A Leicestershire city councillor, Graham Partner, is being investigated for distributing a leaflet citing an article by Express columnist, Leo McKinstry, which claimed "victimhood "comes easily" to followers of Islam".

From the Leicester Mercury:

"A Leicestershire county councillor is being investigated after distributing a leaflet which criticised Muslims.

"Earlier this year, Graham Partner - who quit the BNP to sit as an independent - sent out a New Year message to voters in his Coalville division.

"It featured part of an article from a national newspaper which said victimhood "comes easily" to followers of Islam.

"Two county councillors and two parish councillors lodged a complaint, and the county council's standards board is now investigating.

"Conservative Peter Lewis, said: "The leaflet certainly cocked a snook at the county's equality and human rights policies, and as it was issued in his role as a county councillor, it reflected badly, in my view, on the council.

""It certainly seemed to me designed not to build bridges or foster tolerance but to stir up and fire division and hatred around the same period as the EDL march (which took place in Leicester in February). Mr Partner has resigned from the BNP but has clearly retained its combative posture.""

The article in question, by Leo McKinstry, was published in the Express in December 2010 with the opening paragraphs:

"The narrative of victimhood comes easily to followers of Islam. They constantly bemoan the prejudice they have to endure and the oppression they suffer in the bigoted western world, where Islamophobia is supposedly rampant.

"Every terrorist atrocity, every blood-soaked massacre is justified by reference to imagined grievances. But by far the greatest persecutors of other faiths are Muslim hard-liners themselves.

"The great Caribbean writer VS Naipaul once described Islam as "sanctified rage". The proof of those words has been graphically illustrated by a growing catalogue of barbarities committed by Islamic militants against Christians."

Partner was formerly a BNP councillor before he left the party to sit as an independent. More proof, if it were needed, that McKinstry's anti-Muslim bigotry is fodder for the far right.