This is the third speech sent from the EDL demo in Stoke-on-Trent by ICLA. The name of the speaker was not included with the text:
As a Black man I stand here to say that the English Defence League is not a racist organisation.
I have known many of these people for years and have participated in previous demonstrations. Racism is simply not part of their policy or reflected by their membership.
My presence here gives the lie to the accusation by many media outlets and anti-racist organisations that the EDL is a front for racist organisations in this country. I would not be here if it was.
The EDL is supportive of my interests in promoting harmony between races and people of colour. I see the EDL as defending my interests as a black man to live in a society where skin colour does not play a part in how society functions. As Martin Luther King jr. said many years ago in his famous ‘I have a Dream’ speech: ‘one day [our children will] live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
The EDL’s stand against Sharia law and radical Islam is a stand against a supremacist ideology masquerading as a religion which says that Muslims are better than non-Muslims and that Muslim men are the best of the lot.
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This distinction based on what a person believes is no less evil than a distinction based on colour.
My conscience, that is what I choose to believe, is as much a part of me as the colour of my skin. If I choose not to embrace Islam I am no less a man because of it. And from what I understand of Islam I would say I am much better off if I do NOT submit to Allah!
But an Islamic society would mistreat me, as a non-Muslim, in the same way as a white racist society would treat a black slave.
‘Kaffir’ is the Islamic word for non-Muslim; and it is simply the Islamic version of the word ‘nigger.’
Black men and women have come too far and suffered too much to replace one form of slavery with another. We will not be mistreated nor do we wish to mistreat others.
I will not put up with it and neither should this nation!
I say: No to racism, no to sharia!
As of this writing, there are no current MSM articles available about the Stoke demo. The latest reports coming to me via skype indicate that there is a large police presence in Stoke right now. That’s all the news I have so far.
There is a live feed of the demo at the EDL site.