"That's the way that this wicked, vicious faith has expanded through a handful of cranky lunatics about 1,300 years ago," Griffin said

LONDON, July 16 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) -  Police will consider Friday, July 16, what action to take against members of the British National Party (BNP) after they were filmed calling Islam "wicked" and confessing to assaults on Muslims.

The BBC expose brought furious reactions from Muslims and the government, whose leader in Parliament said the BNP is "a vile party of Nazi thugs".

It may also lead to criminal prosecutions, Reuters expected.

In secretly recorded footages in the northern town of Keighley , BNP leader Nick Griffin - who recently hosted French National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen - rails against the Qura’n and acknowledges his views are legally dangerous.

"That's the way that this wicked, vicious faith has expanded through a handful of cranky lunatics about 1,300 years ago until it's now sweeping country after country," he said at one point.

He told his audience they should stand up for the party or "they (Muslims) will do for someone in your family.

"I will get seven years if I said that outside," he adds.

Blowing Up Mosques

Other footage in "The Secret Agent" shows one BNP member expressing a wish to blow up mosques with a rocket launcher and to machine-gun worshippers with "about a million bullets."

Another member tells how he put dog faeces through an Asian shop's letterbox, while a third describes how he beat up a Muslim man.

"I'm kicking away ... it was fantastic," he says.

Police in West Yorkshire where filming took place were waiting to see the program to decide whether to press charges.

"We will always prosecute where we find evidence of anyone being involved in racially motivated crime," a spokesman said.

"Nazi Thugs"

"This is a statement of the vilest kind by a vile party of Nazi thugs," Hain said

The comments put the NDP under a heavy wave of criticism from all parties and the Muslim community leaders.

The government's leader in parliament Peter Hain said the BNP was an organization with long-standing criminal connections.

"This is a statement of the vilest kind by a vile party of Nazi thugs and the sooner we confront them and beat them the better," he told legislators of the BNP remarks caught on TV.

The comments in the documentary were also condemned by all parties, the BBC News Online said.

Unmasked

Leaders of Britain 's nearly two million Muslims - already worried about a rise in race hate since the September 11, 2001 attacks - said the program unmasked the BNP.

"It has tried for a false image of respectability. Yet under the surface lurks the same hatred of the foreigner," said Inayat Bunglawala, of the Muslim Council of Britain.

The Islamic Human Rights Commission called for the BNP to be banned, comparing its "hate-filled propaganda" with that which preceded ethnic cleansing in the Balkans in the 1990s.

It is more worrying that the BNP’s anti-immigration stance has won it a handful of council seats, mainly in poorer areas with large ethnic populations.

But it remains on the fringe of politics and is largely ostracized by media and mainstream parties, Reuters said.

The BNP responded to the expose by expelling the two members who admitted assaults and vowing to discipline the third.

But Griffin refused to apologize, saying his comments were selectively edited to put him in a bad light and challenged authorities to prosecute him.

"If (Home Secretary David) Blunkett wants to put me on a show trial about whether we're entitled to warn about the dangers of Islam, I will be absolutely delighted," he said.

BNP spokesman Phil Edwards added that most members were respectable members of the community. "You can't judge a political party by two or three yobbos," he said.

BBC reporter Jason Gwynne obtained his material over six months after infiltrating the BNP with the help of a former local leader who became a mole on behalf of a campaign group.

The statements came a few weeks after British Prime Minister Tony warned against stigmatizing Muslims, naming the BNP.

He warned against allowing "unnecessary tension" to develop between ethnic communities, which eh said could be exploited by parties like the far-right party.

"Those are areas particularly where political parties like the BNP can come in and exploit those tensions," Blair said.

British Muslims have repeatedly complained of maltreatment by the police and the stop-and-search operations  under the Terrorism Act for no apparent reason other than being Muslims.

More than 35,000 Muslims were stopped and searched last year without reason, with fewer than 50 charged, whereas before the 9/11/2001 attacks only around 2,000 Muslims were stopped and searched, according to a recent report.

Blair said that concerns about terrorism since the 9/11 attacks had added a "new dimension" to race relations.

The British government has recently embarked on an intensive PR campaign to improve its relations with the Muslim community, which felt being discriminated against.

Muslim organizations have recently embarked on a nationwide anti-terror campaign  to "isolate and stop tolerating those spreading hatred against the country using the name of Islam."