Time To Stop These Double Standards!

Muslims in the UK are often accused of not doing more to integrate into the wider society that they live in. However, sometimes, the wider society I feel does not do more in bridging the gap between the disillusionment felt by many Muslims from a varying array of strands in society. If the inequality continues to be perpetuated by the wider society at large then the gap that already exists will continue to prevail.

Yesterday a former British National Party (BNP) candidate, Robert Cottage, was jailed for two-and-a-half years. His crime was that he had stockpiled a hoard of chemicals, which according to initial Police reports were "the largest haul of chemicals of its kind discovered in someone's home in the country". It was also alleged during the trial that he wanted to kill the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

Of course Cottage's barrister argued that they would not be used to maim or kill but instead be used as some sort of "thunder flash style bangers" and the judge was too readily to give him the benefit of the doubt, summing up:

"It is important to understand that Cottage’s intention was that if he ever had to use the thunder flashes it was only for the purpose of deterrents."

However, contrast this to some of the sentences handed out to high profile cases involving Muslims in recent years:

Andrew Rowe was JAILED FOR 15 YEARS (later commuted to 10 years) for having "details of how to fire mortar bombs and secret codes to facilitate terror attacks."

Or the four Bradford university students sentenced this week for upto three years because they had been "possessing material for terrorist purposes."

Or the protagonists behind the 2004 Financial buildings plot who were all sentenced to more than 15 years in prison even though "the group had no funding, vehicles, or access to bomb-making equipment" at the time of their arrest.

Even holding a placard is deemed more dangerous than the actual hoarding of chemicals after "Mizanur Rahman, 24, Umran Javed, 27, and Abdul Muhid, 24, were each jailed for six years for soliciting to murder after telling a crowd to bomb the UK".

In this day and age you can even get banged up, deported, your name sullied and your career in ruins just because you passed on a sim card to a relative!

Robert Cottage should be grateful that his faith is of a persuasion other than Islam and that he was granted trial by jury - for if the authorities had their way, Muslim offenders would just be locked up and the keys thrown away. Such hypocrisy will not go unnoticed. Parity cannot be achieved on an unequal footing, no matter how hard they stamp their feet!