“Stop pandering to the Islamist extremists”
So says Ed Husain, in the Evening Standard:
For example, this week, just days after the 7/7 anniversary, London’s Olympia will see a massive, four-day event sponsored by the London Development Agency, a Ken Livingstone commitment to his friends. Called IslamExpo, the event seems ostensibly harmless and is sure to attract tens of thousands of young Muslims.
Journalists and academics, non-Muslim and Muslim, will speak at the event to lend it a veneer of respectability. But closer examination of the programme reveals something else. The most frequent speakers at this event are advocates of suicide bombing. The directors of Islam Expo Limited, as registered at Companies House, include well-known supporters of clerics who provide theological support for suicide bombers.
Azzam Tamimi, a director, has repeatedly expressed his belief that suicide bombings are martyrdom operations, and lead to paradise in the next life. Another director, Kathem Sawalha, was named as a co-conspirator in a 2003 indictment brought by US federal prosecutors in Chicago against Hamas activists in the US. According to the indictment, before Mr Sawalha moved to London in the early Nineties, he was a Hamas leader in the West Bank. Why are such men being allowed to organise and repeatedly address young Muslims in London?
Their endorsement of martyrdom operations in Tel Aviv makes it theologically possible to attack innocents in London and New York. The suicide bomber who seeks his place in paradise, as promised to him by clerics such as Yusuf al Qaradawi (hosted by Ken Livingstone), sees Brits and Israelis as one thing: kuffar, or infidel.
If you doubt my words, ask the innocent people at university campuses in Pakistan about how Islamists control - through violence and intimidation - their secular Muslim student opposition. Or ask those who live under the tyranny that is Hamas in Gaza. If you still want evidence, then read the writings of the founding father of Islamism, Sayyid Qutb, and digest his view of non-Muslims and Muslims as distinct races and peoples.
Mr Sawalha is the man who is presently threatening me with a libel suit. Tellingly, he does not dispute the revelation in the 2006 Panorama documentary and in a number of court documents, that he is a senior Hamas activist. Yet, somehow, Sawalha thinks that it is improper to imply that a member of a genocidal racist terrorist organisation is an anti-semite.
Ed Husain’s arguments are spot on.
It is a huge relief that, finally, there is a better level of understanding of the manner in which really vicious Islamist groups, with a murderous and totalitarian agenda, have disguised their origins, in order to present themselves, falsely, as moderates.
I think that we’re in the process of seeing a shift in the strategy of these clerical fascist groups.
During the first phase, which I think is now coming to an end, the clerical fascists hid their identity. When the Muslim Association of Britain was identified as the British franchise of the clerical fascist Muslim Brotherhood in The Times, Anas Altikriti issued the following half-hearted protest:
MAB reserves the right to be proud of the humane notions and principles of the Muslim Brotherhood, who has proven to be an inspiration to Muslims, Arab and otherwise for many decades.
We also reserve the right to disagree with or divert from the opinion and line of the Muslim Brotherhood, or any other organization, Muslim or otherwise on any issue at hand.
Similarly, the Jamaat-e-Islami aligned leadership of the Muslim Council of Britain went ballistic when Panorama identified their closeness to Mawdudism: but then blew it all by claiming, unconvincingly that Mawdudi’s description of the Islamic state that he wanted to create as bearing - “a kind of resemblance to the fascist and communist states” - was quoted “out of context”.
Now that the disguises of the prominent UK Islamist groups have fallen away, it is difficult for them to present themselves as a moderate and mainstream voice, and an appropriate partner for government. There’s a near certainty, now, that any publicly funded project, or political event, involving an MCB or MAB connected individual will be quickly picked up by the newspapers: who will ask why a purveyor of vicious sectarian politics has been favoured in this way.
It is even worse than that for the Muslim Brotherhood. The documents disclosed during the Holy Land Foundation trial demonstrated that this organisation has been pursuing a strategy of setting up a series of front groups, with innocuous sounding names - some posing as cultural associations, some as civil liberties outfits - with the aim of fundraising and advocating for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. They did themselves no favours when they described their aim, thus:
The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ’sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.
Oooh, what a giveaway!
So, the Islamist front groups are going to have to find a new strategy. So far, two of them have emerged.
