The Guardian identifies the terrorists:

The lynchpin of the group was Mohammed Chowdhury, a 21-year-old from east London, who pleaded guilty at Woolwich crown court on Wednesday to preparing to commit an act of terrorism.

He and eight other young men from London, Cardiff and Stoke on Trent were due to face trial this week, but in a last-minute change of plea they admitted the terror plot, but denied the intention was to cause death or injury.

Undercover detectives had followed Chowdhury and his right-hand man, Shah Rahman, observing Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, the London Eye and the Houses of Parliament on 28 November 2010, during a massive surveillance operation which eventually led to the arrest of the terror gang.

There should be no ambiguity about their intentions and how they have been radicalised. Anwar al-Awlaki and Inspire magazine are all namechecked:

The group – who will be sentenced next week – were inspired by Anwar al- Awlaki, the US-born Islamist cleric who was al-Qaida’s leader in the Arab peninsula until he was killed in a drone attack last September.

Chowdhury and his followers collected messages sent out by Awlaki, who had masterminded a plot to send bombs disguised as printer cartridges to US synagogues on cargo planes. His plan failed when the packages were intercepted.

The men are understood to have followed instructions to copy Awlaki’s mail bombs in an al-Qaida magazine published five days before their first meeting in November 2010.

The publication, Inspire 3, detailed Awlaki’s attempt to post the bombs to synagoges in October 2010.

Chowdhury and his co-defendants, Gurukanth Desai, 30, his brother, Abdul Miah, 25, Shah Rahman and Mohibur Rahman, were found with copies of the magazine as well as an earlier edition Inspire 2.

CST cites the Al-Muhajiroun link:

CST was informed by the police of the potential threat to the rabbis when the group was arrested in December 2010, and together with the police we briefed the rabbis and the security officers at their synagogues. This plot is a reminder of the enduring terrorist threat that is faced by the UK Jewish community.

The “radical groups” that the men were associated with were al-Muhajiroun and its various successor groups, including Islam4UK and Muslims Against Crusades, which have been proscribed (pdf) by the government. This is no surprise: one researchreport (pdf) found that 15% of UK nationals convicted of Islamist terrorist offences had links to al-Muhajiroun or its successor organisations. Some details of the defendants’ connections to these groups appeared in the media at the time of their arrests, and it is likely that more will emerge in the coming days.

And here’s the proof. A photo of the leader of the terrorist plot, holding an Islam4UK placard.

Lynchpin Mohammed Chowdhury

And here Mohammed Chowdhury again, standing respectfully next to Anjem Chaudri, his “emir”.

Mohammed Choudhury, second from right

Isn’t it high time to acknowledge that the Al-Muhajiroun pose a greater danger than simply a group of hyper-aggravated Muslim radicals who look good on Newsnight provoking Jeremy Paxman?

Has anti-semitism become normative in the editorial policy at the Guardian? Here’s a story that suggests that it is certainly getting there.

Yesterday the Graun reported that Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Education, had awarded a £2M grant to the Community Security Trust (CST), a charity which provides security for Jewish schools. For the Guardian this was a “scoop” because Gove had sat on the CST board since 2007.

Unfortunately the Guardian failed to explain that CST is not the recipient of any of the donations it receives. It simply distributes funds to various security companies which provide services to Jewish schools, none of which Gove sits on the boards of. Even Shadow Chancellor, Ed Balls, tweeted this:

“I’ve had many disagreements with Michael Gove, but on this one he’s right: CST do a great job on security for Jewish schools.”

The decision by the Guardian to publish a false accusation could be put down to shoddy reporting or an over-zealous impulse to “stick it to the Tories”. But that fails to explain its egregious decision to deny CST a right to reply; instead the newspaper buttresses its report with the opinion of Professor David Miller! Yes, you read that right; none other than David Miller “of the Spinwatch pressure group, which campaigns for greater transparency in politics”. Miller is quoted in the report:

“It is blindingly obvious that he should have stood aside, as this is a potential conflict of interest. This is another example of transparency rules in the UK being ineffectual and in serious need of overhaul.”

Readers of the Spittoon are already aware of Miller’s work and his commitment to “greater transparency”. The sources of David Miller’s organisational funding and the fact that certain anti-semitic references have “mistakenly” crept into the information disseminated by a SpinWatch contributor have already been discussed here.

Harry’s Place has condemned the Guardian’s uncritical embrace of Miller in straightforward terms:

David Miller also runs a series of websites, one of which reproduced the thesis of a notorious neo-Nazi, Kevin MacDonald. MacDonald believes that Jews are genetically predisposed to scheme and conspire against non-Jews. The article was eventually removed, after this was pointed out to them. But, as far as we can tell, nobody was “sacked” from Miller’s project for promoting neo-Nazi antisemitism.

David Miller’s various web sites have not been averse to smearing moderate British Muslims who are opposed to organised Political Islamic lobby groups in the UK. Moreover, Miller’s campaigns to “expose” lobby groups curiously fail to expose any Islamist lobby groups. A search for information on the activities of the Islamic Forum Europe or the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, to take two examples, draws a complete blank. The selective absence of data on particular lobby groups on a web site that purports to catalogue lobby group activity in the interests of “transparency” is revealing. It would suggest that SpinWatch is not without an agenda.

Toby Young frames it like this:

So, let’s be clear about what the Guardian is doing here. It’s running a hit piece about the Secretary of State for Education that falsely accuses him of acting improperly, the source for which is a purveyor of anti-semitic propaganda.

What’s striking about this is that it inadvertently highlights the two biggest weaknesses of Guardian journalists: their knee-jerk opposition to public service reform and their willingness to regurgitate anti-semitic propaganda. Given that the Secretary of State is a conspicuous philo-simite, I daresay he will continue to be targeted. Let’s hope next time the Guardian does’t rely on the likes of David Miller.

So what opinion should we hold of a newspaper that becomes the mouthpiece for a character like David Miller?

Watch the full interview.

Following the Breivik atrocity, the ‘counterjihad’ blogosphere had a certain amount of shuffled feet and shifty glances. One common refrain is that there is a fire of condemnation heard about the grisly acts from groups who were in the process of excusing it when it appeared to be a Jihad atrocity. That’s true, but it’s a truth that cuts both ways. Another line is that Breivik can’t be inspired by a given person because he also cites a large list of other figures including Churchill, Ghandi etc. Well, I know bad faith and casuistry when I see it. One cannot insist that various jihadist should be taken at face value when they say their religion is their inspiration and then demand that Brevik be taken at something other than his face value.

That said, there is also a bad faith attempt to use this gross crime to silence any criticism of both Islam and the Islamic far right. The wretched Stalinist technique of the amalgam, and the related tactic of assuming that the worst motive for anything is always the right one. And then there’s the combination of hyperbole with banality. In particular the term fascism has become diluted to the point of meaninglessness, applied by a certain section of the left to everything from budget cuts to Srebrenica, from David Cameron to Nick Griffin. A word that can mean so many things ends up meaning nothing. This is particularly bad in the barrooms of the web, where ill-thought positions must be defended to the death. The same thing can be seen on the right, where “radical Marxist” or Stalinist thrown around with the same lack of continence.

