An MCB statement from last month contained a heart-warming interfaith message to members of other religions:
This year, the month of Muharram falls close to both Christmas and Hanukkah, and at this time, we extend our warmest wishes to the Christian and Jewish communities. As a revered Prophet for Muslims, we also remember that Isa (as) or Jesus dedicated his life to serving his community, and spreading the message of peace and freedom. In Hanukkah we are again inspired towards sacrifice in the face of oppression.
The month of Muharram is one that holds a rich and powerful history for Muslims, and the Muslim Council of Britain marks this month as one that should inspire us towards the search for truth and justice and sacrifice in the way of the communities that we are part of.
Two weeks later, they are advertising the following Event:
Exposing 21st Century Crusade Against Islam
Annual winter conference with lectures delivered by guest speakers; from Arabia; including Shaykh Ali Hasan Al-Halabi; Shaykh Khalid; Al-Anbari; Shaykh Husain Al-Awayishah; Shaykh Bassam Al-Jawabirah.;
Topics to be addressed include:
The Bloody History of Christianity; (From the Crusades to Modern Times);
History of Muslim Tolerance; towards Non-Muslims;
The Shari’ah; Are Muslims in the West Trying to Impose a State within a State?Venue: Masjid Al-Gurabaa, 116 Bury Park Road, Luton, Beds, LU1 1HE
Everyone is welcome to attend.
Granted this event is organised by the neophyte Salafi zealots from the Al-Gurabaa Mosque in Luton. But how does the MCB justify advertising events like this while at the same preaching to government worthies about the deleterious effects of “Islamophobia”? What, for example, does Muhammad Abdul Bari say in defence of this Seasonal Message (PDF) to the “kufaar” from the Al-Gurabaa Mosque, Luton:
Congratulating the kuffaar on the rituals that belong only to them is haraam by consensus, as is congratulating them on their festivals and fasts by saying ‘A happy festival to you’ or ‘May you enjoy your
festival,’ and so on. If the one who says this has been saved from kufr, it is still forbidden. It is like congratulating someone for prostrating to the cross, or even worse than that. It is as great a sin as congratulating someone for drinking wine, or murdering someone, or having illicit sexual relations, and so on.
…
Whoever does anything of this sort is a sinner, whether he does it out of politeness or to be friendly, or because he is too shy to refuse, or for whatever other reason, because this is hypocrisy in Islaam, and
because it makes the kuffaar feel proud of their religion.
habibi’s update: perhaps the MCB would like to explain why it has published this Green Lane Mosque press release about hate preachers on its website, in toto, without qualification or comment?
As such he has made it clear that when he referred to ‘the Jews’, this reference was not to Jews in general, but to those elements that have shown hostility to Muslims and resorted to violence.
Yeah, right.
A few quotes (pdf) from the Green Lane preachers:
“The oddities of humans and bands of creation that are Jews (may Allah make them ugly) have smeared creation and defaced mankind. The band of the Jews have amassed despicable qualities and vile characteristics of which only one of those qualities would be enough to indicate the sordidness of their cause and the greatness of their malice, so what if all those traits were combined in them?”
- Abdul Aziz As-Sadhan
“We have to be prepared for those enemies [the Jews] and for every enemy of Islam and Muslims and we have to prepare the means of victory and be sincere in our intention to Allah, and we have to return to the religion of Allah and call towards the Sunnah and Tawhid, and if people returned to that the banner of jihad would be lifted to raise the word of Allah and to implement his shariah … and we have to also prepare all the weapons we can and prepare the material and moral means, so when these things are achieved Allah will help us to victory.”
- Faisal al-Jassim
The MCB pushing Green Lane’s pathetic “defence” tells you everything you need to know about the organisation’s real attitude to Jew hatred.
8 Comments
I’m sure the basic premise of the following article will be conveniently ignored by the type of people who sympathise with the views espoused by the Al-Gurabaa mosque, but it should be of great interest to everyone else :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/dec/24/religion.uk1
This is a much longer and very eye-opening article by William Dalrymple about attitudes towards Christians in India during its Mughal period; the rulers discussed took a very different stance indeed from some of the modern-day individuals mentioned in Abdul Hamid al Manchesteri’s article above:
http://www.newstatesman.com/200512190021
And in case anyone missed it (I posted the URL links in the comments thread for another Spittoon article last week), here is an article I recently wrote which was partially inspired by Dalrymple’s New Statesman piece; some lessons in tolerance and amicable coexistence from more enlightened times, perhaps :
“Christianity and Islam in Mughal India”:
Part 1: http://www.pickledpolitics.com/archives/6912
Part 2: http://www.pickledpolitics.com/archives/6961
A look at the conditions and treatment of minority religious groups in muslim majority countries today is much more relevant to current circumstance than historic facts and fantasies of harmonious interfaith relations at different times.
The ongoing genocides of Assyrian and Chaldean Christians in Iraq, and the slaughter and rape of Christian Darfaris are far better illustrations of Muslim attitudes and treatment of religious minorities. If Britons were to follow the Sikh experience of attempting to peacefully coexist with muslims, can we expect some time in the future to be ethnically cleansed from parts of Britain?
