I had no idea!

Election fraud driven by immigrants practising "village politics" of the Indian sub-continent could be a crucial factor in deciding the future control of Birmingham City Council, a major report warns today.

Family loyalties, the dominance of men and the existence of the "biraderi" clan system among British Asians provides perfect conditions for widespread rigging of postal votes and other electoral malpractice in Britain’s major cities, according to the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust. In a 94-page report called Purity of Elections in the UK – Causes for Concern, the trust argues that the UK’s election system is close to breaking point and at risk of fraud, as the countdown to May’s local elections gets under way.

The study says the turning point in recognising Britain has a problem with election fraud came in 2005 when a court found six Birmingham Labour Party members in Aston and Bordesley Green, all Asian men, guilty of tampering with thousands of postal ballots.

The incident, which Elections Commissioner Richard Mawrey QC said would "disgrace a banana republic", forced the Government to tighten regulations surrounding postal voting, but the reforms were nowhere near tough enough according to the authors of today’s report.

They say: "The Birmingham election court of 2005 demonstrates that the control of a major city council or the outcome of a parliamentary contest could be influenced by the scale of fraud that was rendered possible by postal voting."

The study says numerous convictions for electoral fraud since 2000, when postal votes first became freely available on demand, resulted from incidents in inner-city wards where a large concentration of voters originate from the Indian sub-continent.

It adds: "Significantly, these convictions have emerged alongside anecdotal evidence of more widespread, and long-run, practices associated with Pakistani, Kashmiri and Bangladeshi traditions of biraderi (brotherhood) clans influencing voting behaviour.

"It is widely suggested that extended family and kinship networks, frequently with their origins in settlement patterns in Pakistan and Bangladesh, are mobilised to secure the support of up to several hundred electors, effectively constituting a block vote."

So, are our fearless elected representatives from the three main parties taking action to challenge this pattern of behaviour? Are they distancing themselves from those engaging in such activities? Not a bit of it! On the contrary, we are told that "all of the main political parties have sought at times to gain advantage by allying themselves to a Muslim candidate claiming to be able to guarantee a minimum number of votes arising from their support within a wider clan". This is something that is also evident from the fact that, while the overwhelming majority of vote-rigging cases involve Pakistani or Bangladeshi Muslims, the party affiliations of those involved seem to be pretty evenly divided between Labour, the Tories, and the Lib Dems. More evidence that for all three parties the primary, or perhaps the sole aim, is to get power, while such things as democracy and public service come, at best, a poor second in the reckoning.

Still, it is nice to see the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, a strongly left-wing organisation, which last year donated £2million to the Lib Dems, coming out and acknowledging that certain sections of the community do indeed have a disproportionate tendency to engage in vote-rigging, and that the advent of postal voting on demand has played into the hands of anyone who should wish to subvert the democratic process in this manner. If we're lucky, this might herald a new era of straight talking about the former issue, and the solving of the latter problem by the simple expedient of abolishing the on demand postal vote. But since all three major parties have, for short-term gain, bought into the long-term corruption of the democratic process, I don't hold out much hope that this new era will eventuate.

Hat-tip: English Rose

Like the TARDIS

A WOULD-BE MP is being investigated by police after it emerged 27 people are registered to vote at his house.

And officers are also probing claims a prospective councillor has five people registered at his home who are also listed at other properties in the same town.

Both Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate Mohammed Afzal Anwar and Labour Pendle Council candidate Mohammed Tariq have insisted they have done nothing wrong.

Police launched their investigation after separate allegations were made to Pendle Council and Lancashire Constabulary by the Liberal Democrat and Labour parties in Pendle.

Mr Anwar said there was nothing untoward about the number of voters living at his terraced home which is 214 to 216 Manchester Road, Nelson, and consists of two houses knocked into one.

He said that 27 people were registered to vote at the property, but that not all were resident in this country at any one time.

Mr Anwar said no postal or proxy votes would be requested for the property.

He said that he had discussed the situation with election officials at Pendle Council.

Mr Anwar said: "There are different people who are living in different parts of the properties. There are certain people who go abroad from time to time. One or two are students who have been in Poland for example.

"And other people are going (abroad) and coming back. There will be no postal or proxy votes issued from this address."

His election agent, Coun Tony Greaves, said the property was inhabited by Mr Anwar, his father, three brothers, their respective families and "contains 24 bedrooms."

