THE British National Party's tactics are as predictable as they are vile. These bigots feed on fear and hate. So they seized on the September 11 atrocities as a hell-sent opportunity to recycle their racist views.

This is a well-worn strategy. In the 1930s, Oswald Mosley manipulated pre-war anxiety to raise support for his fascist black shirts. BNP leader Nick Griffin will learn, just as Mosley did before him, that a defining quality of the British people is tolerance - of all except fanatics.

Every right-minded recipient of the BNP leaflet calling for a campaign against Islam will find it abhorrent. The argument it espouses is not only racist, but incoherent.

To suggest that British Muslims share any responsibility for the attacks on the United States is as logical as saying that all Christians support IRA terrorism. Nick Griffin, we are told, has "singled out passages from the Koran which show the Muslim faith to be less than the peaceful one they would have us believe". Even if we trust this man to be capable of a faithful translation of the Koran, this means nothing. After all, parts of the Old Testament are hardly a pacifist's guidebook.

Muslim leaders here and abroad have unequivocally condemned the terrorist assaults on America, in which more than 100 Muslims lost their lives.

As one York Muslim emphasised on this page last Thursday, Islam is a religion of peace - a word which the BNP does not understand.

Its leaflet only serves to highlight the BNP's failure. Britain is a multi-cultural, multi-faith society, and much the stronger for it.

We hope the police will study the leaflet with a mind to prosecute its publishers if it incites racial hatred.

The rest of us should put the leaflet in the place where all the BNP's warped sensibilities belong - the rubbish bin.

Updated: 10:29 Monday, October 15, 2001