Sikhs have been from the birthplaces of their faith in Pakistan, and as hindus have from Bangladesh. Coptic Egyptians suffer under some of the worst discrimination and active persecutions in the modern world, a plight that will only get worst still if the leading opposition group, the dubious muslim brotherhood reach power. Further still, an examination of the five primary schools of sharia, the basis of islamic law and governance reveal an anything but a tolerant and harmonious relationship between islam and other faiths. Islam must dominate and other faiths must feel subdued, living under a host of conditions to humiliate and make their lives as difficult as possible. It quickly seems that periods of islamic tolerance are much more the exception than the rule. To say otherwise is to project a hopeful fantasy on the plight of those suffering minorities. In circumstances were muslims represent significant minorities we see disruption, terrorism, and attempts at intimidation of majorities, while crying out their victimized status by official muslim organizations. Lebanon is a good example, perhaps to be followed by France and then …. the United Kingdom in thirty or fifty years.
Cameron,
I hate to interupt your foam-flecked, unparagraphed frenzy of ill-informed anti-Muslim hate; but can I just correct you on one issue?
There are very few Christian Darfuri. In point of fact, Darfur is almost completely Muslim – with a smattering of believers in traditional African religions.
The issue is not the slaughter of Christians by Muslims in Dafur; but actually the slaughter of Muslims by other Muslims.
Whatever buddy it’s a blog post not an academic paper, and to correct you the first Darfaris to experience this government’s genocidal policies were Christians. It was only after they had been cleansed, that the janjaweed moved on from using jihad against unbelievers to justify their atrocities to good old fashioned arab supremacist crap. Why is it antimuslim hate to tell it like it it is? Sikhs and Hindus represented significant minorities in Pakistan and Bangladesh in ’48, now those communities have been virtually destroyed. I’m not making that up, and oddly enough the muslim population in India has risen. Tells me that religious tolerance is by far a feature of hindu culture than islamic. Am I making up the plight of the Copts, are they living in some sort of islamic inspired utopia that I’ve missed. Not according to them, and most of the world’s observers on the treatment of religious minorities. But if you can refute my assertions of vigorous ill treatment of religious minorities in muslim dominate countries? Please be my guest,… ill-informed my ass.
If I really hated muslims, as opposed to having no respect for islam , I would advocate that muslim minorities in Western countries be subjected to the same treatment and conditions as described in the hanafi or hanbali schools of islamic law(I always get those two confused, like abu or ibn). Big smiles habibi
Cameron
There are no Christians in Darfur – stop making things up. You clearly do not have a clue of what you are writing.
I think you need to read my article on the Copts before you make ludicrous claims that I am asserting that they live in some sort of Islamic utopia. Incidentally, Egypt is not an Islamic state – despite the yearnings for such on the part of MB and fellow Islamist travellers.
I am not defending the persecution of non-Muslims in Muslim-majority lands as both my articles on the Copts and other non-Muslims in such places make perfectly clear.
Evidently, however, you have chosen not to bother reading materials I have previously posted here (and on, for example, Harry’s Place). That is a shame, as it would have saved you making quite such an arse of yourself.
Please do not lecture me (especially from a position of such startling ignorance) on Sudanese issues. I live and work in Sudan and I am very much involved in such matters.
I am sure you will want to distinguish between “Muslims” and “Islam”. I am sure ‘some of your best friends’ are the former.
Incidentally, I am not your “buddy”.
Mate(that’s bound to knot up your panties)
You are not so important that I would both, read every bit of tripe you write or bother to claim or assert anything about you. You are not that important.
I guess the Christian population of Darfar or the lack there of is a question when you start the clock, did the jihad start with the first arab conquests ’cause the region was Christian and animist before, and now as you pointed out there is no Christian community left, another example of islam’s stellar record of relations with other faith communities. So like the utter destruction of the Buddhist and Zoroastrian societies in Persian, Afghanistan and northern India, I’m not making any thing up, you can’t make up a record of cultural trauma, hypocrisy, and glorification of genocide like that belonging to islam. Even the destruction of native north american societies by European colonization can’t rival islam’s invasion of India and the genocide of the Hindus with some estimates of 100 million dead.
Spare me…. your frankly racist assumption, that I would say, “some of my best friends are …” Why would I say that,,,, because I’m of European stock? I do however have some muslim family members, and one thing that constantly startles me is the ignorance so many muslims have regarding their own religious texts, history, and faith’s characters, the very tenets of their religion as articulated by authorities like sharia jurists and schools like al-azhar in Egypt. . Thinking of mohammed as the perfect man and moral exemplar, knowing he raped a 9 year old little girl and numerous captives, while seeing no contradictions there. See little habibi, I don’t hate muslims …I pity them, of all the idiotic religions and superstitions humanities come up with muslims have got the worst it.
I am not Habibi, you illiterate troll.
Save us your insane rants, please; and moderate the personal insults, there’s a petal.
Yawn wastsa’ matter did i hurt your little feeling?