The Sun Urges Brits of all Faiths That Wear Union Jack Hijabs to Stand up to Extremists.

The Sun's cover yesterday saw them rallying their friends in 'all faiths' that wear hijabs to stand up against ISIS. So, that's erm, Muslims then.

Tell you what, if I was a British Muslim, I wouldn't waste time 'uniting against ISIS' to appease a bunch of blowhards demanding 'whose side are you on?' In fact, if I was previously planning on publically denouncing Muslim extremists (where and specifically how to do the denouncing, The Sun doesn't explain) I sure wouldn't do it now. The Sun's crass cover image and self-righteous bullying in the guise of 'friendly urging' certainly isn't a fair way to encourage anyone. It looks a lot more to me like a fait accompli to justify the unpleasantness that will be unleashed upon the brown people of Britain if they don't do as we say. It gives a new meaning to the phrase 'veiled threat'. It's that drunk guy at the pub that asks you why you've got them tunnels through your ears, or starts slavering over your girlfriend, but thinks it's OK because he's smiling when he does it. And after beating someone up he wakes up in the morning as says 'well, I was just having a laugh, but he had to get lippy'.

If I was a British Muslim, I'd feel pretty unwelcome in my country over the last few years and damn sick of the white 'silent majority' going on about me, not quite silently enough that I can't hear. I certainly wouldn't be waiting for them to tell me what it is they want me to do for them, in order to disprove my allegiance to a terrorist organisation I never pledged allegiance to. The fact that this is 'expected' of Muslims by The Sun and its white readers - on their own utterly arbitrary terms - is typically pig-headed of a newspaper whose lack of credibility or self-awareness has been exposed time and again... and yet for some reason people still draw comfort from its bile. These are people who have shown no friendship, empathy or tolerance of Muslim communities before this and have no real frame of reference for their culture or faith, other than what they contrive and distort. And now it's all 'we're mates right? We've always been mates. Well here's what I need you to do'.

A British person of all faiths, yesterday.

Tell you what The Sun, How about we urge Brits of all colours to stand up to racists? How about ridding ourselves of the 'Britain First' culture that reacts to abhorrent behaviour from a Muslim with a racial slur, then reacts to the same behaviour from a white person with the word 'chav'? A culture you and the tabloids exacerbate, aggravate and profit from? Then we can have an adult conversation about Islam, warts and all. Without us having to tolerate these printed hypocrisies day in, day out, people might be able to distinguish the signal from the noise. The we can begin to talk through the specifics of what place misogynistic, illiberal and violent perversions of Islam have in this country without tripping over ourselves to keep things tolerable for the thousands upon thousands that go about their day, run their businesses, eat their tea, and worship Allah. I look forward to that day.

It goes back to the very simple statement I made to people complaining about the 'kid gloves' approach to Muslims in the Rotherham situation; without racism, there is no anti-racism. The reason legislation and political correctness puts ugly red tape all over this country is basically an attempt to redress the the balance of a system historically rife with prejudice, bigotry and, yes, flat-out racism. And that Catch 22 is significantly perpetuated by tabloids that rake this muck up out of everyday people's bins and serve it back to them in the morning. This situation is the utter mess we're left with. This is why we can't have nice things. Not because of Muslims refusing to denounce terrorists we've erroneously and arrogantly assumed stand for 'them' in the first place.