An LGBT+ pride parade took place in the Walthamstow district of London on Saturday. At some point, a Muslim woman clad in a full burka was recorded shrieking at a male LGBT activist, who wore a rainbow flag as a cape.
The woman yelled, “Shame on you! God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” She continued to repeat “Shame on you, shame on all of you. You despicable people, you shameless people.”
As a policeman tried to come between the two, she continued shouting.
Over the weekend, Yusuf Patel, a counter extremism practitioner, posted the video on twitter. It can be viewed below.
Disgusting homophobic abuse at those on Waltham Forest Pride today.
No matter what form hate comes in, we must stamp it out and say no to all forms of hate! Also, very importantly we cannot call out one form of hate but be silent/complicit on others. @GalopUK @stonewalluk pic.twitter.com/kDAFoAb8Vw
— Yusuf Patel MBE (@YusufJP_) July 27, 2019
Patel appears to assign blame to the Muslim woman and he is probably right. All signs point to it and the majority of Muslims oppose LGBT+ groups. He tweeted, “Disgusting homophobic abuse at those on Waltham Forest Pride today…No matter what form hate comes in, we must stamp it out and say no to all forms of hate! Also, very importantly we cannot call out one form of hate but be silent/complicit on others.”
Patel told a reporter from The Independent he was “extremely disheartened to see such intolerance in my local area. We know there are growing hate incidents of antisemitism, anti-Muslim hatred and LGBT+ hate.”
What’s a liberal to do in a case like this, where both parties involved belong to protected identity groups?
Although it appears that the Muslim woman initiated the dispute, the video begins as the woman is already yelling at the activist. There is no definitive indication of who may have initiated the conflict or what caused it. Would the mere sight of a homosexual or a transgender trigger such anger? Possibly.
The local newspaper, The Metro, reported that as the activist walked away from the woman and the policeman, he said, “We still love you, you will not shame me.”
Stella Creasy, a member of the liberal Labour Party, represents the district in Parliament. She tweeted that she was “Gutted to see this and clear such hatred isn’t acceptable anywhere let alone in our home town – proud that many from all faiths and none today including Islam joined the Waltham Forest Pride march to show Walthamstow really does mean welcome.”
Although this confrontation did not include violence, police are investigating it as a potential hate crime.
A spokesperson from the Metropolitan Police said:
We are aware of footage circulating on social media of abuse directed at those taking part in the Waltham Forest Pride event and enquiries are taking place. Abusing someone because of their sexual orientation or gender identity is a hate crime and we would encourage victims and those who were there when this took place to come forward.
If you have been verbally or physically abused, harassed or attacked in any way by someone because you are or they think you are LGBT+ please report these crimes to the police.
I don’t know how they would ever be able to identify the woman because women do look rather alike in their burkas. In fact, I wrote a post last summer about the uproar following a comment by Boris Johnson, the newly minted British Prime Minister, that women dressed in burkas look like letter boxes. They do actually.
Hate crimes are on the rise in the UK. According to PJ Media:
Reported hate crimes on the basis of sexual orientation rose by 27 percent to 11,638 between 2017 and 2018, while hate crimes against transgender people rose by a third to 1,651 in the same period, The Independent reported. Religiously-motivated bias incidents — which the paper said were mostly directed at Muslims — rose by 40 percent to 8,336. Evidence is not required to report a hate crime.
The increase in the hate crime rate may have something to do with the UK’s enthusiastic embrace of political correctness in recent years, which seems to dwarf even that of the US Democratic Party.
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