Analysis, Europe, Side Feature

Political Violence is Escalating in the UK, but No Amount of Violence is Considered Terrorism Unless it’s Perpetrated by a Muslim

Jo Cox was buried on the 15th July 2016. She is a UK member of parliament who was shot and stabbed to death with a knife during the campaigning for the referendum that led to the vote for the UK to leave the European Union. The day after her funeral, the UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper asks the question: “Four weeks on from Jo Cox’s killing, why are people still threatened with ‘being coxed’?” The term ‘coxed’ has become a new way of threatening a UK politician or political activist with being killed as Jo Cox was killed.

Comment:

Luciana Berger, the former shadow cabinet minister for mental health, received a message saying “you are going to get it like Jo Cox did,” and Kevin McKeever, was threatened as follows: “hello comrade; we’ve watched you leave this building; we’ve watched you on the strand; your blood is the price of your treachery; prepare to be coxed :-)” Such is the level of political hate in the UK. Indeed, the whole campaign for leaving the European Union was based upon hate and fear, and now that the leaders of this campaign have achieved success, all sides are struggling to find the way forward for the UK with the realization that fear and hatred of mostly Muslim immigrants cannot build a platform for returning the United Kingdom to former greatness.

If it had been one of the Muslim immigrants who had stabbed MP Jo Cox to death while shouting “Allahu Akbar”, it would have been declared as an act of terrorism, but the killer was not Muslim, and the killing was not described as an act of terrorism. The killer was a 52 year-old white man who was screaming “Britain First” as he shot, slashed and stabbed his victim multiple times in the frenzied attack. When the killer was arrested, he told police: “I’m a political activist”, and when he appeared in court he said that his name was: “death to traitors, freedom for Britain.”

Despite the brutal murder and all the political objectives and slogans the killer used to generate fear to support the political aim of getting Britain out of the European Union, the act has not been called an act of terrorism by UK media and politicians. Today, the Daily Telegraph and other UK newspapers are complaining about the swelling tide of political hatred and the use of the murdered MP’s name as a common death threat against other UK politicians and their staff, and yet still the label “terrorism” is not being applied to such politically motivated intimidation. It seems that a non-Muslim can do or say almost anything in the UK without ever being called a terrorist.

 

Dr. Abdullah Robin