"Muslims 4 Ken"

The Daily Telegraph carries a very disturbing article about the Islamic influences on voting patterns in London's 2008 mayoral elections, in an attempt to secure victory for then-incumbent "Red" Ken Livingstone, paragon of a number of Leftist and Islamist virtues:

In an election lost by Mr Livingstone, the Islamic Forum of Europe helped secure massive and unexpected swings towards him in its east London heartland.

In one ward, Spitalfields, his vote share rose from 29.6 per cent in 2004 - an election he won - to 68.4 per cent in 2008, a rise of nearly 39 percentage points.

In every other ward in Tower Hamlets and Newham with a sizeable Muslim population, his vote rose by between 23 and 36 percentage points. His vote in other Muslim and ethnic minority areas of London also rose, but by far smaller amounts.

Mr Livingstone's economic development body, the London Development Agency, had agreed to pay more than £1.3 million to the East London Mosque, controlled by the IFE, and described by critics as hardline.

Emails leaked to The Sunday Telegraph show that a senior LDA official furiously protested against at least £500,000 of this grant, saying there were "major concerns" about the mosque project and "no case" for giving it the money.

However, the official was overruled and the grant was paid.

Part of Mr Livingstone's voting rise will have been due to his opposition to the Iraq war and support for the Palestinian cause, both popular among Muslims.

However, part can be explained by the activities of a group called "Muslims 4 Ken," which The Sunday Telegraph has established was run by the IFE's community affairs co-ordinator, Azad Ali, and an IFE ally, Anas al-Tikriti of the British Muslim Initiative.

Mr Ali is listed on his personal web page as a "team member" of Muslims 4 Ken and on the Muslims 4 Ken site, along with one other person, as a "contributor".

On his IFE blog, Mr Ali has praised a key mentor of Osama bin Laden, described al-Qaeda as a "myth," and justified the killing of British troops in Iraq.

Muslims 4 Ken made a series of false and inflammatory claims against Mr Livingstone's main opponent, Boris Johnson.

It leafleted mosques claiming that Mr Johnson had "expressed his hatred against Islam" and also claimed that he wanted to ban the Koran.

Muslims 4 Ken's website quoted Mr Johnson as saying that "racism is natural" without adding the sentences which followed ("It is as natural as sewage. We all agree that it is disgusting.")

After the election, Muslims 4 Ken boasted that it "mobilised the Muslim community in unprecedented numbers," saying: "We got out the vote."

Electoral officials have also expressed concern, The Sunday Telegraph has established, about dramatic fluctuations in the number of people registered to vote in Tower Hamlets.

In 2008, the year of the mayoral election, the area's electorate was 154,181. The following year, when there were no major local polls in the borough, it dropped sharply, to 148,970.

But in 2010, the year of local council elections and a referendum on switching to a powerful directly-elected mayor in Tower Hamlets, the borough's electorate has shot up again - to 160,278.

This is a rise of more than 11,000 voters, or 7.6 per cent, in just a few months.

Office of National Statistics figures given to the council do show that the population of Tower Hamlets is rising, but only by about 1.5 per cent a year.

IFE activists are heavily involved in campaigning for a Yes vote in the Tower Hamlets mayoral referendum.

Undercover footage taken by Channel 4's Dispatches shows that they are organising to take the mayoralty, with almost total power over the council's £1 billion budget.

One IFE member, Abu Talha, tells the undercover reporter: "The [new] mayor is going to have a lot more control. That's why we need to get someone, one of our brothers, in there. Which we will do, whether it will be brother Azad [Azad Ali] or someone else."

The referendum was granted after a leading IFE activist, Abjol Miah, organised a petition containing the signatures of more than five per cent of the Tower Hamlets electorate, as the law requires.

However, a report by council officers found that almost half the names on the petition were "invalid", including more than five thousand which did not appear on even the expanded electoral register.

A total of 99.3 per cent of the names on the petition are Asian, in a borough where only around 40 per cent of the population is Asian.

The petition contains entire pages of names and addresses written in the same handwriting. Nonetheless, enough signatures were ruled to be valid and the mayoral referendum was granted.

There is no suggestion that Mr Livingstone, Mr Ali, or Mr al-Tikriti conspired to rig votes or register fake electors.

However, investigations by The Sunday Telegraph have established that some of the new voters - albeit in a community where many people have common names - do have the same names as people linked to the IFE. The IFE categorically denied that it had registered fake voters.

The launch of the "Muslims for Ken" campaign came after the East London Mosque, which is closely connected to the IFE, secured at least £1.3 million in funding from Mr Livingstone's City Hall.

They needn't have worried, of course. Evil "Right-wing" Boris Johnson is if anything even more enamoured with Islam than Ken.

The latter seems to see it purely as a means of resistance to the West and its traditional values, whereas the former will often take the opportunity to remind us of the charming tale of his ancestors, one of whom was a Russian-Circassian woman sold into Turkish slavery. How romantic! How diverse and vibrant!

Let us also not forget Johnson's complete and utter betrayal of the conservatives who voted for him over other representatives of the Right - for example, he has backed amnesty for over 500,000 illegal immigrants.

The best part of the article is Ken's response upon having these matters brought to his attention, however:

Mr Livingstone said he could not recollect the project, or whether he had been personally involved in approving the payment. He refused to comment on the activities of Muslims 4 Ken and said: "You are a liar who is stirring up racism."

Yeah. The old ones are the best, eh, Ken?

But then what can one expect from a scoundrel who has built a political career on the most fantastical Leftist nonsense?

At least he stopped himself before he started ranting about Jews and concentration camp guards.