It's time the LGBT activists obsessed with Palestine took off their keffiyehs and faced down an Islamist ideology that wants them dead: JULIE BINDEL

Across most of the Muslim world, being gay is not a picnic. In Afghanistan, the Taliban imposes the death penalty on anyone convicted of same-sex relations, including public stonings.Saudi Arabia and Iran have also executed large numbers of gay people in recent years, including by public stoning – while several other countries, among them tourist favourites such as Egypt, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, all keep the death penalty for homosexuality on their statute books.When Isis controlled parts of Iraq and Syria during the 2010s, the authorities murdered gay men by throwing them off tall buildings. In Gaza, today, Hamas tortures and executes gay people for 'moral violations'. (Yet Israel, anathema to many Left-wingers, hosts some of the largest and safest gay pride parades in the world.)Predictably, many Muslims who now live in Europe remain implacably opposed to homosexuality. A 2016 poll of British Muslims found 52 per cent believed it should be illegal in Britain.Such prejudices can spiral into murder. In 2022, two people were killed and 21 wounded in a mass shooting at a Pride event in Oslo, Norway, by an Isis terrorist screaming 'Allahu akbar'.And at the weekend, of course, a radical Islamist named Abdul Ballout savagely attacked Berlin’s Pride parade by mowing down a crowd in his van before getting out and waving a blade, thought to be a machete. One woman was killed and at least 29 others were injured. Ballout, who was killed on Sunday following a police manhunt, was a self-described Islamist who tried to join the fake caliphate of Isis. Local authorities have been at pains to call him a 'German citizen', though his background is Lebanese.Although there are millions of tolerant, decent Muslims around the world, radical Islam abhors homosexuality and, in its extreme moments, wants to see gays killed. The Berlin Pride attack left one Polish woman dead and injured at least 29 others (pictured, a makeshift memorial at Brandenburg Gate) Abdul Ballout, a 21-year-old German citizen with Lebanese heritage, was shot and killed by police on SundaySo it might seem odd that huge numbers of 'LGBT' campaigners have in recent years become bizarrely obsessed with Islam. On the same day as Ballout's murderous rampage in Berlin, I attended a 'trans rights' rally in Trafalgar Square as a reporter, where thousands of activists had gathered.Amid the cries of 'Death to Terfs' (women like me who believe biological sex is real) and calls to ‘behead’ Queen Camilla and feminist Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling (after the two posed for a picture), I saw thousands upon thousands of keffiyehs.The tasselled black-and-white scarf, once the emblem of terrorists such as the late Palestinian Liberation Organisation leader Yasser Arafat, is now worn, like a trendy pashmina, to signal one’s Left-wing politics. (The keffiyeh is now so ubiquitous on Pride marches that it wouldn’t surprise me if its motif ended up being added to the increasingly unwieldy rainbow flag.)At this ugly and intolerant demo, I caught sight of ‘Sarah Jane Baker’, a trans-identified male and self-defined ‘anti-capitalist’. Baker is Britain’s longest serving trans prisoner, currently out of jail on licence for the attempted murder of another inmate.Following various medical treatments, this individual now has breasts, and had chosen to expose them on the march to display a slogan, scrawled in red felt-tip pen: 'Free Gaza'.Well, that just sums it up, doesn't it? You don’t have to think too hard to imagine what some 'freed Gazans' would do to a person like Sarah Jane Baker if they ever got hold of them.Inside the Green Party, it’s much the same thing. The leader, populist rabble-rouser Zack Polanski, is openly gay and has danced at (yet another) 'anti far-Right' rally in Trafalgar Square alongside a man wearing leather chaps, and not much else. People wrapped in thermal blankets hug after the Berlin Pride attack on SaturdayYet in a near-perfect illustration of the bizarre alliance between the far-Left and political Islam, the Greens' deputy leader, Mothin Ali, is a strict Muslim who wears traditional Islamic garb, as well the keffiyeh, and whose wife is covered from head to foot in a niqab.Finally, 'Queers for Palestine', the surprisingly large movement of far-Left activists – not all of whom are gay – who support what they see as another ‘oppressed’ minority. As others have pointed out, 'Queers for Palestine' might as well be a sister group for 'Turkeys for Christmas'.But this isn’t a joke any more. Last weekend’s atrocity in Berlin should be the moment the 'LGBTQ' lobby, and the wider Left, recognise their true enemy: radical Islam, and the issues the West now faces having imported millions of people from distant lands who – to put it mildly – hold different opinions on sexual liberalism.Instead, many of these same campaigners are actively allying themselves with radical Islam, in many cases blaming a phantom 'far-Right' for the mounting dangers they face.Incredibly, Labour minister Chris Bryant, who is gay, wrote online after Berlin: 'This horrific event shows why we still need Pride.'Bryant was asked directly by an online commentator: 'What ideology committed this crime? Be honest.' He replied, dishonestly: 'Hatred.'Defence Secretary Wes Streeting said much the same thing, while offering – scant comfort this – his 'thoughts and prayers'.To her disgrace, Labour MP Kate Osbourne went further still, claiming a direct line could be drawn from Nigel Farage’s Reform Party and, in her own phrasing, 'GB News spouting nonsense' to the Islamist attack in Berlin.'We see these patterns emerging across Europe,' Osbourne claimed. 'An escalation of hate and verbal attacks online act as a catalyst for real-world physical violence.' None of them was prepared to state in plain terms what the issue actually is. Radical Islamism, you might say, is the hate that dare not speak its name.As a young woman back in the 1980s, I marched for gay rights. I was spat at, sexually assaulted by men to 'turn' me straight and beaten up more than once.But after a raft of legislation published by both Labour and Tory governments from the 1990s to the 2010s, those rights are now secured. British society has changed immeasurably for the better.So now we need something else. Not more 'Pride', as Bryant and Streeting claim – but a fearless willingness first to name and second to address the problems wrought by the mass importation of the more extreme sections of religious groups that abhor British values of decency and tolerance.There are signs that some people are belatedly realising this. I disagree about many things with veteran campaigner Peter Tatchell. But he was right to say yesterday: 'The Berlin Pride terrorist was a far-Right Islamist. Islamism is religious fascism. It menaces Jews, women, LGBTs and liberal Muslims. Shamefully, much of the Western Left never fights Islamism and the tyranny of Sharia law.'Similarly, a poll in March this year found Reform – still seen as the most pro-British, anti-immigration major party – is by far the most popular with gay men in Britain, way ahead of Labour, the Greens and the Tories.But whatever your politics, it’s high time those LGBT activists put down their keffiyehs and opposed a radical ideology that wants them dead. If they do not, those terrible scenes in Berlin will presage far worse atrocities closer to home.Julie Bindel is a journalist and feminist campaigner.