The quote you have pulled out makes no mention of congrats or credit to Bungles – I didn’t agree with praising him then and I dont now. At that time, it just seemed liked harmless naivety, so I couldnt really be bothered to argue about it, but now it seems there are more sinister things afoot that I feel I need to protest against.

This credit where credit is due idea is a very weak argument on its own – the Taliban and al-Shabaab, by many accounts, have been very successful at cutting the crime rate in ther respective enclaves – should they also be eligible for our congrats??

You still havent really adequately addressed the issues I brought up in my above comments – and that is probably because deep down you know I’m right.

You can’t just criticise him for backing Qaradawi and then continue to praise his transparent ‘liberal’ comments – it just doesnt work that way, and would never happen in any other circumstance or with any other person.

I do not see why saying what I have said here is so controversial yet, when I wrote this post where I praised Bunglawala’s supportive position on gay rights you wrote:

Interesting.. he will probably lose as many friends as he gains from this. I wonder what his boss at iengage makes of this, surely he wouldnt agree?!

Credit where credit is due, condemnation where condemnation is due. You will forgive me for finding strange your now vehement opposition given that just a few weeks ago you seemed to have no problem with this concept.

Condemnation where credit is due is a recipe for guaranteeing that the status quo is preserved and I don’t know about you but, personally, I’m not content with the status quo.

1) Has she ever said anything which compares to supporting a genocide promoter?

2) If she continued to support the IDF, but also said that Daniel Pipes/Spencer et al were wrong, would you give her the same treatment as Bungles?

No, no, no – again you are avoiding the real problem. HE SUPPORTS A MAN WHO WANTS TO RECREATE THE HOLOCAUST – QARADAWI EVEN PRAYS FOR IT. I dont need Bunglawala to tell me that gays should be given equal rights, how dare he tell me that after all he has been involved in? I was aware of that when i was in school and he was still praising bin Laden thank you very much. If he really meant it, he would have written it on Islamonline anyway. You can’t just criticise him for backing Qaradawi and then continue to praise his transparent ‘liberal’ comments – it just doesnt work that way, and would never happen in any other circumstance or with any other person. The double standards here are truly shocking and, above all, disappointing.

Surely it is not about affording Bunglawala “special treatment” but about appreciating the distance he has moved from where he was just a few years ago. If people continue to attack him – and do so because he’s done the right thing (as Mel P did) – then, rather than encourage Bunglawala to move further and deliver on the promise he has shown, we will force him into an entrenched position which he doesn’t actually fully believe in but, at least, it’s one where he has allies.

But where he does wrong, like support Qaradawi, he should – and will – be criticised by all.

Why are you over complicating this~? The issue is simple- here we have a guy who lies about Awlaki only being extreme post 2003 and is happy to refer to a man who celebrates the holocaust as ‘an asset’. There are many people out there who still celebrate the mass murder of Muslims by Milosevic, and who make excuses for it – would you treat an apologist of this type of person in the same way as Bungles?? No, of course not. The question then becomes, what is it about Bungles which means you are willing to afford him special treatment? Does it have anything to do with what religion he claims to ascribe to??

So I suggest you spell out, as clearly as possible, what “issues” you want to work with him on, when you say “work him him on some issues while opposing him on others”.

The question that then arises is whether Bunglawala’s wrongness on some issues (e.g. Jews, Qaradawi) is severe enough to invalidate his correctness on other issues (free-speech, gay-rights, opposition to Anjem Choudary etc).

From this, we can ask whether it is possible to work him him on some issues while opposing him on others? To use an analogy, should the UK work with countries like North Korea or Iran to tackle climate change – while simultaneously opposing them and challenging them on other issues?

What’s your take on this?

And Bunglawala *is* right, on this *specific*, but rather obvious anodyne statement:

“it is essential that we see continuing efforts by credible Muslim scholars – with far more impressive Islamic learning – to forcefully speak out against indiscriminate violence and in favour of democratic and peaceful engagement. “

Essentially, he is still very antisemitic and sympathetic to Islamist extremism, no matter how many pseudo-liberal salvos he fires on the webpages of CIF.

So, using the present tense, you say that Bunglawala is “right” (i.e. at the present moment in time), but then you later add that “as late as 2005″ (i.e. four years ago), he was wrong.

No – unfortunately you clearly have a faulty or limited grasp of the grammar and usage of English verbs. I might say:

“The chips are fine at the chippie on Waterloo Street”; and actually be referring to my (prior) experience of said chips.

Or, if that will not convince, I might write:

“Chaucer is here attempting to lend support to a Lollard position”; and in the full and certain knowledge that Chaucer was doing so in the middle of the Fourteenth Century.

You will note, I hope, that both utterances contain use of the simple present tense. Tense is not directly or always temporally bound.

The only way one can interpret this is that Faisal Khazi thinks that Bunglawala was wrong in the past but that he is “right” at present.

Clearly, from the above, this is faulty. Equally, as other s have pointed out:

“I believe the Earth t be a sphere – and so did Benito Mussolini” hardly means that I ascribe to Italian-style classical fascist ideology; it simply means that Benito was correct in that instance. After all even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

How embarrassing!!

You have taken the words quite out of my mouth. Embarrassing for you, darlink.

You have just now written, using the past tense, that:

‘Melanie Phillips was right!’

While on Tuesday you wrote, using the present tense, that ‘Inayat Bunglawala is right’.

Could you possibly clarify the apparent contradictions that are present in these two statements?