What makes Øyvind Strømmen such a treasure is that, when he starts discussing fascism, he tells us exactly what he means. He gives us the definition of Roger Griffin, Professor at Oxford Brooks University:  ”Fascism is best defined as a revolutionary form of nationalism, one that sets out to be a political, social and ethical revolution, welding the ‘people’ into a dynamic national community under new elites infused with heroic values. The core myth that inspires this project is that only a populist, trans-class movement of purifying, cathartic national rebirth (palingenesis) can stem the tide of decadence.” And he adheres to it severely, insisting that, whatever one thinks of them, restrictions on immigration, or even xenophobia, are not fascism.

It’s for this reason that he is worth taking seriously when he warns about a resurgent European fascism. Central to his analysis is the work of the blogger Fjordman (Peder Jensen). Reading through Defeating Eurabia (an achievement in itself), Strømmen shows that Jensen’s views agree entirely with the classical model of fascism. The EU is predicted to collapse, civil war result and only a strong, revolutionary caste of nationalists can be the answer to both the current decadent ruling class and the Muslim minority.

The precision of this analysis is worth noting. Mark Steyn, Bruce Bawer, and Sam Harris have all posited the rise of the European far right in response to the Islamic, but none of them can be called fascist, as they write in various degrees of warning. Jensen, by contrast, actively advocates for such revolutionary overthrow. Moreover, Strømmen is one of the few writers (your humble servant amongst them) who noticed the connection of Breivik with the nouvelle droite, the European fascist international. His book, Eurofascism, is now available online, and is probably the best work on the subject around.

Strømmen’s restraint makes him all the more devastating. It would be neither true nor useful to indict the whole or even the majority of the counterjihad scene as fascists. However, in the same way that one can argue that in many cases there is no firewall between conservative Islamic religiosity and Jihadism, one can argue that in other cases there is no firewall between the crypto-fascists and the counterjihadists. The blog BrusselsJournal, for example, routinely praises the writers of the nouvelle droit, whose website Arktos features such items as posters of Codreanu, the founder of the Romanian Iron Guard.

There really isn’t an excuse for tolerating this sort of thing. As the old AIDS slogan goes, “Silence = Acceptance”. Peter Hitchens, a proud and open reactionary, believes in the Christian religion as the moral basis of Britishs society, is opposed to homosexuality, supports a strong law and order system, and sharp controls on immigration. Yet no one could seriously call him a fascist because he makes it quite clear that he despises the BNP and any other neo-fascist who tries to get chummy or ingratiate himself. Serious conservatives should pay heed.

The method of getting at the truth is the dialectical and adversarial. But name-calling is not dialectic, nor are taboos or tantrums. Dialectic requires sound arguments based on facts. For this reason, Strømmen’s work on the rise of Eurofascism is invaluable, and should be read by anyone with a serious interest in the various far-right factions, be they Islamic, home grown, or otherwise, on the loose today.

Jesus and Mo (peace be upon them)

This is a press release from One Law for All

HOLD THIS DATE – 11 February 2012
A Day to Defend Free Expression

One Law for All is calling for a rally in defence of free expression and the right to criticise religion on 11 February 2012 in central London from 2-4pm.

We are also calling for simultaneous events and acts in defence of free expression on 11 February in countries world-wide.

The call follows an increased number of attacks on free expression in the UK, including a 17 year old being forced to remove a Jesus and Mo cartoon or face expulsion from his Sixth Form College and demands by the UCL Union that the Atheist society remove a Jesus and Mo cartoon from its Facebook page. It also follows threats of violence, police being called, and the cancellation of a meeting at Queen Mary College where One Law for All spokespersonAnne Marie Waters was to deliver a speech on Sharia. Saying ‘Who gave these kuffar the right to speak?’, anIslamist website called for the disruption of the meeting. Two days later at the same college, though, the Islamic Society held a meeting on traditional Islam with a speaker who has called for the death of apostates, those who mock Islam, and secularist Muslims.

Whilst none of this is new, recent events reveal an increased confidence of Islamists to censor free expression publicly, particularly given the support received from universities and other bodies in the name of false tolerance, cultural sensitivity and respect.

The right to criticise religion, however, is a fundamental right that is crucial to many, including Muslims.

Clearly, the time has come to take a firm and uncompromising stand for free expression and against all forms of threats and censorship.

11 February is our chance to take that stand.

You need to be there.

Enough is enough.

In a U.S. Department of Defense memorandum released by WikiLeaks, I have uncovered another, especially devastating source who spoke out against Mr. Aamer in Guantanamo. “UK558″ described Mr. Aamer as a “recruiter” for al Qaeda. He outlined how Mr. Aamer and he traveled to meet members of a European al Qaeda cell in 2000, and how Mr. Aamer fought in Bosnia under the leadership of Abu Zubayr al-Haili, a senior al-Qaeda figure. “UK558″ talked of the training in AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades Mr. Aamer received.

“UK558″ is the Defense Department memorandum’s code-name for none other than Moazzam Begg. Back in the U.K., Mr. Begg consistently calls for Mr. Aamer’s release. He has said that it is Mr. Aamer’s “personal character and charisma” that keeps him in Guantanamo, “as opposed to anything he has been accused of.” He also suggested that he is only being detained because he could expose British complicity in torture. Yet while in Guantanamo himself, Mr. Begg was telling the U.S. that his “lifelong friend” was an al Qaeda recruiter and mujahideen fighter. (It is worth repeating that four separate U.S. inquiries have dismissed Mr. Begg’s accusations that this information was obtained under coercion.)

This old-school hip hop track is dedicated to Mr Begg

Last Sunday, the BBC hosted an edition of The Big Questions that examined arguments for and against the existence of God. Being an agnostic myself, I found the arguments presented by the ‘for’ side extremely weak and self-contradictory. Even more off-putting was the arrogant and smug manner in which certain individuals presented their arguments, especially the Middle Eastern sounding Muslim chap and Adam Deen. Both of these individuals touched upon the oft-repeated fallacy that the Quran must be the word of God since it contains no errors.

This is a very popular argument used by Muslim preachers who generally rely on audience’s ignorance of the Quran to win the argument. They also have a natural advantage in that people are fearful of criticising Islam and are therefore often reluctant to enter into the debate. It is also an argument that I often made when I was a young Muslim and am therefore very familiar with it.

It is, however, deeply flawed. The Quran not only contains many scientific and historical errors, there is also strong evidence to suggest that it was been changed, altered and authored by more than one source.

Most Muslims when faced with these contradictions will seek out an apologists attempt to answer them. They will post a link to said apologist and say ‘see, these have been dealt with’. What they won’t do is ask themselves, ‘how credible are these explanations’? Technically any contradiction is any ancient book from the Middle East can be explained away through the use or creative language interpretation, metaphors and other sophisms. But these explanations are rarely credible or convincing to the neutral observer yet appease believers due to their confirmation bias.

