*************

Press Release: British Muslims for Israel condemns Jerusalem Bomb Plot

British Muslims for Israel condemns the terrorist attack in Jerusalem today. Such acts of indiscriminate violence are never justified, hurt the cause of Palestinians and harden public opinion in Israel.

Hasan Afzal, a spokesperson for British Muslims for Israel says “Today’s attacks seem to be of a piece with the extreme violence perpetrated against Israelis in the last few weeks. First we had the Itamar massacre, then a barrage of rocket attacks from Palestine into Israel and now the attack in Jerusalem. These attacks hurt all sides, and help no one.”

Afzal added “Recent events have shown that groups such as Hamas and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade are determined to kill indiscriminately and use ordinary Palestinians as hostages to their cause. We urge all British Muslims to condemn these senseless attacks which block any attempts for peace and ruin the lives of both Israelis and Palestinians”.

For further information, please call (+44) 7590 67 66 91 or email BritishMuslimsForIsrael@gmail.com

[ENDS]

Notes to editors:

1.       British Muslims for Israel is a Muslim pro-Israel advocacy group based in the United Kingdom founded in 2011.

2.       British Muslims for Israel is an independent, grassroots initiative.

“Nationalism”. I believe the word instantly causes thoughts to materialise in one’s mind – of extremists, such as skinheads, thugs, nazis, people with “dark agendas” and violent or deceiving methods to fulfil said dark agendas. This is not me – but I still consider myself a nationalist. If you’re interested in more detail, I consider myself a “territorial nationalist”. That is to say, I don’t see colour / race and such as important, or a necessity to be “a part of the club”. I personally see it this way: everyone is a part of the club and should pull together and make this club a better place. I think most people are truly nationalists, even though they wouldn’t use that exact word to define themselves: “Hi, I’m ABC, I’m a nationalist.” But the dictionary definition tells us it is a person who loves his or her country, with synonyms such as “good citizen”. I am sure that we would all like to consider ourselves good citizens, people who care for the wellbeing of the nation and our neighbours. Sure! So, when a party brings a slogan to you like: “Putting British people first!” “People like you!” “Bring our troops home!”, they feel like reassuring statements, noble statements. Can they inspire to a degree and draw you in? Well, I thought so. I wanted to see how they were doing this and see these “people like me”. Obviously, there was a multitude of people saying this party was full of bad people, people not at all like me. As I saw myself as a nationalist, I thought they must be wrong and that I would be much, much more satisfied finding out what’s what for myself. This is how I am – always having to see for myself rather than taking someone’s word for it. Just because many people say so, that doesn’t necessarily make it true.

I wouldn’t deny for a moment from the beginning that there were bad apples within the group; you’re always going to get a few, (see if you spot the irony and please place answers on a postcard) and I feel it is unreasonable and lacking in logic to define an entire group by the actions of a small percentage. I spent months before the general elections and a few months after that becoming affiliated and trusted within the “online ranks” of the party. It got to a stage where in a relatively short time I had become respected and given Moderation / Administration authority within the groups. If I’m honest, this fuelled my ego. I started to try and educate and moderate the bad apples and promote the good parts of the party, always, always having to defend its past mistakes and errors. But I began to tire of defending the past, which I wasn’t a part of. Each time, I was assured by all the others that things such as that wouldn’t happen again – we were building a righteous nationalist party the land could be proud of, they just needed to realise we had changed! United, we had the power to change anything!

As time passed – especially after the elections – I saw more of the entrails of the beast; saw what it was and how it worked. The deeper inside, the uglier it got. Many people, making a racist remark here or slandering another who opposed them… I still held onto the idea that ‘Well, perhaps this is still just the bad apples; I need to reach the higher echelons.’ I was frustrated, because when I wasn’t there, keeping everyone in check, people would just come on and instantly start spouting hatred. There was no reason behind many people’s rants; they were blinded. “Nationalism seems to just draw this kind of people”, I thought. I finally got a meet with the area representatives; now I was buzzing, it was all going to be different, more positive, more progress, get to meet leaders – it’s going to be awesome. I had planned out so many ideas and suggestions and wanted to put them forward.

But at the meeting, all the ideas and topics I had to offer were shot down or ignored. They were much more interested in and – dead set focused on – ranting about “those damn blacks” and how “they didn’t belong here” and they were “invading inferior beings”. No matter what topic I tried to raise – always the same. It really came down to a personal hatred of black people. Now it was confirmed to me, finally. I had gone on to meet three influential people within the party, whose jobs and duties it was to encourage and promote to the members… All had blinding grudges and unreasonable hatred of other races; they had no interest in speaking to me about education, economy, health, welfare. So what are they teaching the rest of the group? Not many of those I encountered would second-guess them, or follow up on their statements -  they just wished to get people pissed off, because pissed-off people can be manipulated very easily. I felt sad, because I gave them the opportunity to prove me wrong and they, in my opinion, had sadly not done so.

These people just breed hatred and anger.  Maybe there’s something valid they’re upset about, something that looks like it needs looking into or stopping, but this sort of hate only breeds hate. The way they offer misinformation makes this a vicious cycle. I was asked to represent them, to encourage people my age and younger to join. That I just had to decline; I couldn’t encourage anyone to join a group which is so blinded.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

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My erstwhile friends and comrades in Hizb ut Tahrir – the liberation party, innit – have released a new report on ‘The future for Muslims in Britain’. The new pamphlet professes to look at the British state’s ‘anti-Islamic agenda’ as part of its ‘war on Islam’.

The group’s leadership banned its members from speaking to me after I defected from the party and exposed their internal culture in 2005. It seems, however, they are also banning the shabab from quoting my work.

Imagine my surprise when, thumbing through their paper, I saw my own report (published by Policy Exchange) being extensively quoted.

On page 12 they write:

…there is no agreed definition of ‘extremism’, although they [the Conservatives] persist in formulating policy (despite the lack of such a definition); and that they were considering clamping down on activity they had deemed ‘extremist’, even though it was not violent.

The government-linked think tank, the Policy Exchange, recently proposed a definition of ‘extremism’ as those who:

- Support or condone the deliberate targeting for attack of civilians (as defined by the  Geneva Conventions) anywhere in the world.

- Call for, or condone, attacks on British service personnel and their allies anywhere in the world or against any forces acting under a UN man-date.

- Call for or condone the destruction of UN member states.

- Give a platform to deniers of, or apologists for, crimes against human-ity, including genocide.

- Support or condone terrorism anywhere in the world.

- Discriminate or advocate discrimination on the basis of religion, reli-gious sect, race, sexual orientation or gender in any aspect of public life or public policy.

- Oppose armed forces’ recruitment.

Those criteria are lifted directly from my Policy Exchange report, Choosing our Friends Wisely. They appear in the executive summary (on page 8 ) and are elaborated upon in chapter 6.

Rather than footnote my report, Hizb ut Tahrir links to this page on the Policy Exchange website announcing the launch of a different report on faith schools.

Hizb ut Tahrir quote my report again on page 14 saying:

The Conservative Party’s approach seems to have borrowed a lot from think tanks like the Policy Exchange, with whom they share many links (Michael Gove is former chairman of the Policy Exchange). Among the numerous recommendations in one of their reports, the Policy Exchange recommended that the definition of extremism should be expanded to those that oppose the wars that the British government are engaged in:

“The state should rightly be concerned about groups that try to dissuade young Muslims from joining the armed forces or the police. Muslims are currently under-represented in both, and it should encourage, not discourage Muslims to join. Sup-porting groups or individuals who dissuade Muslims from joining the police or armed forces vitiates the policy of increasing the representation of ethnic and religious minorities in those institutions. Provisions must be made for conscientious objectors, but only in cases where an individual believes that all wars are wrong. Government must not engage with organisations that oppose armed forces’ recruitment because they selectively oppose wars that the state, under the authority of the democratically elected parliament, is currently fighting.” [36]

Again, the Hizb’s footnote is wrong and links to this page on the Conservative party’s website featuring a speech by Pauline Neville-Jones. Nowhere in that speech does Pauline say the words attributed to her by the Hizb. Instead, the passage above is directly lifted from my Policy Exchange report and appears in the second column at the bottom of page 73.

The other footnotes in the document are all correct. For example, David Cameron’s speech at the Foreign Policy Centre (footnotes 28 and 29) appear correctly, as does the link to Cameron’s speech at the Community Security Trust (footnote 24). Similarly, a quote from the Civitas think tank is referenced correctly at footnote 17.

That eliminates the possibility of the Hizb being sloppy and careless in this case – though sloppy and careless it frequently is.

The only other option is that the Hizb ordered its shabab to not even reference the work of former members. Instead of correctly referencing my work, they seem to have deliberately fudged those footnotes – ironic from a group that once told us acting is haram (forbidden in Islamic law) because it involves ‘deception’.

Still, I’m flattered they still consider me an authority on religious matters; bienvenido gentlemen.

Like good apparatchiks, I hope they will take this blog post in the spirit it is intended; a simple response to party orders which appear on page 3 of their report stating:

We welcome feedback on the contents of this booklet

I would love some clarification – is this a conspiracy or a cock-up?

A Muslim woman living in Europe talks of her experiences with markers of Islam and her reasons for affiliating herself with Muslimness alongside equally powerful reasons for distancing herself from its overt expressions in the public sphere.

This was still a world before 9/11, and my article generated a lengthy, if unclear, counter-response in the Telegraph on the folly of my position – the writer, a prominent academic, assumed that this position was one of supporting the practice of veiling. My mother, reading both articles, made a perspicacious comment: that, having witnessed first hand the abuses of the pir system in a rural Bengali Muslim ashraf household, she could not understand what the fuss was all about: the burqa was, in her opinion, firmly a practice that degraded and entrapped women within patriarchy’s collusion with religion. Educated as a doctor in Calcutta, and married into what would be called a “highly progressive” Muslim family in which, for three generations, there had not been a veil in sight, she found it absurd that any woman would want to regress in this manner, especially if she had had the benefits of education.

1992-2010: Personal Experiments with Muslimness
Looking back to that moment a decade later, when the burqa ban in France brought the issue of women’s veiling back on the Liberal agenda, I am struck by two things. First, the ease with which one could open oneself to misunderstanding and rebuke from the Indian left if as a self-identified Muslim woman, I chose to analyse the choices other Muslim women were making in local and global spheres, rather than take overt sides. This would be even more so, if I chose to interrogate the responses of the so-called Indian “mainstream” to images of the veiled woman. Second, I realise how much more clearly I understand today my mother’s position and how much I appreciate being the legatee of the Nehruvian secularism that she was a beneficiary of and that my parents found the most congenial dogma to raise a family in post-Partition India. This benefit of hindsight has been enabled by a change, however, cosmetic, in the ideologies emanating from those that rule at the Indian Centre: through the 1990s and the 2000s, I had found myself, as a secularised Indian Muslim, thrown into epistemological and philosophical confusion about how I felt about markers of “Islam”.

During that period, I became a barometer that responded to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) aggressions by becoming a defender of practices and beliefs that were otherwise alien to me. Searching for ways to protect myself psychologically from daily polemical assaults on people like me – secular, middle class Indians who happened to be Muslims – I tried even to import practices of a Muslim habitus into my daily life – experimenting with fasting, praying namaaz, and reading the Qur’an every morning. But the truth was that, without food and coffee, I could not teach; I could not remember the motions of the wazu without reading my mother’s notes on the matter; and I found I would rather spend early mornings writing 500 words than struggle through Arabic script. I knew what those practices meant, but no one had forced them on me in childhood and as an adult I could not import them into my lifestyle willy-nilly. Close to veritable despair, I found anchor in a sense of humour, in the shared confusions felt by other Indian Muslim friends, and in the powerful spiritual energies of Sufi music and shrines, especially Ajmer, that called to me and somehow transmitted what the qawwals termed sukoon (peace of mind).

