Bartholomew's Notes

English Defence League leader Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (“Tommy Robinson”) has appeared on Michael Coren’s Canadian Arena TV show, discussing the recent attack on him and how he perceives the local situation in Luton. Yaxley-Lennon’s talking points were essentially a condensed version of a “New Year Message” which was posted on-line a few days ago.

News that Yaxley-Lennon had been attacked appeared just before Christmas on the Gates of Vienna blog, sourced to the EDL:

He was out driving, when he saw a car similar to his wife’s, driven by a blond white girl. The other car flashed its lights so Tommy pulled over.

A group of Pakistani youths wearing knuckle dusters poured out. Tommy was knocked out pretty quickly, and they gave him a good kicking.

He looks pretty beaten up, but no bones were broken, and no eyes or teeth are missing. He had a brain scan this morning. We don’t know the results yet.

He has spoken to The Sun, who asked whether he had called the police. Tommy said there was no point, as a racial attack on a white guy was of no interest to them.

An update to the post has an extra detail:

Message from Tommy: “They were shouting ‘allahu akhbar’ and ‘Merry Christmas, Tommy'”.

In his New Year statement, Yaxley-Lennon adds that his assailants were shouting “this is for our mosque”; the attack took place just after the council announced it was reversing a decision to sell some local land to a Shia Muslim group to build a mosque (the decision had been opposed by a separate campaign led by Yaxley-Lennon’s uncle). He also tells this to Coren, although he revises a couple of other details:

Coren: There were rumours that they were chanting “allah akbar” and “Merry Christmas Tommy” as they were kicking you. Is that true?

Yaxley-Lennon: No, the last thing which I can categorically say I heard was “we’re going to kill you, you white pig”. That was the final thing I heard before I was knocked out.

Yaxley-Lennon eventually did make a complaint to the police, although he won’t give evidence under oath:

where I live… you just can’t go to court and point at people.

According to the North West Infidels, which split with the EDL some time ago, Yaxley-Lennon was in fact assaulted by some local football hooligans as part of an internal dispute; the NWI claims “this is proper info from a good lad”, although no actual evidence is forthcoming. Of course, there are doubtless young local Muslims who would be willing to harm Yaxley-Lennon given the opportunity, either in revenge for EDL insults against Islam or because the EDL is seen as hostile to their community. However, that willingness is more likely to be determined by social circumstance rather than religious imperative.

Yaxley-Lennon makes a number of other accusations in his statements: he claims that police and media are covering up Muslim intimidation, and in his New Year statement he names a particular Muslim police officer as being “bent”. He also claims that a spate of car firebombings incorrectly thought to have been the work of the EDL had in fact been perpetrated by Muslims who were now in jail.

Michael Coren is an enthusiastically sympathetic interviewer, and on his blog he describes Yaxley-Lennon as

an anti-fascist, a supporter of free speech, and someone who is prepared to expose the authentic nature of Islam.

Coren also gives regular air-time to Paul Weston of the British Freedom Party, which has recently entered into an “association” with the EDL; Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer have also been guests on his show.

Coren is a member of the more intellectual end of the Catholic right, and he is particularly known for his objections to homosexuality.

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The Daily Mail‘s Chris Hastings strikes again:

The Palace of Westminster has rejected demands to serve halal meat in its restaurants.

Muslim MPs and peers have been told they cannot have meat slaughtered in line with Islamic tradition because the method – slitting an animal’s throat without first stunning it – is offensive to many of their non-Muslim colleagues.

Some rather basic questions: who is making the “demands”? Who has told “Muslim MPs and peers” that halal will not be made available? And what is the basis for claiming that the reason halal food remains unavailable is that “many… non-Muslim colleagues” find it “offensive”?

Hastings, however, offers only the following:

…The stance has infuriated some parliamentarians who have eaten meat in the Palace’s 23 restaurants and cafes, having been assured that it was halal. 

Lord Ahmed of Rotherham said: ‘I did feel misled. I think a halal option should be made available.’

…However, a spokesman for the House of Lords and the House of Commons confirmed that it was not served in their restaurants.

That’s it. There’s no “demand” here from Lord Ahmed, and the quotes do not support the other claims in Hastings’ article.

The only discussion on the availability of halal food  at Westminster that I can find dates from 2006. The House of Commons Administration Committee produced a report entitled Refreshment Department Services, which in paragraphs 88 and 89 included the following:

Responses to the Committee from sufferers of nut allergies and Coeliac Disease highlighted the difficulty of obtaining basic information on the ingredients of food currently available in RD outlets. Several submissions to the Committee suggested making available a wider and more imaginative range of vegetarian food. Responses from House staff and Members’ staff suggested making halal and kosher food available.

