British Muslims actively interested in politics (trying to consume regular news). this is a broad term, which can be divided into those with a liberal outlook, those with a conservative outlook, those study political Islam, and those actively interested in what is going on in Iraq / Afghanistan. It is a broad bunch. As I say above, it is from this group that Quilliam Foundation needs to win over the angry radical types.
Hamid
· 1 year ago
Get your facts straight Sunny - Qulliam Foundation is NOT on the government's dole, unlike Demos with that half-idiot Fieschi who is too scared and witless to debate on Harry's Place. Did you ever check Qulliam's website before pushing this lie?
Besides, why did Demos NOT INVITE Qulliam to the panels at Islam Expo, if Demos cared so much for engagement and real debate?
The busybodies of Demos who are funded by government monies have totally failed in this project. Good riddance of the Fieschi - her one-way article on Harry's Place was quite juvenile and devoid of "complexity" (a favorite meaningless reactionary lefty trope). Glad to see my income tax not going to waste no more.
Hamid
· 1 year ago
Westophobia = Postcolonialism
Get an education - what did you major in college Sunny? Seriously.
Unitalian
· 1 year ago
Osama bin Laden = George Bush? Not very mature Sunny.
Seems you want to fit them in a Sunny-size box, but it's their box.
Why not "Westophobia"? How else would you describe the various rantings of Islamists and their ilk? It's hatred of the West and Western values, just as "Islamophobia" means hatred of Islam and its values.
Don't be prejudiced! ;-)
Andrew
· 1 year ago
It's not smart for Ed to write for a paper like the Evening Standard! Just like having an article in the Daily Mail!
David T
· 1 year ago
The BMI is an Muslim Brotherhood project. It was founded by Sawalha (who says he is suing me) who was identified by the BBC as a senior Hamas activist, responsible for military and "dawa" activities. He was identified on the MB's own website as in charge of the "political unit" in Britain of the MB. All the people involved in BMI are linked to the MB, and - in Sawalha and Tamimi's case - the openly genocidal terrorist movement, Hamas.
I understand that cheques for the BMI conference that Fieschi's Demos sponsored, were made out to the BMI. In other words, to attend a Demos event, you had to pay Hamas' British sister organisation.
You say:
"More broadly - this is part of a discussion on how to engage with politicised British Muslims. Nick Cohen et al take an absolutist approach that basically equates all of them with the BNP and then say the government should ignore them. I think this is not only simplistic, but oblivious to what is going on at ground level. "
Listen mate. A high percentage of "politicised white British people" in Barking support the BNP: a party which would like to pack you up, and deport you. What liberals and progressives do when they encounter politics like this, is to work out how to oppose and defeat it.
Most "politicised British Muslims" support mainstream parties. They don't support the Islamists. But even if they did - even if some British Muslims have some sympathy with some of their aims - then you should be fighting hard against that. This doesn't mean 'working out how we can engage constructively with them'. It means taking them on, whenever and wherever you can.
David T
· 1 year ago
I mean, what would you do if some of your white friends started to say
"I haven't voted for the BNP before but, you know, a lot of what they say about immigration makes sense!"
You wouldn't say
"Oh dear, perhaps they have a point, better not say anything to disparage Nick Griffin ... if they're having a rally I should go along to show that I'm not TOTALLY opposed to them"
Roger
· 1 year ago
Surely the important division in British Muslims iactively interested in politics is between muslims who are interested in and engaged in British politics and British political parties and muslims who are interested in and engaged in what they perceive as muslim politics. The fact that most of the latter do not regard most of the former as proper muslims is also important.
Mrs Ben
· 1 year ago
I think Sunny is still smarting because Ken and his gravy train of publically funded, self promoting, multi culturalists were removed from office.
Curious how in all these articles by the likes of Sunny, about why we should engage with "radical" Islam, the authors bang on about how non violent the majority of British Muslims are. True I am sure, but then they omit to mention how surveys show that a significant percentage of young Muslims are at least sympathetic to the aims of al Qaeda, as they relate to developing a european wide islamic caliphate and imposing it on the rest of us.
Does this mean we should engage with them or oppose them? I think we should be showing up the radical extremists for what they are, including how they dissemble. And I think Ken's identity politics as a solution, handing out favours to selected minorities and using Jasper as the school bully, are outdated and we need a new approach.
Val F
· 1 year ago
It seems that the growing influence of Ed Husain and Maajid Nawaz is having a pernicious effect and is in effect stirring up Islamophobia (especially as their definition of Islamism is so wide). They are being given a prominence, and proliferation of platforms, out of all proportion to their real significance. For example, in the past few days, Maaj has been addressing the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and the neoconservative think tank Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Why, pray, should he be accorded so much authority? He certainly sings what the neocons love to hear. He and Ed supposedly have unique insights as "former extremists" (or "former jihadis" as they are sometimes described; were they ever that?)
Ann On
· 1 year ago
David T saying the Islam Expo was the equivalent of a BNP rally seems a bit unhinged. If the BNP were able to hold a 30,000 strong rally in Olympia (and maybe they are on the way so to do), I would expect to see a rise in attacks on non white folk, trade union activists, gays to follow.
