Mayoral Candidate Livingstone Pledges To Make London "A Beacon Of Islam"

Ken Livingstone, who was London's mayor from 2000 until 2008, when the Conservative Party's Boris Johnson became the city's first populace-elected mayor, is the Labour Party's candidate for that office.  The election is on 3rd May.

Ken's an atheist.  He's a Socialist.  He doesn't like Israel very much at all.  And apparently - as the Jewish Chronicle reports - he told some of his Labour colleagues just recently that Jews are too rich to vote Labour, an alleged statement that has prompted a letter of protest to Labour leader Ed Miliband from a number of Jews who support the party.

Ken Livingstone's courting the Muslim vote - and how!

Never mind that certain aspects of Islam sit uncomfortably with secular democracy and with the equality of the sexes.  Ken has pledged to make London "a beacon of Islam".

Soeren Kern, Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group, explains:

'Speaking to Muslim worshippers on March 16 at the North London Central Mosque, one of the most hardline mosques in Europe, Livingstone pledged that if elected, he would "educate the mass of Londoners" about Islam.

...."I want to spend the next four years making sure that every non-Muslim in London knows and understands [Mohammed's] words and message. That will help to cement our city as a beacon that demonstrates the meaning of the words of the Prophet."

Livingstone's electioneering tactic may earn him the support of Muslim voters in London. But by speaking at the North London mosque, Livingstone has also succeeded in reviving long-standing suspicions that he is closely linked to Islamic fundamentalists.

The North London Central Mosque, also known as the Finsbury Park Mosque, has a well-established reputation for being a center for radical Islamism in Britain. The mosque was once controlled by Abu Hamza al-Masri, an Egyptian jihadist who is now in prison in Britain for "instigation to acts of terrorism." The Finsbury Mosque is currently being run by the Muslim Association of Britain, an Islamist organization tied to the Muslim Brotherhood as well as the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

One of Livingstone's main links to radical Islam is through an organization called the Islamic Forum of Europe

(IFE), an Islamist group dedicated to changing the "very infrastructure of society, its institutions, its culture, its political order and its creed … from ignorance to Islam."

The IFE is especially active in the East London borough of Tower Hamlets. Also known as "The Islamic Republic of Tower Hamlets," the area is brimming with extremist Muslim preachers, the Tower Hamlets' Taliban, who are seeking to impose Islamic Sharia law on large swaths of the British capital.

The Tower Hamlets' Taliban regularly issue death threats to women who refuse to wear Islamic veils. Neighborhood streets have been plastered with bright yellow posters declaring "You are entering a Sharia controlled zone: Islamic rules enforced." And street advertising deemed offensive to Muslims is regularly vandalized or blacked out with spray paint....'

Read all of Soeren Kern's illuminating (and alarming) article here 
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/2967/ken-livingstone-london-islam
Hat tip: reader Shirlee