Some of these explanations rely on logic such as given in this example. If you were told ‘go to your home’, you would most likely interpret that as meaning going to your physical address where you reside. However, the word ‘home’ could also refer to a safe place and it could refer to somewhere you feel comfortable. Yet no sensible person would interpret ‘go to your home’ as meaning find a safe place or go to somewhere where you feel comfortable. Now that is the kind of fanciful interpretation words and phrases in the Quran are given by Muslim apologists who deploy mind-bending logic to preserve their holy book.

In the interests of time and your patience, I will limit myself to providing four such Quranic contradictions. I have heard Muslim attempts to explain away all of the below contradictions on numerous occasions, yet most of their explanations are so ridiculous that they don’t even deserve referencing.

Contradiction 1

The Quran states:

The Jews call Ezra a son of God, and the Christians call the Christ a son of God. That is a saying from their mouth; (in this) they but imitate what the unbelievers of old used to say. God’s curse be on them: how they are deluded away from the Truth!
[Quran 9:30]

Putting aside the harsh and uncouth tone of the above verse, the content is simply incorrect. No Jews have ever claimed that Ezra was the son of God. You will not be able to find a single document or Jewish reference that makes this claim. Even if there was an obscure and minority sect in 7^th century Arabia that did make this bizarre claim, it is hardly accurate to call them ‘the Jews’ without further clarification. That is a bit like saying ‘The Muslims believe that Ghulam Mirza Ahmed was a Messiah’. If someone made that statement, Muslims would be the first to challenge it and quite rightly so.

Contradiction 2

The Quran States:

So let man consider from what he is created. He is created from a gushing fluid that issued from between the loins and ribs. (Quran: 86, 5-7)

The gushing fluid, semen, is not issued from between the loins and the ribs. It is created in the testicles and issues from the tip of the penis. There have been many Muslim attempts to re-interpret this verse in light of modern science. Most of these attempt to provide creative interpretations for the words ‘Sulb’ (backbone) and ‘Tara’ib’ (ribs). Apologists claim that sulb refers to the erect penis whilst Tara’ib refers to the sexual areas of a woman. However, you will never find these words being give those interpretations in any credible Arabic dictionary and there are no other examples in Islamic sources of these words being used to mean sexual areas of the man or woman.

Futhermore, all Tafsirs (commentaries) from Ibn Kathir onwards have interpreted sulb and Tara’ib as meaning ribs and backbone. Alternative interpretations have only been advanced very recently when this contradiction was pointed out. Whatever, you make of this mess, pardon the pun, you can’t disagree that the Quran is anything but vague, misleading, opaque and thus a poor guide or reference.

Contradiction 3

The Quran states:

Allah is He who raised the heavens without any pillars that you can see; is firmly established on the throne; He has subjected the sun and the moon! Each one runs for a term appointed. He regulates the matter, explaining the signs in detail, so you can be certain of meeting with your Lord. (Quran 13:2)

And

Don’t you see that Allah merges night into day and he merges day into night and he has subjected the sun, and the moon each running its course for a term appointed. And Allah is aware of what you do. (Quran 31:29)

Every single tafsir (commentary) of the Quran written prior to the 20^th century also supports this view, as did almost all Muslim scientists of all the past. In fact even some Muslims defend this view today along with many who still believe the earth is flat, since that what the Quran suggests in many verses.

Modern apologists have claimed that the since the Sun does actually have an orbit around the Milky Way, the verse is technically correct. However, this far-fetched interpretation fails to take into account the fact that the sun’s orbit takes roughly 226 Million years. In the verse, God is supposed trying to convince mankind of his majesty and asking them ‘don’t you see’ and referring to clearly observable phenomenon. The orbit of the sun is not observable by humans and therefore this explanation makes absolutely no sense unless you are a believer who is desperate to find any explanation.

Contradiction 4

The Quran states:

And of every thing We have created pairs: That ye may receive instruction. (Quran: 51:49)

Not every creature procreates or reproduces through male and female sexual relationship. The whiptail lizard in the U.S. Southwest, Mexico, and South America consists only of females who reproduce by parthenogenesis. The Qur’anic Allah does not know anything about the biological process by which new individual organisms are produced. Today we know you can find an organism which creates a genetically-similar or identical copy of itself without a contribution of genetic material from another individual. There are also hermaphrodites.

So there you have it. There are of course, many other such contradictions but the above should suffice to bury the claim that the Quran is inimitable.

At a December 8th presentation at SOAS, London, Sarmila Bose presented a talk “The legacy of 1971 – 40 years on,” at the invitation of the Center for the Study of Pakistan. During the Q&A session I asked her directly why, in her book Dead Reckoning, she had been dismissive about Razakars, as if it was a figment of fevered Bengali imaginations. She had treated them as a “discourse” rather than a fact on the ground that needs examination. Why was there no discussion of their actions, no mention of peace committees or their political linkages to the Jamaat e Islami? In reply, she simply said that these issues were not her concern and the book dealt with only certain incidents. This evasive response is elaborated in her just-published essay “The question of genocide and the quest for justice in the 1971 war” (Journal of Genocide Studies, November 2011), where she states: “It may be argued that the groups doing the killings were the creation of the regime, but their exact identity and motives remain shrouded.”

Looking at how she responded to various questions at SOAS, she appears to be going through a central shape shifting in the face of mounting criticism of her book. At the time of launch, she claimed Dead Reckoning was groundbreaking, a new account of the war, showing that the major narrative was not merely flawed or incomplete but fundamentally wrong. By now, after months of published criticisms of her book (Mookherjee, Mohaiemen, in EPW, among others), she says it is only a “few incidents” and when key issues like Razakars are brought up, she says these are “not her concern.”

When the book was first launched, the Pakistanis were gentlemen and the Bengalis were racist and nasty towards them. Now, she states, she was not intending to be rude, but rather to display “the richness of the vocabulary” of Bengalis criticising Pakistanis. Then, there was no genocide (except of Biharis). Now, she says she has written an article saying that there might have been some genocidal killings.

That is why I call her a shape shifter.

One method used by her is to look at written narratives, and then take them apart by “checking” with the Pakistani army. She clearly started out with a great deal of access, but she uses none of the material which could help make a case against the Pakistan army. In several cases, people are alive and she could have talked to them directly rather relying on hearsay. Bose has certainly not attempted to raise the shroud she referred to, although she had the perfect opportunity to do so.

In Dead Reckoning, Bose quoted General Niazi, who wrote that sanction to set up al Badr and al Shams was given at the end of August 1971 and they were drawn from well-educated students from schools and madrassas. But by the time she writes this new article on genocide, she has apparently forgotten this citation and all mention of al Badr. In the book, she discusses accounts of “the killing of the intellectuals.” Now, in the article, she concludes that there is no evidence that the Pakistani army was involved. In neither the book nor the article does she connect al Badr and al Shams to the Jamaat e Islami or examine their ideology, intentions or actions. There is a blackout in her book about the peace committees and the role of the Jamaat in systematic killings and torture.