Inayat Bunglawala seems to be following the ersatz ex-jihadi route. Banished from the corridors of power, he is now trying to play the penitent in the hope of being invited back. Accordingly, the man who once circulated the works of Osama Bin Laden has now started writing ambivalent articles opposing book burning, speaking up for the Ahmadiyyah and supporting evolution against creationism. Good for him. Of course, you’ll never hear him say a word against Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood, or Jamaat-e-Islami: because, actually, he’s still a supporter of their politics.
The Muslim Brotherhood front groups are likely to take a slightly different direction. My guess is that they’ll now give up on denying that they’re the Muslim Brotherhood. Instead, they’re likely to start representing themselves as the moderate wing of Islamism, the only guys who know how to stop Al Qaeda. “We’re the Middle East’s next big thing”, they say. Work with us, or else you’ll have to negotiate with Bin Laden”. This is the line the Muslim Brotherhood been pushing to the foreign policy establishment, with the help of the likes of Robert Leiken and Alistair Crooke.
I’d support a foreign policy strategy of building informal channels of communication with terrorist organisations, without any of the illusions peddled by the Conflicts Forum bunch. However, I am utterly opposed to the mainstreaming, in British political life, of organisations run by men with will known links to clerical fascist, theocratic, and terrorist organisations.
Beyond a shadow of a doubt, this is the route that the Muslim Brotherhood will pursue next. Under Ken Livingstone’s administration, they enjoyed considerable success in pushing this line. They were aided in doing so by Detective Inspector Bob Lambert, and his “Muslim Contact Unit”:
The aim of the Muslim Contact Unit, set up in 2002, was to avoid the mistakes made during the IRA campaign of alienating the Irish community, and to work with credible Muslim figures to isolate and counter those prepared to support terror attacks. Lambert points as an example to the crucial role played by prominent Islamist activists, such as the British Muslim Initiative leader Azzam Tamimi, in taking back Finsbury Park mosque in 2005 from supporters of Abu Hamza, now awaiting extradition to the US on terrorism charges.
“The government approach is increasingly to lump all Islamist groups together”, the special branch veteran says. “But Islamists can be powerful allies in the fight against al-Qaida influence. Our experience shows they can be the levers that help get young people away from the most dangerous positions.”
Bob Lambert has now retired. His Muslim Contact Unit strategy of putting the Muslim Brotherhood in the driving seat, in effect delegating to them the task of ‘keeping troublesome Muslims from blowing themselves up’ is a public policy disaster. The government needs to be opposing the attempts of these violent hatemongers to corrupt a generation of young men and women: not facilitating it. Lambert’s strategy needs to be retired as well, and for good.
That is why it is so important to publicise the fact, as Ed Husain has done, of the links between the British Muslim Initiative - which is running IslamExpo - and Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood. It is as if a celebration of English culture were being run by Combat 18.
I look forward to fighting the various Muslim Brotherhood front groups out in the open, stripped of the pretence that they are merely a religious, cultural, or human rights group. The pedigrees of their activists need to be stripped bare. Those who team up with them, fund their projects, and speak on their platforms, should do so in the full knowledge that they are supporting an organisation which targets terrorist attacks on innocent civilians abroad, settles its political disputes by murdering its opponents, and proposes to create a theocracy in the Middle East.
My only concern is that, when the Muslim Brotherhood is prevented from achieving its aims in the United Kingdom by subterfuge and sleight of hand, they’ll turn to terrorism over here. Unlikely? That’s what the security services thought of Abu Hamza and his ilk.
Comments
| 9 July 2008, 10:46 am |
David, this is a straight question: do you think Al Jazeera is a MB front organisation, or something like that?
| 9 July 2008, 10:54 am |
Benji
There are a number of Arab and Muslim commentators who have stated that Al Jazeera is close to the Muslim Brotherhood. I really couldn’t say whether it was established as a “front organisation”, or whether it has merely been “hijacked” by the MB.
The Islam Channel in the United Kingdom is also pretty close to the Muslim Brotherhood, and has played an important role in promoting MB activists.
| 9 July 2008, 11:01 am |
I’d support a foreign policy strategy of building informal channels of communication with terrorist organisations:
What about a similar domestic policy, as advocated on Peter Oborne’s programme by an ex police chief?
| 9 July 2008, 11:02 am |
“My only concern is that, when the Muslim Brotherhood is prevented from achieving its aims in the United Kingdom by subterfuge and sleight of hand, they’ll turn to terrorism over here.”
