Ed Husain and me

On Friday, I wrote about the confused message being put out by the various groups which were taking to London’s streets yesterday, including one led by Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain, to oppose the ‘sharia now’ demonstration by al Muhajiroun.


My post provoked an unexpected reaction – an extraordinary ad feminam attack upon me, on the Guardian’s Comment is free blog, by the ‘reformist’ Muslim Ed Husain which accuses me of displaying

zealotry and ignorance

and being filled with

anger, venom and hatred

not to mention also being

demented.

Such fame! It could turn a girl’s head.

The first question is why Ed Husain was so exercised by what I wrote. After all, this was not his fight; I had made no mention of him or his ‘anti-Islamist’ Quilliam organisation. Much more astonishing was that he was leaping to the defence of none other than Inayat Bunglawala and the MCB. The MCB is an Islamist body which wants to theocratise Britain according to the precepts of Islam.

Last March, the government suspended links with it after its deputy Secretary-General, Daud Abdullah, signed a declaration that was seen as calling for violence against Israel and condoning attacks on British troops in Iraq.

Earlier this year, it boycotted Britain’s annual Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration ceremony. Its Secretary-General, Dr Abdul Bari, has said Britain should adopt Islamic practices such as arranged marriages and that Britons should follow the teachings of Islam. Moderate it is not.

As I reported below, Bunglawala told me himself that he wants Britain to become an Islamic state. Yet Ed Husain, whose Quilliam organisation receives a great deal of money from the government in order to oppose Islamic extremism, actually extols Bunglawala for having moved to embrace liberal attitudes.

Ed Husain, who in 2007 vividly described in his own book Bunglawala’s anti-Jewish attitudes, now says Bunglawala should not be held to account for remarks he made in 1993 in support of Islamist extremism and from which he has now ‘distanced himself’.

People must decide for themselves whether Bunglawala’s apparent conversion to the causes of gay rights and freedom of speech is genuine. But what about his declared aim of turning Britain into an Islamic state? Does Ed Husain now think this too is evidence of Bunglawala’s ‘liberal’ attitudes? Or must we assume that Ed Husain too must not be held to account for his previous opposition to this Islamist goal?

Now let’s look at what Ed Husain says about me. His article sits underneath a strapline, almost certainly written by the Guardian rather than by him, which says:

In her McCarthy-style paranoid parallel universe, the Spectator columnist views every Muslim a potential Islamist terrorist.

You really do have to rub your eyes at this. In my blog post which provoked Ed Husain’s article, I praised and welcomed those truly moderate Muslims who were mounting a counter-demonstration against al Muhajiroun, particularly the group British Muslims for a Secular Democracy.

I have never said or implied that ‘every Muslim’ is a ‘potential Islamist terrorist’.

On the contrary, in everything I have ever written about the subject I have emphasised that there are many Muslims who sign up to secular western values and who are themselves victims of the jihadis.

Read more here,,,,

Source: Melanie Phillips

UK counter terrorism aids far-right

Muted mainstream political reaction to recent Guardian and Institute for Race Relations (IRR) reports concerning allegations of "violations of privacy and professional norms of confidentiality" in connection with the UK government's Prevent (Preventing Violent Extremism) programme is revealing.

Politicians and commentators who have been falling over each other to express outrage against Nick Griffin, the leader of the far-right British National Party (BNP), who appeared on the BBC's flagship Question Time for the first time last week, have remained conspicuously silent on the important issues raised in the two reports.

Crucially the Guardian's Vikram Dodd and IRR's Arun Kundnani interviewed ordinary British Muslims in their research.

The concerns and fears expressed by these Muslims about the extent to which the Prevent programme might infringe Muslim civil liberties deserve to be taken seriously in Westminster.

However, it was not an issue deemed worthy for discussion on Question Time. Instead those British Muslim viewers already fearful of being stigmatised as a suspect community will have noted with concern how Griffin was constantly attacked by his Westminster co-panelists as a racist while his attacks on Islam and Muslims went largely unchallenged.

This is significant. Griffin has successfully lifted the BNP from the political gutter by singling out Muslims for attack.

His first publication on the topic pre-dates 9/11 and throughout the last decade he has maintained a steadfast campaign against Muslim targets.

While it is a tribute to the fairness of the overwhelming majority of British citizens that BNP's electoral successes have been as small as they have so far, it is to the shame of many in Westminster that they have provided much of the fuel for Griffin's rise.

This is the same fuel first used by Tony Blair and George Bush to propel the war on terror.

At all points Griffin agrees with Blair that the suicide bomb attacks on 9/11 and 7/7, along with those attempts successfully thwarted by British security services and police, are motivated by an evil ideology inherent to what they both call radical Islam.

