Perhaps British Home Ministry apparatchiks watched what happened in New York City this week. If so, they must not have watched it on CNN.
What led the UK to allow the police to ban this annual march? For one thing, its sponsor is a propaganda arm of the Iranian regime. The Jerusalem Post figures that's enough, but there's more, of course:
The UK's Home Secretary has approved the Metropolitan Police's ban on the upcoming annual Al Quds march and any associated counter-protest marches on account of elevated risk and potential for terror support.
The Al Quds Day Rally is set to take place on Sunday, March 15, during Ramadan. The rally is a well-known part of an international day of demonstrations established in 1979 by then-Islamic supreme leader Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini with the aim of mobilizing opposition to Israel and expressing solidarity with Palestinians.
It is organized by the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), a group believed to have extensive ties to the Islamic regime in Iran and Iranian-backed extremism.
In other words, this parade has always been a propaganda exercise for the Iranian mullahs and their tyrannical regime. It goes well beyond an expression of "solidarity" with the Palestinians. The march offers support for Iran's terror proxies Hezbollah and Hamas, which have conducted massacres and terror operations in hot wars with Israel for the last two and a half years, not to mention attacks around the world on Jews and Britain's allies for the last five decades.
This year, the British government couldn't ignore the hypocrisy. The IHRC likely forced them into action:
The IHRC recently condemned the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The group described him as a leader who “resisted oppression and stood on the right side of history”. ...
Calls to ban the march first intensified after comments by the courts minister, Sarah Sackman, who told LBC radio on Tuesday: “Those expressing support for the malign regime in Iran and the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] and its proxies have no place in our society. They shouldn’t be on the streets of London calling for hate and hostility against this country.
“That’s thoroughly anti-British and I expect the police and the home secretary to take the necessary action against those people.”
The New York Times reports that the IHRC has objected to the decision on the basis of ... wait for it ... free speech. No, I am not kidding:
In a statement, the organization described itself as an independent non-governmental organization, and said it “strongly condemns” the decision to ban the march on Sunday.
“If it was not clear already, the police have brazenly abandoned their sworn principle of policing without fear or favor,” the group said in a statement, adding: “We are seeking legal advice and this decision will not go unchallenged.”
The group also said it would be going ahead with the event, but in the form of a static protest.
Ahem. The IHRC objects to being denied the right to march in the streets just a few weeks after the man they claimed to have been "on the right side of history" literally ordered the massacres of tens of thousands of Iranians for marching in the streets. Their commitment to Western values of liberty and free speech seems quite transactional and limited to ... well, just themselves.
I'm not the only one noticing this, either:
Are we allowed to do anything about this, or would that be against Labour party policy https://t.co/EFaf1PhWBd
— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) March 11, 2026
Should the UK have banned the march? It's a tough call. As long as the demonstration remained peaceful, it would speak for itself. In the US, the government at every level would have had a very difficult time blocking this kind of march based on the content of the speech, although it's worth noting that the British government relied on security concerns rather than prior restraint. We have seen localities and universities use that strategy to shut down conservative speech in the US, usually by forcing speakers and orgs hosting them to spend absurd amounts of money on security. A free society is strong enough to allow the radicals to self-identify in public, and also strong enough to shut down and punish violence and direct incitements to violence.
However, I'm not losing sleep that the mullah toadies of the IHRC have to stand still to spew their hypocritical evil rather than commandeering the streets of London to do so this year. Let's hope by next year that the mullahs won't be able to fund the IHRC or any other propaganda efforts in the West.
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