I agree of course if we had not let them in the first place then we would not have to worry.
If we believe that the UK should control immigration by only letting people in who are a benefit to the UK. Then why not say only people who do not want an Islamic state should be allowed in ? Would we let KKK members come and settle here ?
| 9 July 2008, 11:04 am |
Cambridge dictionaries still use the stuffy old-fashioned definition of “martyr”, ie:
a person who suffers greatly or is killed because of their political or religious beliefs, and is often admired because of it
Someone ought to tell them the meaning has been altered and is now something like “a person who commits mass murder because of their religious beliefs, dying in the process, and is often admired because of it”.
| 9 July 2008, 11:13 am |
Ami
I’ll make it clearer that I’m opposed to the adopting of domestic Islamists.
| 9 July 2008, 11:18 am |
Good post David T. But the problems between Islam and democratic politics are far greater than those thrown up by the violent Jihadists or those like the Muslim Brotherhood, et. al. who adocate a gradual, peaceful, imposition of the reign of god on Earth through the Caliphate. The Islamophile British media are rather quiet on the increasing persecution of Christians, notably Christian preachers, in a range of countries which are said to be ’secular’ Muslim state, but which nevertheless give a privileged role to Islam in their constitutions. Secularism in many lands means that legislation and law are not run by the Ulma. Not that Islam is absent from the state.
Turkey gets some, limited atttention (but it is rarely noted that in fact there Sunni Islam is in effect endorsed and controlled by a government Ministry -effectively opening the way for discrimination against non-Sunnis, heterodox Muslims and non-Muslims). The AKP has not adabonded its aim of Islamising Turkey, and in the vanguard of puritan and discriminatory initiatives. In Algeria, where Islam is the ‘religion of the state’, one can see worse actions.Reactionary family law (which Algerian feminists vigorously protested against) has been introduced along (modified) Sharia lines. I did not pick up a British report on the two Arab Christians sent to gaol last week in Algeria, where Islam is the ‘religion of the state’. Imagine the furore if British Muslims were sent to prison for preaching…
Algeria does have a secular, predominantly leftist, left, which receives support in the Francophone world. It appears the British Islamophiles prefer to turn a blind-eye to just how intolerant even ‘moderate’ forms of Islamicism (named as such because it is political practice and a private matter of piety). Those interested in just how bad all forms of law and government may be, even only partially inspired by the Sharia, can read the secularist Algerian daily, le Matin. notably this article (published this week): Algérie-Débat : Le prosélytisme peut-il justifier l’intolérance religieuse ? (can proselytism justify religious intolerance?) which outlines the reactionary effects of giving political status to Islam, and asks pertinent questions:
The daily is full of material on this topic.
| 9 July 2008, 11:20 am |
That should have read Ulema, the community of religious ’scholars’ etc.
| 9 July 2008, 11:23 am |
Does IslamExpo ALWAYs fall on the weeken after July 7th?
If so, is it deliberate?
| 9 July 2008, 11:30 am |
Does IslamExpo ALWAYs fall on the weeken after July 7th?
Yes.
Not sure if it’s deliberate though.
| 9 July 2008, 11:30 am |
David T, your opposition to adopting domestic Islamists has always been very clear. What I am asking is what do you think of the ex police chief (who was very involved in the 7/7investigation and aftermath, afair) who says we have no option but to speak to Islamists here. He seemed to be advocating the informal channel type communication, which is somewhat short of “adopting”. I thought he was misguided.
| 9 July 2008, 11:32 am |
Yes, we should speak to them
We should say:
“It is very clear what you’re up to. You’ll get no help from us. We will be opposing you, actively. Moreover, we’ll be watching you very closely to make sure that you’re not breaking any laws. If you do, you’ll be arrested and prosecuted”.
| 9 July 2008, 11:36 am |
What we should not say is, “here’s the red line, and as long as you don’t cross it, you are more than welcome to do your thing! Now how do you have your tea?” etc.
That approach was tried and failed in the 1990s. The position of the red line has shifted since then, but it’s still no sort of strategy.
| 9 July 2008, 11:43 am |
David T I commend you on a brilliant post and analysis. I always welcome something that exposes MAB/MCB as the Islamists who seek to disrupt our society with their politicval Islam and so co-opting ALL Muslims as if they agree - so drwaing so-called Islamaphobia - which then allows the Islamists to say “See, I told you the West is Islamaphobic”.
