By Guest | Published:
March 4, 2010
This is a guest post by The Professor first posted on Harry’s Place
Two days ago the Pakistani Sufi organisation Minhaj-ul-Quran launched their remarkably comprehensive fatwa (religious ruling) against terrorism and suicide bombing.
Since then the Muslim Brotherhood’s Azzam Tamimi has been on a one-man mission to discredit it.
On the BBC, he mocked al-Qadri for not preventing suicide bombings in Pakistan before saying that he himself believed that suicide bombing was allowed in “self-defence” (but not against “innocent civilians” – as opposed, presumably, to guilty civilians) and saying that:
‘Then there is the question of utility and whether this is actually good for the cause or bad for the cause and in most cases it’s not good for the cause. And I think this is the argument we need to push forward rather than resorting to fatwas because for every fatwa, there is a counter fatwa.’
Mosab Hassan Yousef
Introducing Mosab Hassan Yousef, 30.
Mosab’s father is Sheikh Hassan Yousef, senior Hamas figure in the West Bank, currently serving a 6-year prison sentence in an Israeli prison.
Mosab helped Israel’s security forces kill and arrest members of the Islamic militant group, Hamas. He is probably marked for death and but he has published his story in his new book, ‘Son of Hamas’.
A fromer deputy of Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence service said he was one of their agents, helping to prevent Hamas attacks on Israel. This will be an embarrasment for the militant group, which prides itself on its tight discipline.
Mosab has renounced his Muslim faith, converted to Christianity and denounced his father’s organisation. By doing so, he has exposed his family to persecution in his home town of Ramallah and endangered his own life.
From the Jerusalem Post:
By Effendi | Published:
March 3, 2010
More fallout from the Channel 4’s Dispatches documentary. The East London Advertiser takes up the story of Peter Golds, whom the ruling Labour group are trying to oust because of his involvement in the programme.
Members of the ruling Labour group are planning to table a resolution to suspend Tory Opposition leader Peter Golds after he took part in journalist Andrew Gilligan’s programme Britain’s Islamic Republic.
They accuse him of leaking confidential documents about the controversial appointment of Lutfur Ali as the £120,000-a-year assistant chief executive.
Gilligan’s programme, which heavily researched breaking news from the East London Advertiser over the past three years about the internal politics of Tower Hamlets and the power block at the Town Hall, examined Mr Ali’s qualifications and questioned his CV.
Peter Golds was a dissenting voice on the appointments panel who challenged Labour’s choice and spoke openly on the programme.
By Guest | Published:
March 3, 2010
This is a cross-post by Brett from Harry’s Place
****
For good reason of course, there has been a lot of focus on the Islamist radicalisation and entryism around the East London Mosque (as exposed in Monday’s Dispatches on Channel4), so it is unsurprising that no one has yet made a fuss of the fact that obnoxious lectures take place there inciting hatred of the gay community – as seen in the image above.
So let me be the fist to kick up a fuss.
The slide on the screen has a picture of openly-gay singer Elton John next to a very butch-looking Tupac Shakur. The presenter tells the audience: “This is a little game I like to play called ‘Spot The Fag’.”
He then launches into a rant about the ‘fag’ lifestyle.
By Effendi | Published:
March 3, 2010
On Monday’s expose of the Islamic Forum Europe (IFE) on Dispatches, Andrew Gilligan conducted an interview with Lutfor Rahman, Labour Leader of the Tower Hamlets council. In the face of overwhelming evidence and given that we now know that a number of councillors are IFE entryists or that a senior member of the IFE helped him win the leadership of the council, Cllr Rahman refuses to deny any of it.
The following is a transcript of that interview taken from Gilligan’s blog.
Q: Lutfur, why is the local Labour Party in special measures?
Cllr Rahman: It has been in special measures since 2001, it’s a question you should direct to the regional office.
Q: But you are the leader of the Labour Party in Tower Hamlets.
