‘Creeping Sharia’?: The New Twitter Craze

In England there is a small band of right-wing, racist, really rather unpleasant idiots called the English Defence League or EDL for short. Mostly they’re a group of football hooligans and other assorted folks with criminal records who like to bang on about how the UK has ‘gow’n to the dogs’ fostering an image of a UK full of spitfires, dragons, and white people cheerily getting along that never really existed. Indeed, it has recently transpired that they appear to have had some connections to the Norwegian murderer Breivik; all in all, a lovely bunch of people.

One of its founders, Tommy Franks, recently inadvertently started a Twitter craze with the following tweet:

“Welcome to twitter homepage has a picture of a mosque. what a joke #creepingsharia”

Problem is, the picture on Twitter’s home page that many of you may have seen is this building…

…which the more perceptive of you will have realised is not a mosque.

What a burke.

But, happily, this has created a hashtag craze mocking the stupid Franks really rather wonderfully. Here are some of my favorites taken from a Guardian article:

• Alcohol is not available at my children’s primary school #creepingsharia Marchell Revanner K

• Tommy Robinson is a anagram of Allahu Akbar #creepingsharia #nobodychecksanagrams Adam

• Apparently, British high-school students are being coerced to learn algebra. Yet another example of #CreepingSharia! Ed Gerstner

• The weather in Britain is always Sunni or Shi’ite. #CreepingSharia ???? ??????

• I skipped breakfast this morning. Clearly fasting subconsciously. #CreepingSharia Eóghan

• you have to take your shoes off before getting on a bouncy castle #creepingsharia Keith Watermelon

• The sand from the beach has infiltrated my sandals #creepingsharia Asian Forum

by David Roberts

David B Roberts is a Phd student at Durham University, UK focusing on Persian Gulf international relations, with a particular interest in Qatar's foreign policy. He has lived throughout the Middle East, speaks Arabic with varying degrees of success and is the creator of www.thegulfblog.com

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