I still remember the day when my late father telephoned from Calcutta to tell me triumphantly that the BJP had lost the national elections. As we rejoiced together in some disbelief (I had gone to bed in Manchester listening to the NDTV psephologists prognosticating the BJP’s victory), I felt a burden physically slipping away from me. No longer, I realised in a flash, would I have to respond defensively to the BJP’s Hindutva agenda that had been pushing me ideologically into an ever-tighter corner. I emerged through that period when the BJP government went out of power, able to regain a sense of self again, of being strict about the principles of Nehruvian secularism that had shaped me as an individual and that, although old-fashioned, I realise I hold dear to me and are, paradoxically, akin to a religious affiliation. Now that the question of the veil has once more taken the global centre stage, I feel able to stare the issue squarely in the face and say with conviction, “I do not support the practice of full face covering, call it burqa or niqab, particularly when it comes in the form of a black, shapeless garment (however luxurious its material may be) and the extent of my distaste is such that I find myself fine with the French government’s ban on it.”

Cultural Relativism vs Humanism
This position is relatively rare amongst my friends, colleagues and acquaintances, whether in India, south Asia at large, or Europe. Indeed, it opened up a bizarre situation where I, of Muslim heritage, was expressing my lack of sympathy for those crying hoarse about the French ban, while colleagues with no such connections but with self-declared liberal affiliations all but rebuked me for my stance. What is this liberalism that goes about supporting the right of women to cover completely their faces and wander around beshrouded in shapeless black garments? Such is the topsy-turvy, post-postmodern, post-postcolonial world we live in, where Left and Right have totally interchanged positions that one might intuitively associate with them. Caught in the quagmire of argumentation, we inadvertently support stances we would normally distance ourselves from. We do not like the reactionary shades the French call for “laicité” seems to have taken on, and so we argue against their banning of the burqa, just as we might have rejected the idea of a uniform civil code when it was the BJP that called for it.
As a Muslim woman living in Europe, I experience powerful reasons for affiliating myself with Muslimness alongside equally powerful reasons for distancing myself from its overt expressions in the public sphere. The former arise from that grey zone where “religion” and “culture” intermingle. I feel a strange, almost romantic affinity with those who know what words like wazu and sehri imply, but a similar feeling resurges when I am in the company of someone who knows what a kofta or a dolma is. By that token, I feel that affinity with anyone belonging, say, to a one-time Ottomanised cultural sphere, such as my Bulgarian friend who knows what a shelwar is, and knows that I know too. The more I work through this instinctive affiliation, the more strongly I realise that what I am responding to is historical membership of an Islamicate heritage that was shaped by and shaped the forces of modernity. The kofta becomes a version of a Masonic handshake. On the other hand, the roots of my disaffiliation to veils of any kind, or to dietary restrictions imposed by religion, lie in the fact that my strongest ideological affiliations are to principles of secularism, socialism, and humanism.

This realisation has helped me arrive at a situation of no compromise over some fundamental issues that include veiling practices, although I can tolerate the headscarf (for reasons I explain below). I admit I may seem full of contradictions as I try to work my way through a mesh of local, global and national politics that once again draws sustenance through the Muslim woman’s veiling practices. It is only superficially paradoxical, however, that I feel strongly the need to retain for myself the label of “Muslim” precisely while being as far away from any kind of head covering as can be: ironically, those who want to seek out the “moderate Muslim” do not seem to want to acknowledge that in the existence of such a strange creature, a self-declared Muslim woman who has no truck with veiling practices, may lie that Holy Grail they are so fervently searching.

An Anti-Veiling Rationale
But there is another reason why I cling to the label “Muslim”. Attached to the adjectives “Indian” and “Bengali”, it encapsulates for me a political, ideological and affective heritage that is no less than a specific trajectory of south Asian modernity. This is my inheritance, and the very rejection of the burqa and niqab that I feel able to articulate is predicated on it. It is no contradiction to my mind, that along with the Sufi music of Ajmer and Nizamuddin Aulia, and the Baul music of Bengal, I appreciate the local vernacular practices of my Bengali Muslim world where grandmothers, mother, aunts and even I can discreetly draw the end of a sari across the head if occasion calls for it – which can range from visiting a graveyard to protecting oneself from the sun’s rays – and equally seamlessly let it drop once the moment is over. This was the very spirit celebrated (and its disappearance mourned) in Sabiha Sumar’s fine film Khamosh Pani, through the juxtaposition, in particular, of two distinct scenes.

The first was a wedding scene where men and women singing traditional songs were separated by a flimsy and translucent curtain that, at the height of merriment, was playfully breached; the second was one where young men of the village sought earnestly to erect a brick wall around the girls’ school to protect the “modesty” of their female counterparts. Separating the two scenes is the gradual radicalisation of those youth by Islamic fundamentalist preachers from Lahore (the film retrospectively explores the Islamicisation of Pakistan under Zia-ul-Haq). It is no coincidence that those Muslim women whose views on veiling resonate most closely with mine are from Bangladesh and Pakistan as well as India (rather than second or third generation Europeans). The visual contrast between the flexibility of the curtain and the rigidity of the brick wall is the same that distinguishes the flexibility of the pallu/aanchol and the rigidity of the burqa and niqab, which renders problematic even the basic act of eating in public.

At the heart of my objections to this practice, is, finally, a very simple matter – the intrinsic humanism of conducting person-to-person contact by allowing your interlocutor to see your face. Whether we like it or not, those of us conducting this conversation about full veiling move in a modernised public sphere, at the basis of which is the assumption that we speak to each other, face to face. This is not merely an aspect of humanism but an aesthetics of the face, where aesthetics stands not for elite privilege but is akin to rasa – the ability to enjoy and savour life in heightened form, to adorn and to express oneself. The amassing of sequins and encrustations of embroidery on a burqa renders it not a whit more aesthetic to me, but rather makes it more sinister, more counter-aesthetic in this fundamental sense that I am proposing. This is a practice that signals to me sullen joylessness, a declaration of shutting out the world.

How to Spot the Moderate Muslim
This interpretation also furnishes me with the reason why I do not condemn the headscarf (though I do not like it): it does not necessarily breach my framework of humanism and a rasa-driven aesthetics. It can also explain why I can find unreasonable the French government’s ban on the turban, which does not obscure the face of the wearer and in whose colour-coordinated care I locate a true note of rasa. I appreciate that Sarkozy’s government is driven by bigotry and arrogance, and that expounding freely about the anti-humanism of full veiling can easily be misinterpreted as support of that bigotry and arrogance. But on balance, the dangers of keeping quiet about one’s objections to full veiling cedes ground to the forces within Islam that have been attempting to seize control over what “Islam” can and must mean. The biggest problem is that the liberal, leftist position all over the world seems determined to accept their definitions, while hunting high and low for where the moderate Muslim might lurk, and for ways to coax him or her out of hiding.

Ananya Jahanara Kabir (a.j.kabir@leeds.ac.uk) teaches at the School of English, University of Leeds, UK.

In the year 2001 I contacted the ‘Salafi’ communities at their main headquarters in the UK as I was searching for a good Islamic community and sincere Muslims who would help me learn about Islam and take my studies further.  In  2004, disgusted by their behaviour, attitudes and bigotry, I left them for good.  In this article I want to share my first hand experiences to raise awareness about the way ‘Salafis’ use Islam to prey on young and vulnerable women.   Some people may find some of the contents of this article disturbing but I feel it is essential to bring them out if we are ever to recognise the damage being done by the so called Salafis.

I initially approached the Salafis in very high spirits.  In 2001 I was living in Birmingham, I had read some of their books and had a lot of hope in their dawah and community.  After contacting their headquarters I was introduced to other Muslim females who also wanted to study.   I studied with Salafi groups in the Midlands for around 18months.  It was during the second year of my studies that I began to realise that their form of Islam had no place in British society.  They were teaching a separatist, isolationist and culturally backward form of religion. I was told I had to break all contact with my Sikh, Hindu and Jewish friends because they were cursed people and destined for Hellfire. Especially the Jews who were waging a war against humanity and specifically Islam.  We were instructed to read The Elders of the Protocols of Zion to understand Jewish plots.

Most of the people in the study groups were converts/reverts. I was told by senior Salafi members that the majority of their recruitment took place in Prisons and brothel crowds because they were the easiest places to recruit from.  The Salafi males were told to target young Muslim girls by setting up stalls outside universities.  The Salafi females were taught to accept polygamy and discriminatory treatment from the males.  The behaviour of senior members was also despicable, all they were interested was in marrying multiple wives. Many of them regularly beat their wives and one of the reasons their wives covered their faces was because of bruises.  I remember one incident when a widowed Somali female married a Salafi Jamican convert.  He ended up raping her and also sexually abusing her three year son.  Some Salafi males would put the word out that they only wanted to marry females who would give them oral sex.  One Salafi convert even said that he wanted a female who would take part in threesomes involving his other wife.  Other incidents can be found here.  Salafis were told to shout ‘Islamaphobia’ if the Police ever tried to investigate any of their ‘community affairs’, I was told this was a tried and tested tactic that always worked.

The Salafis also took great pride in proclaiming that they were the only ‘true’ Muslims and would regularly insult other Muslims.  One Salafi leader once said in a public speech that he would rather spend the night with a paedophile then with an Ikhwani (non-Salafi) Muslim.  They also regularly cursed Sufi Muslims saying they were all sinners beyond help and were destined for hell.  Young Salafi men were encouraged to learn physical jihad and constantly had violence justified to them from warped religious teachings.

Disturbed by many of these incidents, when I tried to raise issues by posing questions and asking why things were the way they were, I was labelled and ostracised by the Salafi community and their leaders.  I was also bullied and threatened with being boycotted if I didn’t agree with them and follow them blindly. At the time I thought it was just the ignorant Salafis in Birmingham who were behaving like this and so I decided to relocate to another area.

In 2002 I moved to Luton and lived in the Bury Park area which also had a large Salafi community.  In Luton I wasn’t allowed to enter the Mosque because they believed females should only learn at home. I was also sexually harassed by one of their UK leaders and because I refused his advances I was insulted and slandered in front of other members of the Salafi community.  This was an extremely upsetting experience for me.  I eventually decided to write to one of the senior Salafi scholars ‘Sheikh Muhammad Abu Nasr’ (a student of Sheikh Albanee).  He was coming from Jordan on a lecture tour to the UK and I thought this was a good opportunity for me to raise my concerns and also to seek his advice.

I attended one of his lectures and I had put my questions to the Sheikh in written form because females were not allowed to ask questions directly at Salafi events.  To my disappointment I didn’t get any answers to questions.  From the Sheikhs attempted replies I realised that he didn’t have any insight at all regarding the situation of Muslim females in the UK.

In Luton most of the Salafi males were well known for marrying and then quickly divorcing their wives.  These wives would then be passed to other Salafi men who would do the same thing.  In some places the divorce rate amongst Salafis was shocking, it had reached such a height that it had become like ‘wife swapping’.  Some Salafi females I came across had been married and divorced five times in a very short space of time. Some of the married men also slept with non-Muslim women who they weren’t married to but said it was allowed because they saw them as slave girls. Some females left the community and moved on, others felt stuck and have remained married as the 3^rd or 4^th wife, treated badly with no rights.  Many Muslim women who’ve suffered at their hands have ended up with depression, schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. Most alarmingly this is all taking place in modern day Britain!

Conclusion

Salafis claim to be the only true Muslims who follow the way of the Salaf.  Every other Muslim is labelled as a sinner or innovator.  They expect members of their community to cover for their evil and despicable ways and prey on vulnerable people by hiding behind labels such as ‘Salafi Manhaj, JIMAS and Salafi Publications etc. Some of these groups also receive funding from the Home Office for their interventions work in prisons.