The most striking thing about the book is the complete absence of any framework, theoretical or political. Some of her material clearly shows an uprising in progress. Fear, rumours and exaggeration are well known features of uprisings, but you don’t get any sense that she understands this, or has read anything about the behaviour of crowds. There is also a non-discussion of genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanityeither legal or political movements for accountability, or the case that has developed through international tribunals

Now it is true that only certain incidents are discussed, so she may argue she does not need to cover every incident. But the book claims to dismiss the genocide allegation based on these selective incidents. In her book, she summarily denied genocide allegations against Pakistanis. For instance, she makes no determination on the crimes committed at Dhaka University, though she doesn’t deny the direct accounts of targeted attacks on civilians. But she mocks them for “cowering” instead of fighting. There is a strong whiff of admiration for the military, instead of these paltry people who hid when the army launched a massive attack. Her main concern is numbers and other issues of burial and evidence.

There was an emphasis in her EPW article on rape (preceding this book) on randomness, as she keeps calling rape “opportunistic.” In the book, there is a refusal to see any patterns targeting of civilians, even where it is described, it is not commented on. After being challenged on the EPW article (by Mookherjee, Mandal, Rahman and others), she excluded some of the rape material from the book. Although Yasmin Saikia is cited as a reliable source, none of Saikia’s information about rape, or contrition of Pakistani soldiers, is used. Other secondary sources are frequently used, so why not this one? My film The War Crimes File is cited, but very little of the material in it, except for footage of the killings in Dhaka University, is discussed.

One of the difficulties of the definition of genocide is that there is a requirement to prove “intent.” That, along with the requirement to show that a group (for instance, religious or ethnic but not political) is being destroyed is of paramount importance. This requirement does not have to be met in the case of war crimes or crimes against humanity. But evidence that crimes are either “widespread” or “systematic” would be crucial in determining a crime against humanity. As the Rwanda tribunal showed, inflammatory speeches calling for extermination of a group, can be an element in genocide. It would be important to show whether there were organised groups, whether they were acting on their own or under military command. Bose’s failure to gather and present such evidence, in a book and subsequent article on genocide and other grave crimes, is inexcusable.

The first is ‘The Blood Telegram‘

In 1971 U.S. diplomat Archer K. Blood took a heroic stand against Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. Blood was the U.S consul general to East Pakistan – now the independent nation of Bangladesh. Blood and his team were witnesses to a brutal military crackdown and asked for the U.S to denounce the atrocities on humanitarian grounds, but the Nixon team remained silent. Finally Blood’s team sent a dissent telegram accusing the government of being “morally bankrupt”. The ‘Blood Telegram’ marked the first time a whole U.S mission had dissented from their own government.

On the fortieth anniversary of the birth of Bangladesh Jonny Dymond unravels Blood’s story to uncover one of the most courageous diplomatic stands in history. Dymond speaks to Blood’s family and signatories of the telegram to unpick the events leading to Blood’s decision to risk everything and make his stand, and finds out why Nixon and Kissinger remained silent. He reveals that Blood was a victim of a grander cold war game driven by the realpolitik of Nixon and Kissinger.

And the second is ‘Boundaries of Blood‘

Shahzeb Jilani, now the BBC World Service South Asia Editor, returns to the region to find out how these traumatic events have shaped contemporary Pakistan. It is a personal journey of discovery to challenge the contradictions in the Pakistani narrative he was taught while at school.

Of the second, Tendence Coatesy, who also listened to the show says:

He describes how nine months turmoil in ‘East Pakistan’ Bangladeshi “separatists” (fighters for national liberation), India intervened. The war then lasted 13 days.

Jillani, who was born in Sind, Pakistan,  summarises this, “The defeat of the Pakistani army on 16 December 1971was a triumph for India and the Bengali insurgents it had assisted.”

Although the programme was sensitive and throughly researched it is unlikely to appeal to all Bangladeshis or supporters of their great war of national liberation.

The atrocities committed by the Pak army were reported, but ‘balanced’ by reference to attacks on supporters of Pakistan. The scale of the genocide was left undecided - over 2, 3 million deaths? or less?

It was left uncertain.

Above all there was no reference to the present trial of Bangladeshi collaborators with Pakistan. That is, those who enrolled in the mass-murdering Razakars. They stand accused of War Crimes.

This perhaps summarises some of what took place (here):

“…… we were told to kill the hindus and Kafirs (non-believers in God). One day in June, we cordoned a village and were ordered to kill the Kafirs in that area. We found all the village women reciting from the Holy Quran, and the men holding special congregational prayers seeking God’s mercy. But they were unlucky. Our commanding officer ordered us not to waste any time.”

Assisting the Army were Bangladeshi Islamists, such as supporters of the Jamaat-e-Islami, a brother party of the Pakistani Party of the same name.

They continue to have a strong domestic base, with support in the UK. Here they enjoy a role in ‘community leadership’  in the East End of London.

It is to the Pakistan’s great honour that a man like Lt Col Abdul Qadir Baloch can criticise the army’s actions during this war.

But sadly there is little evidence that this honesty is widespread. Some of the interviewees on the programme spoke of the reports of killings and other atrocities as “propaganda”.

In Pakistan Jillani reports,

One might expect that the Pakistani army’s failure in 1971 would have diminished its power in the country. But in my lifetime, its influence in shaping and running the country has grown exponentially.

In Pakistan: A Hard Country by Anatol Lieven (2011) one can detect absolutely no Pakistani remorse for the army’s mass murders. No apologies for its racism – that the regarded the Bangladeshi people as inferior, tainted by Hindi culture, and, clearly disposable.

And here’s the editorial view of New Age on where Bangladesh is now:

Be that as it may, on the fortieth anniversary of the victory, we must ask ourselves whether or not the objectives of our independence, for which so many people laid down their lives, have been realised over the past forty years. The 24 years of political struggle of the Bengalis within Pakistan clearly suggests that the objectives behind the liberation war were to establish a representative democracy, economic prosperity of all the citizens and a secular society and a state free from religious communalism. It is common knowledge that the successive regimes, civil or military, have not been able to deliver in the light of the political, economic and cultural dreams that inspired the people at large to fight the war and make enormous sacrifices for the victory.

Economically, Bangladesh has been growing at a rate of over five per cent, but economic disparity between the poor millions and the rich few has been widening every day. On the political front, a kind of oligarchy of a few families and interest groups, under the banner of two inherently undemocratic camps led by the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, has been dominant. Culturally, the state has drifted far away from its secular-democratic promise. Gender discrimination remains a crude reality at all levels of life. The ethnic minority communities are yet to be freed from racial discrimination. Bangladesh needs to defeat all these anomalies to become really victorious.

In 1971, Pakistan became engulfed in civil war. Pakistan consisted of two regions separated by more than 1,000 miles, with India in between. The two regions shared a Muslim majority, but differed in language, ethnicity and culture. West Pakistan politically dominated the more numerous, largely Bengali population of the East and exploited them economically. The callous indifference shown by the authorities in Islamabad in the West to a devastating cyclone that struck the East in November 1970 further inflamed separatist sentiment.

