Muscat aide apologises for anti-Islam retweet

The Nationalist Party has condemned a retweet by Glenn Bedingfield, an aide to Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, accusing him of endorsing an anti-Islamic rant on Twitter.

Taking its cue from Malta Independent columnist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who flagged the offensive tweet on Monday, the PN said it condemned the “discriminatory comments that Glenn Bedingfied, the Prime Minister’s personal assistant, posted on Twitter in which he conveyed discriminatory comments against Islam.”

Bedingfield retweeted a tweet by @Islamlie2, a successor to the blocked Twitter account for Stop Islam, an Italian Facebook group that has just 48 likes.

L'unica differenza tra il Corano e Mein Kampf è che il secondo è più "moderato". @gasparripdl @magdicristiano @a_meluzzi @ferrarailgrasso

— Stop Islam 2 (@Islamlie2) February 16, 2015

The tweet, in Italian, read: “The only difference between the Koran and the Main Kampf was that the latter was more ‘moderate’,” suggesting that Adolf Hitler’s manifesto for Nazism, in which he insisted that Jews forcibly be pushed into Madagascar, was more moderate than Islam’s holy book.

“Bedingfield compared Islam to Nazism,” the PN said, “through the implication that Nazism is more moderate than Islam. The current situation regarding religious-linked terrorism is delicate enough. Having the Prime Minister's personal assistant utter such comments, clearly does not help. The Prime Minister should announce whether he agrees with what his personal assistant believes.  If not, the Prime Minister should take action against Glenn Bedingfield and not ignore such a situation.”

Bedingfield has since tweeted an apology: "Apologies if my retweet offended people of goodwill, especially Muslim brothers/sisters who cannot be associated to any terrorist action."

Bedingfield is a former One News journalist who ran unsuccessfully in the 2004 European Parliament elections. He was elected to the EP in a bye-election for Muscat’s seat when the new Labour leader vacated his MEP’s seat to take up a seat in the Maltese parliament in 2009.

Apologies if my retweet offended people of goodwill, especially Muslim brothers/sisters who cannot be associated to any terrorist action

— Glenn Bedingfield (@GlenBedingfield) February 17, 2015

Bedingfield is also the secretary of the Human Trafficking Monitoring Committee.