Heresy is another word for freedom of thought

This is a cross-post from Ted Jeory

The Water Lily Centre in Mile End Road has a long (and literally divided) history in Tower Hamlets. Completed in 1927, it was the Wickhams department store until the late 1960s. Architecturally, it was famous for the little house that splits the site (the developers had to build around the house after a family refused to move out).

Last year, after decades of neglect, the site re-opened as the Water Lily Centre. It is owned by Water Lily Properties Ltd, which is owned by a group of 14 businessmen who chose the national flower of Bangladesh, representing peace and love, for their company name.

Sadly, the centre is now becoming a magnet for hate.

Last November, Anjem Choudary tried to stage an event there, but his luck ran out when his cover was blown. I wrote about it here. At the time, the Water Lily told me extremists weren’t welcome.

In its latest press release, the Muslim Council of Britain makes this claim:

Presenting his financial statement, the Treasurer of MCB, Harun Rashid Khan, strongly rebutted the repeatedly wilful misreporting that the MCB was in receipt of PREVENT funding. He also stressed that the MCB does not take any funding from the government for its core work. He thanked the member affiliates and the community for sustaining the MCB to date with their tremendous contributions and support.

But Andrew Stunell, Minister at the DCLG, says otherwise:

Andrew Stunell, Minister at the DCLG said it had provided £2,500 to the Muslim Council of Britain for a guest table at the council leadership dinner held on 22 February 2010. DCLG has not provided any further funding to the Muslim Council of Britain for the organisation to undertake work or projects.

This is a cross-post by habibi at Harry’s Place

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Here is a segment of an interview on Sky with Nabil Ahmed, the president of the Islamist student group FOSIS.

He says:

I know precisely the quote that she’s talking about [Houriya Ahmed]. The police actually did an investigation into this quote just a couple of years ago because it came on the telly then. And it was actually proven that he did not actually make this quote.

This is a reference to Abu Usamah At-Thahabi, an imam at Green Lane Mosque in Birmingham, being exposed as an extremist by the Undercover Mosque broadcast. Unfortunately for Mr Ahmed, this tape of Undercover Mosque shows him to be a liar.

Thahabi himself has admitted that he said what Undercover Mosque showed him saying, while appealing to that old friend of dodgy Islamists, “context”.

This is a Spittoon EXCLUSIVE by Abu Wannabe Arab

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An outspoken Canadian critic of Islamist extremism, Raheel Reza, recently wrote a piece about Hizb ut Tahrir (HT) holding conferences in Australia and Canada. She argued that western nations are far too complacent about the threat posed by Islamist agitators and their cohorts. In response, as predictably as night follows day, she received this threatening e-mail from a HT supporter:

…I personally cannot believe how idiotic you are. I then checked your website and found to my further astonishment photos of you holding the holy Quran. Have you even read the book? Also since you weren’t wearing hijab, I can only hope you had washed yourself before touching it. Beyond the point of Islam, how dare you make such disgusting comments about Australia and how ‘naive’ Australia is, when like you said you ‘live 1000s of miles away’. You have no idea about Australia and articles like yours only increase a climate of fear that is already being propagated by foreigners, I have heard of sisters being attacked and spat on because of ‘being a radical muslim’ (aka wearing a hijab) and without a DOUBT in my mind it is people like YOU who give them the justification in doing so. How does it feel knowing that somewhere in the world some racist has done/or is intending to do an act of hate due to an article you wrote.

I attempted a fisking of Mehdi Hasan’s hack job of the new Prevent Strategy last week, which you can read here. But my effort is dwarfed by a majesterial evisceration of Mehdi Hasan’s ‘sixth form’ criticism of the Prevnt by Unmesh Desai on, of all places, Comment is Free! Desai heads the Prevent agenda for Newham council, so he knows a thing or two about the practical issues involved. This is what he has to say on the spurious distinction between “non-violent” and “violent” extremism, that is often made by apologists of Islamism:

Hasan attacks Prevent’s lack of distinction between “non-violent” and “violent” extremism. But if one does not counter the basis of extremist ideology, isn’t it then too late to stop it being translated into terrorist action? Non-violent extremism encompasses those who condemn terrorist attacks in this country but are happy to justify suicide attacks against British troops in the Middle East. These views poison the minds of young people for whom the next logical step is to translate their anger into violence. “Non-violent” and “violent” extremism are different sides of the same coin, and both have to be fought together.