Shameless
This is a cross-post from Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens:
What would you do if you found out that, for the last three years, you were engaged in promoting and supporting an al-Qaeda ideologue with extensive links to the last two terrorist attacks in the United States? Most people would likely show a bit of humility and “sit the next couple of plays out”. Not Moazzam Begg however, whose organisation, Cageprisoners, are the UK’s leading promoters of al-Qaeda linked preacher, Anwar al-Awlaki. Instead, Begg has come out fighting.
Last week, he wrote an indignant article responding to criticism of him and his group where he tried, and failed, to defend his links to Awlaki. He began by trying to distance himself from the underpants bomber, who in 2007 organised the UCL Islamic Society’s ‘War on Terror Week’, at which Begg was a keynote speaker. According to Begg “a rudimentary investigation would have uncovered that Abdulmuttalab was not the actual organiser of these lectures – he was not even present.” Not according to the Times:
The Nigerian student who organised “War on Terror Week” in January 2007 is now better known as Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be suicide bomber who tried to blow up a transatlantic airliner last week.
Or the New York Times:
For the inaugural lecture of the “War on Terror Week” that Abdulmutallab helped organize as president of the college’s Islamic society from 2006 to 2007, the group booked a large lecture hall. It was a full house, said Fabian De Fabiani, a student at the time who attended, with about 150 people.
[...]Abdulmutallab was seated “where the lecturer would usually sit,” De Fabiani said, “very close” to Moazzam Begg…
CNN also informs us that Abdulmutallab posted online using the name ‘farouk1986′, and this exact username was used to promote the ‘War on Terror Week’ on gawaher.com, an online Islamic forum.
This, anyway, was the result of my “rudimentary investigation”, perhaps Begg can share with us what he found.
Begg then moves on to “another person I keep getting calls about: the US-Yemeni Imam Anwar al-Awlaki”. It shouldn’t surprise him too much that people would like to know why his group continues to promote Awlaki despite what has been revealed about his repugnant views. Even if we were to forget for a moment that Awlaki was in direct contact with the Fort Hood murderer or that Abdulmutallab was a student of his in Yemen, just one look at his blog, the existence of which Begg acknowledges, shows him to be a jihadist of the highest order. Take, for example, his praise of the al-Qaeda linked Somali group, al Shabaab, a group that executes 13 year old girls for the crime of being gang raped:
We are following your recent news and it fills our hearts with immense joy. We would like to congratulate you for your victories and achievements.
Al-Shabab not only have succeeded in expanding the areas that fall under their rule but they have succeeded in implementing the sharia and giving us a living example of how we as Muslims should proceed to change our situation. The ballot has failed us but the bullet has not.
Or his jihadist take on the already rigid and ultra-sectarian Wahhabi concept of al wala’ wa al-bara’, (loyalty to Muslims and enmity to non Muslims):
If a Muslim kills each and every civilian disbeliever on the face of the earth he is still a Muslim and we cannot side with the disbelievers against him.
[the blog is now offline, but Cageprisoners have been reading it since at least mid 2008]
In his article, Begg is unwilling to criticise these pronouncements and instead can only muster a half -acknowledgment of Awlaki’s extremism: “After his release [from Yemeni prison in 2006], I am told, Anwar’s position on issues pertaining to US foreign policy had started to become more hostile.” What a child- killing, totalitarian organisation in Somalia has to do with US foreign policy is not, however, immediately clear to me. In any case, Awlaki was an extremist long before 2006, and his links with terrorists, including three of the 9/11 hijackers, have been clearly documented. Among other things, Awlaki also called for the murder of Mohammed cartoonist, Kurt Westergaard, before his 2006 incarceration (again, where US foreign policy fits into this is a total mystery to me).
Begg ends his muddled explanation of his dealings with Awlaki by “condemning the ideology of killing innocent civilians”. This is not good enough, especially considering that he promotes a man who represents exactly that ideology.
Despite his protestations, Begg is still more than happy to have Awlaki’s material on his website, presented as a respectable voice in Islamic jurisprudence no less. Cageprisoners even reproduce Awlaki’s book reviews of Islamic material as if he is an authority on the matter. The gross irresponsibility of this cannot be overstated and presenting Awlaki as an authority on Islam is what will create the next Abdulmutallab or Nidal Hasan.
