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The Sun faces investigation over 'Muslim Problem' article after it was likened to Nazi propaganda

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Jewish and Muslim organisations in Britain have issued a joint complaint to the press regulator over an Islamophobic article they likened to Nazi propaganda.

The groups argue The Sun column’s reference to the “Muslim Problem” resembles the Nazi references to the “The Jewish Problem” and sets a troubling precedent.

Written by the former political editor of the tabloid, the article features a tirade about Muslim communities and claims Britain is consumed by a “Muslim Problem”.

Trevor Kavanagh argues Islam constitutes the “one unspoken fear” which unites Britain and wider Europe but claims the phenomenon has been suppressed by political correctness. He says the problem began after former Prime Minister Tony Blair allowed what he describes as “mass migration”.

The article, which caused anger among social media users, prompted the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Tell Mama and Faith Matters to complain directly to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso).

The organisations argue the phrase “Muslim Problem” shares direct parallels with “The Jewish Problem” – an expression used in Hitler's Nazi Germany which led to the mass murder of six million Jews.

“The printing of the phrase ‘The Muslim Problem’ – particularly with the capitalisation and italics for emphasis – in a national newspaper sets a dangerous precedent,” states the complaint.

“And harks back to the use of the phrase ‘The Jewish Problem’ in the last century, to which the Nazis responded with ‘The Final Solution’ – the Holocaust.”

A representative for Ipso told The Independent they had received a total of 150 complaints about the piece.

“As you’ll appreciate, Ipso does not comment on any complaints while they are being assessed,” they said.

“However, I can confirm that we have had a total of 150 complaints about the piece to which you refer, mostly under Clause 12 (Discrimination) of the Editors’ Code of Practice.”

A spokesperson for the Board of Deputies said: “We were horrified to read this in The Sun today, and we feel that it warrants swift condemnation by Ipso, and a prompt retraction and an apology by The Sun. We will not tolerate indiscriminate attacks in the media on any faith community.”

A representative for Tell Mama and Faith Matters said: “We stand united with the Jewish community in our condemnation of this outrageous article. Newspapers must take responsibility for peddling hate.”

The Sun’s article has been branded “disgusting” on Twitter, with critics urging people to issue formal complaints to the paper.

“This country doesn't have a 'Muslim problem', it has a Murdoch problem. Today's piece by Trevor Kavanagh in The Sun has to be the end of it,” said one user, Maria Crawford.

"Trevor Kavanagh is trying to be the new Katie Hopkins. His language is incendiary & his views are vile. Poison," said another, Russ Jackson.

Mr Kavanagh, who became political editor of The Sun in 1983, sits on the Board of Ipso.

Miqdaad Versis, the Assistant Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: “Author of this disgusting piece in The Sun about 'the Muslim problem#, Trevor Kavanagh, is a Board member of the press regulator Ipso”.

Ipso sparked anger when it announced Mr Kavanagh would be joining its board at the end of 2015. He played a critical role in the tabloid’s infamous accusations that Liverpool fans had urinated on rescuers and pick-pocketed dead victims during the 1989 disaster.

At the time, Professor John Ashton, president of the Faculty of Public Health, who helped treat victims at Hillsborough, said: “It beggars belief that Ipso believe this helps their credibility.”

Dr Evan Harris, co-director of the pressure group for media reform Hacked Off said: “It is hard to believe that any rational regulator would see fit to appoint someone directly involved in one of the most crass examples of press abuse in history.”

A representative for The Sun did not immediately respond to request for comment.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...nazi-propaganda-tabloid-news-uk-a7894231.html
 
The Sun is the worst newspaper ever. It's stories are all fake from politics to football transfer rumours they are always wring. I am surprised this crap newspaper is still going. Must have seriously powerful backers.
 
The Sun is the worst newspaper ever. It's stories are all fake from politics to football transfer rumours they are always wring. I am surprised this crap newspaper is still going. Must have seriously powerful backers.

They have the same backer as The Times I think. They have a columnist called Melanie Philips who writes the same sort of stuff basically, but she words it more carefully.
 
To those claiming only tabloid newspapers are pushing this subject, Andrew Norfolk wrote a stirring defence of the underlying principle of targeting Pakistani/Muslims as a group for these crimes in his column in The Times today:

To change attitudes will risk offence

Forced to resign for speaking an uncomfortable truth, Sarah Champion has fallen victim to the same liberal squeamishness that for years allowed street-grooming sex crimes against young white girls to flourish unchecked.

It is more than six years since The Times first accused national child-protection authorities of failing to tackle a hidden crime pattern in which gangs of men were feeding alcohol and drugs to children, often from troubled backgrounds, before subjecting them to sexual abuse.

On its front page, this newspaper wrote in January 2011 that in the relatively few cases investigated by police and brought to trial — our research identified 17 prosecutions from 13 towns and cities — the vast majority of the 56 convicted offenders were of Pakistani origin. To suggest that men from a minority ethnic community were significantly over-represented was incendiary, as was the immediate response of the former Labour home secretary Jack Straw. He said that some young Pakistani men in his Blackburn constituency viewed white girls as “easy meat”. Mr Straw was widely condemned for the remark.

It is true that the vast majority of child sex crimes in the UK are committed by white men. That applies to abuse online, in families, in institutions and sex crimes in which the victims are boys. Most such offenders, however, act alone.

When it comes to the group exploitation of teenage girls, that the pattern was indeed very different has been confirmed by an explosion in the number of prosecutions across England since 2011, including Rochdale, Rotherham and Oxford.

For at least three decades, the targeting of vulnerable white teenagers for sex planted such deep roots among a subsection of men, largely from one minority ethnic community, that it became almost normalised group behaviour.

Today, girls are still routinely shared among groups of friends, relatives and work colleagues who view them as worthless. Overwhelmingly, those committing such crimes are Muslim, predominantly of Pakistani heritage. The Times has called in vain for detailed research to understand why.

Were it ever commissioned, such work should address varying cultural and religious attitudes towards the age of consent and the still widespread impermissibility, within many conservative Muslim communities, of teenagers forming casual boyfriend-girlfriend relationships.

There is at play here a confusion of cultural and religious attitudes that fuels a twisted, street Islam in which conduct unthinkable with a fellow Muslim somehow becomes permissible with a non-Muslim girl.

How do we begin to change such attitudes if we dare not discuss them for fear of causing offence?

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/to-change-attitudes-will-risk-offence-7rrfx8p75
 
The hate preachers at the right wing press are obviously radicalising their idiot readers

<blockquote class="twitter-video" data-lang="en-gb"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">A self-proclaimed Nazi told a Muslim woman to take off her “head towel.” She stood up for herself. <a href="https://t.co/d43VH2Cwji">pic.twitter.com/d43VH2Cwji</a></p>— AJ+ (@ajplus) <a href="https://twitter.com/ajplus/status/901283307245027328">26 August 2017</a></blockquote>
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