Both Griffin and Blair deny Muslims any political identity based on their religion and suggest that its removal is a key part of a strategy to tackle the root causes of the significant terrorist threat in Britain.

Blair's legacy to his successor Gordon Brown was to extend this thinking into the Prevent programme. Thus the outstanding efforts of many grass roots Muslim community projects tackling al-Qaeda inspired propaganda and influence (both with and without Prevent funding) have always been at risk from Blair's diagnosis of the problem.

The extent to which this inaccurate diagnosis impacts on Prevent was revealed in Ed Husain's response to Vikram Dodd's report.

As co-director of the Prevent-funded Quilliam Foundation, Husain argues that Prevent should target Muslims he describes as Islamists whether or not they are suspected of terrorism or violent extremism.

Read more here,,,,

Source: Al Jazeera (English)

The West and the Future of Islam: A debate between Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Ed Husain

‘The West and the Future of Islam’, a debate hosted by the Centre for Social Cohesion in London, brought together two prominent speakers on Islam for the first time.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a self-declared Muslim apostate and former Dutch MP, and Ed Husain, author of the best-selling book The Islamist and former member of the extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, discussed the compatibility of Islam and Western values.

Source: The Centre For Social Cohesion [.pdf]
H/T: Europe News

UK Islamists leaders to Gordon Brown: Hold Israel accountable -- or else

Here is an open letter in The Guardian from UK Muslim leaders to Gordon Brown. The Guardian's editor's note, in italics below, says that the British government "should not alter its foreign policy in order to placate Islamist extremists," but there isn't any such statement in the letter itself. The letter itself is clearly saying just the opposite: that Britain should change its policies toward Israel and the Islamic world, and urge the United States to do so as well -- and Britain should do this in view of the fact that "the anger within UK Muslim communities has reached acute levels of intensity."

Dear Gordon Brown

As friends of the UK government and firm allies in the government's efforts to tackle extremism at home and abroad, we write to express our acute concern about the possible repercussions of the serious on-going conflict in Gaza. Read more ...

Source: The Guardian
H/T: Jihad WatchTahir Abbas
Navid Akhtar
Parvin Ali
Rokhsana Fiaz
Usama Hasan
Ed Husain
Dilwar Hussain
Aftab Ahmad Malik
Maajid Nawaz
Zahoor Qureshi
Zareena Roohi Ahmed
Asim Siddiqui
Julie Siddiqui
Zeshan Zafar
Latest recipients of the Distinguished Islamofascist Award

UK Self Proclaimed Ex Radical Ed Husain Exposed As Anti-Semitic Extremist

Ed Husain: Closet Islamofascist

By Melanie Phillips

When Ed Husain famously renounced Islamism there were some who warned that, despite his denunciation of Hizb ut Tahrir and Islamist ideology, he remained dangerously confused and should not be treated as a serious reformer. I thought this was too harsh. He had, after all, bravely taken an enormous step out of the darkness; surely he had to be given time and encouragement to adjust properly to the light. Surely it was a good thing that he was encouraging young British Muslims to turn away from Islamic radicalism. The extreme importance of that task was such that, even when he wrote a stupid and ignorant piece about Zionism, I hoped that if he was now told the truth about the history of Israel and the Jewish people, he would realise the error of his thinking on that particular issue. So I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

I was wrong. Read more ...

Source: Spectator
H/T: Gramfan / Militant Islam Monitor

Book Review: The Islamist by Ed Husain

By Vinod Joseph

Unlike The Reluctant Fundamentalist, The Islamist is a true story, the story of Muhammad Mahbub Husain, who became an Islamic fundamentalist, saw the light and then went back to civil society.

Husain's main thesis which runs through the entire book as he tells his story is very simple. There are two types of religious Muslims. The ones like his father who are extremely religious, but have the sense to keep their religion private and never let it influence their political views and outlook. And there are others – the fanatics – who believe that Islam is a complete solution which teaches men how to pray, govern themselves, conduct wars, dress, interact with others etc. The second group is much smaller than first group, but is a lot more vicious and has been spoilt by democratic and tolerant Britain.

Democracy, or people's rule, is anathema to fundamentalist Muslims since only Allah should govern (and the Koran contains Allah's words and will). Using the democratic institutions they seek to subvert, Fundamentalist Muslims have wreaked havoc within Britain, especially within the Islamic community in their quest for a global Islamic state. Husain calls upon the British authorities to crush the fundamentalists, for the fundamentalists cannot be reformed. Fundamentalists Muslims will always try to subvert democracy and civil society, even if they are allowed to preach and practice their version of Islam. It is incorrect to say that past injustices against Muslims have given rise to Islamic Fundamentalism of the type preached by Omar Bakri, the erstwhile leader of the Hizb-ut-Tahir. Read more ...

Source: Desicritics