What If I Don't Want To Pick A Side?

The Muslim Fundies vs English Hoolies conflict continues apace I see, over at Old Holborn we have Anjem Choudary spouting crap again. Choudary has quite a history of talking utter bollocks, and is representative of all that is wrong with the extreme edge of Islam.

This hateful character, and what he stands for, is the type of idiot stopping people seeing the English Defence League for what it is, Leg-Iron seems to think they're an apolitical anti-Islam group. Be nice if that was the whole truth.

The EDL are a group of Casuals. These are not nice fluffy people with the UK's best interests at heart, they're not some kind of miscontrued group defending the British way of life, they're a group of barely reformed football hooligans with a lot of white-power connotations.

We used to have some round here, still have a few dangling around, but they used to hang around the local skinhead pub, a little National Front clique consisting of some very nasty people. They'd on occasion pop round the pub next door, filled with students, and kick off, simply because they were students. Skrewdriver was the music of choice.

There were times they'd start at one end of town, and work their way down, kicking, punching and bottling people they didn't like the look of. They'd arrange meets with other firms, and just lay into each other until the police arrived to separate them. Out and out hooliganism really, born out of rage, frustration, boredom and a desire to belong. I can sympathize with their anger, just not their solution.

We have massive issues with Islam in the UK - not least the powers of this country being utter fucking cowards about tackling its darker nature, not dealing with the creeping influence of extremism, and giving its adherents an easy ride until they have no choice but to take action - but don't look to the EDL for salvation.

So if I'm going to be asked to pick a side, then my answers neither. There are better ways of dealing with the creeping Islamification of the UK than turning to the kind of people who have shamed England in the past. They're not the solution, just another problem.

I think maybe I won't be in Britain much longer, I fear for its direction and the fact we have weak, fearful governments and systems. Muslims see a soft underbelly they can use to change what being British is without bothering to ask the natives, the Little Englanders see any change as something to fear despite the fact we, as a nation, have historically embraced change when it's been better and discarded the crap.

There will be civil war between Muslims and Little Englanders in years to come, and those of us who just want to get with out lives - fuck your religion, and fuck your rose-tinted faux-history - will be ground between those two opposing forces. I reject both sides, I choose freedom.