Now we can distinguish between Islamists and Muslims can we now adopt the term “Westernphobia” for what we (the vast majority) get back. I believe it was Leo McKinstry who coined this word in a recent article in The Express.
| 9 July 2008, 11:51 am |
Point of Order:
Shouldn’t it be “Westernophobia” ?
Grammatically incorrect as it may be, it just sounds better.
| 9 July 2008, 12:15 pm |
“Westernophobia” is fine by me.
Does anyone else remember this:-
About 4 years ago the Sunday Times published an item that suugested the Government had discussed through channels emanating through the MCB that Britain would avoid suicide bombing as long as they backed-off from dealing with the Islamists that Melanie Phillips wrote about in Londonistan.
This made MCB an essential interface between Muslims and the Government. That covenant was destroyed by 7/7 and ever since MCB’s stock has fallen to zero.
Can anyone explain why Iqbal Sacranie deserved a knighthood? Was it another sop to the Islamist in the UK. “Look how well Muslims are welcomed - we’ve knighted one” seems to be the formula.
Strange that it seemed co-ordinated with awarding a knighthood to the Chief Rabbi at the time as if Sacranie held a similar position within the Muslim community.
With major articles by Husain, McKinstry and Phillips in mainstream newspapers then are we starting to fight back against the label “Islamaphobia” and against “Islamists”.
London funds Islam Expo and I hope that next year Boris stops it. This year is too late to cancel it. The most number of anti-Western Islamists under one roof in the UK! I have NO objection to an event celebrating Islam but I do have an issue when it also incorporates known anti-Western Islamists in its mix and organisation.
| 9 July 2008, 12:56 pm |
The most number of anti-Western Islamists under one roof in the UK!
One would be tempted to ask where one could hire a fully-armed and laden A-10 Thunderbolt to perform a much needed public service.
| 9 July 2008, 1:10 pm |
There is a massive poster for Islam Expo outside London Bridge.
It is strange to think that two years ago I would not have had the faintest idea about the really rather murky and dubious nature of the event and its organisers.
Glad to see it is slowly starting to come out into the open.
| 9 July 2008, 1:23 pm |
“One would be tempted to ask where one could hire a fully-armed and laden A-10 Thunderbolt to perform a much needed public service.”
Or how about:
“Last week, Martyn Gilleard, a Nazi sympathiser in East Yorkshire, was jailed for 16 years. Police found four nail bombs, bullets, swords, axes and knives in his flat. Gilleard had been preparing for a war against Muslims. In a note at his flat he had written, “I am sick and tired of hearing nationalists talking of killing Muslims, blowing up mosques and fighting back only to see these acts of resistance fail. The time has come to stop the talking and start to act.”
If the police are monitoring this site, I think they might want to talk to ‘Maven’. If they haven’t already, that is.
| 9 July 2008, 1:30 pm |
I agree with Mark T that it is a good thing that the murky connections behind the organisers of this event are being publicised more widely.
I have no problem with religious groups having lifestyle events after all the Christian and Jewish population has done them for years.
Where I do have a problem is the Islam expo’s content and how much will be genuine religious lifestyle content and how much will be covert publicity and networking for the Islamofash?
A Jewish or Christian event should rightly be able to accept criticism if there was wrongdoing and this should also apply to Islamic events.
| 9 July 2008, 1:39 pm |
The British Muslim Initiative are of course those cynical manipulators who published the leaflet during the elections about Boris Johnson banning the Koran if elected. Absolutely disgusting people. It’s a great shame, as a reluctant Ken voter, that this was not more heavily repudiated by Ken.
I’m inclined to agree with Maven that the Mayor shouldn’t fund this next year unless it cleans its act up. In fact, I’m inclined to question why on earth the state should fund something of this sort in the first place. Can they fund an atheism expo for me, with examples of atheist cooking, dress and products? I don’t see why such things as Islam Expo should not succeed or fail on the basis of purely commercial realities. The only thing I’ve been to at Olympia at all recently-ish was Erotica either last year or the year before. I rather doubt that received any public funding.
| 9 July 2008, 1:53 pm |
Morgoth not Maven. Easy mistaka-da-maka.
| 9 July 2008, 1:54 pm |
Can they fund an atheism expo for me, with examples of atheist cooking, dress and products?