When the military government of Yahya Khan permitted the country’s first free elections in December, the Awami League, a middle-class Bengali nationalist party headed by Sheik Mujibur Rahman (Mujib), swept 167 of the 169 East Pakistan seats, giving it an absolute majority in the National Assembly. But Yahya then announced that he was postponing the convening of the Assembly. Calls for independence and communal violence erupted in the East and on the evening of March 25-26 the Pakistani army – that is to say, West Pakistani troops – arrested Mujib and launched a brutal crackdown on the Awami League and on Bengalis more generally.

In the center of Dacca, the main city of East Pakistan, the army set fire to 25 square blocks and then mowed down those trying to escape. Thousands were massacred in Dacca in the first few days and the killings spread throughout the countryside. Bengali guerrilla resistance led to further bloody reprisals. U.S. consular officials in Dacca reported privately to Washington that “selective genocide” was going on. A World Bank mission reported in July that in every city it visited there were areas razed and in every district there were “villages which have simply ceased to exist.” Sober estimates by the summer put the death toll between two and three hundred thousand. (“When one fights, one does not throw flowers,” Yahya told the press). Literally millions of Bengalis fled across the border into India in what was probably history’s largest one-way movement of refugees in so short a time.
World opinion was horrified at the carnage. But from the Nixon administration, there was not a word of condemnation. Officers at the U.S. consulate in Dacca, East Pakistan, sent a cable to Washington dissenting from the official policy: “Our government has failed to denounce the suppression of democracy. Our government has failed to denounce atrocities….we have chosen not to intervene, even morally” – whereupon Nixon ordered the Consul-General transferred.

The U.S. moral failure began earlier. At the beginning of March, in a meeting of top policymakers called the Senior Review Group (SRG), a State Department official suggested that the U.S. try to discourage Yahya from using force. According to one insider, the official did not press the point “after Kissinger cautioned SRG members to keep in mind President Nixon’s ‘special relationship’ with Yahya…. SRG members concluded that ‘massive inaction’ was the best policy for the U.S. “All agencies agreed that the U.S. should not get involved.”

Nixon’s “special relationship” with the Pakistani dictator had two sources: (1) a general fondness for right-wing generals. (When Yahya visited Washington in October 1970, Nixon assured him that “nobody has occupied the White House who is friendlier to Pakistan.”) (2) Yahya had agreed to let Pakistan serve as the jumping off point for Kissinger’s secret trip to China in July 1971. Kissinger wrote that “Pakistan was our sole channel to China; once it was closed off it would take months to make alternative arrangements.” This excuse is nonsense. Romania had already been established as an alternate channel, and there was no reason for a secret channel. As Kissinger acknowledged, the Chinese opposed the trip’s secrecy. It was insisted upon by Nixon and Kissinger.

Ten days before the bloodbath, the CIA, the Pentagon and electronic intelligence sources all detected the Pakistani military preparations, yet Washington chose not to warn the Bengalis. The day after the violence erupted, Kissinger told a high level meeting that President Nixon “doesn’t want to do anything…. He does not favor a very active policy.”

Private communications between the U.S. and Pakistan were extremely restrained. Nixon warmly praised Yahya for his statesmanship and expressed understanding of his difficult circumstances. In their rampage, Pakistani troops used U.S. weapons, among others. Public criticism of U.S. policy forced the administration to announce in April a ban on further arms deliveries to Islamabad. Two months later it was discovered that the ban did not apply to arms licenses issued before March 25. To do otherwise, the State Department explained, would “be interpreted as sanctions” and “seen as an unwarranted intrusion into an essentially internal problem.” To cut off arms “would cause Pakistan to rely exclusively on other sources of supply” – a rather lame excuse given that the main other source was China, with whom the U.S. was now establishing ties.

The pre-March 25 licenses were supposed to cover only “non-lethal” military equipment, but reporters found that “non-lethal” included ammunition. Asked when ammunition might be considered lethal, a State Department spokesperson replied that this was “a theological question.” After March 25, ten ships sailed from the U.S. with military cargo bound for Pakistan worth some $5 million. Congress further discovered that the Department of Defense continued to approve weapons requests from the Pakistani military after March 25. The State Department testified that these approvals, worth some $10 million, could not override the ban on issuing new arms export licenses, but certainly they did not give Yahya a very strong message of U.S. disapproval of his actions. By July 1971, the U.S. was the only western nation still delivering military goods to Pakistan. By early November, Washington finally announced that the military pipeline had finally dried up.

Substantial international humanitarian assistance was sent to East Pakistan (where famine threatened) and to India (where all the refugees were massed). The World Bank recommended in June that no new development aid go to West Pakistan until a political accommodation was reached in the East. Britain, Sweden, the Netherlands, and West Germany among others suspended their aid, but the U.S. did not. As the U.S. representative at a meeting of aid donors declared, “the U.S. did not plan to use aid as a lever to secure a political solution.”

Despite administration objections, the House of Representatives voted to suspend aid. This provoked Nixon’s first public statement on U.S. policy toward the crisis: “We are not going to engage in public pressure on the Government of West Pakistan. That would be totally counterproductive.” U.S. development aid continued to flow to Pakistan.

Nixon’s support for military and economic aid, and his statement that the crisis was an internal Pakistani matter, must have strengthened the dictator’s resolve. “Don’t squeeze Yahya at this time,” Nixon instructed U.S. officials, May 2.

The U.S. was a major contributor to the international relief operations in East Pakistan. A State Department official believes that this aid was intended to “defuse pressures upon the White House to exert influence on Yahya to make meaningful political concessions.” At a meeting on July 31, when the Deputy AID administrator suggested that Washington recommend to Yahya that the army be removed from civilian-type administration in East Pakistan so that relief efforts could go forward, Kissinger barked: “Why is it our business how they govern themselves?”

In the meantime, guerrilla war raged in East Pakistan and India increasingly provided training, arms and bases for Bengali guerrillas. Pakistani and Indian troops exchanged artillery fire across the border and made some cross-border incursions. In late November, Indian troops took up positions in East Pakistan. On December 3, the Pakistani air force launched attacks on Indian airfields and a full scale war was on. Two weeks later, Pakistan’s armed forces in the East surrendered to the Indians and a cease-fire was agreed to in the West. Bangladesh became an independent nation.

The millions of refugees that had poured into India between March and December 1971 had caused incredible hardship for the government in New Delhi. The refugees were concentrated in the Indian state of West Bengal, where they constituted more than 20% of a chronically impoverished population. Recurrent outbreaks of disease, including cholera, threatened to spread beyond the camps. Hundreds of thousands of additional refugees were living among the general Indian population, competing for scarce jobs. Indian officials considered it essential that the refugees return to their homes, but this was obviously never going to happen as long as the West Pakistani army was running amok in the East.

