British Muslims in Derby are really really upset about plans to restore the historic Florentine Boar statue (boar==pig==haram==must destroy!), and they’ve managed to cow the city councillors into cancelling. Veiled threats were issued, as usual in cases like this: Muslims angry at plan to bring back historic statue of wild pig. (Hat tip: bull.)

FOR more than 100 years it stood proudly as the centrepiece of England’s oldest public park before being decapitated during a Second World War air raid.

Now a row has broken out after plans to replace Derby’s historic Florentine Boar statue were abandoned for fear of offending Muslims, whose religion considers pigs to be ‘unclean’.

A replica of the statue, a crouching wild boar, was intended as the jewel in the crown of a Pounds 5 million National Lottery- funded restoration of the city’s Arboretum Park.

But councillors have called for the proposal to be scrapped amid sinister warnings that the statue would be vandalised or stolen.

The Florentine Boar statue stood from 1840 until 1942 when it was beheaded by a German bomb. But it was last week branded ‘offensive’ during a meeting of Derby Council’s minority ethnic communities advisory committee.

Councillor Suman Gupta, a Labour representative for Derby’s Derwent ward, told the meeting: ‘If the statue is put back in the Arboretum, I have been told it will not be there the next day, or at least it won’t be in the same condition.

‘We should not have the boar because it is offensive to some of the groups in the area.’ The park is in an area known for its large Pakistani community.

Shokat Lal, a community leader, said at the meeting: ‘In Normanton the majority of residents are Pakistani Muslims.

‘I’m not saying we have to lose the boar, but we could put the boar in the city centre so it does not cause offence to people.’ Local historian Christopher Harris told The Mail on Sunday: ‘We are living in a multicultural society and I hope that would include English culture.

‘If the boar had never been destroyed in 1941, these people would have grown up with it and would not have noticed it.

‘Activists have jumped on the chance to make a statement. It is one that damns English culture-But the wild boar is part of Derby’s culture.’ He said a small minority of Muslims with extreme political views had issued veiled threats to the council over the statue.