'British Jews should back English Defence League'

EDL develops ties with American Tea Party movement; invites US Rabbi and Tea Party activist to speak on Sharia in London, reports the 'Guardian.'

By JPOST.COM STAFF
EDL rally (photo credit: Lion Heart Photography)
EDL rally
(photo credit: Lion Heart Photography)
The English Defence League (EDL), a British far-right group opposing the "Islamification" of the West and which is in contact with the US-based Tea Party organization, has invited Tea Party activist and senior Rabbi Nachum Shifren to speak about Sharia law in London this month, the Guardian reported on Sunday.
The EDL's links with the Tea Party movement surfaced a day after roughly 1,000 EDL supporters demonstrated in Leicester, which boasts a large Muslim population, according to the Guardian.
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The Tea Party is expected to be an influential player in the upcoming midterm elections in the US.
Shifren, who is running for senate in the midterm elections, said Britain's Jewish community should support the EDL. "The Jewish community is paralysed with fear, exactly what most radical Muslim agitators want," he said. "The people of England are in the forefront of this war – and it is a war. One of the purposes of this visit is to put the kibosh on the notion in the Jewish community that they cannot co-operate with the EDL, which is rubbish."
Devin Burghart, vice-president of the Kansas-based Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, was also quoted in the Guardian story, commenting on the Tea Party's increasingly anti-Islamic views.
"As we move farther and farther away from the Tea Party origins, that were ostensibly around debt and bail-outs, social issues like Islamophobia are replacing that anger, that vigour. The idea that there is a war between Islam and the west is becoming commonplace," he said.