Finally, a police officer has stood up to Islamic sectarian bigots

Is it legal to preach Christianity in London? Apparently, the answer to this question isn’t obvious – at least to some residents of Whitechapel in east London.

Last week, a truly depressing video emerged. It showed a young, female Metropolitan Police officer, surrounded by Muslim men on a street in Whitechapel. They demanded to know why a Christian preacher, proselytising outside the nearby East London Mosque, had not been arrested.

To her immense credit, the officer did not allow herself to be cowed or intimidated. ‘In this country we have freedom of speech’, she told them forthrightly. ‘You guys don’t have to see eye to eye, you don’t need to agree, and you’re all more than welcome to stand here and have conversations with them’, she said.

But these men were not interested in ‘conversations’. They wanted the preacher to be punished – presumably for blasphemy, for daring to declare a belief in a faith other than Islam. One of the Muslim men said he called the police because he heard a man say ‘an offensive word about the religion’. According to the Daily Mail, one of the mob told the preacher not to ‘say Muhammed’. Another said, ‘Your God is a Jew’. When the policewoman arrived, a man implored her to recognise that ‘This is east London, this is Whitechapel – it’s a Muslim area’. Another chimes in to say the Christian preacher was ‘offending our prophet’. ‘I would recommend you just move away and don’t listen to him’, she said in response.

It was a relief to see a police officer actually upholding freedom of speech for once – particularly when faced with an intimidating mob. Nevertheless, it says something about how far free speech has been undermined in Britain that this is even worth commenting on. Indeed, the mob themselves appeared stunned by the fact that a police officer refused their orders to lock someone up on the basis that he had offended their religion.

And no wonder. Islamic sectarians have been remarkably successful in using the police for their own ends. Whether the police feel intimidated or simply believe it is their role to respond to the demands of certain ‘community leaders’, they have been more than willing to keep certain areas ‘Muslim’ at the behest of sectarian bigots. Just last month, the Met banned a ‘Walk with Jesus’ march, planned by UKIP, from going through Whitechapel on the grounds that it would be ‘provocative’ to local Muslims. Last year, West Midlands Police banned Jewish Israeli supporters from travelling to Birmingham to watch Maccabi Tel Aviv play Aston Villa, after learning that some local Muslims were arming themselves in preparation for the visit. Worse still, the police fabricated evidence to suggest the Jews were the group most likely to stir up trouble. They colluded in a lie to placate Islamic sectarians and to cover their violent intentions.

Appeasement of Islamic intolerance is now rampant in every arm of the state. Last year, a magistrate’s court convicted Hamit Coskun for burning a copy of the Koran during a protest outside the Turkish embassy in London. The fact he was attacked with a knife by a Muslim passer-by was held up as proof of just how inflammatory his blasphemous act was. Mercifully, he successfully appealed his conviction in the High Court on free-speech grounds. Yet shockingly, the Crown Prosecution Service is now appealing the acquittal, such is its determination to criminalise critics of Islam. The Labour government, meanwhile, remains committed to drawing up an official definition of ‘anti-Muslim hostility’, which will effectively institutionalise an Islamic blasphemy code within the public sector.

The viral video of the confrontation in Whitechapel has exposed the lie of British multiculturalism. In many areas of our major cities, we do not see people of different races and faiths getting along, living in harmony, showing tolerance and understanding. We see blatant religious sectarianism, which the authorities are usually only too happy to acquiesce to.

The policewoman who stood up to the mob should be commended for her courage, for her plain-speaking and for her defence of freedom of speech. But the crisis of multiculturalism that this viral confrontation exposed cannot be solved by one brave officer alone.

Hugo Timms is a staff writer at spiked.