Not without Altikriti bleating about the ‘gods’ of secularism.
| 9 July 2008, 2:04 pm |
Yes. But it seems that the fact that more people shag than pray is a major disadvantage when it comes to funding these sorts of things. I guess what I need to do is carve out a sufficiently distinct minority identity, and then convince people I am being victimised by wailing about it. And then I might get a publicly-funded expo for me and my kind.
I think I have it, actually. A ZanuNuLab expo. Definitely a minority, and everyone hates us. Sorted.
| 9 July 2008, 2:15 pm |
It costs £12 to get in so it can’t be wholly state-funded. Anyway if anyone’s going I can recommend Café del Mundo for lunch. It’s opposite Olympia and they do a lovely crispy bacon and avocado baguette, although that might not be suitable for some attendees.
| 9 July 2008, 2:50 pm |
I am indeed. How about a Channel Islands Expo? It would be pretty rubbish, but I would get the opportunity to eat some Jersey Wonders and some bean crock, I guess. Subsidised bean crock - that’s the life. I think I’d still need to make a case for being part of a victimised minority rather than just a minority, though.
I guess I could say it was a way of promoting positive images of Jersey in the face of the clear victimisation inherent in the fact that everyone thinks we’re all bankers or paedophiles. Or both. And you know, if it doesn’t happen, then, well, some Islanders are a hot-tempered lot. If you get my meaning. Nudge nudge wink wink.
I think I’ve pretty much got the modus operandi there for a successful new career as a community leader, yes?
| 9 July 2008, 2:52 pm |
A very informative comment on Islamism and religious freedoms by Andrew Coates above.
The ‘good’ gushing thoughts of some Anglo islamophiles can mean death to some people, you know.
| 9 July 2008, 5:15 pm |
Ben , you could try dogging. It’s a minority interest and is disliked by daily Mail readers.
| 9 July 2008, 5:46 pm |
“Muslim coverage in the media is negative” shocka!!!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/7495384.stm
Now, if ONLY someone could find a positive spin on Islamist Terrorism……..
| 9 July 2008, 6:12 pm |
Can we detangle the legitimate exhibits at IslamExpo (the largest Muslim Expo in the country) and the front that organises it, please?
The majority of Muslims (and non-Muslims) who go will not be giving support to the Muslim Brotherhood, they are going for a nice day out with their families.
| 9 July 2008, 6:53 pm |
Ben: Didn’t know you were from Jersey! We’re neighbors…sort of. Although I’m sitting here in the USA I do my “banking” in Jersey for reasons you can well imagine. I do trust the rapacious tax and spenders in government so……
I chose Jersey, by the way, as I judged the belligerent independence of it’s people to hold them less likely to be cowed by US government pressure to change it’s banking laws in ways that the geographically next-door places like the Caymans are not. Plus, having spent three years in Ipswitch in the USAF during the 60s/70s I have fond memories of the UK and the Channel islands and try to get back as often as time allows.
| 9 July 2008, 7:00 pm |
PS: If radio Veronica still existed I’d have parked myself and my money there and played music and drank rum all day to a fair thee well/cows come home, well, until I went eventually deaf or my liver gave out.
| 9 July 2008, 11:16 pm |
Ah useful idiot Ed Husain -making a mint by demonising any Muslim who dares call for Muslim rights here or abroad. Wheres his support other than Islamophobes/zionists?
“Why are such men being allowed to organise and repeatedly address young Muslims in London?”
because we have freedom of speech.If someone suggested banning the BNP and its hateful rhetoric against Muslims or banning Narenda Modi responsible for the genocide of Muslim in Gujurat from entering the UK Ed and HP would be frothing about “freedom of speech”
“Their endorsement of martyrdom operations in Tel Aviv makes it theologically possible to attack innocents in London and New York. The suicide bomber who seeks his place in paradise, as promised to him by clerics such as Yusuf al Qaradawi (hosted by Ken Livingstone), sees Brits and Israelis as one thing: kuffar, or infidel.”
A grevious lie-Qardawi condemned 7/7 and 9/11 vociferously. To disagree with the tactics employed against occupation is fair enough - To say land stolen and under occupation is the same as London and New York is blatantly dishonest. Is London land which has been occupied?
