UPDATE: Britain First’s video taken down by YouTube (see below).
Britain First and Tommy Robinson have been filmed appearing to flee in the face of an ‘Extremely British Muslim’.
The far-right group and the former leader of the English Defence League (EDL) were in Birmingham, a city they have dubbed the “Jihadi capital of Britain”.
Britain First leader Paul Golding and his deputy, Jayda Fransen had spent Tuesday afternoon walking the streets of a predominantly Muslim area of the city brandishing large white crosses, handing out leaflets and shouting “Jesus be with you”.
Fransen and Golding tell the camera they are “very proud” to be holding the cross during Holy Week despite previously being condemned as “un-Christian” by every single Christian denomination in the UK.
An edited video posted by the group shows them being attacked with eggs in a white van and leaving Birmingham “in haste because we were surrounded by about 30 Muslims... and it got violent very quickly”.
But another video broadcast live on Facebook at the time tells a slightly different story as to why they left in such a hurry.
Nizar Dahan and his colleagues had just arrived back in Birmingham from Mosul in Iraq where they were carrying out humanitarian work for the Human Relief Foundation.
He told The Huffington Post UK: “We just saw out of the corner of our eyes some people holding really big crosses.
“At that time we only saw Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen from Britain First and we shouted out the window [of our car] ‘we want to speak to you guys, we want to have a discussion’ and they said ‘yeah come over’.”
“We told them that we’re the people you should be speaking to if you want to have a discussion or a debate or question people about Islam and what Muslims do in our line of work.”
The video shows Robinson holding a microphone and talking civilly to the group, none of whom are throwing eggs or acting violently.
Dahan said: “Tommy was very eager to speak, he actually wanted to stay and speak to us but the Britain First guys, when they saw there were people speaking with logic, it wasn’t for them.
“The Britain First guys got a bit agitated and pretty much forced Tommy in the van and drove off.”
With Dahan was Waseem Iqbal who appeared in an episode of Channel 4’s ‘Extremely British Muslims’.
He posted on Facebook: “This is what happens when the #EDL and #BritianFirst goons bump into an #ExtremelyBritishMuslim.
“After totally destroying them on facts about terrorism one of them said ‘it’s the guy from Channel 4, get in the van’.
“And then they run off.”
Dahan says he doesn’t know who threw the eggs but that two Muslims were also hit.
Robinson later told The Huffington Post UK he and Dahan have arranged to meet in the near future for a debate.
Britain First has not responded to a request for comment although they did later release a video that completely contradicted their earlier post.
In a further development on Thursday, the video had been removed from YouTube for “violating YouTube’s policy on harassment and bullying”.
In it they show that far from fleeing 30 violent Muslims, they did indeed leave whilst Dahan was trying to find out where they were driving to so they could continue their discussion.
It’s been a big week for Birmingham and the far right - last weekend saw a demonstration by the EDL gloriously overshadowed by one photograph of Saffiyah Khan staring down the group’s leader, Ian Crossland.