Trump re-tweets anti-Muslim videos, draws flak from UK

WASHINGTON/LONDON, Nov 29 

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Britain criticised US President Donald Trump on Wednesday after he retweeted anti-Islam videos originally posted by a leader of a far-right British fringe party who was convicted earlier this month of abusing a Muslim woman.

Jayda Fransen, deputy leader of the anti-immigration Britain First group, posted the videos which she said showed a group of people who were Muslims beating a teenage boy to death, battering a boy on crutches and destroying a Christian statue.

Trump’s decision to re-tweet the videos prompted criticism from both sides of the Atlantic, with some British lawmakers demanding an apology and US Muslim groups saying it was incendiary and reckless.

“It is wrong for the President to have done this,” the spokesman for British Prime Minister Theresa May said.

“Britain First seeks to divide communities through their use of hateful narratives which peddle lies and stoke tensions. They cause anxiety to law-abiding people.”

Reuters was unable to immediately verify the videos and Fransen herself said they had come from various online sources which had been posted on her social media pages.

“I’m delighted,” Fransen, who has 53,000 Twitter followers, told Reuters, saying it showed the US President shared her aim of raising awareness of “issues such as Islam”.

As a candidate, Trump called for “a Muslim ban” and, as President, has issued executive orders banning entry to some citizens of multiple countries, although courts have partially blocked the measures from taking effect.

“Look, I’m not talking about the nature of the video,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters. “The threat is real and that’s what the President is talking about is the need for national security, the need for military spending, and those are very real things. There’s nothing fake about that.”

Politicians in Britain condemned Trump, with Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition Labour Party, describing his tweets as “abhorrent, dangerous and a threat to our society”. US civil rights and Islamic organisations said the posts amounted to an incitement to violence against US Muslims.

“These are actions one would expect to see on virulent anti-Muslim hate sites, not on the Twitter feed of the President of the US,” Nihad Awad, National Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the largest US Muslim civil rights organisation, said in a statement. — Reuters