“If you still want evidence, then read the writings of the founding father of Islamism, Sayyid Qutb, and digest his view of non-Muslims and Muslims as distinct races and peoples.”
Distinct people yes- distinct races? when did Qutb every say that? How would he when as HP continually reminds us (except when talking to the Express) Muslims arent a race. Looks like Ed should put up or shut up.
Andraste
“Does IslamExpo ALWAYs fall on the weeken after July 7th?
If so, is it deliberate?”
Its part of the Protcols of the elders of Eurabia
| 9 July 2008, 11:23 pm |
“My only concern is that, when the Muslim Brotherhood is prevented from achieving its aims in the United Kingdom by subterfuge and sleight of hand, they’ll turn to terrorism over here. Unlikely? That’s what the security services thought of Abu Hamza and his ilk.”
Absurd. The MB use democracy to achieve their aims- they havent resorted to terrorism in Egypt despite far worse opression.
Abu hamza consider(ed) democracy idolatry and groups like the MB who involve themselves in it as non-Muslims. Its bizarre for HP to demand Muslims take part in the political process instead of using violence then condemn them for doing so as the MB do.
David T views things through the eyes of a warped zionist -the MB is anti-israel so he is anti-them- he is unable to see that Ed Husain has no credibility with the Muslim community and people who speak up for the Palestinians do. What is good for the Muslim community isnt whats good for Israel.
For all his claimed support for democracy David T would rather the British govt talked to self-appointed zionist puppets like Ed Husain than groups who actually represent much more accurately Muslim views on this subject.
Its simply a return to Muslims as colonial subjects who say what we want them to
| 9 July 2008, 11:39 pm |
Migsuk makes an important point. It is indeed obviously true that the vast majority of people attending the Expo have no truck with (or pay any attention to) the nonsense espoused by the organisers.
Virgil xenophon - I am from Jersey, but live in London these days. A charming little island though, I’m sure you’ll agree. I go back occasionally to see the family. Good to see you are supporting the Jersey and UK economies.
| 9 July 2008, 11:55 pm |
@me
“A grevious lie-Qardawi condemned 7/7 and 9/11 vociferously. To disagree with the tactics employed against occupation is fair enough - To say land stolen and under occupation is the same as London and New York is blatantly dishonest. Is London land which has been occupied?”
-do you think Spain is occupied land?
| 10 July 2008, 12:18 am |
[I]Does IslamExpo ALWAYs fall on the weeken after July 7th?[/I]
I’m guessing future dates for Eid ul-Adha, but IslamExpo will probably change dates in 2021 and 2012.
Distraction: In 1991, one of my sisters rented her house on the Shetland Isles to some Muslim oil workers from Nigeria. The group followed the practice of fasting in the days prior to Eid ul-Adha, which was on June 21st that year. Only 18 hours of daylight…
| 10 July 2008, 12:33 am |
It is only last weekend that I read Ed Husain’s book “The Islamist” and very interesting it is too. Does any poster agree with him that Syria is less repressive than Saudi Arabia?
However, in his “Evening Standard” piece on 7 July, Ed Husain implies that various individuals and groups should be banned. If that is to be done, there has to be a consistent basis for it.
What good reason is there to make Hizb-ut Tahrir or Al Muhajiroun illegal, but not the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) or the Socialist Party in England and Wales (SPEW)?
I know its tempting to think of banning trotskyite sects like SWP and SPEW, but what good reason is there for it?
| 10 July 2008, 12:55 am |
Well, we know Blair was in favour of getting HuT banned. I’d still be in favour of banning them and Al M. But not the SWP or any other trot variant.
Why is that? Because the Islamist organisations mentioned above are intimately implicated in the fostering of a sense of grievance against and violence towards their fellow citizens and the state. (Despite the ostensibly peaceful means.)
I would consider the SWP etc as being rather more akin to the BNP in terms of threat. I would not be in favour of banning the BNP at this point, as I do not consider it, at the moment, a threat to the current liberal and democratic order of things. If, in the future, the BNP were to become more intimately implicated in violent and terrorist acts by its supporters, then I would not blink for a moment at the idea of banning it. Similarly, if the SWP were to become a focus of grievance for a small number of people who were setting off bombs, then I would ban them as well.
