecrated graves will have also lost family in the recent earthquake.
That local Pakistani leaders are calling for no response is admirable. You only have to look to Paris to see what can happen.
