Terror gives birth to terror -- London aftermath

Here's a California version

A Muslim man has been beaten to death outside a corner shop by a gang of youths who shouted anti-Islamic abuse at him, the Guardian has learned.

Kamal Raza Butt, 48, from Pakistan, was visiting Britain to see friends and family. On Sunday afternoon he went to a shop in Nottingham to buy cigarettes and was first called "Taliban" by the youths and then set upon.

Police authorities want to insist the incident had nothing to do with the London bombing. However Butt is demonstrably dead and no one is likely to believe them. Fear and hatred feed themselves.

More on that theme from Nosemonkey at Europhobia, who reports on the role of the racist and anti-immigrant British National Party in the West Yorkshire area where apparently the London suicide bombers grew up:

Events in distant lands may arouse anger. Religious invective may fuel feelings of self-righteousness. But most terrorists normally have some more personal reasons for their actions. There is usually some rationality behind their irrationality. They can usually, in their perverse way, justify their actions to themselves. It takes more than the promise of a few virgins and eternal life in Heaven to provoke someone to kill themselves and others - if not, everyone would be blowing themselves up all the time.

These terrorists could not have been bred in London. Accusations of our capital, which has shown its multicultural unity better than ever in the last few days, being "Londonistan" are blatantly silly, though have - as always - some truth to them. As the cliche goes, there's no smoke without fire. There ARE a lot of radical Muslims in London. . . .But it is this very tolerance which makes London-born terrorists unlikely. They can give vent to their anger and hatred freely. The very civil liberties which the government is trying to stifle in the name of protecting us - the right to free association and free speech - give an outlet to the rage of a disaffected Muslim youth. . . .

West Yorkshire, on the other hand, has been the site of even more stirring of hatred between communities. Hatred stirred by one of the least British groups in the entire country - the BNP. It was in West Yorkshire that BNP leader Nick Griffin stood for election just two months ago. His high-profile campaign, played just the right side of the race-hate laws, played much on fears of Muslims. . . . It was in the same region that race riots occurred a couple of years ago, something the BNP were keen to capitalise on as an indication of the volatility and danger inherent in Muslim youth, even while knowing that they had done much to fire them up.

If you were a young Muslim, British born, being told by a party that professes to be the party of Britain, of the nation, that you were not and never could be British, how would you feel? Would you feel included in society? Would you feel any love for your fellow countrymen? Would you even consider them your fellow countrymen?

It would take an extended campaign of lies and distortions to convince me that Britain is anything other than Great, even while I can see its flaws. This is precisely what the Muslim population of West Yorkshire have been subjected to by the BNP for the last decade.

I'm certainly unqualified to say whether what NM asserts here is true, but as a veteran of the Prop. 187 attack on immigrant human rights here in California and an observer of anti-immigrant panics in the US, it sure seems likely to me that he is on to something.