Only two people registered at the addresses, who were currently resident in Pakistan, were not entitled to vote, said Coun Greaves.

Labour party officials asked Pendle police to launch a probe amid claims that not all residents living there should be entitled to vote.

The claims followed Liberal Democrat allegations over Labour candidate Mohammed Tariq, who is standing in Whitefield ward in next month's Pendle Council elections.

He is accused of having five people registered at his Portland Street home who are also registered at other properties elsewhere in Nelson.

Pendle Labour group leader Mohammed Iqbal is Mr Tariq's election agent and said the prospective councillor had done nothing wrong.

He said: "I have looked into Lord Greaves's allegations concerning Mr Tariq. They seem to centre round two members of our candidate's family."

Police confirmed that they were investigating allegations of electoral fraud in Pendle.

And, of course, there really is very little to be said, pending the result of the police investigation(s). Except that they must be pretty impressive terraced houses that Mr Anwar has, to be capable of yielding twelve bedrooms each. Should the allegations against him prove to be without foundation, we can only hope that those in authority will utilise his evident talents, and task him with solving the nation's housing shortage!

Hat-tip: The Green Arrow

Postscript: Meanwhile, former Slough Tory councillor Eshaq Khan has been charged with conspiracy to defraud, as have four of his campaign workers, all of whom have also been charged with offences under the Representation of the People Act 1983. Last month, an election court found Khan guilty of vote-rigging, in the closely contested election for the town's Central Ward.

Eshaq Khan guilty

In January I wrote about the allegations that Slough Tory councillor Eshaq Khan had been indulging in a spot of vote-rigging. At that time, the hearing into Khan's conduct was still ongoing. Now, however, the election court has reached its verdict, concluding that Khan did indeed engage in large-scale vote-rigging:

...Khan was found guilty at a special High Court election hearing in Slough council chamber of corrupt and illegal practices to secure his election. He was stripped of his seat and banned from standing for office for five years. He now faces a police inquiry.

Khan, 50, won his marginal seat in Central Ward after his team registered hundreds of “ghost voters” in the month before the election and cast votes using fraudulent postal ballots.

He and his team compounded the fraud with a botched cover-up that included poorly forged tenancy agreements and statements from bogus voters, and an attempt to intimidate a witness. Thames Valley Police said that it would widen its inquiry into the case in light of the judge’s accusations of perjury and attempts to pervert the course of justice by supporters of Khan.

Three people have been arrested in connection with the case. Police have interviewed another three. The Times understands that they include Khan and a leading figure in his campaign, Mohammed Basharat Khan.

The election team registered fictitious voters at derelict houses and claimed that as many as 12 voters were living at two-bedroom flats or three-bedroom houses. Khan beat Lydia Simmons, his Labour opponent, by 120 votes but Labour contested the result by bringing an election petition to overturn the result after almost 450 voters were added to the electoral register in the final weeks before the poll, almost all of whom voted by post for the Conservatives.

Labour succeeded in striking 145 “ghost voters” from the electoral roll. The judge accepted that the true figure was likely to run into hundreds.

Witnesses included a handwriting expert, Kim Hughes, who said that 198 of the postal ballot forms were filled in by Mohammed Basharat Khan, described by the judge as “a serial forger”, and another 79 were in the handwriting of the candidate.

Once Labour began to identify ghost voters, Khan and his team produced forged tenancy agreements. Ten of these were produced on the same computer. Khan’s team also produced 46 statements by individuals claiming that they lived at the disputed properties.

Two Polish women were accused of lying by Khan’s allies when they said that they knew nothing of the six and seven Kashmiri voters registered at each of their homes. One witness, Nighat Khan, who was due to give evidence that the five Kashmiris registered at her flat were fictitious, received a visit from a man claiming to be a lawyer. He produced a typed letter that he asked her to sign, saying that she would then not have to attend the hearing. The court received a letter allegedly from Ms Khan claiming that she was too ill to attend.

This case illustrated two particularly common themes in vote-rigging cases. The first is the potential for misuse offered by the postal voting system. Richard Mawrey QC, who presided over Khan's case, said that the present system whereby one can obtain a postal vote on demand (first introduced by Labour in 32 areas in 2000, and subsequently expanded) was "lethal to the democratic process". The Electoral Commission has also called for tighter controls on postal voting, as has Sir Christopher Kelly, the Chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. Clearly, postal voting is a problem - if nothing else, it makes vote-rigging easier, for those inclined to engage in it. It's also completely unnecessary, since the vast majority of people can quite easily vote in person, if they want to. Personally, I see no reason whatsoever not to go back to the pre-2000 system, where postal votes were only ever given to those who were genuinely unable to make it to the polling station.

