Ukip leader defends Islam ‘death cult’ description

Acting Ukip leader Gerard Batten has defended his description of Islam as a “death cult” and claimed a “significant minority” of Muslims are extremists who want to be martyred.

London MEP Mr Batten, who took over at the head of the crisis-hit party after Henry Bolton was ousted on Saturday, said Islam “glorifies death”.

He said Muslim migrants coming to the UK should reject the “dark age ideologies which many of them bring with them” through a literalistinterpretationofthekoran.

In an interview Mr Batten did not rule out running for the party leadership on a permanent basis and insisted it still had a role to play on the national stage by making sure Brexit supporters were not “betrayed”. Defending his “death cult” comments, written in a blog shortly after the 2017 Westminster terror attack, Mr Batten said: “Anybody that cares to look at the history of Islam over the past 1,400 years will see it is true.”