Soccer Lads Alliance march in Birmingham attracts protests

A growing sequence of British electorate and native MPs like united to sentence « hatred and intolerance » as a march by the Soccer Lads Alliance (FLA) takes space against what they call « Islamist extremists » within the UK city of Birmingham.

In a hump to oppose Saturday’s march, Stand Up To Racism has organised a counterprotest called the Birmingham United anti-racist tournament, also in Birmingham, to push a « message of solidarity and opposition to racism and Islamophobia on the streets of Birmingham », per the team’s Facebook page.

The FLA, which describes itself as a « contemporary go with a recent cause to strive against extremism », was space to stage a rally at 12:00 GMT as thousands of soccer followers fall on town for a brief streak in commemoration of the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings which left 21 folks boring.

However the FLA’s calls for « anti-extremist » protests like raised peril amongst locals and anti-racists who fear the march might well be the UK’s most attention-grabbing ever Islamophobic mobilisation.

A key speaker on the tournament is anti-Islam activist Anne Marie Waters, who unsuccessfully ran to be the leader of UKIP in 2017.

Waters calls Islam « nefarious » and has links to an ex-member of the far-appropriate British National celebration, per the Guardian.

The team has also hosted several assorted far-appropriate audio system on its platforms in contemporary months.

British police like been deployed and step up patrols within town centre in anticipation of probably violence.

« We like now got been liaising with organisers to provide an explanation for their intentions for some time, and like an intensive notion in space to fulfil our accountability to facilitate any accrued insist, » chief superintendent Danny Long of the West Midlands Police advised the Birmingham Stay web set up on Friday.

United against racism

Weyman Bennett, Stand Up To Racism’s co-convenor, advised Al Jazeera: « The FLA stated they are no longer racists, but they’ve invited Anne Marie Walters and assorted far-appropriate racists.

« They’re web site visitors of racists and fascists and like centered Birmingham because they ticket it as a Muslim city. We like now got to stand united against folks that leer to divide us. »

In the 2011 Census, 21.eight percent of the Birmingham population identified themselves as Muslim. Right here’s vastly better than the average for England and Wales of four.eight percent.

Commenting on the events, Maz Saleem, a Birmingham native whose father Mohammed Saleem was stabbed to demise on his diagram home from a mosque in April 2013, called on folks to join the counterprotest and to rise up against « racism, Islamophobia and division ».

« The FLA are searching to explain the entire Muslim community as a terrorist community when, in point of fact, we are the victims, » Saleem stated.

« Or no longer it’s coming to my dad’s 5-year anniversary next month and we have not realized any lessons, in particular whenever you happen to encourage such racist ideologies. That’s what this march represents within the center of my fatherland. »

In a demonstrate of increase for the Stand Up To Racism tournament, several British MPs, together with Birmingham Ladywood MP Shabana Mahmoud, Birmingham Edgbaston MP Preet Kaur Gill and Birmingham Hall Inexperienced MP Roger Godsiff, added their voices to a press open expressing peril over the FLA march.

« I unreservedly condemn the Soccer Lads Alliance because it’s miles an organisation searching for out to divide our society and to claim to be, whatsoever, associated with mainstream soccer supporters is abhorrent, » wrote in a assertion on Friday.

Other signatories to the assertion contain general-secretaries of several main alternate unions and native councillors, religion and community groups.

Al Jazeera contacted the FLA for observation but did now not win a response on the time of publication. 

Secret Facebook team

Stories remaining week revealed that the FLA uses a secret Facebook page together with violent, racist and misogynistic shriek as well to posts concentrating on Sadiq Khan, London’s first Muslim mayor, and Dianne Abbott, UK shadow home secretary and Britain’s first dark feminine MP.

The FLA’s 65,000-solid Facebook team, which is invite-most attention-grabbing and monitored by a workforce of administrators, states the FLA are « no longer fascist thugs » but includes posts by contributors calling for Khan to be « hanged » and for Abbott, to be « bustle over », reported the Guardian.

There are also posts claiming the Finsbury Park mosque attacker Darren Osborne, who was charged in June remaining year with « terrorism-associated » ruin and tried ruin after he was arrested by police following a van assault that mowed down Muslim worshippers, is a « scapegoat » and suggesting he was appropriate to region to ruin UK Labour celebration leader Jeremy Corbyn.

The findings strategy after Facebook removed the pages of Britain First, the far-appropriate team, for violating its community requirements and sending out anti-Muslim letters to addresses all around the nation.

John Meighan, who founded the FLA after the London Bridge assault and led a march of thousands of followers thru the streets of London remaining October, insists the team is made up of frequent supporters against all forms of « extremism ».