Cllr Rahman: The London region could give you that answer.
By Guest | Published:
March 3, 2010
This is a guest post by Raziq
****
According to Islamists, Mustafa Kemal destroyed the last Islamic Caliphate (the Ottoman Empire) on this day in 1924. Today we are constantly told by Islamist groups that Muslims need to recreate the Caliphate. They also say that the Ottomans had created the perfect society for Muslims. So let’s take a look at the facts:
- The Ottomans were nomadic warlords who fought for territory.
- The Ottomans fought against the existing Muslim Empires, brutally killed thousands of Muslims, kidnapped their women and enslaved their children.
- In 1453 the Ottomans seized Constantinople after a bloody siege in which thousands of Christians were killed.
- The Ottomans committed one of the biggest genocides in history. From 1896 to 1915 they systematically murdered over 1 million Armenians.
- The majority of the Ottoman Sultans had massive harems with hundreds of concubines. It was not uncommon for a Sultan to have over 50 children.
By Guest | Published:
March 2, 2010
This is a cross-post by habibi from Harry’s Place
****
The Young Muslim Organisation (YMO) is the youth wing of the Islamic Forum of Europe.
Have a look at the reading it recommends:
Mawdudi, “the Godfather of Islamism”, was the founder of Jamaat-e-Islami, the South Asian extremist party.
A Jamaat rally – jihad is the best of Islam and remember to pray for the terrorists
Ali al Timimi is an American preacher who was jailed for life in 2005 for inciting young men to join the Taliban and fight the US in the aftermath of 9/11.
This will give you a sense of Timimi’s mindset. When the space shuttle Columbia crashed in 2003, killing all aboard, it was a happy day (pdf):
By Guest | Published:
March 2, 2010
This is a cross-post by Azarmehr from “For a democratic secular Iran. For peace and prosperity in the Middle East”
****
I found about a Stop the War meeting in the House of Commons where Galloway was speaking through my friend. Peyvand Khorsandi [Shappis Khorsandi's brother]. We decided to go along and meet this stooge of dictators face to face. While queuing to go through the security we told the policeman who was directing the people to different queues that we were going to Committee Room 19. Two of the Stop the War enthusiasts heard us and cheerily said to us,
‘Oh we are going to the same meeting as well. Are you Palestenians?’
To which we replied,
‘We like Palestinians but we are Iranians’.
The two women got even more excited and replied,
‘Oh we support Iran against the West!’
By Guest | Published:
March 2, 2010
This is a re-post of an article by Raziq first posted in August 2009
****
There is a common misconception that the roots of radical Islamism stem from grievances in the Middle East i.e. Israel/Palestine. This is actually not true. The Indian Sub-continent is just as responsible for radical Islamism as the Middle East is thanks to one man in particular, largely ignored in the Western media, Maulana Mawdudi. In this article I will be looking at Mawdudi’s personality and ideology.
Mawdudi was the founder of Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), an Islamist party in the Indian sub-continent (the counterpart of the Muslim brotherhood in Egypt). In the early part of his life he was a newspaper editor. He had no theological grounding as a scholar, rather he was a self-taught man with a passion for political authority. He was a key influence on many Islamist ideologues.
According to historian Philip Jenkins:
By Guest | Published:
March 2, 2010
This is a guest post by Abdul
****
Shaykh Dr Tahir ul-Qadri is a scholar of repute who has following across the East and the West. He is a Muslim scholar who had the likes of the al- Azhar institution of Cairo advocating his scholarship and knowledge. Al-Azhar in fact is seeking for the first time to have a college in Pakistan under Qadri’s auspices.
Today he launched his extensive fatwa, religious edict addressing all of the basic issues of terrorism, taking civilian life, tactics of terror but also details and ancillary issues that relate to Islamist terror tactics such as taking civilian hostages, attacking people in “occupied territories”, “resistance” and foreign policy and defining rules of conduct during warfare.
