London is Under Sharia Law - Apparently
Media magnate William Randolph Heart once quipped, "You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war." As the father of yellow journalism, he was well known for providing his stories as a game of Telephone, repeating a rumor of a rumor of a rumor. It made him billions, and lowered the discourse of media to this day. He would be proud then of the revived media smear tactic of Aggregate Journalism, or reporting on a report without doing any independent investigation of one's own.
Imagine my surprise when I glanced through our own Technorati this week and found the headline "No-Go Zones for Non-Muslims Multiplying All Over Europe" by Claire Reitz. Apparently, "many" neighborhoods in London are being taken over by Muslims, and non-Muslims are being pushed out. Not only is Sharia Law being enacted, but the local emergency services are forbidden to enter such areas. There are even signs being put up all over London, warning non-Muslims that they are unwelcome in ancient boroughs like Tower Hamlets. Being that the author was in LA, and I was sitting in my home in London, I was slightly suspicious of her journalistic integrity.
My suspicions were well founded - it seemed as though the author of the article had simply lifted the article practically wholesale from the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank. The only problem? It appears as though the Hudson Institute had aggregated their entire article (http://www.hudson-ny.org/2367/european-muslim-no-go-zones) from back posts of their own work, or pieces from the Telegraph or Daily Mail (The "National Enquirer" of England). However, the article was spreading like wildfire amongst the conservative blogosphere, with no one “journalist” seeming to care if any of the information was actually true.
In an effort to get some control over the facts, I contacted the Al-Muntada Al-Islami Trust, a large Mosque and information center located in Metropolitan London. Al-Muntada Al-Islami are members of the West London Citizens (the capital’s largest and most diverse alliance of active citizens and community leaders), and a close collaborator with now retired Metropolitan Police officer Dr. Robert Lambert (MBE). I sat down with Trust Secretary Abdelhakeem Montague and Department of Development Manager Sayid Ali to query them over the allegations of Sharia Law in London. They seemed as confused as I was over the article in question.
Gentlemen, what do you feel is the state of relations between Muslims and the London community at large?
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