The Crown Prosecution Service Welcomes Azad Ali Aboard

According to the Sunday Times, the Treasury civil servant and Islamist extremist Azad Ali has been appointed to the Crown Prosecution Service’s “community involvement” panel on incitement to racial and religious hatred.

A civil servant who has condemned ministers for helping to fuel the “slaughter” of Arabs in the Middle East is advising Britain’s most senior prosecutor on Islamic extremism.

Azad Ali, a Treasury official who has used his internet blog to praise the spiritual leader of Al-Qaeda, sits on a Whitehall counterterrorism panel that provides advice to Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions (DPP).

We are familiar with Azad Ali’s extremist politics here on The Spittoon. Ali has written some notoriously interesting articles for Islamic Forum Europe, a UK front for Jamaati-e-Islami.

Azad Ali once gushed on his blog that Anwar al-Awlaki was “one of my favourite speakers and scholars” and “I really do love him for the sake of Allah, he has an uncanny way of explaining things to people which is endearing”.

The Anwar al-Awlaki in question, so lovingly referred to by Azad Ali, is a prominent English-language theoretician of violent theo-political Islam:

“The spiritual condition of total loyalty towards Allah and total animosity towards his enemies was a necessary precursor to the judgment of Allah between His prophets and their disbelieving nations. Never was victory attained by the Prophets of Allah and their people until their loyalty towards Allah was complete and their disassociation with the kuffar was complete.”

Mr al-Awlaki views Pakistani students who fail to fight British soldiers in Afghanistan are committing a sin.

Two of the most important battles that the ummah [Muslim community] is fighting today is the battle in Afghanistan, which is spilling over into Pakistan, and the battle of Iraq. Whoever is capable and able to participate with them physically, then that should happen, and whoever is not able to participate physically should participate in all the other ways that are possible. We are taking about a stage where this support is obligatory and not recommended or voluntary, and when something is an obligation it becomes a sin and a shortcoming by not being a part of it”

Mr al-Awlaki also states on his blog:

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.

This is the man the new Crown Prosecution Service appointee views as “one of my favourite speakers and scholars”.

How did this happen? Back to the Sunday Times:

The appointment of a man with such radical views to help guide government policy on terrorist prosecutions has raised concern among some of Starmer’s senior legal colleagues.

They say it reflects a recent trend in some Whitehall departments to recruit hardline Islamic figures to help secure closer ties with more extreme elements in the Muslim community.

However, the “big tent” approach has led to criticism that ministers are allowing those with controversial views to influence policy.

A senior source close to Starmer said he was surprised by Ali’s latest role. “It may have been a little foolish of Keir to be relying for advice on such sensitive matters from someone with these sort of opinions,” said the source. “There seems to be a fad for taking these sorts of people on board.”

Patrick Mercer, chairman of the Commons subcommittee on counterterrorism, said: “This is the sort of politically correct appointment which the government will make in haste but may regret at leisure.”