Another Indian motive for intervention was more problematic. Indian officials believed that Bengali independence forces would become increasingly radicalized. Eventually the guerrillas would defeat the Pakistani army, which was essentially fighting a colonial war a thousand miles from home. The longer it took to achieve victory the more likely the leadership of the movement – and of post-independence Bangladesh – would fall to the left. The Indian government already had enough difficulties with its own volatile Bengali population: New Delhi routinely took over the West Bengal state government for being too radical. Indian leaders were unwilling to accept an independent leftist Bengali nation just over the border.

In November and December, Yahya virtually cut himself off from all outside influences except his almost daily visits with the U.S. ambassador. Despite this unusual opportunity for leverage, the U.S. did not press Yahya to accept either the independence of Bangladesh or the release of Mujib. When full-scale war broke out in early December, Kissinger told top policy-makers, “I am getting hell every half hour from the President that we are not being tough enough on India…. He wants to tilt in favor of Pakistan.” Kissinger told his Senior Review Group as early as July 30, 1971 – more than four months before the war – that “the President has said repeatedly that we should lean toward Pakistan.”

On December 4, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, George Bush Sr., began his remarks with what one commentator has called “unconscious irony.” “It is time for the UN to bring the great moral authority of this body effectively and quickly to bear to preserve the peace between two of its largest members.” The time for the UN to have acted was back in March, not nine months and hundreds of thousands of corpses later. Secretary General U Thant had tried to get the Security Council to deal with the crisis in July, but neither the U.S. nor anyone else was interested in hearing the issue.

Bush declared in the Security Council in December that Pakistan’s “tragic mistake” did not entitle India to use force. The U.S. introduced a resolution in the Security Council and then, after a Soviet veto, in the General Assembly, calling for an immediate cease-fire and troop withdrawal. Kissinger told U.S. officials that he was willing to have the resolution include a general reference to political accommodation in East Pakistan but “we will certainly not imply or suggest any specifics, such as the release of Mujib.” The General Assembly endorsed the resolution by a wide margin.

There was a serious danger that the war between India and Pakistan might spread. For some months, officials in Islamabad warned that in the event of war, China would not be neutral, and Indian leaders – who signed a friendship treaty with the Soviet Union in October – replied that they would not be alone either. Kissinger reportedly suggested in Islamabad in July that it would be helpful if India received a signal from China that it was strongly committed to maintaining the unity of Pakistan and that in case of war, China would not remain a “silent spectator.” In December, Kissinger thought there was a real possibility that Beijing might go to war. He instructed his assistant that if the Chinese informed the U.S. that they were going to move, Washington should reply that it would not ignore Soviet intervention. Apparently, no word of discouragement was to be offered, though the entire region might be consumed in war, and the U.S. guarantee would, if anything, make a Chinese decision for war more likely. However, the Chinese proved more restrained than Kissinger and did not get involved.

Kissinger asked his advisers whether the U.S. could authorize the transfer to Pakistan of military equipment from allies such as Jordan. Told that it would be illegal, Kissinger sent letter to Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Iran keeping open the possibility of weapons transfers and letting the Indians know these transfers were being contemplated. When Jordan’s King Hussein requested permission to send eight U.S. jets to Pakistan, Nixon authorized sending ten and promised Hussein that they would be replaced.

Nixon and Kissinger claimed to be worried that India would not content itself with defeating Pakistani forces in the East, but was determined to destroy West Pakistan as well, even though Indian military moves in the West were basically defensive holding actions. Washington dispatched a naval task force headed by the nuclear-armed aircraft carrier “Enterprise” to the Bay of Bengal. On December 10, the commander of Pakistan troops in the East tried to arrange a cease-fire and transfer of power to Bangladeshi officials. Encouraged by the prospects of U.S. and Chinese intervention on his side, Yahya ordered his troops to fight on. (Civilians continued to suffer: as it retreated the Pakistani army killed Bengali non-combatants, and Bengal-is killed non-Bengali Pakistanis.) On December 16, Pakistani forces in the East surrendered unconditionally.

Despite the end of the war, conditions in Bangladesh were still grim. Washington did provide food aid, but in September 1974 it threatened to cut off the aid unless Bangladesh stopped exporting jute (its principle crop) to Cuba. In 1975, the Mujib government in Dacca was overthrown in a military coup, perhaps with U.S. involvement, and the new regime became heavily dependent on the U.S., China and Saudi Arabia, while cutting its ties to Moscow and New Delhi.

In an interview with the Guardian, he makes a series of cogent but knockout statements about the status quo, the collapse of a body of theology to square with the modern world, the intellectual capitulation to extremists and the preponderance of ignorance and conspiracy-theory mindsets. No doubt he will now be vilified and his good name associated with everything from a “neocon”, a “fitnah spreader”, a “sell-out” (but maybe not a “coconut” since he is white) and any number of other knee-jerk (but “halal”) epithets will follow.

Surely this is the kind of deradicalising sentiment that should be made in the ISOCs of British universities? Instead we are gifted with a series of half-literate hate-spouting religious right-wingers radicalising young and impressionable Muslims with a message calling for the destruction of the “West” that they would, in actuality, rather never leave.

But the time has now come to do or die, put your benefit money where your mouth is. There are a number of nascent Islamic states spouting up in the Middle East at the moment and all of them present the once in a lifetime opportunity to leave the “evil West” and contribute towards recreating their lives in a glorious  new Islamic state. And all this is available to our  dear Islamist friends without having to shed a drop of blood in any of  that obligatory but messy “defensive jihad” business. Isn’t that what they have always said they wanted? So why don’t they go?

Muslims who claim Islam transcends political and geographical boundaries are the first to tell you that they belong to this or that nation state (and almost always a Western nation state) particularly when they are faced with the sentiment that Hamza Yusuf makes here. They can’t have it both ways.

Indeed, he sympathises with Margaret Thatcher’s statement that British Muslims have not been loud enough in condemnation. “There may be some truth in it,” he says. “Some Muslims tried to explain what has happened. But if you say you condemn something and then try to explain the background, it can mistakenly sound like a justification, as though this is their comeuppance.”

His hard-line attitude to extremists in Britain would be unsayable for any mainstream politician keen to retain any respectability. “I would say to them that if they are going to rant and rave about the west, they should emigrate to a Muslim country. The good will of these countries to immigrants must be recognised by Muslims.”

It is as though he has gone through a second, possibly more radical conversion than the first from Christianity. He regrets speeches he himself has made in the past, peppered as they were with the occasional angry statements about Jews and America that are a staple of much Muslim oratory. Days before the September 11 killings, he made a speech warning that “a great, great tribulation was coming” to America. He is sorry for saying that now.

“September 11 was a wake-up call to me,” he says. “I don’t want to contribute to the hate in any shape or form. I now regret in the past being silent about what I have heard in the Islamic discourse and being part of that with my own anger.”

His great concern is that Muslim thinking has sunk into theological shallowness that allows violent fundamentalists to fill the vacuum. Colonialism and successor powers, he contends, dismantled the great Islamic learning institutions, leaving a poverty of great scholarship.

