As the leader of the controversial English Defence League prepared to speak to supporters in Toronto over the Internet on Tuesday night, activists delivered a message of their own.
“EDL go to hell,” demonstrators chanted on the street outside the Toronto Zionist Centre where Tommy Robinson, leader of the British anti-Islamist group, was to address about 50 supporters.
The protesters blocked the street in front of the centre until pushed back by police. At least two demonstrators were arrested. Eight officers on horseback kept a close watch on the remaining protesters.
The “support rally” for Mr. Robinson was organized by the right-wing Jewish Defence League under the banner “stop political Islam,” but Canada’s largest Jewish organization opposed the event, citing the tactics of the EDL, known for demonstrations that often degenerate into violence.
“Islamic fundamentalism is a real threat. But fighting it with generalized hatred against Muslims, as does the EDL, is only a recipe for fuelling more conflict,” said Bernie Farber, CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress.
“We join with all the leading British Jewish organizations in condemning the intolerance and violence that the EDL represents. It has never been the Canadian way to promote vigilantism.”
The Toronto rally is believed to be the EDL’s first foray into Canada since the group was formed in 2009 in response to demonstrations by militant Islamists in Britain. The town of Luton, Bedfordshire, where the EDL started, has a large Muslim population and has been linked to several terrorist plots, most recently December’s suicide bombing that targeted Christmas shoppers in Sweden.
Mr. Robinson, 27, whose real name is Stephen Lennon, told Toronto radio station AM640 last week he was taking a stand against “Islamic extremism” and “Islamism, which we feel is getting out of control.” He said radical Muslims were not integrating into British society and were hostile to other communities. “Our whole culture is being abused -- it’s being walked all over and the Islamic community don’t do anything against the extremists.”
The Toronto support rally comes as the EDL is trying to forge international links with like-minded groups in Europe and North America. “The EDL needs international support to help it support the values of freedom that Britain was once famous [for]. Now is the time to step forward and stop political Islam,” reads a flyer on the JDL website.
But critics argue the EDL is anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant, and that its demonstrations often descend into street violence. “The English Defence League is a far-right extremist organization,” reads an open letter signed by two dozen activist groups, among them the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid and the Canadian Arab Federation.
“The EDL has organized violent street marches that target Arab and Muslim people,” it says. “They are part of an alarming rise in fascist, racist and neo-Nazi organizing in Europe over the last few years, including attacks on Muslims, immigrants and Roma people.”
The rally and counter-rally in Toronto in some ways mirrored a scenario that has been unfolding for the past two years in the U.K., where the leftist United Against Fascism has been clashing with the EDL. Across the street, a second group of demonstrators held placards reading “No To Islamophibia” and “No To Violence Against Muslims.”
“The EDL are a racist group,” said Weyman Bennett, the UAE’s joint secretary. “They are kind of a racist populist group that is seeking to benefit from the new racism against Muslims.”
Mr. Bennett said the EDL’s attempts to present itself as opposed to Islamist extremism rather than Muslims was “a bit like the Ku Klux Klan saying they’re not against all black people.... This is an organization that’s trying to lead pogroms in this country, really. They’re trying to build up an atmosphere where they can scapegoat Muslims in the same way Jews were scapegoated in the 1930s.
“Obviously, they use the kind of stuff that’s taking place now around the war on terror and all that question in order to give themselves some legitimacy, but nevertheless at the end of the day really what you’ve got is a group of like-minded thugs with an ideology that’s warped or debased to say the least.”
Mr. Robinson was scheduled to appear in a London court on Wednesday to face allegations he assaulted a police officer. He was arrested in November after trying to disrupt a demonstration by radical Muslims who burned poppies and denounced veterans on Remembrance Day. His supporters said prosecutors dropped the case on Tuesday.