After former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie tried to distance society from Muslims, society is now distancing itself from him

Ex-editor of the Sun Kelvin MacKenzie had a cheery and entirely non-inflammatory column about British Muslims in Tuesday's paper...

Only joking: it was actually a diatribe based on a new Channel 4 documentary and ICM poll which has generated headlines this week for supposedly getting to the bottom of 'What British Muslims Really Think'.

...the most explosive revelation yet about the divisions in our country between us and the Muslims.

What is clear from the film... is that there is a chasm becoming wider by the day between the followers of Islam and the rest of us.

Using the incredibly divisive language of 'them and us', MacKenzie takes the findings of the poll as definitive proof that British Muslims want a 'state within a state' where Sharia law is practised, men can marry more than one woman and homosexuality is illegal.

The actual stats are not actually that shocking, and are based on a sample of just 1,000 people. Even findings like 52 per cent of those surveyed believe homosexuality should be banned are not that far removed from mainstream British attitudes, or how many Brits viewed the issue not that long ago.

MacKenzie also conveniently leaves out the finding that 86 per cent of British Muslims feel "a strong sense of belonging to Britain" - which is higher than the national average of 83 per cent.

The whole piece is full of clear, irrefutable logic like this sentence, which accuses an entire racial group of bigotry against another racial group:

No wonder the vile Corbynistas are so anti-Semitic as they value the millions of Muslim votes (and their anti-democratic ways) over the 350,000 Jews in our country. Makes you sick doesn’t it.

But because the UK is actually a diverse, intelligent place, you'll be happy to know that the tables have turned.

Far from the fight being 'us against the Muslims', it now appears the battle lines are us vs Kelvin MacKenzie:

indy100 spoke to Nooruddean Choudry, a journalist for joe.co.uk who helped ignite the Twitter backlash against MacKenzie's scaremongering, who said that the column was helping to push a "dangerous" agenda with its racially inflammatory rhetoric.

In particular, he said, it was "particularly galling" that MacKenzie used anti-Semitism to make a point about Muslims.

...The irony being that he used the exact same dehumanising tactics against Muslims as were used against Jewish people in the past.

There are also problems with the poll itself, Choudry added.

I am perhaps most disappointed in Channel 4 and Trevor Phillips [former chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, who helped create the documentary].

Their poll is heavily warped. They asked Muslims who live in areas of more than 20 per cent Muslim population. Most Muslims don't live in such areas. It focuses on introverted Muslim pockets rather than most Muslims in this country...

It is manna from heaven for bigots and hate mongerers.

MacKenzie stresses at the end of his column that he "can't do enough justice to this film" and asks for people to send their thoughts along to kelvin@the-sun.co.uk.

Well...

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