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We the Christian population of this great country England would like the proposed plan to build a Mega Mosque in East London Scrapped. This will only cause terrible violence and suffering and more money should go into the NHS.

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Emails whipping up communal hatred to influence Evening Standard online poll
4-4-2007 214

The Mayor of London today revealed an organised email campaign around an online poll being conducted by the Evening Standard aimed at stirring up communal hatred by spreading entirely false statements about plans for a new mosque in East London. These included a totally untrue claim that the Mayor was planning to spend £100 million of public money on the mosque when there are no plans to spend any public money at all on the mosque.

The campaign was sparked by an online poll in the Evening Standard reprinting an article from last September asking people to vote for whether or not they were in favour of the "£100 million mosque". In fact, as reports in other newspapers have made clear, there are no plans for a mosque on this scale.

Following this the Mayor's Office was alerted to a series of emails being sent out to large numbers of recipients making a series of false claims about the mosque proposals in such a way as to stir up communal hatred. These read:

"Don't know if you have heard about this but Ken Livingstone is planning to use tax payer's money to build an enormous mosque costing an estimated 100M in the docklands. What do you think about it? Wouldn't it be better to spend the money on a new hospital or improved transport facilities?? BIGGER THAN ST PAULS!!! The plan is for the mosque to be so big that people flying in from all over the world for the 2012 Olympics will it see it as the biggest landmark in London , bigger than St Pauls, Westminster Abbey or Wembley Stadium

Take a second to cast your vote in The Evening Standard on-line poll to determine public opinion about whether a mega mosque should be built for the Olympics.

The vote so far is 57 % in favour. It looks like the Muslim community is casting its vote in droves, and as usual the Christians are burying their heads in the sand....

After voting, forward this to as many people as you can. Here's the link:"

One of the emails used to circulate this was from a work address at Jaguar Cars.

Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone said:

`The allegations in these emails are clearly designed to deliberately whip up communal hatred and contain content that is entirely untrue. They are clearly being spread in an organised way for unscrupulous political reasons.

`Factually there is no proposal to use any public money at all for such a mosque; there is no link between plans for a mosque and the Olympics; and, as widely reported, there are actually no plans for a mosque on the scale claimed in the email.

`This email campaign is a disgrace and should be clearly condemned as such. Besides the lies it is spreading for political purposes it aims to stir up hatred between Muslims and non-Muslims’.

The Mayor has written today to Veronica Wadley, Editor of the Evening Standard, asking her to clarify that the paper repudiates the content of the mass email, and asking the Standard to clarify to readers and visitors to the website that the poll will be disregarded as totally unrepresentative.

It has also emerged today that similar false claims about the mosque relating to the online poll are being promoted by the British National Party on their website, describing it as 'the biggest symbol so far of the Islamic colonisation of England' and urging readers to 'Please go to the Standard website and add your own 'No' vote. And please forward this email on to everyone in your address book.

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