Is the latest wave of anti-Muslim violence in the UK the result of attempts by Eastern European immigrants to become culturally integrated? This is the amazing claim being made by some experts on immigration following the arrest of several Bulgarian students for a series of fire bomb attacks on Mosques in the Home Counties. “These arrests just back up our research which indicates that, increasingly, immigrants to the UK, particularly those from Eastern Europe, feel that the best way to be accepted in an environment apparently hostile to them, is to adopt what they assume to be typical British attitudes and patterns of behaviour,” explains Ralph Crackles, senior lecturer in Human Geography at Newbury University. “Which, if they are to believe our popular media is the hatred and persecution of supposedly ‘alien’ cultures such as Islam. Burning down a Mosque, they think, will make them admired and accepted members of the local community.”

Crackle’s theory seems to be backed up by statements made by another Bulgarian immigrant to the Kent Weekly Farmer’s Exchange and Advertiser. “Before we came to England we were well aware of the mistrust of foreigners – you believe we’re all rapists, thieves and murderers,” the twenty year old, who wishes to remain anonymous, but who is currently a catering student at a Tonbridge further education college, claimed. “We had seen your government campaign telling us that we were not welcome, that English people would spit in our food and urinate in our beer. So we read your newspapers and watched your TV to learn what it is that you British like to do and how we could ingratiate ourselves by doing that thing. It was quickly obvious that you like to hate anyone different, it makes you feel more secure. We saw which groups you hated most of all and realised that if, when we were in England, we hated them more, we would fit in and not be persecuted ourselves.”

Whilst the student denies any involvement in the Mosque burnings, he does admit to having victimised some other minorities in order to better fit in to his new environment. “I know how all these disabled people are lazy scroungers, claiming welfare to support their evil lifestyle choice, so I slashed the tyres of the free car one of them was using at your taxpayers expense. Everyone in my local pub cheered when I told them this and the landlord bought me a beer, I don’t think he urinated in it,” he told the newspaper. “I also put dog mess through the letterbox of an old lady in my street – I know that old people also are benefits cheats, not working but receiving money from the state.” Nevertheless, he refuses to condemn his fellow students for their anti-Islam campaign. “It is clear from you media that these Muslims are the most evil people imaginable. Not only do they worship some insane pagan god, but their holy text is a blasphemous travesty of the Bible which tells them to murder all white people,” he explained. “When they aren’t murdering people in the street at the behest of their preachers, they are grooming underage white girls for vice rings! They also wipe their backsides with pictures of your Queen, but only, apparently, when your Union Jack is unavailable!”

The Mosque burnings – which, although they caused damage, inflicted no casualties amongst the congregations – are only the latest attacks committed against religious minorities by Eastern European immigrants. Earlier this year a Ukrainian student was arrested on suspicion of murdering an elderly Muslim man and waging a bombing campaign against Mosques in the West Midlands. Ralph Crackles fears that, with the UK’s political discourse increasingly dominated by xenophobic anti-immigrant rhetoric, such incidents will only become more common. “All the main political parties seem to be vying with each other to see who can demonise immigrants the most,” he muses. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see David Cameron punching an immigrant out in the street in the next Tory Party political broadcast. Is it any wonder that some of these immigrants are prepared to kill to fit in?” The actions of the Bulgarians, at least, seems to have had a positive effect on the way in which they are perceived, with cheering crowds awaiting their prison van outside Maidstone Crown Court when they arrived for a bail hearing. Indeed, their bail was subsequently posted by an English Defence League council candidate, following a whip round at several local pubs.

At least one far right group has declared a moratorium on its campaign against Eastern European immigrants. “It’s clear that we’ve been severely mislead as to the true nature of these people,” Johnny Frabb, Vice President of the League of St George, recently told a local radio phone-in in Essex. “If we’d known that they were a bunch of right-wing racist nutters, prepared to resort to extreme violence in the cause of cleansing the Aryan homelands of interlopers, then we would have been welcoming them with open arms years ago. However, successive UK governments kept telling us that they were a bunch of commie bastards.” Frab also announced that his movement would, for a limited period, be offering half-price memberships to immigrants from former Warsaw Pact countries. The nameless Bulgarian student, whilst still basking in his new found popularity, doesn’t blame the British people for their initial hostility to him and his countrymen. “If huge numbers of your English youths were to go to Bulgaria, getting drunk, being offensive, urinating and vomiting in the streets and assaulting our women, we would also be hostile to them,” he told the Kent Weekly. “But we wouldn’t be so restrained as you – shouting abuse from a distance, sharing your hatred of the immigrant with your like-minded friends at rallies and writing offensive newspaper articles Oh no, we would be handing out severe beatings with iron bars, slashing faces with our knives, sending your boys home in boxes. Really, you English are far too tolerant. Believe me, if you came to my country and started persecuting our hated minorities – the Jews, the homosexuals, Greeks – we would not be congratulating you. Instead we would be giving you a good kicking and throwing you out of the country – such persecution should be the preserve of local people only!”