…We recommend… that the Department should examine the feasibility of providing foods to meet special requirements such as gluten-free, kosher and halal diets.

This was based on the following submissions to the committee:

Yasmin Ataullah, Asad Rehman, Lara Sami, Office of George Galloway MP

1. We write on behalf of many Muslim members of staff within the Palace of Westminster with a request for you to consider using halal meat in the Refreshment Department. There are a number of Muslims working within the parliamentary estate, both as House of Commons staff, and as MP’s staff.

2. We would very much like to be able to choose from the entire menu, rather than always having to opt for the vegetarian meals on the menu. I am sure that the four Muslim Members of the House of Commons would appreciate this as well as the many Muslims working within the parliamentary estate.

3. I would be grateful if you would seriously consider catering for the needs of all parliamentary staff by introducing the use of halal meat.

4. I am aware that the Refreshment Department already has arrangements for the supply of halal meat when catering for functions sponsored by MPs. As such, I believe that the introduction of halal meat for our canteens would not be too troublesome.

Mashood Ahmed, House of Lords Computer Officice

My only suggestion is for you to provide more Halal/Kosher food.

A subsequent Response from the Refreshment Department included the following:

Catering for customers with strict religious dietary requirements is more problematic. Both kosher and halal food require separate preparation as well as the purchasing of suitable foods; for strict religious observance this can only be achieved by having separate kitchen facilities and separate equipment for the preparation of kosher or halal foods. This could only be achieved if one of the Department’s venues was specifically designated for this purpose and appropriately qualified chefs engaged. We do not believe that this is a viable option, even in the medium term, and recommend that the Refreshment Department continues to cater for requests for strict kosher or halal meals by buying them in from approved suppliers.

So far as I can see, there has been no official discussion of the issue since then, much less one involving “infuriated” Muslims and non-Muslims finding halal “offensive”.

Catering decisions and policies at the Palace of Westminster are clearly made following consultations and discussions that are made public. Hastings should be able to provide evidence from more recent documents to support the claims in his article – instead, he pads his piece out with irrelevant asides such as that “members of the Church of England have complained that the spread of halal meat was ‘effectively spreading Sharia law’ across Britain.” It looks very much that the Mail is fanning a bogus controversy in order to heighten a sense of discord between Muslims and non-Muslims in the UK.

It should be recalled that Hastings has form as a yellow journalist. He recently whipped up a “BBC uses BCE-CE dating system” hysteria, and before that was responsible for a completely bogus story about how the television series Downton Abbey was being re-edited for American television due to “fear its intricate plot will baffle U.S. viewers”. That story prompted US television critic Jace Lacob to make it clear that he considers Hastings to lack journalistic integrity.

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From the Voice of Russia:

In the late hours of Tuesday [27 December], 10 police officers appeared on Mount Athos. It was rather strange to see policemen in a place where no strangers can be usually met except for pilgrims – the more so because the monasteries on Mount Athos have a special status which makes them to a large extent independent from the Greek government.

Father Ephraim was arrested and taken to a police office in Athens, as if he was not a respectable abbot but a gang boss.

The sight could have been a lot stranger: it seems that the Greek state was respectful enough of the site’s “special status” not to send in any policewomen.

Father Ephraim heads the famous Vatopedi monastery – and for a “respectable abbot” he is particularly astute when it comes to real estate deals:

The abbot is accused of financial embezzlement and fraudulent realty deals. The deals involved exchanging less valuable land for higher-value land which belonged tom the state. But, later, the Greek authorities decided that the bargain was unequal – and are now claiming that, as a result, the state has lost at least € 100 mln.

The land swap has been a source of controversy since 2008, as I blogged here.

Ephraim was in the news a few weeks ago, when a relic from Vatopedi was displayed in Russia – this was the Belt of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and its tour across Russia was organised by the St Andrew the First-Called Foundation. This organisation is controlled by Vladimir Yakunin, a close confidant of Putin, and Yakunin believed that the belt would promote “family values” in Russia. In September, Ephraim spoke at a conference in Austria on the subject of Mount Athos – the conference was arranged by the World Public Forum, which was co-founded by Yakunin, and it had the aim of “protecting” Mount Athos.

The Voice of Russia and Interfax both carry quotes from Sergey Rudov, head of a charity called “The Society of Friends of the Vatopedi monastery”. According to Rudov:

“Staying in cold Russia was a serious trial for him. And when he visited Patriarch Ilia in Georgia, he wasn’t far from dying. Father Yefrem needs constant medical attention. He was questioned for 30 hours in Greece. And they told him during questioning: you’ve been to Russia, you talked to Putin, Medvedev, but they won’t help you,” Rudov said. 

