The Sky News headline was “UKIP leader Gerard Batten criticised by Nigel Farage for endorsing anti-Muslim rally,” and the article reported:

Gerard Batten told a right-wing protest that Muslim child grooming gangs have been covered up and are a “social scandal.”

Why “right-wing”? What makes it “right-wing” to protest the covering-up of Muslim grooming gangs? Why isn’t it just a “protest”? Consider the difference in reception if the very first sentence had read: “Gerard Batten told a protest that Muslim…” These tendentious epithets have their effect; when placed at the very beginning of a piece, they can be especially effective.

UKIP leader Gerard Batten has been criticised by Nigel Farage for endorsing an anti-Muslim rally which turned violent in Sunderland over the weekend. Gerard Batten marched alongside the Democratic Football Lads Alliance (DFLA) as they clashed with police who were barricading the march from a separate group of anti-racism protesters.

They — those “Football Lads” — must consist of racists, of course, else why would those showing up to oppose them be called “anti-racism protesters”? And the very words “‘Football Lads” further suggests they were all rowdy hooligans and lager louts, to be despised by all decent people. Forget their views; they are not our sort.

Sky News was the only news organisation at the demonstration, where three people were arrested, including one protester who swung a Union flag at a police officer on horseback.

You are led to believe that the violence came only from those right-wing racist hooligans. There was one protester who swung a Union flag. So we can assume he was among the “Football Lads.” But what about the other two arrested? We don’t know whether they were on the side of those protesting the grooming gangs, or belonged to the group of self-styled “anti-racists” who were protesting those protesters. Perhaps that information is not given because reality did not conform to the desired narrative, where only “racists” commit violence and need to be arrested. It would be interesting to find out exactly who was arrested, and why. One suspects that if all three had been “Football Lads,” that would have been reported.

Mr Batten later addressed the crowd telling them the “political and media establishment” had covered up the issue of Muslim child grooming gangs, which was “the biggest social scandal in English history.” He said: “The overwhelming number of people responsible for this kind of industrialised gang rape and sexual exploitation have been proved to be Muslims, of the Islamic religion.”

Both of these charges are true. Batten has said nothing false, but he has said something that damages the image of Islam, and that itself deserves, in today’s Britain, to be called “racist” and dismissed by all decent people.

He went on to claim that the Prophet Muhammad was “a war lord who took many sex slaves, which is permissible under Islamic culture. He married a six-year-old and consummated the marriage when she was nine years old.”

All perfectly true, though too seldom stated.

“So the age of consent for Islamic culture is a lot more elastic than it would be in western culture.” Islamic scholars say the prophet discouraged slavery and Muslims do not allow sex before marriage.

Bravo for Batten stating correctly, and uncompromisingly, that Muhammad had married Aisha when she was six and consummated the marriage when she was nine years old.

But look at how Sky News then promptly provides a Muslim defense against Batten’s charge. First, to refute Batten’s claim that Muhammad was “a war lord who took many sex slaves, “Islamic scholars say the prophet discouraged slavery.” That is flat-out false. There is no evidence for this. Muhammad himself owned, bought, and traded slaves. It was this which legitimized slavery in Islam for 1400 years. There never was a Muslim William Wilberforce. Slavery was ended in Muslim lands very late, and only under terrific Western pressure. Even today, slavery continues to exist, despite its being formally outlawed, in Mauritania (600,000 slaves), Niger (600,000 slaves), Mali (200,000 slaves), and in Libya, where new slave markets have just opened in the last few years.

Along with a scandalous lie about slavery, those “Islamic scholars” cited by Sky News answer the story about Aisha with a claim that “sex before marriage” is forbidden in Islam, as if that constituted an adequate defense of Muhammad’s having sexual intercourse with Aisha when she was nine and he was fifty-four. Since Aisha was married at six, we are expected to be satisfied that it was perfectly lawful for Muhammad to have sexual intercourse with her when she was nine. As long as the rule against sex before marriage wasn’t violated, Muhammad’s behavior was islamically correct. This missing-the-point response — the point being, for all decent people, not that she was married but that she was nine years old, for god’s sake, when Muhammad forced himself upon her — is supposed to satisfy critics of Islam.

Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage warned that Mr Batten needs “to be careful what company he keeps.” Mr Farage told Sky News: “My concern with all of these groups is that that argument spills into an argument against an entire religion.”

Yes, there is an argument to be made against “an entire religion.” It is an argument based on both what is contained in the texts — Qur’an and hadith — of Islam, and on the observable behavior of Muslims. If we read those texts, and consider Muslim behavior over the past 1400 years, we discover that “an entire religion” has been permanently at war with us. That war, called Jihad, has no end until Islam dominates everywhere. Nigel Farage, who once was himself critical of Islam, now spends more of his time criticizing the critics of Islam, like Gerald Batten. He deeply disappoints.