Freedom of speech under attack in the UK

On Sunday June 18th 2017 the Quds Committee in the UK organized the annual Al Quds Day. Al Quds Day is an international event to protest the Zionist occupation of Palestine and is held on the last Friday of Ramadan. For years this event has been organized in Britain and every year it attracts the criticism of Zionist forces. This year a particular vicious campaign was waged against the organizing committee by the Zionist Campaign Against Anti-Semitism.

They pressured the mayor of London Sadiq Khan to ban the event. His office bowed to the pressure and supported the call. The Zionists thanked him: “Both the Mayor and the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime have been very helpful in facilitating contact with the right people within the Metropolitan Police Service, and we are grateful to them for their efforts.”

But the London Police stood by the freedom of expression and allowed the event to continue.

Meanwhile Islamophobic pundits created a climate of hate around the event. Majid Nawaaz, the director of the Quilliam Foundation and LBC radio presenter, along with some niche media attacked the organizers, claiming they were terrorist sympathisers, and even focused on the Islamic Human Right Commission (IHRC), a member of the Decolonial International Network. IHRC has ledged several complaints with the BBC, LBC, and various press and media regulators, as well as the police, after this year’s campaign against Al-Quds Day.

The night of 18th June after the event, a white terrorist Darren Osborn, drove his van into a crowd of Muslims at a mosque in North London killing one and injuring eight people. It has been reported that his original plan was to attack the crowd at the Al Quds Day march.

The attack on the Al Quds Day failed, but it showed the concerted effort of Zionists, Islamophobic and terrorist forces to clamp down on the freedom of speech.