LONDON, 20 April 2005 — Muslim protesters disrupted a press conference where leaders of Britain’s main Islamic group, the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), were discussing the country’s May 5 general election.
Some 15 men, most of them in the late teens and early 20s and two of them hiding their faces with headscarves, burst into the event yesterday at the Central London Mosque, where the council was unveiling a voting guide for the estimated one million British voters who are Muslims.
Council Secretary-General Iqbal Sacranie suspended the press conference for 15 minutes as one of the protesters shouted: “We are here to condemn you and your organization.” The protesters, who said they were from a group called the Saviour Sect, distributed leaflets declaring that leaders from all of Britain’s political parties were “shayaateen (devils), crooks and criminals”.
“Voting is an act of apostasy,” one organizer in his 20s, who declined to give his name, told AFP. The group said they discouraged British Muslims from voting, and accused the MCB — an umbrella organization representing more than 400 Muslim groups in the country — of serving as the “eyes and ears” of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government.
Some 10 police officers were at the mosque, but did not intervene. The men left after a half-hour interruption, jostling organizers and hitting Sacranie in the face on the way out. Sacranie later denounced the group as extremely marginal.
The MCB, often quoted in the British media, did not back one party for the May 5 poll but published a list of 10 questions that Muslim voters should ask of their candidates on issues like immigration, anti-terror laws and education.