However, there is another feature common to almost all of the various instances of vote-rigging that have been exposed over the past few years. Arguably, this second feature is found even more frequently than postal vote fraud (not, of course, that the two are mutually exclusive). But, while everyone is prepared to point out the problems associated with postal voting, no one seems willing to acknowledge the other, still more common, feature of these cases. I'll give you three guesses...

Postscript: When I first wrote about the allegations against Eshaq Khan, I also mentioned the trial of the former Labour Mayor of Peterborough, Mohammed Choudhary, who was on trial, together with his colleagues Tariq Mahmood and Maqbool Hussein, in relation to another vote-rigging conspiracy, which also involved postal voting. Well, last month Mahmood was convicted of 14 counts of forgery, and Choudhary and Hussein of four counts each. They now face likely prison sentences. Clearly, they weren't such highly skilled vote-riggers as Eshaq Khan, because, despite their spot of electoral fraud, they still lost the election!

Amusingly, seven of the twelve comments made by members of the public about the Peterborough case, on the website of the town's Evening Telegraph newspaper, have been deleted, as "unsuitable". Perhaps they drew the link that must not be drawn...

More (alleged) vote-rigging

A HEARING, which will investigate whether a borough councillor of 23 years lost her seat illegally, is to begin in Slough tomorrow (Monday).

The Election Petition hearing will delve deeper into results in the Central ward in May last year.

Labour’s Lydia Simmons lost to Conservative Eshaq Khan by 116 votes in May last year, which scuppered the party’s plans of retaking control of the council it lost in 2004.

The two-week hearing in the council chambers at Slough Town Hall will allow both sides to present evidence and a QC will gauge if anything untoward has happened.

The Labour group is expected to outline how some voters were registered to derelict homes and a large number of voters were registered to single properties.

[...]

The hearing is separate to the ongoing police investigation into voting fraud. Three Slough men have been arrested on suspicion of false applications to vote by post in connection with the elections in May 2007.

In the interests of fairness I will say two things. First, Khan denies all the accusations that have been made. Until the hearing reaches its conclusion, we will not know what the exact truth of the matter is.

Secondly, there are those who might attempt to use this kind of case to "smear an entire community". That would of course be very wrong: although the alleged perpetrator is a Tory, I am assured that the vast majority of moderate Tories are entirely supportive of democracy. And, while it is true that a tiny minority of alleged extremist Tories (Abdul Razaq, Raja Akhtar, and Mohammed Khaliq in Peterborough; Haroon Rashid, Jamshed Khan, and Reis Khan in Bradford; Iftikhar Hussain in Birmingham) are currently undergoing trial for vote-rigging, there have also been Labour activists (Muhammad Afzal, Mohammed Islam, and Mohammed Kazi in Birmingham; Muhammed Hussain in Blackburn) who have been either convicted of electoral fraud, or found to have engaged in it by an election commissioner, besides the former Labour mayor of Peterborough, Mohammed Choudhary, who is currently on trial for vote-rigging, alongside Tariq Mahmood and Maqbool Hussain. And Lib Dems have also been caught participating in some dubious electoral practices: in 2006, Burnley councillors Manzur Hussain and Mozaquir Ali were jailed for their part in a 2004 vote-rigging conspiracy, while last May Birmingham Lib Dem activists Zaker Choudhry and Mohammed Saeed were arrested over accusations of electoral impropriety. I think that it should therefore be abundantly evident to all but the most hardened and intolerant Toryphobe, that there are individuals within all political parties who show insufficient respect to democracy, and that to suggest that any one group was more likely than others to engage in vote-rigging would be the height of bigotry. So there!

Hat-tip: The Green Arrow

Such magnanimity!

Saudi king 'pardons rape victim'

Democracy, Islamic-style

A Conservative parliamentary candidate and two former Tory councillors will appear in court this week in connection with a suspected vote-rigging conspiracy that was uncovered by The Times.

They are among seven men accused of electoral fraud following a lengthy police investigation into alleged malpractice in Bradford, mostly relating to the use of postal ballots.

The criminal inquiry was prompted by an article in The Times that exposed postal voting irregularities in the Bradford West constituency during the 2005 general election campaign.