Ephraim met Putin at the end of the tour, and he asked for Russia to assist Greece “under these challenging conditions”.

Rudov adds:

“There could be two reasons behind Abbot Ephraim’s arrest… One is that the EU has now been insisting for a long time that the Athos monasteries should be stripped of their special status and subordinated to the Greek government to a greater extent, because the EU is unhappy about the fact that currently, one needs a special visas to be able to visit the monasteries on Mount Athos. The second reason is that some people in Europe are unhappy about the growing influence of Russians in Greece – mainly because of the close ties between the Greek and the Russian Churches.”

Certainly, the Russian Orthodox Church has in recent years been positioning itself as the natural protector of Orthodoxy in Greece and other countries, and it has sought to sideline the Ecumenical Patriarch, who resides in Istanbul.

The Voice of Russia adds a third theory:

…the Greek government is trying to put press on the Church in an attempt to make it help the Greek state financially – something which Greece, as a country most affected by the financial crisis in Europe, badly needs.

The Friends have created a petition condemning the arrest:

We hereby condemn with abhorrence the judicial ‘’crime’ committed in Athens on the 23rd December 2011, against the Church in the face of Elder Efrem, Abbot of the Great, Holy Monastery of Vatopaidi in theHolyMountain.

The decision to take Elder Efrem into custody was based on hatred and prejudice. This is manifested in the following:

1. The timing of the decision: Christmas Eve
2. The surrounding of the Holy Mountain by armed police forces despite the declaration by the attorney representing the Elder that the latter intended to present himself to the police willingly.
3. The sentence passed is normally given to people who have the intention to repeat the offences accused of.
4. During the preliminary hearing the reason given for the sentence was the Elder’s recent trip to Russia, when he accompanied the Holy Belt of the Most Holy Mother of God. During this visit millions of people, including the President, the Prime Minister and the Attorney General of the Russian Republic came out to greet them.
5. The investigation lasted more than three years and no incriminating evidence has been found.
6. The offence which the Elder is accused of is ‘aiding and abetting’ even though the suspects of this offence have been acquitted.
7. During the last three years of the investigation, the Elder has taken numerous trips abroad and if he had intended to leave the country he had plenty of opportunity to do so.
8. The Elder, as a spiritual figure, is honored and praised worldwide and constitutes an excellent envoy for Greece.
9. The people who have been revealed as the masterminds of the conspiracy against him have been honored with ministerial posts and are attempting to cover up their deception at all costs.
10. In Greece, enormous scandals have been uncovered and established while those responsible are not only walking free but are also given political posts.

We are convinced that the decision is a deliberate political act intending to defame the Holy Mountain and the Church.

Meanwhile, the Voice of Russia reports that:

The Russian St. Andrew Foundation, which organized the coming of Mary’s belt to Russia, has sent its representative to Greece. The representative is already in Athens, and is trying, together with Father Ephraim’s lawyers, to find ways of helping him.

The Foundation also called for protests; Greek Reporter notes:

In its latest announcement, the foundation mentions that “the order and persistence, evident in the persecution of the Athonite elder, allow us once again to assume that the separate litigation between Vatopedi Monastery and the Greek state, constitute a reason to affect the foundation of values of the European community and an attack on global Orthodoxy, the spiritual center of which is Holy Mountain Athos” and expresses his surprise because “Greek judicial authorities ignored the unanimous appeal of the Holy Community of Mt. Athos in support of the priest, and that expressed by tens of thousands of orthodox people in online social networks”.

The announcement of the Russian Foundation concludes with an appeal to the faithful “to show their indignation on the inhumane decisions of the Athens Court of Appeal chamber, and following the example of orthodox citizens in Russia and Cyprus, to organize protests at the Embassies of Greece and the agencies of the European Union in several states”.

A 2008 article by Ioannis Michaletos and Christopher Deliso has further background context, although tending towards the speculative:

…The implication has been raised that Ephraim of Vatopedi seemed to have the ambition of becoming an important behind-the-scenes figure in an emerging ‘Orthodox Vatican’ centered around his own monastery. Its bank accounts were recently found to be in excess of 200 million euros…

By piecing together a variety of off-the-record diplomatic sources and anecdotal material, one can create a patchwork of activities for which the monastery, and the Holy Mountain in general, seem ideally suited.

These activities include major international business deals, high-level, third-party communications linkages, meetings of minds, political intriguing and even espionage. Indeed, rumors of intelligence agencies’ protected ‘safe houses’ on the isolated shores of Athos persist and it would seem that the remote, well-regulated and controlled nature of the place would by nature make it ideal for any kind of activity requiring discretion and silence.

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