The Salafis are an evil group whose teachings and indoctrination is planned and funded by Saudi Arabia.  I have found them to be much more dangerous and cunning than even groups like Hizb-Ut-Tahrir and Al-Muhajiroun.  Some of them secretly support groups such as Al-Qaeda whilst others agree with violent Jihadist beliefs but believe they are not powerful enough yet to wage a war on Western countries.

I would like to encourage all Muslim females who are caught in their clutches and are being used/exploited by the so called ‘Salafi brothers’ to be brave and to not be scared of exposing them publically.  If we don’t start doing this now then more and more will continue to suffer at the hands of these evil and wicked people who are abusing the name of Islam.

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The gorgeous Lucy Lips, now freshly tanned from her winter break in the Seychelles, alerts me to an ongoing dispute with Tom Griffin – a writer for David Miller’s smear projects which include Powerbase (formerly Spin Profiles) and the now defunct Neocon Europe.

Readers of this blog will remember that Miller’s website reproduced the work of neo-Nazi Kevin MacDonald as unbiased, objective analysis of Jews including a list of ‘characteristics of Jewish intellectual movements’.

Lucy accused Griffin of being the one who reproduced that material although he has denied it. There is little point in questioning the veracity of his denial. He states:

This allegation is false and I demand that Harry’s Place retract it.

The problem is that Griffin’s boss, David Miller, simply refuses to answer the very simple questions that both Faisal Gazi (from the Spittoon) and I have put to him in the past about this matter.

Miller is a poor man’s Julian Assange, portraying himself as a campaigner for freedom, truth, and transparency but obfuscating when legitimate questions are put to him about his own operations.

Why does Miller refuse to answer the questions we originally put to him in July? Back then we asked:

1. Who posted the material by Kevin MacDonald on Neocon Europe?

2. What disciplinary action was taken against this individual? Do they still write for Neocon Europe? If so, why?

3. What steps have been taken to review all other material contributed by them to the site?

4. Neocon Europe claims to have ‘tighten[ed] the editorial process governing the posting of material’. Please explain, in detail, what new processes have been introduced.

Beyond the reproduction of neo-Nazi material my criticism of Miller focused on the issue of which groups are not feature on his website. I wrote:

Despite the ‘close to ten thousand’ entries on SpinProfiles you will find nothing on [Islamist pressure] groups.

The problem, of course, is not with generic, non-sectarian initiatives encouraging greater participation in the political process – whether communal or not. That is something to be applauded. The problem is with SpinProfile’s apparent obsession with “Jewish power” or, if you will, “the Jewish lobby”.

After all, Miller is supposed to be an academic of the highest order: a professor. Yet, nowhere does he offer any methodology for how his targets are selected.

What constitutes a person, issue or group ‘shaping the public agenda?’ How is ‘public agenda’ defined? What level, type and kind of activity constitutes ‘shaping’ as opposed to merely ‘observing’ or ‘commenting’ on an agenda?

If Miller wants to be taken seriously as an academic these are questions he must answer. It is not just SpinProfiles which is guilty of such intellectual sloppiness.

I’m afraid it still remains impossible to take David Miller seriously. He simply refuses to engage with these issues because, I suspect, he has no answer.

Miller’s been caught out. He tries to suggest that the reproduction of MacDonald’s work was a one-off mistake. It’s not. It’s just the most extreme manifestation of what is going on in his mind – an obsession with Jews and ‘Jewish power’.

In the past Miller has gone further than just hosting the material of anti-Semites on his website – he has also hosted them in person. Joel Kovel, an American academic, caused uproar when he published ‘Overcoming Zionism’, a controversial book which resulted in University of Michigan Press ending its relationship with Pluto Press.

So, guess who provided accommodation to Kovel when he was in Scotland last year promoting that book? According to Kovel’s own website:

Beyond Zionism Book Tour Itinerary:

16-20 APRIL SCOTTISH PSC TOUR

Accommodation: David Miller

It is unclear whether this means Miller hosted Kovel in his own home or just provided accommodation in some other way. Again, this is a legitimate question which those of us who feature on Miller’s websites (and I do here) have a right to ask.

Here’s what Kovel says on page 246 of Overcoming Zionism:

But the notion of a “Jewish restoration” [to Palestine] is also atrocious. Restored for what? To rape Palestine, to pervert the Holocaust, to become courtiers of an empire [= America] that is destroying the planet itself? As they have built their world, the power-Jews have restored nothing so much as Moloch, the child-devouring shadow-form of Yahweh – a verdict all too literal.

While promoting the book in a soft-soap interview with Revolution, Kovel offers an illuminating insight into his worldview. About Zionism he says:

[Zionism] is necessarily a racist ideology if you think about it, but most people aren’t allowed to think about it thanks to powerful Zionist repression.

And then the requisite pieties about the ‘Zionist lobby’ – about which we know Miller also obsesses:

… you find these extremely powerful Zionist groups that are growing by leaps and bounds in this country [America], taking a tremendous role in manipulation and invasion of the U.S. state apparatus, and many levels of civil society including the media and entertainment industry, academia, and the like.

[...]

… [Bush and Cheney] recruited a network of so-called neo-conservatives, some of whom are Christians, many of whom are Jewish, and all of whom are ultra-Zionists. Zionism is the glue that holds together the infrastructure of the U.S. foreign policy elites, and has been a necessary factor in the planning and execution of the Iraq war. There is no question about it.

And then we get this appalling apologia for Osama Bin Laden:

People like Osama bin Laden, he is very explicit in saying that what he is doing is to punish the U.S. and Israel for what they have done to the Arab world. It’s a very abiding emotion, quite understandable, and the emotion itself is quite legitimate, although it doesn’t excuse violent behavior, but it’s perfectly understandable to feel this way.

Breathtaking isn’t it? Kovel and Miller, two peas in a pod.

Beyond Zionism is not the only place where Kovel has expressed his fears of a grand Jewish conspiracy. He writes in “Marx on the Jewish Question,” Dialectical Anthropology, October 1983, pp. 44-5:

The Holocaust has been repressed from history and converted into moral capital to cover and justify whatever the Jewish people would do in the way of domination themselves, whether this be the pell-mell immersion in American bourgeois life or the policies of Israel…

[...]

A horrible annealment, [the Holocaust] added to the spectrum of Jewish possibilities that of an instrument of direct domination, and in so doing, made Israel into the Shylock of the nations. The nation of Zion has let itself become the broker of Western imperialism in the Mid East, and, indeed, through the whole Third World…

[...]

It may be added that the mode of domination through which the contemporary Shylock function is played out has passed from the sphere of usury to that of racism.

Here’s what Betsy Kellman, a regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, has to say about Kovel’s book:

We strongly believe in the First Amendment and are all for diversity of views, but this book deals with anti-Semitic canards and has nothing to do with academic integrity.

The ‘Inside Higher Ed’ website – a news source on American universities – also reports:

Kovel stands out among academic critics of Israel in that he does not just criticize actions of the government there, or advocate for a Palestinian state, but argues for the replacement of Israel with a secular state for Israelis and Palestinians. In interviews, he has called Israel an “abomination” and said that he understands “the desire to smash Zionism.”

This is the company that David Miller keeps.

Reproducing the work of Kevin MacDonald may well have been an error and oversight – but it is indicative of Miller’s obsessive worldview which sees a Jewish conspiracy at work almost everywhere.

And that is what his projects are all about. They are not level handed compendiums exploring political lobbyists or pressure groups. Their primary focus is on those which are Jewish.

To make it worse Miller’s loyalist apparatchik, Tom Griffin, claims to be acting in the interests of ordinary Muslims like myself.

SpinWatch is prepared to call out those who seek to gain political advantage by scapegoating the Muslim community.

Yet, as far as I can see, Muslims like Faisal and I are subject to profiling by Miller and Griffin presumably because we are not the right ‘type’ of Muslim. In this way David Miller and his acolytes shill for Islamists, united by their common distrust of Jews.

Why else would they refuse to clear up the matter and answer our questions?

I can only imagine that if Miller continues to evade these very serious questions it is only a matter of time before people put them to his superiors.

That would be a shame as he has been given ample opportunity to respond.

Just so there’s no ambiguity, here are the most salient questions again:

1. Who posted the material by Kevin MacDonald on Neocon Europe?

2. What disciplinary action was taken against this individual? Do they still write for Neocon Europe? If so, why?

3. What steps have been taken to review all other material contributed by them to the site?

4. Neocon Europe claims to have ‘tighten[ed] the editorial process governing the posting of material’. Please explain, in detail, what new processes have been introduced.

5. How are targets for Powerbase (formerly Spin Profiles and the now defunct Neocon Europe) selected?

6. In what capacity was ‘accommodation’ provided for Joel Kovel?

**********

The problem with Inayat Bunlawala is that, well, he’s just not that smart. It probably explains why he remains an Islamist well into his thirties.

To be honest, I haven’t written about him for a while because it’s just too easy. It started getting embarrassing. Here’s the thing with Bungles, like every good Islamist he loves to whine and moan about pretty much everything while maintaining a blissful ignorance about his own hypocrisy.

In the past Bungles has ferociously tried to protect his own little Islamist match by deriding and dismissing almost every other Muslim group in the most vicious terms. Here he is dismissing my friend Haras Rafiq:

Who is he? Who does he represent? Let’s wait and see just how many groups affiliate to his group, but at the moment it’s obscure and unknown.

Elsewhere, he argues:

Who voted for Haras Rafiq?

Bungles was arguing that Rafiq lacked support in the community for his Sufi Muslim Council, about which Bungles was equally uncharitable:

The key factor is the support in the wider Muslim community

Next, Bungles said the same about British Muslims for Secular Democracy (BMSD) which completely outshone his pathetic attempts to stage a counter-demonstration against Anjem Choudary last year. Bungles called them:

the tiny – as in unbelievably microscopic – outfit

He also told the Jewish Chronicle:

BMSD have almost zero support in UK mosques and Islamic institutions…The only support BMSD appear to attract seems to be from pro-Israeli groups. That itself is very telling.

And, finally, about the Quilliam Foundation – now investing all its equity in a single word brand: ‘Quilliam’ – Bungles again says:

It has very little credibility amongst British Muslims

Credibility; standing; legitimacy – these would all seem to be crucial issues to Bungles. Yet, in recent days Bungles has been going around the press describing himself as ‘Chair of Muslims4UK’. I must confess to almost falling off mine when I read that.

Just what is Muslims4UK? Well, it’s a website and, er, not much else. To make things worse it seems he hasn’t even bothered to update the site since 30 October 2009. That’s almost a whole year.

Muslims4UK started after BMSD first raised the idea of staging a counter-protest to al-Muhajiroun last year. At the time Choudary was carrying out a wave of highly offensive and outrageous demonstrations around the country. BMSD wanted to mobilise a Muslim response to this and started a discussion on facebook about the idea.

Then – by complete coincidence I’m sure – Inayat Bunglawala had the exact same idea. Despite having been involved in frontline Muslim politics for much of the previous decade, Bungles’ moment of realisation came now. Still, better late than never, eh?

Of course, his private emails to supporters – many of whom are very leaky indeed – led to Bungles’ thoughts being revealed in the pages of the Jewish Chronicle. One email from Bungles read:

The BMSD – whose leading members advocate that Muslim schoolgirls should be forbidden from wearing the hijab and believe there is nothing wrong with drinking alcohol in Islam – have naturally attracted the support of Zionists like Mel P, Harry’s Place and the Spittoon blog.

Muslims4UK have spoiled that little plan of theirs [BMSD's], alhamdulillah!

That Bungles now describes himself as ‘Chair of Muslims4UK’ to the British media is hysterical. Actually, it is hypocritical. Where is the legitimacy? The grassroots support? The public backing? How representative is it? How was Bungles elected chair? By whom? For how long? What are the terms of his appointment?

In truth, Muslims4UK is a vanity project for this ailing and alienated Islamist with a grand membership of one: its chairman. The Muslims4UK Christmas party must be a riot. Speaking of which, it turns out we have some exclusive footage from last year’s party:

Oh Bungles.