Those charged include Haroon Rashid, 37, from Buckinghamshire, who stood as the unsuccessful Tory candidate in Bradford West.

Mr Rashid has been a member of the Conservative Party for more than 15 years and an active campaigner for increased Asian representation.

In the run-up to the 2005 poll he was photographed with then Tory leader Michael Howard and other leading Conservatives, including Baroness Thatcher.

Also due to appear before Bradford magistrates on Wednesday are two former Conservative councillors in the city, Jamshed Khan, 53, and Reis Khan, 38.

Hmm. I wonder whether Messrs Rashid, Khan, and Khan have anything else in common, beyond the fact that they are all Tories?

And could there be some common factor linking this case to this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, and this one?

An eminent academic speaks...

Muslim scientists have made all discoveries of the current age, said University of Columbia’s [sic] Arabic and Islamic Studies prof George Saliba at a seminar at [Lahore's] Government College University (GCU) on Monday.

What, every single one of them? The internet, the motorcar, the human genome, DNA, penicillin, the lot? Wow. Then why have there only ever been eight Muslim Nobel Prize winners, of whom five received the utterly worthless Peace Prize and two the Prize in Literature, which, whatever its merits, cannot be considered a science? It must all be a big Zionist plot...

Of course, I don't wish to imply that I am in any way doubtful regarding the validity of Prof. Saliba's claim. I believe it just as much as I believe Dr Jerry Brotton's claim that the Spanish Armada was defeated by the Turks, or Prof. Jean-Claude Milner's suggestion that "Harry Potter is a war-machine against Thatchero-Blairism and the 'American way of life'". Because if an academic says it, it must be true...

Hat-tip: Dhimmi Watch

Amis condemns Islam, Muslim Nobel laureates stunned

The author Martin Amis has claimed he feels 'morally superior' to Muslim states which are not as 'evolved' as the Western world.

Responding to long-running accusations that he is Islamophobic, Amis launched a fresh invective against the Muslim faith and many of its followers.

He admitted his late father and grandfather had been racist but then claimed radical Muslims were the real racists, misogynists and homophobes.

Surely not! Everyone knows Muslims are the most tolerant people on Allah's green Earth, don't they?

In an interview with Jon Snow on Channel Four News, Amis declared: 'I feel morally superior to Islamists, by some distance. I feel an intellectual distance to Islam.

'There are great problems with Islam. The Koran recommends the beating of women.

'The anti-Semites, the psychotic misogynists and the homophobes are the Islamists.'

Well, what can you say? It's all true.

Days earlier, Amis shocked festivalgoers in Cheltenham with claims that Muslim states are less 'civilised' than Western society.

He "shocked festivalgoers"? I don't know about you, but I'm sure that I can think of a couple of revelations that might shock me rather more. The revelation that bears shit in woods, for example.

Ultimately, you'd have to be severely mentally ill, or, which is much the same thing, Muslim, to dispute the supremacy of Western Civilisation over Islam. What great technological, cultural, or social advances have come out of the Islamic world in the last century, for example? Or in the last five centuries, even? None that I can think of. And to pretend that Islamic states, almost all of which are impoverished third world despotisms, are not vastly more backward than any nation in Europe, is simply grossly dishonest.

But of course, if there is anyone out there who disagrees, anyone who believes in the great wonders of modern Islamic civilisation, then they are always welcome to pack their bags and move to such an Earthly paradise as Syria, Saudi Arabia, or Iran.

Muslims ask: "Will the victimisation never end?"

Islamophobia is on the rise in Europe and governments should do more to protect the continent's 15 million Muslims from discrimination, experts meeting in Spain said Monday.

"The situation is very serious," said Mustapha Cherif, an expert on Islam at the University of Algiers who is known for his commitment to battling religious hatred.

Really? I wonder what he's ever done to challenge anti-Christian prejudice in the Islamic world. You know, the kind of real prejudice that leads to people being tortured, imprisoned, attacked, and murdered. Does he stand up and confront this, or other instances of prejudice against non-Muslim minorities (the Mandaeans, for example)? Or does he just whinge about European "Islamophobia", which generally consists in little more than some mildly unhinged Muslim getting their delicate little feelings hurt?

"Islamophobia is a rising phenomena," added Jasser Auda of Britain's Forum Against Racism and Islamophobia, which is made up of representatives of the British Muslim community.

