The people of Tower Hamlets demonstrating against the English Defence League"London's East End: a melting pot simmers closer to the boil." This is the scaremongering headline to a report on Tower Hamlets in today's Sunday Telegraph.

The article notes that the "Muslim patrols" panic has "sparked headlines internationally. Journalists from Russia, Sweden and Germany have descended on the borough". Needless to say, rather than expose this as a hysterical over-reaction fuelled by Islamophobia, the article uses it as a springboard to paint a picture of a borough riven by communal strife provoked by Muslim extremists.

Telegraph readers are informed:

Tower Hamlets is one of numerous areas in England – others include parts of Bradford, Dewsbury, Leicester and Luton – where Muslims Against Crusades, a banned extremist group that burnt poppies on Remembrance Day, has announced it wants to impose sharia law. Al-Muhajiroun, an Islamist group proscribed by the Home Office, is also said to be active here.

The vigilante patrols are the latest in a long line of incidents, which have included homophobic attacks and the appearance of stickers branding the area a 'Sharia Zone' and 'Gay-free'. Maajid Nawaz, chairman of the counter-extremism think tank the Quilliam Foundation, suggested last month that the 'Muslim patrols' could be 'a sign of things to come' as a pattern of extremism spreads across Europe.

The latter reference is to Nawaz's lunatic article in the Times in which he suggested, in all seriousness, that there was a real prospect of the "Muslim patrols" turning to terrorism.

Nor is the Islamist threat limited to Anjem Choudary's band of idiot followers. According to the Telegraph, the extremists apparently include Tower Hamlets mayor Lutfur Rahman, who has "close links to the fundamentalist group, the Islamic Forum of Europe" and has been "accused of presiding over an administration that is seeking to 'Islamicise' Tower Hamlets by, among other things, clamping down on strip clubs and a gay bar".

This picture is reinforced by the usual dodgy demographics. We are told that the latest census figures reveal that "Bengalis have now overtaken white British to become the largest ethnic group in the borough". In reality, the British Bangladeshi community in Tower Hamlets has fallen slightly in percentage terms over the past decade, from 33.43% in 2001 to 32.03% in 2011. The reason they are now the largest ethnic group is that the White British community has declined from 42.91% in 2001 to 31.18% in 2011, having been replaced by increased numbers of people from other minority communities, notably non-British white people – the White Other category has increased from 6.54% to 12.42%. Rather than there being some "Muslim takeover" of Tower Hamlets, as the Telegraph seeks to suggest, what we are seeing is a strengthening of the borough's multicultural character.

As is usually the way with Islamophobic articles in the right-wing press, you have to read to the end of the piece before you get to hear an alternative, and more realistic, view of the situation. That way, newspaper can run reports with scaremongering headlines and paranoid claims about Islamification and Muslim extremism, while covering themselves against charges of bias. After all, they can argue, they allowed opposing opinions to be expressed.

Thus Salman Farsi of East London Mosque is quoted as blaming the Muslim patrol stunt on "fanatics coming into the area from other parts of London to stoke up tensions". He describes them as part of "a fringe minority of our community who clash with the proper teachings of Islam" and whose actions are "at odds with Islamic and British values and traditions". Farsi argues that, rather than being a "fragile environment", there is "a lot of co-existence and harmony" in Tower Hamlets. However, this hardly changes the overall thrust of the Telegraph report.

Similarly, Liam Bushell, manager of the White Swan pub, which is supposedly threatened by Lutfur Rahman's mythical plan to Islamicise the borough, describes the "Muslim patrol" as a one-off and defends Tower Hamlets' reputation as "a very multicultural place" – only to have his views characterised as "typically defiant talk in an area that historically refuses to be cowed". The article concludes ominously: "In the latest wave of extremism, however, it is hard not to wonder how long this slice of East End life will remain."

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"The streets around Acton, which has been my home since 1996, have taken on a new identity. Most of the shops are now owned by Muslims and even the fish and chip shop and Indian takeaway are Halal. It seems that almost overnight it's changed from Acton Vale into Acton Veil."

Over at the Telegraph, Jane Kelly protests against the Islamification of west London. At least she doesn't bother trotting out the usual excuse that her dislike of Muslims is based solely on cultural differences and has nothing to do with race. She writes that "many white people in London and the Home Counties now move house on the basis of ethnicity" and justifies this on the grounds that "mass immigration is making reluctant racists of us all".

Kelly is consulting editor at the Salisbury Review, a publication that achieved notoriety back in 1984 when it published an article by Bradford headteacher Ray Honeyford entitled "Education and Race – an Alternative View" which featured a range of offensive racist stereotypes.

Describing a meeting with Bradford Asian parents to discuss education policy, Honeyford wrote: "The hysterical political temperament of the Indian sub-continent became evident – an extraordinary sight in an English School Hall.... A half-educated and volatile Sikh usurped the privileges of the chair by deciding who was to speak."

Which only goes to show how little things have changed on the Conservative right over the past three decades.

The Telegraph presents Kelly's op ed as "a provocative personal piece". I suppose that's one way of describing an article expressing bigotry towards an entire ethno-religious community. Perhaps the Telegraph might consider following it up with another "provocative personal piece" complaining that Golders Green or Stoke Newington have been taken over by Jews, and see how that goes down.

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