Front of the Park51 Site

As I pressed the timer on my watch so as to check how long it took to walk from the former World Trade Centre to the Cordoba site, it dawned on me how absurd this whole issue really is; what distance would be appropriate? Should there be some sort of strictly enforced ‘don’t offend me’ radius around Ground Zero? The next day, the New York Times reported that Mayor Bloomberg made exactly this point:

Mr. Bloomberg…said he understood the impulse to find a different location, in the hope of ending the controversy.

“But it won’t,” the mayor said, “The question will then become, ‘how big should the ‘no-mosque zone’ around the World Trade Center be?’”

Arriving at the site (it’s about a three minute walk in case you were wondering), I saw three young New Yorkers holding up signs in support of the mosque. Wishing to get at least some idea of the nature of pro-Mosque New Yorkers, I discussed the issue with all of them and was pleasantly surprised: they were normal, young liberals like me, able to balance an appreciation of the threat of Islamic jihad with an understanding that not all Muslims want to take over the world. It was difficult, however, to keep up a long discussion, as we were regularly interrupted by passers-by, many of them clearly against the plans. Two things struck me about these people: first, the main crux of their argument was that it is offensive to have a mosque built so close to Ground Zero; and second, although they were clearly against the centre, they were unwilling to support any sort of ban on its construction.

Pro-Mosque New Yorkers

Things get heated

On the first point, this is simply not a valid argument, and one that was made recently by a Democrat, Sheldon Silver, who is also the Speaker of the New York State Assembly. In City Hall this week, he said that Cordoba “should take into very serious consideration the kind of turmoil that’s been created and look to compromise.” Instead, he hoped that they could find “a suitable place that doesn’t create the kind of controversy” brought about by the Park51 plan.

In any discussion about the construction of the Islamic centre, the least relevant point is that it is in some way an offensive act. Comparisons with the Mohammed cartoons episode have already been made in this debate, but it is worth repeating that, in order for the ‘right to offend’ argument to hold any sway, it must be allowed to go both ways.

There are, however, a number of concerns that if they had any foundation, would be relevant. Some of these include:

• Islamic supremacism/support for al-Qaeda – beginning with the most absurd accusations that have been leveled at the Cordoba Initiative, it is quite clear that they have no intention to use the site as some sort of celebratory shrine to bin Laden and the 9/11 hijackers;

• Saudi money – considering the deep connection between Saudi Wahhabism and terrorism, this is a valid concern, but thus far there is no evidence to suggest any Saudi involvement. Indeed, even if money for the project does come from Saudi, although it would be worth protesting, there would still be no legal way to prevent it;

• Iranian money – although it has been pointed out that the head of the organisation, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, has voiced support for the extremist Shiite Khomeinist concept of Vilayet-i-faquih, there is no suggestion that he or Cordoba have any official connection with Iran. If they did, there are laws in the United States which could be used to stop the project;

• Islamist connections – Islamist ideology is a key inspiration for global jihadism, but again there is not enough evidence to level any such accusation at Imam Rauf or the Cordoba Initiative. They are not supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, or any other global Islamist organisation.

There is no question that the centre must be allowed to go ahead, and unless they are receiving Iranian government money, or plan to use the site to promote jihadist preachers, there is absolutely no legislation which could be used to stop it. However, for those of you hoping that the inevitable construction of the mosque will prove once and for all that America is not at war with Islam and Muslims, I fear you will all be sorely disappointed. People who continue to peddle this idea, particularly Islamists, have no interest in conceding that they are wrong – in fact, they need it to be true. Take, for example, the reaction of some of the senior members of Egypt’s Al-Azhar University, who are convinced that far from being a symbol of Islamic supremacy, the project is an attempt to link 9/11 with Islam, thus assisting in the ancient and ongoing Zionist-Western plot to destroy Islam.

The majority of people who claim that there exists such a conspiracy do so on the basis of irrational ideas (see above), and using logical arguments will simply never convince them, and no one should waste their time trying to do so.

A friend of mine, accepting my argument that this will not shake people out of their absolute conviction that America wants to eradicate them, told me that instead he holds out the hope that allowing the mosque will convince potential future recruits to Islamism that America does not hate them. This may be true, but it is also almost impossible to measure. Also, considering the myriad of anti-American conspiracy theories that (thanks to Islamists, and many others) are now accepted as gospel-like truths among many within the pool of potential Islamists, we will need far more than the building of another mosque in Manhattan to effect any real change in attitudes.

Park51 is not a conspiracy to promote extremist Islam, and nor is it an effort to destroy the entire religion, rather it is a (poorly judged) attempt to heal some very raw wounds in New York, and one that probably will not succeed in its mission. There are far more important debates to be had about extremism, Islam and terrorism, and about a year from now the most striking thing about this entire episode will be just how little difference it made to anything.

I have been content to have left the party on my own terms and in my own way after researching Islamic political thought for myself. Until now, I have never sought to comment on that further but the ongoing mosque controversy in New York – fuelled by some of the very worst elements of the American Right – and, this silly post by Edmund Standing on Harry’s Place (from which he nominally retired as a blogger at one point) has forced me to review that.

Yesterday, Gene highlighted an incident where Imam Rauf was speaking at a memorial service for Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was brutally murdered by terrorists in Karachi. Pearl’s fate has been weighing on my mind quite a lot as I recently travelled to Pakistan for this magazine and interviewed Taliban fighters in Karachi. It was a hair-raising experience, made worse by their repeated and gloating references to Daniel Pearl. At one point, I was told by my Taliban handler, we were passing ‘nearby’ to where he had been killed. “Do you want to see where?” I was asked.

So I was delighted when I heard about Rauf’s statement at the memorial service. Geoffrey Goldberg writes:

In 2003, Imam Rauf was invited to speak at a memorial service for Daniel Pearl, the journalist murdered by Islamist terrorists in Pakistan. The service was held at B’nai Jeshurun, a prominent synagogue in Manhattan, and in the audience was Judea Pearl, Daniel Pearl’s father. In his remarks, Rauf identified absolutely with Pearl, and identified himself absolutely with the ethical tradition of Judaism. “I am a Jew,” he said.

There are those who would argue that these represent mere words, chosen carefully to appease a potentially suspicious audience. I would argue something different: That any Muslim imam who stands before a Jewish congregation and says, “I am a Jew,” is placing his life in danger. Remember, Islamists hate the people they consider apostates even more than they hate Christians and Jews. In other words, the man many commentators on the right assert is a terrorist-sympathizer placed himself in mortal peril in order to identify himself with Christians and Jews, and specifically with the most famous Jewish victim of Islamism. You can read the full text of his remarks on the B’nai Jeshurun website, but here is an especially relevant portion:

We are here to assert the Islamic conviction of the moral equivalency of our Abrahamic faiths. If to be a Jew means to say with all one’s heart, mind and soul Shma` Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu Adonai Ahad; hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One, not only today I am a Jew, I have always been one, Mr. Pearl.

If to be a Christian is to love the Lord our God with all of my heart, mind and soul, and to love for my fellow human being what I love for myself, then not only am I a Christian, but I have always been one, Mr. Pearl.

And I am here to inform you, with the full authority of the Quranic texts and the practice of the Prophet Muhammad, that to say La ilaha illallah Muhammadun rasulullah is no different.

It expresses the same theological and ethical principles and values.

Today, Standing has been busy parsing those prose. He tells us:

The most pertinent question to look at is how ‘the full authority of the Quranic texts and the practice of the Prophet Muhammad’ relates to Rauf’s claim that, as a Muslim, he is also a Jew and a Christian.

[...]

However, the question is: will they be saved as Jews and Christians, or only if they go on to become Muslims? In other words, does the Qur’an, as Rauf seems to suggest, view Jews, Christians, and Muslims as being on an equal footing?

The reality is, not at all…While Rauf appears to be saying it doesn’t matter which faith you follow, that is very unlikely to be the case.

Standing goes on:

Rauf reduces what it means to be a Jew or a Christian to an Islamically acceptable understanding (‘If to be a Jew…’, ‘If to be a Christian…’). In other words, he takes two ideas – belief in one God and loving one’s fellow human being – and defines this as Judaism and Christianity.

[...]

When Rauf appears to consider Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as one and the same, and proclaims himself a ‘Jew’ and a ‘Christian’, … the type of Jew or Christian he actually envisages [is] – a type of ‘Jew’ or ‘Christian’ who is actually a Muslim – given his view is based on ‘the full authority of the Quranic texts’.

Standing is, I am afraid, falling into to the woefully narrow (and wrong) view here of seeing Islam as a monolithic entity with only one ‘correct’ view. My dear friend Faisal from the Spittoon says it all in the comments to Standing’s piece:

I find this article a mean-spirited attempt at de-contextualisation of theology to villify Feisal Rauf.

Imam Rauf made these comments in a speech made at the memorial service for Daniel Pearl, who was slaughtered in Pakistan by the British Islamist, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and cohorts in Al-Qaeda.

If a situation like that does not impel a cleric to reach out and make conciliatory comments and religious platitudes, I don’t know what does.

What next? Digging out a speech Rauf made at an Easter Celebration and insinuating that he is a liar because Islam does not believe that Christ was resurrected?

One of the most depressing aspects of this debate has been to show that there are people out there who will damn Muslims if they are perceived to be isolationists and in the ghetto, and damned if they attempt to reach out.

I don’t know Imam Rauf. I’ve never met him. But his position when he says, “I am a Jew” or “I am a Christian” sits perfectly well with me. Indeed, it reaffirms the very view of Islam that I came to adopt somewhere on the top floor of Cambridge University Library before I promptly resigned my membership of Hizb ut Tahrir. And that view is this.

I had been reading the work of Abul Kalam Azad (11 November 1888 – 22 February 1958) an Indian Muslim scholar and sometime politician in the Indian Freedom Movement. In the 1920s he wrote his seminal text, Tarjuman al-Quran, which, although ostensibly a commentary on the Qu’ran, indirectly explained his commitment to the Indian National Congress and its secular nationalism.

To cut down a long and verbose investigation on Islamic theology, Azad essentially took the concept of tauhid – the oneness of God – and interpreted it through the prism of a Sufi concept known as Wahdat al-Wajood. Azad argued that the basis of devotion to God should be rational belief and that man should strive to embody as many divine attributes as possible within himself, such as humility and righteousness. This is clearly expressed in the Qu’ran’s opening chapter al-Fatiha, he argued, which states:

Praise is for Allah only – the Lord of all being; the benevolent, the Merciful; Master of the day of judgement

It epitomises the three central attributes of God – tauhid, mercy and justice. From this, continuing his exposition of al-Fatiha, Azad argued that its concept of monotheism is, in fact, a pantheistic one. He supported this by highlighting the Qu’ran’s recognition of all previous prophets and the requirement on Muslims to accept them and their messages as being authentic. Indeed, some juristic schools within Islam accept what they call, “the law of previous prophets” (Shara man qablana).

This was only possible, Azad reasoned, because all religions preach the same essential message of tauhid, stressing universal values of righteousness, piety and humility. All monotheistic faiths are consequently legitimate paths to God having originally been conceived by him, prompting Azad to declare:

the Qu’ran has come only to confirm the previous revealed scriptures and not to deny them.

Therefore, while Azad would, of course, have regarded Islam as the best way to realise God – it was by no means the only way. Indeed, Azad held that against the backdrop of rising communal violence in India, Muslims should not seek new converts to the faith but should instead urge lapsed followers of other religions to rediscover their faith. In short, that would mean advising a non-observant Jew about the virtues of observing the Sabbath or advising Christians about the benefits of going to Church – rather than telling them to become Muslim.

I see no problem with any of this.

It was – and remains – a profound principle challenging the exclusionary beliefs held by some Muslim scholars about the supremacy of Islam and their binary division of the world into believers and non-believers.

Azad went further. Arguing that no one was immune to redemption, he suggested that the exclusionary practices of Muslims which failed to accommodate diversity demonstrated their failure to appreciate the lessons from the Quran’s opening chapter. Failing to make common cause with wider society through emphasising points of similarity violated God’s unity, he argued:

The unity of man is the primary aim of religion.

And Azad did not just stop with those who might be referred to as obvious ‘people of the book’. He also argued that Hindus were ‘people of the book’ too.

The history of the Hindu concept of God is a panoramic view of conflicting ideologies. On the one hand there is the philosophy of the unity of God, and on the other there is the religion as it is practiced [today].

After all, some aspects of Hindu theology, particularly those which stress the trimurti (Hindu trinity) are monotheistic in their basic composition. Followers of the trimurti itself subscribe to a central belief about the unity of God represented through three of his attributes – Brahma, the creator; Vishnu, the sustainer; and Shiva, the destroyer. While these deities are often represented independently through artistic depiction, examining the theoretical basis of trimurti reveals that it is not dissimilar to the Christian concept of the trinity, particularly Sabellianism, which maintains the belief that the three agents of the trinity represent different modes of the same person, rather than three wholly different people.

The idea of conceiving God through his attributes is not an alien concept within Islam either. The name ‘Allah’ represents a composite mix of his ninety-nine attributes by which he can also be known. Therefore, just as Smartha Hindus believe God to embody the attributes of creation, sustenance and destruction, these are characteristics similarly attributed to Allah, by which he can also be invoked rather than using the central name: Allah. Muslims therefore also regard Allah as the creator, Al-Khaliq; the sustainer, Al-Qayyum; and the one who takes life (i.e. the soul), Al-Mumit.

The Qu’ran also makes it clear that Muslims can invoke God by calling on those attributes, telling its readers,

Call upon Allah, or call upon ar-Rahman: by whatever name you call upon Him, (it is well): for to Him belong the Most Beautiful Names.

By reassessing the theological relationship between Hinduism and Islam in this way Azad hoped to deconstruct the tensions which kept Hindus and Muslims apart. From establishing this principle it followed that all religions can be the same in spirit because the religion of God is one, if religiosity is defined as devotion to God, however conceived. This also circumvents questions about the validity of differing religious codes by suggesting their differences reflect the diversity of human civilisation, but that their essential spirit remains the same and universal.

Azad’s acceptance of multiple paths to God makes it entirely unholy to forge division based on religion alone. Religion, viewed this way, is a constructive social element which can be used to transcended racial and communal difference by employing universal values. Azad told his readers:

If an idolater honours and worships God in his own way, he should not be shown any disrespect, because the honour and worship of God is, in any event, still the honour and worship of God.

Indian Muslims were therefore urged to see themselves as part of a wider, indivisible Indian society and not distinguish themselves by virtue of religion alone. For these reasons, Azad bitterly opposed the division of India and the creation of Pakistan.

This is where Standing gets it so wrong. Simply telling Muslims their religion is rubbish at every opportunity will get you nowhere. What Azad’s scholarship offers is the most compelling case for a progressive, liberal, and secular Islam at peace with itself and the wider world. Popularising those beliefs from within – and with reliance on – an Islamic tradition gives ordinary Muslims the best chance to decisively and fatally undermine the millenarian mania of their co-religionists.

How could any sincere and thoughtful contributor to this debate want anything else?

Postscript: I should add that the ideas discussed here are much more meaty and substantive than what I have offered up. Friends who are more qualified and understanding than myself will expand on these concepts and ideas for those that want to pursue the debate in all its theological nuance. As I’ve said before, theology really is not my game.

The recent deluge of sensitive information by Wikileaks on the US in AfPak has made me really mad. I don’t care about the breach of security, although, the naming of Afghan informants was highly cavalier and Julian Assange should have blanked out assets names. Intelligence and the suppression of strategic information should become more open in some respects, but what Wikileaks have done is just simply reckless. The Afghan people have been risking their lives to give us information and intelligence which they hoped would help defeat the Taliban and its allies. But, what really annoys me the most is the fact that Pakistan has been complicit in sponsoring militants and playing us for fools, or have they? That position is certainly conventional wisdom at the moment, but is it strictly accurate?

While trying to dissect our recent strategic failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, we should reflect, that this new information- the regrouping of the Taliban and the continued sponsorship by Pakistan’s ISI was known by the Prime Ministers, Presidents, diplomats and politicians, but has been hushed up since the initial invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. The Taliban were making progress in Quetta, Pakistan in 2003 just as British troops were heading off to Basra. I know what the Taliban were getting up to- receiving help from the ISI and Pakistan’s religious parties. I didn’t need Julian Assange and Wikileaks; I simply picked up a Pakistani newspaper and read about it. OK, so I guessed the ISI involvement, but normally the ISI and the religious parties are joint at the hip. That’s another fact, which has been muzzled by the US and British press. The religious parties help breed jihadi culture, the army and ISI help polish their best recruits and send them on their way- Kashmir, Tajikistan, Chechnya, Bosnia, Indonesia, Xinjiang, Kargil, London, Mumbai, New York…

Our political leaders and diplomats muzzled their military leaders and intelligence specialists. Tony Blair and Bush knew about what was happening in Pakistan, yet decided to exasperate the situation by invading a Muslim country in a different geographical region under false pretences. The Iraq inquiry needs to address this or it will fail to teach our future leaders anything.

We need the press to help to break the chains of their governments; they need to delve into investigating militancy like Daniel Pearl tried to. You, the media, are our only hope especially with our intelligence services steeped in a history of supporting Islamist militants. They have put more effort into covering their tracks than destroying their former allies. I’ve never met a former intelligence officer that was posted in Pakistan in the 1980s who didn’t say that Jamaat were anything but democratic, these guys should know they helped Jamaat create jihad and militancy in Pakistan. They feign shock when confronted with it “have you got evidence we actually funded Bin Laden”, and I’ve replied “ well no, not on me, but if you pop into your local Waterstones or Borders you will be able to buy a few books; authors from the left and the right- oh and French, which will hopefully refresh your memories…”

We also have political elite which hasn’t bothered to learn about the radical Islamist phenomenon. I remember listening to a tale of how senior US politicians while being briefed by the US’s most seasoned counter-terrorism experts were asked by Jeff Stein, a renowned reporter whether Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were either Sunnis or Shias- they all managed to guess wrong. I mean, c’mon! The only people who seem to know anything about Islamists are the neocons and that’s only because they once cheered them on. The neocon Achilles heal is that they don’t do anything but the Mid East. If it’s not a problem which affects Israel directly you might as well be whistling in the wind. They’ve even tried to link AfPak to Iran in recent months. It’s so bad in an academic sense, but if US politicians who sit on Intelligence Committees don’t know their Sunnis from their Shias you could have a field day to be honest. Good luck to the neocons.

David Cameron may have been cavalier in his recent comments on Pakistan’s continuing support for Islamist militancy, but at least he didn’t invade another Muslim country knowing you were allowing the culprits of 9/11 to retrain, re-arm and regroup whilst also reducing your military personnel to a literal skeleton crew. Tony Blair and Bush muzzled their Generals so they couldn’t put daylight on the problem. A seasoned journalist or a crusading politician could have raised the problem and dragged it before an influential foreign affairs committee. It may have helped turn the tide. Maybe it is too late. That was a strategic mistake; that was cavalier…

On Monday Comment is Free invited Gerry Adams to pontificate about – would you believe it – the killing of civilians. Yes, really. Since when did the Guardian recognise Gerry Adams as the moral arbiter on informers and leaks?

On Tuesday they published an outrageous piece which – even by their standards – plumbs new depths. Norman Geras noted the ‘miserable evasion’ of Priyamvada Gopal who trivialises the ordeal suffered by Aisha, the Afghan woman featured on the front cover of Time magazine. After fleeing an abusive marriage the Taliban tracked her down and ordered that her ears and nose were cut off as punishment. It is a haunting image; the mania of millenarianism.

Gopal does not see it that way. Instead, she is ‘concerned by the continued insistence that the complexities of war, occupation and reality itself can be reduced to bedtime stories’. Without a hint of irony, her piece is titled ‘burqas and bikinis’.

As if that were not bad enough, David Thompson alerts readers to the inevitable invocation of racism by Gopal in the comments section of her article. She argues ‘the favoured game in town really is White Men Rescuing Brown Women From Brown Men’. No reduction of reality there, natch. Thompson notes:

[Gopal] also objects to “assertions of civilisational superiority,” as if the society in which she lives, and lives quite comfortably, offered women no more opportunity for self-determination than one in which girls’ schools are burned to the ground in the name of piety.

Aah yes, the rote rhetoric of relativism, I’m only surprised it took Gopal that long to get there.

Elsewhere, Vikram Dodd wrote about the leaking of a private Quilliam document which, aside from the intemperate use of language when describing some civil servants and their departments, is hardly scandalous. Even Quilliam’s most ardent critics have failed to make hay of it – with the exception of the excitable Inayat Bunglawala – so why did the Guardian run this non-story as news?

Dodd objects to groups like the Muslim Safety Forum being declared Islamist. That is the Muslim Safety Forum whose one-time chairman, Azad Ali, issued thinly veiled threats against a Channel 4 journalist who exposed Islamist politics in East London. Ali told him (listen to it here):

Yes, Atif, we’ve got a picture of you and a lot more than you thought we had…We’ve tracked you down to different places, but that’s for another day. And if those people are gonna turn what I’ve just said into a threat, that’s their fault, innit

Azad Ali has also praised the al-Qaeda theorist Anwar al-Awlaki as having ‘an uncanny way of explaining things to people which is endearing‘. In 2008 Ali told us:

So, since we are all working our socks off, in different ways, for the resurgence of the Khilafa [caliphate], I have one question who would you give bayyah [allegiance] to today and what would you say are the qualities needed for them to get your vote? Please, no essays or dissertations!

[...]

My vote for the title of Amir al-Mu’mineen [commander of the believers] would have to go to the Palestinian Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh. Not only is a motivational leader, with political depth and skill, but also he is a Hafiz of the Qur’an, Mashallah!

Name me one other Muslim leader that is currently leading his people in salat al-Tarawih? I cannot think of another single leader that can lead his people like this!

Yup, that’s Vikram Dodd’s non-Islamist Azad Ali ‘working his socks off’ to revive a Caliphate. And who does he want as Caliph? Well, none other than terrorist leader Ismail Haniyeh of course! Haniyeh is a ‘motivational leader’, Anwar al-Awlaki is ‘endearing’ – it doesn’t take much to realise Azad Ali’s politics does it?

In April 2009 the Muslim Safety Forum announced that Abdurahman Jafar was taking over as ‘interim chair’. Since then they have refused to confirm the permanent chairman so we have no way of knowing whether Azad Ali is still involved. That is, until you look at the minutes of a meeting from the Metropolitan Police Authority from May 2009 which states:

Azad Ali (Chair of the Muslim Safety Forum)

D’oh!

Dodd also objects to groups such as the Muslim Council of Britain, and the Islamic Human Rights Commission being labelled Islamist. In fact, there are too many groups in his piece to go through them all but regular readers will be familiar with most of them. (My colleague Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens will have more on this later today).

Priyamvada Gopal is right to argue we should all be concerned by the reduction of complex realities – a delusion from which the Guardian appears to be suffering particularly badly.

With the current impetuous on finding some sort of anti-thesis to war in Afghanistan and elsewhere. There has been a whole host of buzzwords and maxims coming from the media and international community of talking heads.

We all agree that since 9/11 there has been one strategic blunder after the other: from the war in Iraq to illegal renditions of terrorist suspects to Guantanamo Bay. It is clear that war is failing to help meet our strategic objectives, people are growing disillusioned, but there is an alternative answer to what is becoming the fashionable in-phrase within the conflict averse diplomatic community and apologists of radical Islamism which is less war war, more jaw jaw.

It’s a very brave addition. Why don’t we put ‘law’ in-between the war and the jaw. The global war on terror or struggle against extremism (what is it currently called?) has suffered on all sides because of the lack of anyone to uphold international law; ‘law law’ can become an effective solution to these important questions.

If we look at current developments in Bangladesh we can start to see a little more hope. The Bangladeshi people have decided that they want to bring the war criminals of 1971 to justice. They haven’t used bombs or infantry and to date no collateral damage has taken place. The Bangladeshi people see the war crimes trial as a way of halting the culture of impunity and a way of tackling religious fundamentalism and corruption within the country.

Soon, the United States will put Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on trial for his role as the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. The trial will be controversial and perhaps show why the US has been trying to pluck combatants off the battle field then sending them on to CIA ghost prisons; denying them habeas corpus. The majority of the orange jumper-suit darlings hold information which the US has wanted to avoid facing. Information which will make the 9/11 Report look like history’s biggest white-wash. So please, when answering the questions of whether we should look at engagement rather than counter-productive war for wars sake; lets give ‘law law’ a chance.

In the comments section of Alexander’s article, Miller writes:

Meleagrou-Hitchens argues that his profile should not appear on our website Powerbase, because he did not want to feature on a site which in the past ‘published’ the work of racist academic Kevin MacDonald.

Meleagrou-Hitchens well knows that – to our regret – one of our researchers did quote MacDonald on one of our sister sites – as opposed to ‘publishing’ anything by MacDonald.

This could be seen as misdirection by Miller. The difference between ‘quoting’ and ‘reproducing’ would be the terms in which the selected material of MacDonald was represented on the website. As it was, MacDonald’s views were reproduced, at length, and without challenge, on Neocon Europe. The passages appeared in terms which not only seemed to approve of – but also approbated – MacDonald’s views. The Spittoon points out:

NeoCon Europe still decided to present MacDonald’s views on their website as an objective commentary on Irving Kristol’s ‘The Neoconservative Persuasion’.

It is the representation of MacDonald’s views as authoritative and objective commentary that is problematic. Miller cannot deny this, and it goes much further than merely quoting something distasteful.

Miller goes on to say:

The person involved is no longer a contributor to our wiki projects. Note also that our project is a wiki with literally hundreds of registered users, many of them volunteers.

Again, there is reason to suspect misdirection from Miller here. Neocon Europe might well have ‘hundreds of registered users’ but even a cursory glance of the website reveals that it has only a handful of regular contributors. The most prolific are David Miller, Tom Griffin, Idrees Ahmad and Tom Mills.

As a result, we should be told who the specific contributor in this case was. In the interests of transparency and disclosure – which I know Professor Miller values highly – the individual involved should be named. We should also be given an opportunity to speak with and interview the individual concerned. I look forward to receiving this information soon.

Miller simply cannot continue claiming dispassionate objectivity while refusing to answer the simple questions put to him by Faisal Gazi and myself.

Again, for the sake of convenience, I reproduce the questions here:

1. Who posted the material by Kevin MacDonald on Neocon Europe?

2. What disciplinary action was taken against this individual? Do they still write for Neocon Europe? If so, why?

3. What steps have been taken to review all other material contributed by them to the site?

4. Neocon Europe claims to have ‘tighten[ed] the editorial process governing the posting of material’. Please explain, in detail, what new processes have been introduced.

At best, it seems only the second question has been answered. Even then, no documentary evidence has been forthcoming. For a group concerned with absolute transparency this is most disappointing.

Of course, all these questions leave aside the less than transparent Swiss banking system through which Miller receives his funding from a Lebanese business man.

Faisal adds:

This is the comment I have left on the Alex Hitchens’ CiF piece. I am still waiting for a response:

Professor Miller

While you are here, I wonder if you could clear up a matter of some discomfort to me.

I run the Spittoon blog and as a result, both myself and the blog have been given entries on your “Watch” sites.

Now normally, I wouldn’t have bothered with this at all. But the only reason why I object to the entry is because of a sentence which you have chosen to include in my profile:

“Gazi has developed affiliations with neoconservatives and attacked Muslims, Muslim organisations and ‘multiculturalism’ in general as a threat to ‘pluralism’ and ‘universal values’.”

Now there is a grave distortion in that sentence which I believe is entirely intentional. It is true that on my blog, I have chosen to criticise particular Muslims and Muslim organisation.

But you know very well that the objects of my criticism are exclusively Islamists and Islamist organisations.

As a result, your entry makes out that I am out to attack Muslims. I think your intention is to malign me as an anti-Muslim bigot or an Islamophobe,

Unless and until you can provide evidence that I attack “Muslims and Muslim organisations” without qualification and I would request an apology from you on this public forum. Furthermore, that you either edit my entry to reflect the truth or you take it down altogether.

Thanks.

My colleague and comrade Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens has today explained why he wanted his profile removed from the SpinProfileswebsite operated by Professor David Miller of Strathclyde University.

Hitch the younger was characteristically generous in his response, omitting the wider questions relating to David Miller’s websites and views. I am honour-bound to raise these in defence of a trusty friend.

Miller operates SpinProfiles along with a number of other websites which include SpinWatch and Neocon Europe. The first of these websites came to attention after Alexander requested that his profile be removed from it.

SpinProfiles describes itself as an:

encyclopedia of people, issues, and groups shaping the public agenda that is being written collaboratively on this website. It catalogues descriptions and details of PR firms, activist groups and government agencies as well as the criticisms that are made of these groups from different perspectives.

There is some truth in this. SpinProfiles does indeed catalogue ‘people, issues and groups shaping the public agenda’. What is curious however is the rather narrow manner in which targets are selected.

For example, there is a profile of the Community Security Trust. There is one for the Board of Deputies of British Jews. There is also an entry for the Jewish Leadership Council. An entire essay greets those looking upBICOM.

By Miller’s own admission SpinProfiles:

features close to ten thousand profiles of think tanks, lobbying organisations and those associated with them.

But what about the Muslim Public Affairs Committee which is, by definition, a public advocacy group? After all, it describes itself as ‘a movement with branches across the country and Britain’s biggest Muslim website’.

What of IEngage which boasts of “enhancing the active engagement of British Muslim communities in our national life, particularly in the fields of politics and the media”?

There is a similar dearth of material on the pressure group ‘Muslims4Ken’which campaigned unsuccessfully to have Ken Livingstone re-elected as Mayor in 2008. And you’ll find nothing if you search for the Muslim Council of Britain which created the ‘Muslim Vote’ portal for the last general election. It states that ‘Muslim Vote’ is:

a tool and a platform to encourage British Muslims to go out and vote on 6 May.

Muslim Vote 2010 also intends to create a non-partisan space where British Muslims of all political persuasions can come together, debate, share learn and activate for the common good.

Despite the ‘close to ten thousand’ entries on SpinProfiles you will find nothing on these groups.

The problem, of course, is not with generic, non-sectarian initiatives encouraging greater participation in the political process – whether communal or not. That is something to be applauded. The problem is with SpinProfile’s apparent obsession with “Jewish power” or, if you will, “the Jewish lobby”.

After all, Miller is supposed to be an academic of the highest order: a professor. Yet, nowhere does he offer any methodology for how his targets are selected.

What constitutes a person, issue or group ’shaping the public agenda?’ How is ‘public agenda’ defined? What level, type and kind of activity constitutes ‘shaping’ as opposed to merely ‘observing’ or ‘commenting’ on an agenda?

If Miller wants to be taken seriously as an academic these are questions he must answer. It is not just SpinProfiles which is guilty of such intellectual sloppiness.

Another of Miller’s projects, Neocon Europe fails to offer any definition of ‘Neocon’. Yes, the website does give a history of neoconservatism, its emergence and development – which is, in itself, highly contentious and skewed, but put that aside for now.

The most basic requirement for the website might be considered a fairly robust definition of the criteria by which someone is judged to be a neocon and therefore listed on the site. This is, however, lacking altogether. A pitiful attempt at offering some criteria is offered here, but the categorisations (particularly the third) are too vague to have any meaning.

How can Miller expect any credibility when he cannot even define his terms? The absurdity of it is that even Sunder Katwala, director of the Fabian Society, once had a profile on the website. It has since been ported over to SpinProfiles (though click here to see an old copy of it on Neocon Europe).

Anyone wanting to understand Miller and his projects needs to consult two websites: The Spittoon and SpinWatchWatch. The former has produced a series of lucid expositions on the matter while the latter focuses on it exclusively.

SpinWatchWatch identifies David Miller’s websites as having ‘a keen interest in Jews’ which promote a ‘Jewish conspiracy theory of history’.

A quick read of Miller’s sites reveals just that. While they profile almost every Jewish group out there – such as those listed above – they only focus on those Muslims who oppose Islamism. Thus, friends such as Faisal Gazi and Ed Husain are logged and recorded on Miller’s websites (along with myself) while there is nothing on Iqbal Sacranie, Mohammed Abdul Bari, or Daud Abdullah. Even the intellectual heavyweight, Inayat Bunglawala is left without an entry.

How can Miller, then, continue claiming academic impartiality and balance? His websites have a clear and obvious selection bias.

To make matters worse, research undertaken by the Spittoon reveals that until around November of last year Miller’s Neocon Europe website was hosting material by the neo-Nazi sympathiser Kevin MacDonald.

In the past MacDonald has appeared as a witness for David Irving in his libel battle with Deborah Lipstadt, describing Irving’s work as “required reading for serious students of the Third Reich and World War II”. MacDonald went on totell the court:

…my training as an evolutionist as well as the evidence compiled by historians leads me to conceptualize Judaism as self-interested groups whose interests often conflict with segments of the gentile community.

MacDonald’s views were reproduced uncritically and without challenge at length on Neocon Europe. There are pictures proving this here and here. Perhaps worst of all, the site also reproduced a racial eugenics list written by MacDonald outlining the ‘characteristics of Jewish intellectual movements’. He listed these as follows:

• A deep concern with furthering specific Jewish interests, such as helping Israel or promoting immigration.
• Issues are framed in a rhetoric of universalism rather than Jewish particularism.
• Issues are framed in moral terms, and an attitude of moral superiority pervades the movement.
• Centered around charismatic leaders (Boas, Trotsky, Freud).
• Jews form a cohesive, mutually reinforcing core.
• Non-Jews appear in highly visible roles, often as spokespersons for the movement.
• A pronounced ingroup/outgroup atmosphere within the movement-dissenters are portrayed as the personification of evil and are expunged from the movement.
• The movement is irrational in the sense that it is fundamentally concerned with using available intellectual resources to advance a political cause.
• The movement is associated with the most prestigious academic institutions in the society.
• Access to prestigious and mainstream media sources, partly as a result of Jewish influence on the media.
• Active involvement of the wider Jewish community in supporting the movement.

As the Spittoon points out:

That’s the kind of attitude that ultimately led the Nazi’s to theirLebensunwertes Leben doctrine.

Miller now concedes:

Macdonald has been repeatedly and rightly (in our view) accused of racism. Moreover, the statements expressed core essentialist anti-semitic/racist ideas. This material should not have been posted and is in no way endorsed by this site. I apologise for, and deeply regret, this error.

While attacking my trusty Hitch on Comment is Free, David Miller states:

Our site can, indeed, be controversial for those who appear on it, which is part of the point. Some of the organisations and individuals we focus on go to great lengths to evade transparency.

In the interests of transparency and full disclosure David Miller should now answer the simple questions put to him by my friend Faisal Gazi almost seven months ago.

It would be a shame if he continued to evade those questions so, for convenience, I have replicated them below (with some changes and additions of my own):

1. Who posted the material by Kevin MacDonald on Neocon Europe?

2. What disciplinary action was taken against this individual? Do they still write for Neocon Europe? If so, why?

3. What steps have been taken to review all other material contributed by them to the site?

4. Neocon Europe claims to have ‘tighten[ed] the editorial process governing the posting of material’. Please explain, in detail, what new processes have been introduced.

These are urgent and pressing questions which Miller must now answer. They are not the only ones. He should also explain more about the research methodology and selection criteria for his websites if he wants to be perceived as anything more than a simple hostage to ancient and destructive prejudices.

*******************

The Sunday Telegraph is full of stories about the Islamic Forum of Europe’s (IFE) growing influence in East London. It says the group has effectively infiltrated the local Labour Party and brought extraordinary pressure to bear on the local council, Tower Hamlets, where a number of the IFE’s members and supporters have been installed in key positions.

Undercover filming captured, Abjol Miah, an IFE activist and Tower Hamlets councillor, telling reporters:

“We’ve consolidated ourselves now. We’ve got a lot of influence and power in the council, councillors, politicians.”

Abu Talha, an IFE member, was also filmed saying:

“Our brothers have gone into positions of influence, council positions.”

The IFE has, of course, flatly denied all the allegations.

That makes Inayat Bunglawala’s email (sent today at 1830) to members of the Islamic Society of Britain and Young Muslims group on Yahoo particularly interesting.

The current campaign against IFE has been brewing for some time. Just a few weeks ago, Martin Bright – the political editor of the Jewish Chronicle – called for a grand alliance of secularists and Zionists against the IFE:

[...]

You are quite right to say that elements in the local Labour party are concerned by the IFE. The IFE have become influential in East London and unfortunately that means [sic] that have been selected to have their wings clipped by hostile elements (and who include some Muslims – as is often the case).

It is actually quite funny. You get criticised as being an ‘extremist’ if you don’t adopt the method of democratic engagement. And if you do adopt democratic engagement but also happen to be Muslim (and not of the neo-con variety), then you still get smeared as an ‘extremist’.

There has been an ongoing campaign for a few years now to target those Muslim organisations and individuals who are politically active and do not adopt the pro-Israel narrative regarding justice in the Middle East. This campaign has also included the government providing huge – and unprecedented funding – to new organisations which have zero support among Muslims but are willing to act as attack dogs against politically active Muslims and smear them as ‘Islamists’.

The campaign has of course been an utter failure, alhamdulillah, and there are signs that senior elements in government have recognised how counter-productive it was to back some of those fly-by-night organisations.

This is not to whitewash the IFE. I am sure some of its members have said and done some silly things at various times – who hasn’t – but they are clearly streets ahead of many other Muslim organisations in terms of organisational ability, vision and discipline.

There you have it.

Inayat confirms ‘the IFE have become influential in East London’ and that ‘the local Labour party are concerned by the IFE’.

I’m inclined to take Inayat’s word for it given his close association with current and former leaders of the IFE including Azad Ali and Mohammed Abdul-Bari.

So, what exactly are the IFE accused of?

Speaking to The Sunday Telegraph, Jim Fitzpatrick, the Environment Minister, said the IFE had become, in effect, a secret party within Labour and other political parties.

“They are acting almost as an entryist organisation, placing people within the political parties, recruiting members to those political parties, trying to get individuals selected and elected so they can exercise political influence and power, whether it’s at local government level or national level,” he said.

“They are completely at odds with Labour’s programme, with our support for secularism.”

Mr Fitzpatrick, the MP for Poplar and Canning Town, said the IFE had infiltrated and “corrupted” his party in east London in the same way that the far-Left Militant Tendency did in the 1980s. Leaked Labour lists show a 110 per cent rise in party membership in one constituency in two years.

More detailed analysis of the Labour Party’s members list reveals:

Leaked Labour Party membership lists obtained by this newspaper provide clear evidence that someone is certainly infiltrating Labour.

From 2006 to 2008, membership in the Bethnal Green and Bow constituency more than doubled from 551 to 1,159, at a time when the party’s membership nationally was in steep decline. In 2006, the party, like the constituency, was roughly 50-50 Asian and non-Asian.

But 90 per cent of the new members were Asian. Some 175 joined in a two-week period between Sept 14-28, 2007, and 31 on a single day – Sept 20, 2007.

Some of the new members told The Sunday Telegraph they were signed up en bloc by Lutfur Rahman, the man accused of rising to the council leadership with the IFE’s help.

In another case the supposed “members” could not be found and had never appeared on the electoral roll at the address they gave, but a person with the same name as an East London Mosque employee was on the roll at that address. Many other new members have the same names as staff or trustees of IFE-linked organisations. The exercise is not conclusive because many people in the Bangladeshi community have common names – but it is suggestive. The IFE denied it was in any way behind the rise in membership.

This forms the central allegation against the IFE – that its members are pursuing entryist tactics in East London. Notably, Inayat does not deny this but instead reiterates all the usual allegations of ‘McCarthyism’ and ‘Zionist conspiracy’.

Of course, Inayat is not a spokesman for the IFE and cannot act on its behalf. Yet, his proximity to its leadership and his longstanding involvement in the murky world of sectarian Islamist politics makes him an authoritative voice in this respect.

The Labour Party must investigate this urgently.

********************

CBS News is breaking an exclusive story over in the United States. It seems that Anwar al-Awlaki did indeed direct the abortive Christmas day attack by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Here’s what CBS are reporting:

The suspect in a failed Christmas Day airliner bombing attempt told federal investigators that radical Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki directed him to carry out the attack, CBS News has learned.

[...]

The source said Abdulmutallab told investigators he was guided by al-Awalki to detonate the bomb over U.S. soil, unlike the failed British bomber plot in 2006 when the bombers were instructed to detonate bombs on airliners over the ocean on the way to the U.S. so that there would be no evidence left behind.

This is confirmation of what many of us had long suspected – that Awlaki is not just an al-Qaeda theorist, but is now playing an active leadership role within the organisation too. These revelations will certainly make uncomfortable reading for many of his British based supporters – some of whom should now be urgently investigated by the police.

Cage Prisoners have been among Awlaki’s biggest cheerleaders in the UK. The group’s director is Moazzam Begg, a former inmate at Guantanamo Bay, whose first brush with the law came in March 2000, when a bookshop he ran called Maktabah al Ansaar was raided by West Midlands Police during an intelligence-led operation by the Security Service.

Begg conducted a remarkably soft-soap interview with Awlaki in 2007 for Cage Prisoners.

Are you allowed to travel outside the Yemen? Obviously, many people want you to come to the United Kingdom and elsewhere, to come and give lectures, and you’ve only been out a few days! I think this is based on a question from a lot of your supporters, subhan Allah [Glory be to God]. Are you allowed to travel outside the Yemen to give lectures?

And, for those who wanted to get in touch with Awlaki, Cage Prisoners helpfully suggested:

You can send a message to Imam Anwar by emailing us at contact@cageprisoners.com

You can listen to an audio recording of the interview here:

Begg recently explained:

Interviewing Awlaki was important on many levels for Cageprisoners, not least because he was a prisoner held in the Middle East at the behest of the US. This was noted even by Human Rights Watch who also sought our assistance in trying to secure an interview with him, as well as several western media outlets. After his release, I am told, Anwar’s position on issues pertaining to US foreign policy had started to become more hostile. Cageprisoners went on to invite Awlaki to deliver audio-recorded addresses at two of our annual dinners, speaking solely on the issue of prisoners’ rights as prisoners and their families would find solace in hearing from a scholar who was a former prisoner and could relate to their experience.

[Emphasis added]

Indeed, Awlaki was invited to deliver messages at Cage Prisoners events in 2008 and 2009. Begg goes on to say:

A cursory look at Awlaki’s pre-incarceration lectures would clearly show just why he became so popular. He was not a radical ‘preacher of hate’ by any stretch of the imagination. Whilst teaching Islamic principles in an erudite and articulate way – he neither shied away from talking about the Islamic concept of jihad (in military terms) nor from condemning the September 11 attacks and terrorism in general.

[Emphasis added]

Yet, this is how Charles Allen, former under-secretary of intelligence at the Department of Homeland Security, describes him:

[Awlaki is an] al-Qa’ida supporter, and former spiritual leader to three of the September 11th hijackers Anwar al-Awlaki-who targets U.S. Muslims with radical online lectures encouraging terrorist attacks from his new home in Yemen.

That is certainly true. Awlaki was in contact with the Fort Hood terrorist, Major Nidal Hasan, and later described him as a ‘hero’. We now also know that he directed the Christmas day attack on Delta airlines.

Despite that, Awlaki is a man who Cage Prisoners still refer to as ‘inspirational’. Indeed, here’s Asim Qureshi, another senior member of Cage Prisoners preaching jihad:

So when we see the examples of our brothers and sisters, fighting in Chechnya, Iraq, Palestine, Kashmir, Afghanistan, then we know where the example lies.  When we see Hezbollah defeating the armies of Israel, we know what the solution is, and where the victory lies. We know that it is incumbent upon all of us to support the jihad of our brothers and sisters in these countries when they are facing the oppression of the West. Allahu Akbar!

Of course, Afghanistan and Iraq are theatres of conflict where British troops are currently serving, while Qureshi says it is ‘incumbent upon all of us to support the jihad of our brothers and sisters in these countries when they are facing the oppression of the West’.

For Awlaki, the end is nigh. Dennis Blair, America’s national intelligence director, recently declared that the US government is prepared to kill American citizens abroad if they are operational terrorists threatening the security of the United States. He told the House Intelligence Committee:

We take direct action against terrorists in the intelligence community. If that direct action — we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that.

CNN says:

Topping the list of such Americans may be Anwar al-Awlaki, currently living in Yemen. Privately, many administration officials said he is one of the next American citizens abroad with whom the U.S. intelligence community wants to deal.

Al-Awlaki is a fugitive American-born preacher whom a U.S. counterterrorism official described as a “key associate of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula‘s top leaders and one of their go-to men for external plotting.”

What remains unanswered is how Cage Prisoners and Moazzam Begg enjoyed such close access to the al-Qaeda affiliated Awlaki for so long. After all, they were expecting a special audio message from him just weeks before he praised the Fort Hood terrorist and subsequently went into hiding. That means they will have been in contact with him, raising all kinds of very serious questions: how can an individual or a group operating in this country simply pick up the phone and call, or email, an al-Qaeda affiliated leader abroad?

It is time for the Security Service and police to urgently investigate Awlaki’s British network of supporters – something my colleague Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens has lucidly written about here.

Meanwhile, it seems like Awlaki’s cards are numbered. I suspect he will have to keep running now until Abdulmutallab eventually gives up his location. Oh well.

*******************

The Saudi royal family is massive, comprising of an estimated 7000 or so members. Like any family, they have diverse interests.

Recently, one of King Abdullah’s brothers, Prince Faisal bin Mansour, has decided to try his hand at becoming an R&B singer. He even sings about the usual topics of R&B songs – promiscuity, partying, frivolity – but from a uniquely Saudi perspective.

For example, here he is singing: ‘Never Too Late’.

It was at this at this party / where I saw this shorty / and she was all over the place / tried to get male attention / by wearing short dresses / but she had a sad look on her face / young sister / you ain’t gotta dress the way that you seen on TV / be true to (Allah) yourself nobody else / and believe me you’re gonna be free / everybody makes mistakes / but it’s no reason to lose your faith / just believe that God is great / and inshalla you’ll find your way

Unfortunately, the House of Saud is not best pleased about Prince Faisal’s fledgling singing career and has told him to put a stop to it. You can, however, still download another of Faisal’s songs, Dear Mother Dear Father, through his website, Islam is eternal.

Maybe he should have employed this guy as a backing dancer:

(Via: True/Slant)

******************

I’ve recently obtained a statement from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) claiming responsibility for the abortive terrorist attack on Delta airlines last week. I’m replicating the statement below for readers of this blog, interspersed with my own commentary.

Urgent Statement, by Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula

Operation by the Mujahid brother Omar Al-Farooq the Nigerian

Praise be to Allah who says:

And fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief and polytheism: i.e. worshiping others besides Allah) and the religion (worship) will all be for Allah Alone.