Hardly an impartial "expert", is he? On the contrary, he's a professional player of victimhood poker, whose very job consists of affirming that Muslims are the Most Oppressed People Ever.

The two were speaking at a meeting in the southern Spanish city of Jaen of some 30 non-governmental organisations from across Europe.

The gathering was held ahead of the start on Tuesday in the nearby city of Cordoba of a two-day conference on the issue organised by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

[...]

The non-governmental organisations will present a list of recommendations on how to tackle the problem to delegations from the 56 nations that make up the OSCE, and that are set to take part in the Cordoba conference.

Oh goody! So we can soon look forward to yet more demands for preferential treatment from the Mohammedans, all dressed up in the language of promoting equality.

Cordoba was chosen as the host for the event because for centuries the city was a symbolic centre of coexistence between Christians, Jews and Muslims.

Yes, coexistence in which Muslims ruled, and Christians and Jews were second-class citizens. Arguably, it was considerably better to be a non-Muslim there then that it is to be a non-Muslim in an Islamic state now, but still it was not the epicentre of world tolerance that Muslims and their apologists commonly make out.
I would, however, agree that the Caliphate of Cordoba has symbolic significance for the future (and indeed, the present) of Europe, and for this conference. After all, dhimmitude, of the type practised by the Jews and Christians of Cordoba, seems rapidly to be becoming the norm across Europe, and it is often those who cry the loudest about "Islamophobia" who do the most to facilitate this.

The threat faced by apostates of Islam

Once again, the Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, has proved a rare voice of sanity and common sense in a Church of England sliding ever further into the morass of cultural and moral relativism. While the likes of the Revd Canon Chris Chivers go into spasms of delight as they discuss the wonders of Ramadan, Mr Nazir-Ali warned tonight's Dispatches programme on Channel 4 of the dangers faced by people in Britain who have publicly rejected Islam, saying:

It is very common in the world today, including in this country, for people who have changed their faith, particularly from being Muslim to being Christian, to be ostracised, to lose their job, for their marriages to be dissolved, for children to be taken away.

He added that he suspects that it is only going to be so long before a Muslim apostate in Britain is killed.

Certainly, he is right that Muslims who convert are at risk. Consider these cases documented by The Times in February 2005:

THE first brick was thrown through the sitting room window at one in the morning, waking Nissar Hussein, his wife and five children with a terrifying start. The second brick went through his car window.

It was a shock, but hardly a surprise. The week before, another brick had been thrown through the window as the family were preparing for bed in their Bradford home. The victim of a three-year campaign of religious hatred, Mr Hussein’s car has also been rammed and torched, and the steps to his home have been strewn with rubbish.

He and his family have been regularly jostled, abused, attacked, shouted at to move out of the area, and given death threats in the street. His wife has been held hostage inside their home for two hours by a mob. His car, walls and windows have been daubed in graffiti: “Christian bastard”.

The problem isn’t so much what Mr Hussein, whose parents came from Pakistan, believes, but what he doesn’t believe. Born into Islam, he converted eight years ago to Christianity, and his wife, also from Pakistan, followed suit.

[...]

Ruth, also of Pakistani origin, found out recently that she had only just escaped being murdered. When she told her family that she had converted, they kept her locked inside the family home all summer.

“They were afraid I would meet some Christians. My brother was aggressive, and even hit me — I later found out he wanted me dead,” she said. A family friend had suggested taking her to Pakistan to kill her, and her brother put the idea to her mother, who ruled against it.

Cases like this illustrate the fundamental difference between Western civilisation and Islamic barbarism. In Britain, or other Western nations, you can renounce the established religion and join any other religion you please, and the only option open to those who wish to prevent this is to try to convince you by force of argument. Whereas, if you reject Islam, then those who object to this will have swift recourse to the threat of sheer physical force in order to induce you to change your mind. How anyone can argue that there is any form of equality between these two cultures is completely beyond me!