“We Muslims have lost theologically sound understanding of our teaching,” he says. “We are living through a reformation, but without any theologians to guide us through it. Islam has been hijacked by a discourse of anger and the rhetoric of rage. We have lost our bearings because we have lost our theology.”

He has been examining the backgrounds of the extremists. The consistent feature, he says, is that they have been educated in the sciences rather than the humanities. “So they see things in very simplistic, black-and-white terms. They don’t understand the subtleties of the human soul that you get, for example, from poetry. Take the Iliad, for example. It is the ultimate text on war, yet you never know whether Homer is really on the side of the Greeks or the Trojans. It helps you understand the moral ambiguities of war.”

So hats off to Mr Hamzah Yusuf. Please do read the interview.

A debate on Islam in Amsterdam with the Canadian Irshad Manji, author of the book ‘The Islamic Dilemma’, and the parliamentarians of the Green Left Party Tofik Dibi, was disrupted on Wednesday evening by a group of radical Muslims.

The Islamists threatened and spat at Manji. Tofik Dibi accompanied Ms Manji to the police station where she filled a report. He said that “the failure of the debate shows that it is necessary also in the Netherlands to continue the debate on a free and moderate Islam.”

Finally, the police were called to remove the protesters. A police spokesman said later that two of the 22 men involved were arrested, one for threats and another for insulting the police.

Irshad Manji, a known critic of Islam, is the author of ‘The Islamic Dilemma’. She said she had already experienced fierce resistance, but this was something she had never seen before.

The rioters were of the view that Tofik Dibi and Irshad Manji did not have the right to talk about Islam “because they were too liberal”,  said Dibi. When the riot began, but the audience took Irshad Manji and Tofik Dibi took under their protection.

The Islamists, who also threw raw eggs demanded that the participants leave the stage of the debate, which the panelists rejected. Mr. Dibi later wrote in his Twitter that the debate “about a promising new generation of Muslims” was later continued at the request of Ms Manji.

Bukhari – Book 6; Volume 60; Hadith 79

Narrated ‘Abdullah bin Umar:

The Jews brought to the Prophet a man and a woman from among them who had committed illegal sexual intercourse. The Prophet said to them, “How do you usually punish the one amongst you who has committed illegal sexual intercourse?” They replied, “We blacken their faces with coal and beat them,” He said, “Don’t you find the order of Ar-Rajm (i.e. stoning to death) in the Torah?” They replied, “We do not find anything in it.” ‘Abdullah bin Salam (after hearing this conversation) said to them. “You have told a lie! Bring here the Torah and recite it if you are truthful.” (So the Jews brought the Torah). And the religious teacher who was teaching it to them, put his hand over the Verse of Ar-Rajm and started reading what was written above and below the place hidden with his hand, but he did not read the Verse of Ar-Rajm. ‘Abdullah bin Salam removed his (i.e. the teacher’s) hand from the Verse of Ar-Rajm and said, “What is this?” So when the Jews saw that Verse, they said, “This is the Verse of Ar-Rajm.” So the Prophet ordered the two adulterers to be stoned to death, and they were stoned to death near the place where biers used to be placed near the Mosque. I saw her companion (i.e. the adulterer) bowing over her so as to protect her from the stones.

Muslim – Book 17; Hadith 4206

There came to him (the Holy Prophet) a woman from Ghamid and said: Allah’s Messenger, I have committed adultery, so purify me. He (the Holy Prophet) turned her away. On the following day she said: Allah’s Messenger, Why do you turn me away? Perhaps, you turn me away as you turned away Ma’iz. By Allah, I have become pregnant. He said: Well, if you insist upon it, then go away until you give birth to (the child). When she was delivered she came with the child (wrapped) in a rag and said: Here is the child whom I have given birth to. He said: Go away and suckle him until you wean him. When she had weaned him, she came to him (the Holy Prophet) with the child who was holding a piece of bread in his hand. She said: Allah’s Apostle, here is he as I have weaned him and he eats food. He (the Holy Prophet) entrusted the child to one of the Muslims and then pronounced punishment. And she was put in a ditch up to her chest and he commanded people and they stoned her. Khalid b Walid came forward with a stone which he flung at her head and there spurted blood on the face of Khalid and so he abused her. Allah’s Apostle (may peace be upon him) heard his (Khalid’s) curse that he had huried upon her. Thereupon he (the Holy Prophet) said: Khalid, be gentle. By Him in Whose Hand is my life, she has made such a repentance that even if a wrongful tax-collector were to repent, he would have been forgiven. Then giving command regarding her, he prayed over her and she was buried.

Bukhari – Book 83; Hadith 37

Narrated Abu Qilaba:

Once ‘Umar bin ‘Abdul ‘Aziz sat on his throne in the courtyard of his house so that the people might gather before him. Then he admitted them and (when they came in), he said, “What do you think of Al-Qasama?” They said, “We say that it is lawful to depend on Al-Qasama in Qisas, as the previous Muslim Caliphs carried out Qisas depending on it.” Then he said to me, “O Abu Qilaba! What do you say about it?” He let me appear before the people and I said, “O Chief of the Believers! You have the chiefs of the army staff and the nobles of the Arabs. If fifty of them testified that a married man had committed illegal sexual intercourse in Damascus but they had not seen him (doing so), would you stone him?” He said, “No.” I said, “If fifty of them testified that a man had committed theft in Hums, would you cut off his hand though they did not see him?” He replied, “No.” I said, “By Allah, Allah’s Apostle never killed anyone except in one of the following three situations: (1) A person who killed somebody unjustly, was killed (in Qisas,) (2) a married person who committed illegal sexual intercourse and (3) a man who fought against Allah and His Apostle and deserted Islam and became an apostate.”

In a recent piece for the New Statesman, Quilliam’s Maajid Nawaz made the point that government should bypass Islamist front groups such as MAB, IFE and the MCB when engaging with Muslims. Rather Muslims should seek representation through their elected politicians, just like all other citizens, and Islamist inspired organisations should not be allowed to monopolise Muslim representation. Quite a straight forward argument you may think, who could possibly be upset with a challenge to anti-democratic means to representation and extremism?

Welcome to the world of Bob Pitt. Bob is an ageing and outmoded far-left blogger who has developed a reputation for making mind-bending and logic-stretching arguments in order to contort reality to his fit his cynical far-left worldview. In Bob’s world, Islamophobia is not a societal scourge to be challenged, but rather something to be exploited and manipulated for short-term political point scoring. His website www.Islamaphobiawatch.com’ is less about Islamophobia and more about attacking his political opponents, many of whom are Muslim.

It should, therefore, come as no surprise that Bob was not happy with Maajid’s piece.  In fact, he has an entire piece on his website attacking it. In his piece Bob claims that Maajid:

‘…presents an argument against the state having relations not just with Islamists of any variety but with any group claiming to represent any section of the Muslim community.

