More Anti-Muslim views from UKIP candidates

The Daily Mail, The Times, The Guardian, The Independent and local papers, The Argus and Hampstead and Highgate Express, provide further coverage of UKIP candidates’ anti-Muslim taunts on social media sites.

Hours after Mo Farah became a double Olympic champion at the 2012 London Games, UKIP candidate for Walsall, David Wycherley, posted a comment Facebook saying ““can somebody explain please….Mo Farah, an African from Somalia, who trains in America, has won a gold medal for Great Britain !”

Mo Farah, who grew up in Hounslow, London, won two gold medals at the 2012 Olympics and was later awarded a CBE by The Queen for services to athletics.

The Daily Mail and The Times also reveal that UKIP’s candidate for the Royston South Ward in Oldham, Jackie Garnett, suggested on Facebook that the UK should “ban Islam and knock down all the mosques’.

Also reported is Camden UKIP chairman, Magnus Nielsen’s attempts to defend his comments that “70% of mosques in the UK have been taken over by Wahabbi fundamentalists. Islam is organised crime under religious camouflage. Any Muslim who is not involved in organised crime is not a ‘true believer’, practising Islam as Muhammad commanded”. Nielsen told the Hampstead & Highgate Express:

“I don’t regret anything I’ve said. Whatever I said, I say having taken proper study of the circumstance and everything I said can be backed up by quotations from the Quran.

“Islam is created by a man called Muhammad who was a gang leader of criminals and he justified his behaviour by saying he was instructed by god to behave that way.

“He was able to inspire followers to commit criminal acts using the justification of religion.”

“It is a hot topic. We’ve just had Muslim infiltration in Birmingham schools, we have Muslim rape gangs in the north of the country and we have Muslim patrols in Tower Hamlets.”

Such derogatory comments don’t stop there. Another UKIP candidate for the local elections in the Hastings Borough Council, Kevin O’Doherty, posted “There is no such thing as a benign Muslim, only the latent adherent of Koranic dogma,” on Facebook.

According to the Argus, O’Doherty not only agreed with fellow UKIP candidate William Henwood’s comments on Lenny Henry, but also appeared to support UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom’s “bongo bongo land” comment in August 2013.

In response to racist posts posted by Henwood and the revelation of two party members’ links to the British National Party and the English Defence League, a UKIP party spokesman insisted “UKIP is a non-racist, non-sectarian party and we are determined to uphold those values.

“Part of that process is maintaining vigilance against the possibility of infiltration either on an organised or individual basis by those who do not subscribe to our values.”

In a more defeated tone, Farage who had previously claimed to have introduced stricter vetting procedures, apologises on a video posted by the Daily Mail for the racist comments posted on Twitter by Andre Lampitt. His remarks included a disturbing post describing Islam as ‘an evil organisation respecting a prophet who was a pedo’.

Despite having suspended two party members for links to far right organisations based on UKIP’s policy to bar individuals with far right backgrounds, Farage concedes “something has gone wrong inside UKIP, something has gone wrong with the procedures. This guy should not have got through… I’m holding my hands up. This is UKIP’s fault.”

Such admissions do not dispel the fear that UKIP is attracting unsavoury characters with deeply offensive views. There is possibly a case for the Crown Prosecution Service to investigate incitement to religious hatred, pathetic as the law is on the issue. UKIPs high polling rate in the weeks before the European elections is a desperate cause for concern for anyone alarmed at the respectability the party is giving to closet racists and Islamophobes.