Heresy is another word for freedom of thought

Cllr Lutfur Rahman, the previous Labour leader of Tower Hamlets Council lost his job after he was directly linked to the Islamic Forum Europe (IFE) and Jamaat-e-Islam (JI) in Andrew Gilligan’s Dispatches programme.

He was subsequently struck off the Labour shortlist of candidates for the seat of directly elected Mayor of Tower Hamlets.

The JI-linked Rahman has now launched a “legal challenge” to the selection process . ‘Cutting your noses to spite your face’ is a euphemism that comes to mind in trying to understand this surprising decision by Lutfur Rahman. The legal complaint has sent the entire proceedings into chaos. Ted Jeory quotes a senior Labour member:

“Lutfur’s lot are trying to make out that this is some kind of grass roots uprising against the selection process. Don’t believe a word of it. Actually, it’s a group of businessmen looking for influence and they are promising to back any challenge with money. They’re also saying they’re dong this on behalf of the black and minority ethnic community. Again….wrong. This is about self-interest.”

Paul Berman is very good at getting under the skin of Islamism’s white liberal cognoscenti. His latest book, The Flight of the Intellectuals, has irked almost everyone in that esteemed group. Particularly those who would like to sell us the notion that Islamism is a force for good, or that Isaiah Berlin, and not Sayyid Qutb, is a precursor to Tariq Ramadan.

He also pulls the rug out from under Islamists who are working hard to dress up clerical fascism as a “liberal” antidote to western capitalism and US imperialism. In other words, Berman has a lot of detractors, but he knows how to deal with them.

And how. This came out originally in the WSJ. But you can get past the paywall and read Berman at GayandRight and here:

A book for any self-respecting Spittoon reader’s bedtime book list, I should think. And here’s a review from the THE:

How could jihadi violence break out in a country seen as the historical heartland of Islam and ruled by a state that boasts about its many Islamic credentials? Here, Thomas Hegghammer unpacks the paradox of jihadi militancy in an Islamic state.

The book is based on fieldwork in Saudi Arabia, and draws on an impressive collection of biographies and written sources from al-Qaeda websites. Its 10 chapters trace the evolution of militant Islamism and its later containment by Saudi authorities.

Since 9/11, scholars and security specialists have searched for plausible explanations to account for jihadi militancy at local and global levels. Wahhabi radical theology, Western foreign policies, socio-economic deprivation, dictatorships in the Muslim world and, more recently, the rise of the internet, are often cited as causal factors. In a global world, it has become difficult to isolate local conditions from global contexts.