This is not of course a view that prevented Nawaz and his friends at Quilliam from accepting generous state funding under the last Labour government, on the spurious grounds that they represented a tendency within the Muslim community that could assist in the campaign against terrorism. And if the principle of rejecting co-operation with Ikhwan-associated political organisations were applied to foreign policy it would lead to the UK breaking relations with Tunisia and Egypt.’

Firstly, Maajid does not argue that the state should have absolutely no relations with Islamists or groups claiming to represent any section of the Muslim community. Rather, he quite clearly argues that government should not rely on such groups when engaging withBritain’s diverse Muslim communities because they don’t represent Muslims, they are not elected and they represent the more repressive and reactionary strands within Muslim communities. Secondly, Quilliam never claimed to represent any Muslim community nor any sections of it, this is made very clear from their website. Thirdly, Bob’s foreign policy analogy is simple laughable because in Tunisia and Egypt there have been elections recently and Islamists have won a large share of the vote. Hence, engaging with those governments is very different since the Islamists within those governments have a democratic mandate, which their counterparts in the UK lack. Also, co-operating with Islamists on issues of concern is very different to relying on them to represent the views of people they don’t represent and have had no contact with.

As a Muslim, I take offence to Bob, under the guise of tackling Islamophobia, attacking people who are speaking against attempts by Islamists to monopolise Muslim engagement, especially when the arguments made are so lame and badly argued. I appreciate sections of the left have been drifting aimlessly for a number of years but this really takes the biscuit.

Then again, Bob is rumoured to have belonged to Gerry Healy’s Workers Revolutionary Party, which was known for having links with Saddam Hussain and Colonel Gaddafi. Healy himself was accused of sexually abusing female colleagues and enjoying a financially comfortable lifestyle whilst allowed fellow activists, who he lived off, to live in poverty. With roots like that its not surprising that Bob produces such lame nonsense.

It’s another example of some sex-obsessed cleric making a religious edict based on his own personal preoccupations and, hey presto!, it’s religious law! That’s sharia for you.

CAIRO: An Islamic cleric residing in Europe said that women should not be close to bananas or cucumbers, in order to avoid any “sexual thoughts.”

The unnamed sheikh, who was featured in an article on el-Senousa news, was quoted saying that if women wish to eat these food items, a third party, preferably a male related to them such as their a father or husband, should cut the items into small pieces and serve.

He said that these fruits and vegetables “resemble the male penis” and hence could arouse women or “make them think of sex.”

He also added carrots and zucchini to the list of forbidden foods for women.

The sheikh was asked how to “control” women when they are out shopping for groceries and if holding these items at the market would be bad for them. The cleric answered saying this matter is between them and God.

Answering another question about what to do if women in the family like these foods, the sheikh advised the interviewer to take the food and cut it for them in a hidden place so they cannot see it.

Which reminds me of the “Thingy shaped turnip” sketch from Blackadder:

Update:
The website, Bikyamasr, which broke this story has followed it up with an update:

CAIRO: The “cucumber” controversy continues as the opinions of a sheikh residing in Europe on how women should avoid certain foods due to their sexual resemblance has sparked massive outcries of frustration and anger.

An Islamic scholar and chairman at Egypt’s Religious Endowments Ministry said this sheikh could not be more “far from the truth.”

Sheikh Gaber Taye’ Youssef knows a lot about preaching and the process in which scholars are selected to be assigned to a job abroad. He expressed serious doubts that the sheikh sourced is even qualified for his position.

“Nonesense and wrong, such talk is empty of any logic or sense and has no roots or relations with Islam or its belief system,” said Youssef when Bikyamasr.com interviewed him over the phone early on Saturday.

What a banal statement. The world already knows that the ‘cucumber fatwa’ is “nonsense and wrong and empty of logic”. The “unnamed sheikh” remains unnamed but his fatwa exists and was not a hoax and is still out there in the public domain. Nothing has changed to prevent similar edicts to be pronounced by any given fuckwit who cares to call himself a “scholar”. Like this one, for example. There are plenty more where that came from and come they will.

The Pakistani ISI and its parliamentary lapdogs are responsible for tens of thousands of Afghan and ISAF/NATO deaths over the past decade. Everybody knows now. But the depths of duplicity, mendacity and barbarism to which the Pakistani elites have stooped, and the enthusiasm with which they have devoted themselves to the care and feeding of some of the world’s most savage and lumpen jihadi gangsters, are not so well known.

As of last Wednesday, the BBC World News has been blocked by Pakistan’s cable channels as a “protest” against this two-part BBC documentary, Secret Pakistan. Watch this, and you will see what the Pakistani establishment does not want the people of Pakistan to know. The people of the “west” need to know these things, too, no less.

Part One: Double Cross.

Part Two: Backlash.

It takes all of five minutes of a bad tempered exchange before the two men are at each other’s throats.

The unexpected victory of the Salafists in the Egypt and Tunisia elections has caught many by surprise, not least the Muslim Brotherhood who once thought that they would clean up, but now are faced with the prospect of having to share power with a segment they regarded as marginal. The rise of the Salafists is seen by some as the authentic reaction to the repression of Islamic practice by secular Arab despots. The Salafists regard the first century of Islamic history as the perfected state for humanity,  and now they see themselves as the real inheritors of the voice of the repressed Muslim majority. Their stake has been under-reported because attention has always been directed on the Muslim Brotherhood as the stakeholders of the Islamist vote.

The rise of the Salafists is arguably the most alarming dynamic unleashed by the Egyptian revolution.

But this story has been muffled by an upbeat media narrative that describes the anti-Mubarak movement as dominated by secular youth (in a country of 85 million with median age of 24, the revolution naturally contained many young people). Media coverage was also fixated on the perceived or real dangers contained in the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood.

But as revolutionaries and Mubarak loyalists fought for Tahrir Square, the Salafis maintained an aggressive but low-profile presence at its barricaded entrances.

Part of the bias in coverage has been created by protest organisers. An effort by Sheikh Hassan to enter the square and proclaim his support for the revolution was thwarted by protesters concerned that he would compromise the secular atmosphere they were feeding the western media. That version of the story put the secular users of social networks at the front and centre of coverage.

“I’m not worried so much about the Muslim Brothers as about the Salafis,” said Mohammed ElBaradei, the Nobel peace prize winner and presidential candidate, last month, voicing the fears of secularists. “Some of them, well, there is no common ground with them. They want a completely theocratic state. One of their spokesmen said the other day that democracy is against Islam, and the ultimate authority should be the Quran – as, of course, interpreted by him.”

We miss these signposts of the times at our peril. The 1979 Iranian revolution’s religious roots were largely ignored by the international press, which preferred to interview foreign language-speaking Iranians rather than the less sophisticated crowds supporting Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Similarly, the great popularity of a religious figure such as Sheikh Hassan did not fit the feel-good narrative of Tahrir Square.

The Mubarak regime had suppressed Islamists in many ways, from banning political parties like the Muslim Brotherhood to consistently harassing devout Muslims in Cairo’s streets. But that was not much mentioned. Mr Mubarak was a staunch western ally and so, as with the Shah of Iran, his record of repression was airbrushed.