Is Hatred of Islam the UK Home Secretary’s Religion?

Islamophobia appears to have become the religion of British Home Secretary Theresa May, who follows the US’ racist lead in its war on Islam, referred to in the invented vernacular as the “war on terror.” Mrs. May is obsessed with Mr. Abu Qatada principally because he worships at a mosque instead of an Anglican Church, yet the religion she claims to practice is Christianity, which teaches, among other virtues: love, forgiveness and reform.

Consider the following two “criminals”:

Abu Qatada

Let us assume for a moment that Abu Qatada has committed crimes in Jordan, though much evidence suggests otherwise. Mr. Qatada has committed no crime in the United Kingdom. So, even if he was a criminal abroad, he fits the Christian example of a reformed character and, providing he continues to live lawfully, should be forgiven. What appears to irritate Mrs. May as much as anything is that Mr. Qatada has called for the release of Muslims held in United States prisons and Guantanamo Bay, which gets him labeled a preacher of hatred. Most of the prisoners for whom he advocates have been held for 11 years without charge, never mind without trial. I too, together with many others in the UK, have called for the release of these prisoners. So why have I not been arrested? I would suggest that what makes my case different is that I am a white Christian and consequently fall outside of Mrs. May’s racist profile.

Abu Qatada is a family man. His family has been subjected to racist abuse from right-wing extremists, but his children are model pupils, and his family is respected elsewhere. When they were abused, due largely to a media campaign against Qatada, no authorities intervened to protect them. The family suffered silently for a long time before getting an injunction to stop the abuse. All this has resulted from slanderous accusations made in support of the war on Islam by previous governments and, more recently and fervently, by Theresa May in pushing forward her fixation to send Abu Qatada to Jordan to face trial. Jordan is reputed for torture, and Mr. Qatada belonged to an opposition party before the present dictatorship; he also has no great excess of money.

Now if Qatada were as wealthy as a United Arab Emirates’ oil-sheikh, the racism against him would probably be kept in check. The nipple through which money flows is the one at which the authorities suck, and while the cash keeps flowing in, it matters little whether the breast is black, brown or white. Thus criminal oligarchs from Russia, former Soviet states and elsewhere, may bring their filthy lucre to the UK and get it washed free from stains at the laundry of the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street. The world’s mafia can afford to buy off accusations of wrongdoing, and Mrs. May, being married to a banker, can only empathize. The divide is not about rich and poor, so much as the gaping crevice between a white alleged criminal settler such as Shaun Patrick Breach and a Palestinian like Abu Qatada — who is derogatorily called a radical Islamic cleric. It is also about how differently the Home Secretary and her authorities treat each man.

Shaun Patrick Breach

It is hard not to go looking in the Dictionary of Abusive Slang to find a fitting epithet to describe Shaun Patrick Breach with any degree of accuracy. Before coming to the UK from South Africa, Breach had allegedly been a mercenary for the notorious Executive Outcomes, though this is denied by the former controllers of this corporation. Before its demise, Executive Outcomes had at its helm right-wing fixers like Tony Buckingham, Simon Mann and Tim Spicer, whose former antics in Africa and, in the case of Buckingham and Spicer, current ones in oil-rich countries destabilized by NATO, were sketched in a recent article. Breach is different altogether. While most of the top men have kept their nefarious activities under cover, Breach seems to wallow in his crimes, and he appears to be, or thinks himself as being, untouchable.

Shaun Patrick Breach is an alleged serial wife-beater. He has been accused of trying to knife journalist Simon Tomlin, who was and might still be investigating his activities. Despite repeated requests, and despite the attack on Tomlin being monitored by CCTV cameras, the Nottinghamshire police has refused to stop and search Breach for weapons. He appears to be able to commit crimes with impunity, provoking the question: why? What information does Breach hold to render him above the law? He lives in Nottingham, a place that some might describe as England’s equivalent to the Chicago of the 1930s. Nottingham is reputed to be a gangster-ridden, drug-running, gun-toting place, with some of the police allegedly being in cahoots with the gangsters. What is even more astounding is that many of the locals seem to know who the bent coppers are.

Despite being arrested in the UK more than 40 times for crimes ranging from witness intimidation to death-threats — including racist attacks — Breach has usually been released without charge and never been imprisoned. Simon Tomlin believes that Breach has been protected by the police and security services as a useful asset. This could be right, since no mainstream journalist has covered this story of police cover up, and if Shaun Patrick Breach is an asset, the mainstream media would not be allowed to go public with this information. Thus Simon Tomlin seems to be taking on Nottinghamshire police almost single handedly, and recordings suggest that Tomlin’s account of Breach’s psychotic knife attack is correct. So what is an alleged South African criminal with British Nationalist Party leanings doing in the UK, given Theresa May’s policy of returning suspected criminals to their homelands, or to countries where they are wanted for allegedly breaking the law?

One cannot help but conclude that Theresa May is racist. She has targeted Abu Qatada, who has committed no crime in the UK, but not Shaun Patrick Breach, who has probably committed many. Breach was protected by the law and police, whereas Qatada and his family were not. There is no evidence that Qatada has been anything but a good family man; by contrast, Breach has been accused of beating all three wives he has had, and other women too. Why doesn’t the Home Secretary do Breach’s current wife a favor and send the self-acclaimed mercenary back to South Africa, and stop picking on Qatada? Of course the above interpretation of what has been seen and read could be wrong. If so, perhaps Mrs. May could explain how these allegations are false.

Editor’s Note: All photographs by UK Home Office.