The key point is that all of the above groups are totalitarian in nature. That is why they could become involved in violence against the liberal democratic state. As long as they don’t foster that - either consciously or an instrumental manner - then they should be allowed to peddle their propaganda. I don’t think anyone except the most extreme far leftist or hard rightist is in favour of banning any non-Islamist groups at this point.
But I don’t myself consider that the rights of any of the above groups to exist legally is absolutely sacrosanct in all, extreme, instances. But it’s needlessly controversial to consider that sort of thing in the political climate in which we find ourselves. The far right and far left are a largely non-violent irrelevance. This is not - necessarily - the case for extreme Islamist groupings.
| 10 July 2008, 6:53 am |
There seems to be more than a hint of tautology in the title of this post.
| 10 July 2008, 7:35 am |
There are some poisonous comments about Ed Husain on the “Evening Standard” website. Here, from page 219 of “The Islamist” is what the man himself wrote about part of his experience in Syria “.. all refused to call me by my first name: Mohammed. This was an honoured name and reserved for the Prophet, not to be used in vain.” The is how he came to shorten his name.
| 10 July 2008, 11:42 am |
Andrew Coates
Good observations about Algeria.
Of course one of the reasons for the arrest of Christian prreachers is the increasing numbers of Berbers converting to Christianity to escape the ’spiritual stain’ of the brutal Islamist generated civil war that carried out unimaginable horrors against them.
I should say re converting as the islamically hetereodox Berbers were for centuries pagans Jews and Christians, religiously, until reluctantly and forceably converted to Islam.
Jewish Berber communities who had been in the Maghreb since at least, Roman times, though most likely before, since 1948 the Algerian war and the civil war are reduced to at most a few thousand (and are no more in Morrocco).
Berber beliefs and continuing cultural traditions place them as nominal or ‘impure’ Muslims and thediscriminatory process of Arabization continues.
It is not surprising that many might be drawn to a non-violent Christianity in this context and even less surprising that the Government would react to increasing Christian evangelism as a political challenge to centralised rule.
In 2006 the Government passed an anti-conversion law
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49495
Recently there have also been arrests of Christian converts, in one case reported in June this year the convert is facing up to three years imprisonment; in another case involving six converts prosecuters are demanding 2 years jail;
http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=18174
http://www.compassdirect.org/en/display.php?page=news&length=long&lang=en&idelement=5393
http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2008/02/22/pressure-rises-on-christians-in-jordan-algeria/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berber_Jews
| 10 July 2008, 12:14 pm |
Alan Ji
In the sense that there is a civil society in Syria (though weak and at times vulnerable there is a thriving intellectual life) despite its paranoid, surveillance obsessed state, yes it is less repressive than the hatefull theocratic kleptocratic monarchy of Saudi Arabia (truly one of the worlds most hateful regimes).
Ed Hussain coming from a democratic secular country with a highly elaborated civil society, despite his then islamist pretensions, would have found a theocracy where he could scarecely breathe or associate in any way other than at Mosque unbelievably alien and oppressive.
Syria though it has the functions and structure of a secular state would appear immediately less alien and more welcoming to an outsider than saudi Arabia, though as Dave M has observed sharply the longer you spend in a parnoid military/spy state like Syria the weirder and more oppressive it becomes..
Syria is probably more like Spain and Portugal in the 60s or Cuba or Bulgaria under communism.
Saudi Arabia is an absolute Monarchy and theocracy with modern toys and money alltogether more of a sci-fi state (I am thinking Dune).
| 10 July 2008, 1:23 pm |
mettaculture
It’s interesting when you consider that the Berbers themselves in late antiquity tended heavily to a heterodox form of Christianity (Donatism) which had violent tendencies/extremist behaviour.
| 10 July 2008, 10:29 pm |
Mettaculture, I haven’t been to Syria or Saudi Arabia.
I quoted what Ed Husain wrote to refute the poisonous stuff posted on the “Evening Standard” website in response to his article of 7 July.
And his earlier life was no pretensions. He relates a period in different sectarian groups. His book is in all good libraries and probably in most bad ones as well.
I saw the film of Dune and I wasn’t impressed. It was a mish mash of pre-islamic middle eastern myths with a few bits of pre-christian north european myths thrown in. Arbian nights with a bit of saga for holidays.
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