Some Muslims, such as the author of the Islamics blog, have claimed that Mr Nazir-Ali is merely scare-mongering. They say that he is demonstrating his "prejudice and the deep rooted hatred...for Islam". As evidence for this, they say that while Islam does mandate the death penalty for apostasy, it only does so for those who commit apostasy in Islamic countries, and that, since Britain is not an Islamic country, apostates here have nothing to fear. There are two points to consider here. First, even if what they say is exactly true, then it is hardly a ringing endorsement of Islamic civilisation to say that Muslims only violate the right to freedom of thought when they form the majority of a nation's population. If nothing else, this should further demonstrate why it is imperative that we do all we can to resist the Islamification of this country.
However, the second point is that what they say is not true. However the Koran may be interpreted, the fact is that the cases that I have cited from The Times, demonstrate that for a Muslim in Britain to renounce Islam is to put themselves at risk of physical harm from their former coreligionists. This is also the case in other non-Islamic countries. In the Netherlands, for example, Ehsan Jami, the chairman of the Dutch committee of ex-Muslims, has been provided with increased security after he was attacked by three Muslims outside a supermarket. This was the third such attack to which he had been subjected.

The Islamic death penalty for apostates is something of which a great many people are unaware. Indeed, I have found many people who refuse point-blank to accept that it exists, so well indoctrinated have they been into the mantra of "Islam is a wonderful Religion of Peace". Michael Nazir-Ali's willingness to come out and tell the truth about this is once again to be welcomed.

BNP "lies" exposed...as truth!

A hidden world in which Asian [MSM code for 'Muslim' - FR] men “groom” young white girls for sex has been exposed with the jailing yesterday of two men for child-abuse offences.

Zulfqar Hussain, 46, and Qaiser Naveed, 32, from east Lancashire, were each jailed for five years and eight months after exploiting two girls aged under 16 by plying them with alcohol and drugs before having sex with them.

Both men pleaded guilty at Preston Crown Court to abduction, sexual activity with a child and the supply of a controlled drug.

Despite being told explicitly by police and social services that both girls were under-age and should be returned to care, the men picked up one girl from a children’s home in Blackburn and then drove on to collect her friend who was living in temporary foster care in North Wales.

Naveed, from Burnley, gave one girl the first of five Ecstasy tablets at a motorway service station before having sex with her on the back seat of the car while the group drove back to Lancashire. The court was told that the two men later took the girls to an address in Blackburn where Hussain, from Blackburn, had sex with the second girl and gave her a total of ten Ecstasy tablets.

[...]

The trial came amid growing concern at the attitudes of some Asian men towards white girls which campaigners for women claim few people wish to address.

Parents have complained that in parts of the country with large Asian communities white girls as young as 12 are being targeted for sex by older Asian men yet the authorities are unwilling to act because of fears of being labelled racist.

Ann Cryer, a Labour member of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, has been at the forefront of attempting to tackle the problem after receiving complaints from mothers in her constituency about young Asian men targeting their under-age daughters.

Although campaigners claim that hundreds of young girls are already being passed around men within the Asian community for sex, she said that attempts to raise the problem with community leaders had met with little success, with most of them being in a state of denial about it.

[...]

However, Ms Cryer added: “I think there is a problem with the view Asian men generally have about white women. Their view about white women is generally fairly low. They do not seem to understand that there are white girls as moral and as good as Asian girls.”

Wow. It's almost as though their society was institutionally racist!

Incidentally, I seem to recall that the BNP has been going on and on about this issue for years, and have been repeatedly accused of spreading "racist myths" by groups such as the confused far-leftists of Unite Against Fascism. Now, however, it seems that the wicked Nazis may have been on to something after all. How unexpected...

Sex Slavery and Paedophilia: another day in the Muslim World

A local husband and his wife have been arrested by the Palestinian Authority police on charges of selling their two daughters to young men.

The two girls, aged 12 and 13, were sold for 2,700 Jordanian dinars [approximately NIS 15,000] and NIS 7,000, said Col. Issa Hijo, commander of the Ramallah District Police Force.

He said the two men who bought the girls were brothers aged 23 and 25 and that they had been arrested on charges of raping minors.

"What is astonishing about this case is the fact that the two girls were sold with the approval of their mother and the parents of the two men," Hijo said. "This incident takes us back to the period of slavery. What is even more shocking is the fact that the two men's mother argued that this was an accepted custom."

Had the officer been better informed, he would have known that this is not an isolated event, and that Islamic parents commonly treat their daughters as items of property. There was the man in Pakistan who gave away his daughter in payment for a £75 gambling debt, for example. Or the two Saudis in their seventies (one of whom already had three wives) who married their teenage daughters off to one another (the daughters were not, of course, consulted). And it's spread to Britain as well: in 2004 the British High Commission in Islamabad dealt with 100 cases of forced marriage of British-born Muslim girls.

Yet another example of why we mustn't let Islam take root in Britain.

Hat-tip: Dhimmi Watch