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Anorak News | Bakri The Bid

Bakri The Bid

by | 20th, July 2005

‘GIVEN that insurance doesn’t usually cover force majeure, it’s unlikely anyone who bought a ticket to hear Yusuf al-Qaradawi speak in Manchester this August will be able to get their money back.

‘I’ll be Bakri’

As the Express says in its front-page news (“BANNED”), the paper’s “crusade” has deterred the Egyptian-born Muslim cleric from speaking in the UK.

It can be no mere coincidence that just 24 hours after the Express “demanded” that Qaradawi be barred entry to the UK he has decided not to appear.

But the paper could not have done it alone, and appreciates the 95 per cent of its readers who called for Qaradawi to be banned in the paper’s opinion-forming poll.

The reason why most papers only publish the result in percentages is because it would be too embarrassing to admit that only a handful of people actually bothered to phone in. But this is a vital issue – one in which the Express’s crusade has seen off the jihad – and we hear that callers “flooded” the paper’s phone lines.

Buoyed by that success, the paper produces another poll today: “Is Blair doing enough to halt Muslim fanatics?”

Such questions are usually more loaded than a 21-year-old George W Bush at a frat party, but we spot room for some confusion given that Blair is the surname of our beloved leader and of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Ian Blair.

Of course, neither of them is doing enough. So the Sun has pulled on its chain mail and joined the fight. Splashed over its cover page is a picture of the unlovely mad mullah, the “Muslim fanatic” Omar Bakri Mohammed and the cry: “SEND HIM BAK.”

The Sun is angry that the “poisonous cleric” has spouted the opinion that we Britons are all to blame for the terrorist atrocity in London.

But before you hand yourself over to the authorities, take a look at Bakri’s words. “I blame the British government,” says the Syrian-born polemicist, “and I blame the British people.”

Thanks to various human rights acts Bakri is entitled to give full throat to his odious opinions – and thanks to the British system he’s also entitled to £300-a-week income support and to have the rent on his London home subsidised.

The Sun also thinks it’s important for us to know that Bakri’s house is worth £200,000 – although how its price has been affected by the recent bombs perhaps the Mail can work out. He has his council tax paid and drives a Ford Galaxy on which he pays no insurance, gets free specs and NHS prescriptions.

Quite right that Tory MP Julian Brazier tells the Mail (“CLERIC: BOMBS ARE OUR FAULT!”): “He’s abused our hospitality in the most outrageous fashion. He should be put on a plane.”

Clearly, Bakri is a malevolent and contemptible presence, however the big worry is not that he voices his offensive opinions but that anyone listens to such vitriol and pays it any credence. But, sadly, as recent events have shown, some do…’



Posted: 20th, July 2005 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink