Every now and then, however, comes a set-piece moment:

“The Trustees of Policy Exchange are delighted to report that Mr Justice Eady yesterday struck out the claim brought against us by the North London Central Mosque.

North London Central Mosque commenced an action against Policy Exchange and Dr Denis MacEoin for libel, following publication of our study “The Hijacking of British Islam” in October 2007.

Six trustees who had advanced the claim on behalf of the North London Central Mosque were ordered to pay Policy Exchange’s costs of defending this action.

The High Court made a further Order that £75,000 of those costs be paid by North London Central Mosque within 28 days.”

Of course, a Hail Mary appeal by the NLCM is not out of the question. Indeed it is likely, given that part of the point of all Islamist legal action is to intimidate and distract regardless of the prospect of success.

But, for now, I look forward to reading the gleeful accounts of this “humiliating climbdown” that will no doubt follow on ‘Liberal Conspiracy’ and its ilk.

****

This November, the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) will be holding its course on political Islam and, like the last one, it is not without its controversial speakers.

I don’t have many fans in the SOAS political Islam Course; this is mainly because the think tank for which I work was instrumental in preventing the entry into the UK of one of its prominent invitees, Ibrahim el Moussawi.  Moussawi, the head of Hezbollah’s propaganda station al Manar TV, was due to address the same course in March of this year until the Home Secretary refused him an entry visa at the last minute.  SOAS, for their part, were more than happy to play host to a man who heads a TV channel which is banned in most of Europe because of its extreme antisemitism and promotion and incitement of violence.

The course, which is priced at just under £2000 per person, is aimed at police and civil servants who wish to learn more about Islamism.  In the coming years, having police and members of the security services who are well versed on the history and ideology of political Islam will be absolutely crucial and the SOAS course is, in principle, a very important programme.  It is a pity therefore, that the course convenors have wasted this opportunity by showcasing and paying a number of speakers who will be unable to provide an objective view on the subject.

Although this year SOAS have not attempted to hire a member of a terrorist group, and there are a number of very good lecturers, such as Joas Wanamakers, there are two speakers who should not be paid to teach government staff.  The first is Kemal Helbawy, the former spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in Europe, who has played a pivotal role in establishing the MB network in the UK.  He founded both the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) and the Muslim Welfare House (MWH) in the 90s, with both groups seeing substantial success in propagating the MB ideology in the UK.  He is also known for his support for Hamas terrorism and a month after 7/7, when Tony Blair stated that suicide bombing was wrong under any circumstances, including in Israel, Helbawy condemned him: “Well he is wrong. It is as simple as that! He is not a Mufti. He is a British Statesman.”  More recently, he told a BBC Arabic interviewer that Israeli children were legitimate targets for terrorist attacks.

Helbawy will be joined this time by Noman Haneef, who is advertised on the SOAS site as undertaking a PHD on Hizb ut Tahrir (HT) and as a lecturer at Birbeck College and Royal Holloway.  What the synopsis fails to mention is that Haneef is also, at best, an apologist for HT and their ideology.  Formerly involved with the group himself, he is heavily critical of former HT members who have identified the HT ideology as a potential security and societal threat.  On his blog he has also written a number of rambling and long-winded articles explaining that HT represent nothing more than harmless exponents of classical Islam.

In his paranoid attack on my co blogger Shiraz Maher, Haneef criticises him for writing that “Islamist terrorism does not exist in a vacuum. Like other social phenomena, it operates within a wider infrastructure, designed to achieve specific ends. In this case, that is the political ideology of Islamism, an idea distinct and different from Islam the religion.”  Haneef’s response to this concise and correct identification of the root of jihadist terror is that “The issue is not terrorism but a concerted attack on the ideas of political Islam and specifically those concerning the Caliphate, Islamic Universalism and jihad.”  For him, attempts to re establish the Caliphate and the concept of jihad are completely disconnected from jihadist terrorism; a claim that could only be conjured up by an apologist for a sectarian and supremacist ideology.  What use then, is a man who refuses to accept the ideological underpinnings of Islamist terror?  If anyone attending Haneef’s lecture at SOAS thinks they may not be able to make it, here is my synopsis of what I think he will say: “Political Islam, and in particular the perceived duty of re establishing the Caliphate, are the products of pure Islamic teachings and pose no threat to the secular world.  Those who connect the terror threat with the Islamist ideology are Mi5 stooges and Islamophobes .”

As exponents and supporters of Islamism, Helbawy and Haneef are no doubt in a good position to teach about the subject and I suppose we could learn something from them.  Using tax payer money to pay them for this service, as will be the case with many of the attendees, is absurd, as is the notion that their lectures will be of a balanced and objective nature.

****

The Muslim Brotherhood is the largest Islamist party in the world today.  It also claims to be a democratic party.  In this article I will be looking at its founder Hasan al-Banna, the reasons why he established the Muslim Brotherhood and his Nazi sympathies.

Hasan al-Banna was born in 1906 to a poor family in Southern Egypt.  During his teenage years he took part in demonstrations against British Rule. He later went on to become a school teacher and in 1928 founded the ‘The Muslim Brotherhood’ (MB), the world’s largest Islamist group.

Although the end of the Ottoman Empire was brought about by Turkish secular Muslims, some Muslims, like Banna, blamed “the West” and thus he established the MB with the aim of creating an Islamist State in direct antithesis to western ideals.  Banna was able to recruit from a large cross-section of Egyptian society by manipulating issues such as social inequality, public health and the growing conflict in Palestine.  Banna claimed his group would solve all these problems and thereby resurrect lost Arab glories.

According to Banna, the Ottomans and every other non-Arab Muslim power had not properly understood Islam.  Banna lists this as one of the reasons why these Muslim empires failed in the past:

The transfer of authority to non-Arabs: Persians at one time, at another, the Mamluks, Turks and others who had never had the genuine taste of Islam, and whose hearts had never been illuminated with the light of the Qur’an because of the difficulty they encountered in trying to grasp its concepts, even though they read the words of Allah (swt)…

(Between Yesterday and Today by Hasan al-Banna, Pg 5, Prelude Ltd, 1997)

This is a strange statement considering that the Ottoman Muftis had been giving fatwas to Muslims around the world for over 500 years.  It was also under the Ottoman Turks that Muslim power reached its zenith.  But none of this mattered to Banna, as far as he was concerned only his party had the correct political model.

Banna also believed in the compulsory nature of aggressive jihad:

All Muslims must make jihad –Jihad is an obligation from Allah on every Muslim and cannot be ignored or evaded.

(The Way of Jihad by Hassan al-Banna, Pg 2)

But Banna preferred to fight the Jihad once the MB had wrested state power from all rivals:

It is Fard (obligatory) on us to fight with our enemies.  The Imam must send a military expedition to the Dar al-Harb (land of war) every year at least once or twice, and the people must support him in this

(The Way of Jihad by Hassan al-Banna, Pg 8, Prelude Ltd, 1997)

To get to power Banna was even prepared to ally with the likes of the Nazis.

Banna’s ideology and the Nazi ideology were quite similar.  The Nazis wanted to create an expansionist empire with a Fuhrer at its head; Banna wanted a Caliphate with a religious leader at its head.  In the 30s and 40s the MB worked tirelessly to propagate Nazi propaganda in the Middle East. Members of the MB translated Hitler’s book ‘Mein Kampf’ into Arabic, calling it ‘My jihad’ and they also propagated the notorious anti-Semitic forgery ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’.

At the outbreak of WW2 Banna also appealed to Nazi Germany for help in fighting against the British backed monarchy in Egypt.  MB even helped spy on the movement of British troops for the Nazis.  The Nazi party’s ascent to power through exploiting democratic means inspired Banna to similarly use democracy as a tool to take power.  The best known Nazi sympathiser in the Muslim brotherhood was Banna’s friend Hajj al-Amin Housseni who worked to propagate Nazi propaganda. Housseni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, instigated riots against the Jews in 1929 (which destroyed the 3000-year old Jewish community in Hebron) and again in 1936 before visiting Nazi Germany in 1941. The founder of Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) Taqiuddin al-Nabhani , who, prior to establishing HT was involved with the MB, also associated with Housseni.

Another prominent member of the Muslim brotherhood was Syed Qutb.  Qutb’s books, especially ‘Milestones’ and ‘Social Justice in Islam’ played a key part in formulating Islamism’s violent ideology.  Qutb also wrote an essay called “Our struggle against the Jews” in which he condemns the Jews as being the root of all evil.  Although he was executed in1966, his works continue to be a source of inspiration for militant Islamist movements like al-Qaeda.

Members of the Muslim Brotherhood assassinated the prime minister of Egypt in 1948 and, in the following year, Hasan al-Banna himself was assassinated, it is rumoured by the Egyptian intelligence services.

His MB movement is today the largest Islamist party in the world and its offshoots, from Hamas to the Muslim Association of Britain, are active around the globe.  Hamas also distribute literature such as ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ and also encourage the killing of all Jews.  The founding charter of Hamas not only makes reference to ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ but it calls for the destruction of the State of Israel with which Hamas states that it can never have permanent peace. However just as the Nazis did, Hamas is prepared to use democracy as a tactic to get to power.

Hasan al-Banna was an anti-Semitic bigot who supported Nazism.  His Muslim Brotherhood movement remains true to those ideas today.

This sent certain individuals into a tailspin. Not because of what was suggested by the article (none of its many critics attempted a refutation of the points it made) but because its author had the audacity to pick on moderates. These critics missed the point. The post was not a bitter attempt to blacken the name of people doing good work, rather it sought to point out to a moderate organisation that some of its allies were letting the side down.

The point is, we all make mistakes. If we do not criticise our friends when they make mistakes then what do our values mean? If you disagree with the arguments made in any article at the Spittoon then you have an immediate right of reply in the comments (which largely go unmoderated) or, if you feel very strongly (and can string a few sentences together coherently), we’d be happy to give you a guest post. And if we have made any factual errors then we are always glad to correct them.

Which is a very long preface for the post I was intending to write.

The Home Office and FCO funded (pdf) Radical Middle Way describes itself as “a revolutionary grassroots initiative aimed at articulating a relevant mainstream understanding of Islam that is dynamic, proactive and relevant to young British Muslims.” Although it has had its wobbles in the past, this is pretty right on stuff. They organise events involving a variety of speakers including Abdal Hakim Murad (Timothy Winters). His excellent writings are available online. Also Tariq Ramadan and Usama Hasan. All of these speakers provide interesting and valuable contributions to a developing modern British/European Muslim identity. I would not want to detract from their efforts.

There are other speakers though, like Jamal Badawi and Kemal Helbawy.

Jamal Badawi often gives the impression of being a moderate, but there are legitimate doubts about his moderate credentials. Here he is trying to clear up misunderstandings about jihad and terrorism.

A military act or violent act [which] violate[s] those principles laid down in the Qur’an and Sunnah it is non-Islamic no matter what title he give[s] to it. Call it jihad, Islamic, it has nothing to do with the true jihad. Nothing to do with Islam. [...]

But I must add also that these cruel acts, such as hijacking airplanes, bombarding them, carbombs that destroy the lives of many innocent bystanders did not just come from thin air.

Some of the other things Badawi which stands for are not exactly easy to reconcile with Radical Middle Way’s goal of creating a modern, youthful, British Islam. Here he is defending polygamy.

The question is, however, far more than the inherent flexibility of Islam; it also is frank and straightforward approach of Islam in dealing with practical problems. Rather than requiring hypocritical and superficial compliance, Islam delves deeper into the problems of individuals and societies, and provides for legitimate and clean solutions that are far more beneficial than would be the case if they were ignored. There is no doubt that the second wife legally married and treated kindly is better off than a mistress without any legal rights or security. There is no doubt also that the legitimate child of a polygamous father, born in the “full light of the day, ” and who enjoys all the rights and privileges of a son or daughter, is far better off than the wanted or unwanted illegitimate child (especially if it is a girl).

He has also written arguing that a Muslim man has a right to strike his wife if she misbehaves.

There are cases, however, in which a wife persists in deliberate mistreatment and expresses contempt of her husband and disregard for her marital obligations. Instead of divorce, the husband may resort to another measure that may save the marriage, at least in some cases. Such a measure is more accurately described as a gentle tap on the body, but NEVER ON THE FACE, making it more of a symbolic measure then a punitive one. Following is the related Qur’anic text:

And that suicide bombers can, at times, be considered martyrs.

Not every martyr is a “suicide” bomber. As indicated earlier, a person who is killed in the battlefield is also a martyr; also a woman who dies in a difficult child birth is also a martyr (of a lower degree).

Not every “suicide” bomber is a martyr if that action violates any of the conditions detailed in [a previous question on the same page].

Here he is discussing exactly when it is legitimate to kill an apostate [UPDATE: Link Corrected].

There are scholars who distinguish between apostasy on a personal level, which is not punishable by death, and apostasy that is accompanied by what we call today high treason, in which case the punishment is for high treason, not for apostasy.

However, some scholars do not distinguish between the two types.

Such immoderate views from Badawi, in the context of Radical Middle Way, are highly surprising. But they should not be for he has strong connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and, in particular, its Jew-bashing, female circumcision-justifying, spiritual leader Yusuf al-Qaradawi – who, like Badawi, would allow a man to beat his wife . For example, they taught together at the Islamic American University and Badawi set up the Muslim American Society, an organisation which has been revealed as a Muslim Brotherhood offshoot.

Kemal Helbawy has even stronger links to the Muslim Brotherhood. He joined at an early age and then proceeded to set up the Muslim Association of Britain and the Muslim Council of Britain. He also has some quite shocking views about Jews.

Oh Brothers, the Palestinian cause is not of conflict of borders and land only. It is not even a conflict of human ideology and not over peace. Rather, it is an absolute clash of civilizations, between truth and falsehood. Between two conducts – one satanic, headed by Jews and their co-conspirators – and the other is religious, carried by Hamas, and the Islamic movement in particular, and the Islamic people in general who are behind it.

And Israeli children.

Dr. Kamal Al-Hilbawi: “I condemn the targeting of any civilian, but incidentally, I believe that every Israeli civilian is a future soldier.”

Interviewer: “He is what?”

Dr. Kamal Al-Hilbawi: “A future soldier.”

Interviewer: “Even if he is two years old?”

Dr. Kamal Al-Hilbawi: “Even if he is a child. A child born in Israel is raised on the belief that [the Arabs] are like contemptible sheep, and that this is a land without a people, and they are a people without a land. They have very strange concepts. In elementary school, they pose the following math problem: ‘In your village, there are 100 Arabs. If you killed 40, how many Arabs would be left for you to kill?’ This is taught in the Israeli curriculum. What would you say about that? Should a child studying this be considered a civilian? He is a future soldier.”

Quite apart from the unpleasantness of the views expressed by these two Radical Middle Way speakers, it is deeply concerning that they should have such strong links to the Muslim Brotherhood, the global Islamist movement which Egyptian press recently reported retains a secret armed wing.

So what has the Radical Middle Way been doing? Whilst Kemal Helbawy no longer appears on RMW’s website – possibly a good sign that RMW has seen sense – why do they maintain their association with Badawi when they clearly know a wide array of speakers with far more moderate views?

The ways the government can eradicate extremism is by acknowledging that their foreign policy and their draconian laws against Muslims play an immense part in radicalising Muslims. They need to work with mainstream Muslim organisations such as MCB, IFE, MAB etc. These organisations are working at the grassroots level and have the support of many Muslims. They need to be provided more resources and room to carry out their work. They also need to allow the existing mainstream Imams in Britain to do their job effectively by providing them resources and platforms to preach a balanced Islam.

Hasan’s views are not particulalry novel or unique or even mildly groundbreaking. His statement is important, however, because Hasan is himself a textbook Islamist and here he is articulating an Islamist’s view of the political lay of the land. His explanation of how “extremism” can be eliminated, if deconstructed, amounts to:

1) Islamist extremism is caused by the government’s foreign and domestic policies and laws directed at Muslims both here and abroad.
2) This extremism can be eradicated by upgrading radical extremist organisations from their current level of minority status to bear on government policy making on civil society.

Of the first of these, there is no doubt that a sense of grievance and victimisation is widespread amongst Muslims, coupled with a belief that consecutive governments, particularly the Labour party, at best no longer cares about them and at worst conspires against them. Islamists will be the first and the loudest to play on this sense of grievance with little or no nuance about the actualities of their motivations other than to claim they represent mainstream Muslim views. Many Muslims buy into the illusion that Islamists share their language and, worse, speak on their behalf.

But the question that must be asked is, ‘Will radical Muslim extremists suddenly abandon their ideology of religious supremacism and communal exceptionalism if the British government were to align foreign policy to their way of thinking’? Doubtful.

A useful analogy can be drawn here with the BNP. For BNP voters, immigration remains the dominant issue of failed government policy. They too feel a deep-rooted sense of victimisation and abandonment by the government, coupled with feelings of economic insecurity. However, there is no getting away from the fact that their alienation from mainstream politics is nurtured by shocking levels of racism and white supremacism. A new survey into the attitudes of BNP voters showed that 31% of them believed there was a difference in intelligence between the average black Briton and the average white Briton. Only 4% of BNP voters believed that recent immigration had benefited the country. And most startling of all, 44% (compared to 12% of all voters) disagreed with the statement: “non-white British citizens who were born in this country are just as ‘British’ as white citizens born in this country”. The BNP now have two elected members in the European Parliament.

This being the case, does that mean that the BNP should hold the government to ransom over it’s extremist views on immigration policy? Would it be a justfiable strategy for tackling the BNP for the government to shut down immigration to zero levels and begin a program of repatriation of Blacks and Asians?

Likewise when Islamists, like Abdullah Hasan, claims that Islamic extremism will diminish if British foreign policy is changed to suit their views is fallacious nonsense.

On the second of Hasan’s agenda points of the need for “acknowledgement” of certain Islamist organisations and their representative-ness of mainstream and grassroots Muslim viewpoints, nothing could be further from the truth. Specifically he suggests the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), the Islamic Fourm Europe (IFE) and the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB). Why these particular organisation and what do they represent exactly?

The MCB, once the darling of the British political establishment, set up under the aegis of the Conservatives and funded by consecutive governments, fell from grace after Daud Abdullah, in a bout of group-hysteria and radical ennui, unwisely signed-up to the pro-Hamas and anti-British document known as the Istanbul Declaration. Coupled with the advent of the directive of PVE funding, developed by its own network of mosque committees, the government now has multiple agencies and departments it uses to interface with Muslim communities at grassroots level, making the MCB appear for what it is: a redundant relic from a bygone age of Muslim policy making. The irony is that if it were not for the government-funded structure known as MINAB, architected by the dearly departed Hazel Blears, whom Islamists revile, the MCB wouldn’t have a credible leg to stand on.

The IFE are a front for the Southasian clerical fascist organisation of Jamaati Islami. Currently jostling for community representation in Tower Hamlets, they are a very nasty little group of entryists. The IFE and its affiliates, the East London Mosque and the London Muslim Centre (LMC) shares the ideology of the Jamaat. The mosque is no fringe organisation; it was at the centre of the campaign that helped elect the local Respect party candidate, George Galloway, in the 2005 general election.

The MAB was set up in 1997 by Kemal al-Helbawy who was then the London-based spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood thus making the MAB directly linked to the Islamist tradition of the Muslim Brotherhood founded in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna. Today the Brotherhood claims more than 70 affiliations with branches in Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan etc. Yusuf al-Qaradawi is the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and is presented as a “moderate” scholar but has supported the religious necessity of putting homosexuals to death. They are still affiliated to the Jamaati-Islami. However, they distance themselves from al-Muhajiroon and Hizb-ut-Tahrir not because they are particuarly less radical than these amateur nutters, just much more politically canny. The MAB are religious supremacists who endorse the notion of the ideal Muslim society and state based on what they consider to be true Islamic culture, true Islamic philosophy and true Islamic custom.

Anas Altikriti replying in The Times (17 August 2004) to allegations that MAB is linked to the Muslim Brotherhood replied:

“MAB is an independent British organisation. Links with others extend simply to shared ideas, values and expertise, in which the Brotherhood is indeed rich, with around eight decades of experience”.

In short, the MAB is blessed by Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi and contexualised by the PR skills of  Anas Altikriti.

None of these organisations are either “mainstream” or representative of British Muslims any more than the BNP is representative of the white population of Britain. And nor should they ever be no matter how much they claim to be.

If the BNP were to say:

“In order to reduce racial attacks of Muslims and Jews and the fire-bombing of mosques and synagogues, the government needs to work with mainstream British organisations such as the BNP, the National Socialist Movement, Combat 18 and the White Nationalist Party. These organisations are working at the grassroots level and have the support of many Britons.”

We would know that for the blatant and dangerous lie that it is. It should not be any different when radical Muslims claim the mainstream respectability they crave for Islamist organisations.