And peace and blessing be upon the seal of the Prophets….. To proceed:

With the grace of Allah alone the heroic martyrdom bomber brother Omar Al-Farooq managed to carry out a special operation on an American Airplane, from the Dutch city Amsterdam to the American city Detroit, and this happened during the Christmas holiday, Friday December 25, 2009. He managed to penetrate all devices and modern advanced technology and security checkpoints in international airports bravely without fear of death, relying on Allah and defying the great myth of American and international intelligence, and exposing how fragile they are, bringing their nose to the ground, and making them regret all that they spent on security technology.

Interestingly, I’m told by senior security officials that AQAP has bought airport screening equipment which they are using to find weaknesses in the existing technology. It has been reported in the German press here.

The unity of faith and the Islamic brotherhood that prompted the young man from Nigeria , the Mujahid brother Omar al-Farooq to respond directly to the American aggression, the oppressor against the Arabian Peninsula, and that with the grace of Allah through direct coordination with the Mujahideen in the Arabian Peninsula after the brutal bombing using cluster bombs and cruise missiles launched from U.S. warships in the occupied Gulf of Aden on the Yemenite tribes in the Abyan province and the last attack on Shibuya, and killing dozens of Muslim women and children and entire families were also killed, and these operations were coordinated from Yemen, America, Saudi Arabia and a number of neighbouring countries.

The Mujahideen in the manufacturing department managed with the grace of Allah to make an advanced IED. The IED has been tested and proven effective and passed through the detector ports. The martyrdom bomber managed with the grace of Allah to reach his target, but due to a technical error the IED did not explode completely, and we will continue on our path until we get what we want, and all worship is devoted to Allah alone.

The last part of that statement is highly significant – ‘and all worship is devoted to Allah alone’. It cannot be stressed enough that jihad is, for al-Qaeda, an act of worship. Indeed, they would argue it represents the pinnacle of faith. The failed attack on Delta airlines must be seen in this context.

We call on every Muslim who feels any jealousness for their religious beliefs to remove the polytheists from the Arabian Peninsula, by killing all of the crusaders working in embassies or otherwise, and to declare war against the crusaders in the land of the Prophet Muhammad – peace be upon him – on the ground, sea and air.

And we call on every soldier working in the crusader armies and puppet governments to repent to Allah and follow the example of the heroic Mujahid brother Nidal Hassan, to stand up and to kill all the crusaders by all means available to him supporting the religion of Allah and to make the word of Allah most supreme on earth.

Hence, we say to the American people; as you support your leaders and are standing behind them to kill our women and children, rejoice for what is coming to you, we will come to you with slaughter and we have prepared men who love death as you love life, and with the permission of Allah we will come to you with something you have never experienced before, and as you have killed us, so shall you be killed, and that tomorrow for its seeker is close.

This kind of direct appeal to civilian populations has become a common – and worrying – theme in al-Qaeda statements over the last few years. Previously al-Qaeda only addressed Western leaders, before broadening the scope of their appeals to everyone in the West, hoping to incite them to pressuring their governments into appeasement. Of course, this strategy has reaped dividends for al-Qaeda with large parts of officialdom (and the Left) arguing we should concede to the demands of the terrorists.

Those who are bent on wrong doing will in time come to know how evil a turn their destinies are bound to take!

O Allah make brother the Mujahid Omar al-Farooq steadfast on the truth, and sent down to him inner peace and patience and persistence. O Allah remove his misery and his problems. O Allah remove him soon from his current situation as he never expected to be removed from. O Allah free him and all the Muslims east and west from prison, without leaving the path of the truth, and let them leave prison steadfast on the truth with Your mercy, O Most merciful. O Allah grant victory to the righteous servants, the Mujahideen, everywhere and defeat falsehood and the people of falsehood. All praise be to the Lord of the Worlds.

There is a broader point to make here too. Every opponent of the Iraq war and those who insist we should withdraw from Afghanistan must accept the reality of what they propose – a surge in terrorist attacks against civilian targets and populations. Iraq was described as the ‘fly paper’ strategy, giving the global jihad movement a target against which it could fight and dissipate its efforts. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq, explained the theory to CNN back in 2003 saying:

This is what I would call a terrorist magnet, where America, being present here in Iraq, creates a target of opportunity… But this is exactly where we want to fight them. …This will prevent the American people from having to go through their attacks back in the United States.

This is the grizzly reality that opponents of our military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan just will not accept. Since pulling back from Iraq al-Qaeda has gained renewed momentum across the world. The al-Shabab mujahideen are resurgent in Somalia; al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has returned with greater venom than before – despite having been almost obliterated by a massive Saudi crackdown; al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (north Africa) is becoming increasingly belligerent again, kidnapping two Italians the other day; while the Taliban and al-Qaeda forces in AfPak have brought Pakistan to the brink of civil war and collapse. No sensible person of conscience can deny this. What is the alternative to a strong and robust military response?

‘Talk to the terrorists’ cry anti-war campaigners. Perhaps we should. But it begs the question, what is there to talk about? A new book by John Bew and Martyn Frampton, Talking to Terrorists, shows that bringing terrorists to the table almost always requires a strong military response to their activity first. Only that creates the conditions where there is something to talk about.

And, if we aren’t to put our troops on the ground, then what? Drone attacks? The problem with mechanising war in this way is that it is much too indiscriminate. An article in the New Yorker explains why this is less than desirable:

The recent campaign to kill Baitullah Mehsud offers a sobering case study of the hazards of robotic warfare. It appears to have taken sixteen missile strikes, and fourteen months, before the C.I.A. succeeded in killing him. During this hunt, between two hundred and seven and three hundred and twenty-one additional people were killed, depending on which news accounts you rely upon.

Not all those killed were terrorists, but this is the reality of our increasing reliance on mechanised forms of war. It is means less precision and more civilian casualties.

These are the realities that opponents of our military campaigns cannot face: terrorism increases and more civilians – on all sides – will die.

*NB: The al-Qaeda statement about the Delta airliner plot was taken from an al-Qaeda internet forum to which I deliberately decided not to link.

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For most of us, the holidays are a time for rest and relaxation; a time to recuperate and enjoy the company of family and friends.

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad

What has any of this got to do with Neocon Europe? Well, regular readers of this blog will know that last year we shone a spotlight on the racist and antisemitic writings of both Muhammad Idrees Ahmad and his boss Professor David Miller. Together they run Neocon Europe which has, inter alia, published a list of ‘racial characteristics’ about ‘Jewish intellectual movements’.

That’s the kind of attitude that ultimately led the Nazi’s to their Lebensunwertes Leben doctrine.

So then, back to the festive period – and just look at how Idrees spent Christmas eve, Christmas day and boxing day.

How Idrees spent Christmas

Yup, he spent his time editing the ‘wiki’ entries for the Spittoon, the Centre for Social Cohesion, Robin Simcox, Christopher Caldwell, Policy Exchange, the Quilliam Foundation and Ed Husain.

What a sad and sorry way to spend the holidays.

I’m going to pick up from where the Arabian Neocon and American Neocon left off. We have lots more material on both Idrees and Miller. Soon they will have to answer some very serious questions.

It’s coming soon, folks. Stay tuned.

The French Neocon gets down to work

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Peter Neumann from the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) at King’s College, provides some instant analysis of the attempted bombing of a Delta Airlines flight travelling from Amsterdam to Detroit. He’s got all the main bases covered, so I’ll only provide some footnotes to a few his points:

Similarities with the ‘shoe bomber’. Richard Reid, the so-called ‘shoe bomber’ tried to blow himself up onboard an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami shortly before Christmas in 2001. As with today’s incident, Reid was caught fiddling with the explosive device, which failed to set off properly. Interestingly, it later turned out that Reid had an accomplice, Saajid Badat, who was hoping to bomb a different plane.

Flashpoint Yemen. US government sources claim that the suspected perpetrator received the explosives and his instructions in Yemen. This makes a connection with Al Qaeda highly likely. Yemen is one of the hotspots for Al Qaeda activity about which Western security services have been warning for years. Only yesterday, Yemen launched a strike against an Al Qaeda training camp in the south of the country and killed eight aspiring suicide bombers in the north. Among the people who died were two top leaders and (possibly) Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born extremist cleric who is said to have inspired the Fort Hood shooter, Nidal Malik Hasan.

This last point about Yemen is highly significant. I think it’s unlikely that the abortive attempt yesterday was a ‘revenge’ attack for the drone attacks carried out in Yemen a few days ago, but it does underscore just how much of a battleground Yemen is becoming. While al-Qaeda has effectively been eliminated in Iraq, its fighters are now regrouping in the horn of Africa and Yemen. It confirms our worst fears of the global jihad movement: an almost ubiquitous force with broad and piercing tentacles giving it unparalleled reach.

The last time al-Qaeda inspired this kind of global network was in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 when terror attacks carried out by its regional affiliates rocked Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and North Africa. From 2003 their efforts seemed to concentrate on Iraq, with the conflict becoming a focal point for jihadists everywhere. We now appear to be re-entering a phase of renewed and revived ‘global jihad’ with al-Qaeda doing what it does best – spreading chaos through localised branches and affiliates, rather than operating a concentrated campaign through a centralised command and control structure.

Al Qaeda still obsessed with blowing up planes. More than eight years since the 9/11 attacks, Al Qaeda doesn’t seem to have any new ideas. Most Al Qaeda-linked plots in the West have been directed at transport, especially airliners and urban public transportation.  Also, they still seem to prefer traditional explosives – none of the more adventurous scenarios about chemical, nuclear, or radiological attacks have yet become reality.

This is an interesting point that was brought up recently in court during the trials of the British airline plotters – some of whom were convicted earlier this year of planning to blow up several transatlantic airliners midflight. Of course, al-Qaeda’s obsession with bombing aircraft did not start with 9/11. That attack was, after all, merely an adaptation of an earlier plot hatched in the mid-1990s known as the ‘Bojinka plot’. The plan then had been to simultaneously blow up a series of aircraft midflight over the Pacific as they travelled from South-East Asia to the United States.

Nigerian Al Qaeda operatives. The involvement of a Nigerian in an Al Qaeda operation is a novelty. Few, if any, Nigerians have played prominent roles in the organisation, and there remains little concrete evidence of significant Al Qaeda activity in Nigeria. At the same time, the country is deeply involved in a civil war between the Christian North and the Muslim South, and there are several other, sometimes violent Islamist groups who are active in Nigeria, including Boko Haram, the Hisbah, the Zamfara State Vigilante Service, and Al-Sunna Wal Jamma (also known as the Nigerian Taliban).

Terrorism going global. The incident is a good illustration of how Al Qaeda inspired terrorism has become more and more transnational – a Nigerian national, who seems to have received training and instructions in Yemen, boards a plane in Holland, and nearly blows it up in the United States. Four continents – and that’s only the main suspect!

As I said above, I think we are re-entering a much more dangerous phase of renewed global capacity for al-Qaeda, particularly as it strengthens its foothold in the horn of Africa and Yemen. Finding a way to stop this renewal of capacity by the global jihadist movement will be something Western leaders will need to think about very carefully.

Why did airport security fail? Amsterdam Schiphol – where the suspected terrorist got onboard the plane – is one of Europe’s largest airports, and has a good reputation for its security. Why weren’t the explosive materials detected? What were they, and how did they get on the plane?

This requires urgent investigation. The fact someone could so brazenly smuggle any kind of explosive device – however small – on board an aircraft from a major European airport is alarming. To make it worse, Amsterdam Schipol is one of the few airports currently trialling the latest body-scanning machines on passengers, raising further questions about the failure of their pre-flight screening procedures. There are also some reports that the alleged terrorist was also on a US Government ‘watch list’ list. Establishing exactly what went wrong must now be a major priority.

We will keep following this story as it develops.