Heresy is another word for freedom of thought

This is a cross-post by habibi

On Saturday the extremist party Hizb ut-Tahrir tried to muscle into a demonstration against Mubarak at the Egyptian embassy in London.

The demonstration’s organisers were having none of it:

Hundreds protested outside Egypt’s embassy in London on Saturday calling for President Hosni Mubarak to go, but differences in message highlighted tensions between Islamists and others over the country’s future.

Islamists in one demonstration wanted an Islamic government and Islamic law to replace Mubarak’s 30-year autocratic rule, around the corner was a secular protest.

…

“Mubarak out, Islam in,” and “Allah take Mubarak the pharaoh,” chanted Islamist protesters, including organisers Hizb ut Tahrir, a hardline Islamist group. Women and men in the group protested separately.

Nearby, other demonstrators were careful to distinguish themselves from the Islamists, sticking to secular chants

Remember how Kris Hopkins, Tory MP for Keighley, and the Labour peer Lord Janner closed the door last month on the Islamist lobby group iEngage from the All Party Parliamentary Group on Islamophobia? Well, both of them have quit the APPG, after they failed to persuade other MPs to keep iEngage out of the secretariat.

The two of them have sent an email to the members citing their reasons for quitting the APPG, as Gilligan reports:

“The Group needs to be seen as above reproach and political leaning in order to maintain trust and confidence in its work.

Whilst iEngage are perfectly entitled to express their views, we did not believe it appropriate for them to do so whilst continuing to act for the group.

An orchestrated lobbying campaign on behalf of iEngage since we issued our statement has only served to reinforce our opinion.

The Quilliam Foundation has released a briefing paper on the recent upheavals in Tunisia and now Egypt and the speculative role of the Muslim Brotherhood and other extreme Islamic far-right political groups. These are the key points of their analysis:

Islamists do not have a monopoly on grassroots movements.
The ‘conventional wisdom’ that only the Muslim Brotherhood can organise grassroots opposition movements in the Middle East clearly needs re-thinking as does the idea that it is the ‘only real opposition’. While it is true that the Muslim Brotherhood is the most ‘organised’ formal opposition group in Egypt (and some other Middle Eastern countries but not in others such as Tunisia), advances in technology mean it can now be outmanoeuvred by spontaneous grassroots movements.