Begg and his cronies should take some advice from these guys:
Comments
| 21 January 2010, 1:25 pm |
Yes, that’s some world-class bigotry there Jonny. Well done.
| 21 January 2010, 1:29 pm |
Surely whats shameless is this continuing campaign against someone imprisoned without trial for years and years. And those who supported such policies.
| 21 January 2010, 1:32 pm |
Begg -
Although the last thing Awlaki said to me was if I could get help him find a copy of a book by a convicted terrorist: Nelson Mandela (Long Walk to Freedom) I wonder if its terribly surprising if an Imam who once condemned the attacks on the World Trade Centre as unIslamic acts, after suffering abuse I know only too well US agents to be capable of, now allegedly lauds the Fort Hood shootings deeds of heroism?
What an idiotic equivalence.
| 21 January 2010, 1:33 pm |
Johng -
I can think of lots of unpleasant characters who have been imprisoned without trial.
Presumably – by your logic – all their views are beyond criticism.
Don’t embarrass yourself.
| 21 January 2010, 1:38 pm |
Surely whats shameless is this continuing campaign against someone imprisoned without trial for years and years.
It’s just occurred to me you could be referring to Awlaki, for instance.
Are you?
| 21 January 2010, 1:47 pm |
Anyone who supports Begg, either on political, legal & religious
terms is a deeply misguided person.
As long as Begg & his ilk are at large in the civilised world
there is a danger that their poisonous views will be disseminated
to still more gullible lost souls who should not be in Europe
in the first place
Happily integrated “moderate muslims” of course do not come
under this characterization.
| 21 January 2010, 1:54 pm |
Johng’s mind has been imprisoned without trial for years and years.
| 21 January 2010, 2:12 pm |
John Game = Malcolm Caldwell.
“Comrade Awlaki! I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability! Comrade Awlaki? What are you doing with that sword? But Comrade Awlaki! I’m a member of the SWP! The Socialist Workers Party! I am your Comrade! Please Comrade Awlaki! Put the sword down!! Can’t we just talk about it!!! Here, have my copy of Das Kapital!! Take my Ipod!! What are you DOING!!!!!!! Help, help*!!!”
* obviously not “help” as in “from the British Army”
| 21 January 2010, 2:38 pm |
Are there no journalists at any of the newspapers who will write about this and ask the Joseph Rowntree Trust why they are funding such people?
| 21 January 2010, 3:24 pm |
I’m a little confused. What does David Brooks’ article have to do with Begg? Or Awlaki?
Mr. Fried’s linked article is obnoxious, including the linked contention that Israel “sucks” money from the US or anybody else, especially in view of contributions made by Israel to global progress in general and in spite of the wars and terror against its people, against which it is expensive to defend.
Much of the aid to Israel is in the form of loan guarantees which stipulate that the money must be spent in the US. The loan guarantees would not be necessary at all if the Israelis weren’t under existential military pressure all the time and reparations wouldn’t have been paid to Jews had the Shoah not exterminated most of the Jewish people in Europe and stolen the assets of their families and businesses.
Subsequently the uprooting and looting of Jews was repeated in the Middle East where nearly a million Arab Jews fled, many losing all they owned in the process. For years they had been attacked in pogroms and were threatened in very direct terms with extinction as have been the people of Israel.
Note the people attacking Israel are armed by oil-rich nations which derive their wealth not from creativity but rather from an accident of nature. These same wealthy nations are also helping incite the violence against Israel and the Arab League has had a boycott in place since 1931. They are joined in their efforts with misguided groups and individuals in the West, some very wealthy and elite.
Their attacks on Israel are counterproductive as a means of alieviating the misery of the Palestinians whom they claim to defend, nor do they improve conditions for other peoples in the Middle East; thus one has difficulty in seeing their actions as anything but antisemitic.
As far as numbers are concerned, a slight majority of the world’s total Jewish population lives in Israel. Most of the rest live in the US with scattered populations, some significant, around the world and (also making contributions).
Some of these populations are under extreme threat and/or are just about extinct, for example the Jewish population in the Arab world. It is important to recognize the fact that the global Jewish population is about 2 million less than it was before the Shoah. The most recent population to flee was the handful remaining in Yemen, which has been attacked so violently in recent years that most have now departed, losing their homes and livelihoods in the process.
Many other diaspora Jews have been attacked, for example in the huge city of Mumbai Chabad House was specifically targetted as have been Jewish community centers in South America, Jewish tourists on planes and boats, terrorists even in the US have menaced and harmed us, and Jews everywhere are threatened by vile bigotry approaching the viciousness of Nazi Germany.
Now. Can we please go from a discussion of Jewish accomplishments back to the OT, which I believe was extremism that is co-opting the message of Islam?
Really, come on, THIS is SHAMELESS –
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2010/01/21/jewish-or-israeli-achievements/#respond