Maybe I am wrong, but I don't believe the Islam Expo rally is going to lead to a similar set of physical attacks. I see Nick Cohen thinks the Expo is "at the beginning of a continuum whose terminus is psychopathic hatred" - I wonder if his co thinker David T could let me know what terrible things this Expo will lead to, how the psychopathic hatred it is stirring up will be expressed. Nick also says that Demos might be negotiating with Muslim Brotherhood about the rights of "Women’s rights? The Jews, the gays, the apostates, the free thinkers, the secularists, the liberals, the democrats". Are the Muslim Brotherhood using Islam Expo to negotiate legal limits on the rights of democrats ? Does stopping Shahid Malik attending the Expo stop this secret plan to attack gays ? Or is this all a bit of a fantasy by people who want to be "policing the boundaries of respectable discourse ".
tim
· 1 year ago
Surely its not true that Demos gave money to the British Muslim Initiative. A quick bit of research shows that BMI Ltd has never filed accounts, and uses as its office the home address of Mohammed Sawalha, named by the BBC as a Hamas fugitive organiser.
BRITISH MUSLIM INITIATIVE LIMITED ***** ##### STRAND LONDON NW9 5QJ Company No. 05703363
Status: Active Date of Incorporation: 09/02/2006
Country of Origin: United Kingdom
Company Type: PRI/LTD BY GUAR/NSC (Private, limited by guarantee, no share capital) Nature of Business (SIC(03)): 7487 - Other business activities
Accounting Reference Date: 28/02 Last Accounts Made Up To: (NO ACCOUNTS FILED) Next Accounts Due: 09/12/2007 OVERDUE Last Return Made Up To: 09/02/2007 Next Return Due: 08/03/2008 OVERDUE
Shamit
· 1 year ago
If we engage with Islamic Extremists why not engage with BNP and support them too. Come on folks -- I know this might be simplistic but I have come to believe that while every British Citizen have the right to disagree with their Government and politically oppose it on policies. No one has the right to carry a British Passport and say we are not really British because we are Muslims and we would blow you up because you removed a genocidal dictator from Iraq.
By the way, public opinion in Iraq and life in Iraq as a democracy is getting better by the day. And guess what the war was not about Oil as we pay exactly the same amount for Iraqi Oil as we do for Russian or Saudi Oil. Second, the Iraqi Government is also standing up to the US Government and US troops and others would only be there as long as Iraqi Government wants it.
So those beating on the Iraq war (And I am not talking about those who disagreed with what happened immediately after the initial conflict) needs to give it a rest. As that is no reason for any British Muslim to take up arms against our own country. And those who do it are bloody criminals and should be opposed not engaged with. Because if you engage with them then you engage with BNP too at least they have a love for this country.
Btw, Demos and Catherine Fieschi do great work even if you do not always agree with them. They have made some excellent policy work which has in turn become Government policy including on citizen engagement. So, attacking Demos as government funded do nothing body is not factual.
cjcjc
· 1 year ago
As long as it isn't more of my cash they have gotten hold of!
tim
· 1 year ago
Seems the Sudanese Governtment had a stand.
What was that offering advice on.
MaidMarian
· 1 year ago
Possibly a bit of a side-point, but...
Given that in percentage terms the muslim population of the UK is little more than nominal is there just the faintest possibility that this is all just becoming self-reinforcing and snowballing way beyond perspective?
Reading some of the comment on the issue anyone would think that muslims were from a different planet and have a 0% integration rate. Granted, some of this may well be internet hot-air and wannabe shock-jocks.
So many of these groups look rather like the People's Front of Judea.
Community engagement policy is simple - get off your backside and involve yourself in the big wide civil society that exists out there. It really is that simple.
Less over-analysis, more doing.
Sid
· 1 year ago
Sunny, I think there is far too much personalisation of issues going on here.
Ed Husain and Maajid Nawaz: Most of my secular, pro-democracy Muslim friends (and that's pretty much all of them) and myself were anti-Islamist way before these two men were still handing out Hizbut Tahrir leaflets outside some Newham mosque. I don't articulate my engagement with the modern world in the terms of men who seem to have arrived so recently to it.
And yes, I have met some bon-fide ex-Jihadis in Walthamstow who have more effect in a single session aimed at diffusing the effects of "recruiters" than 100 op-eds in the Evening Standard by Ed.
But having said that, I am more in aligned with the QF than I am with the BMI, Sawalha or Takriti and the whole movement to legitimise the Muslim Brotherhood in Britain.
Similarly with Nick Cohen. I am pretty much opposed to everything he writes but when it comes to his anti-Islamist stance, there is no ambiguity towards my support of the cause against the Muslim Brotherhood. And if that means being a fellow traveller with a pro-war, pro-torture hack, then that's the way it is.
But I won't be supporting the BMI or the Muslim Brotherhood simply because Cohen and Husain write dodgy articles.
Iain
· 1 year ago
I'm sorry the word 'Westophobia' riles you up, Sunny. The word 'Islamophobia' riles up people who don't want to see people criticised for having anti-Muslim prejudice and agendas.
Presumably the word 'Westophobia' upsets you because you think it's inappropriate and missing the point to focus on the virulent hatred that Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood and Marxists like Seamus Milne have for the West.
Your own position is moving closer to Milne's by the day.
platinum786
· 1 year ago
I see Qulliam falling on it's face. Watch out for MYDP, the new kid on the block. Muslim Youth Development Project. This is based at ground routes, it takes young people and works with young people. It encourages social activities and helps with education and careers (tries too). It's not afraid to raise it's voice for the Muslim issues, yet it is not politicised.
It also focuses on teaching kids about Islam, rather than warning the away from the bogey man. If kids know fundamentally what islam is, then they cannot go astray. The major flaw of the Muslim comunity is that we put so much emphasis on Islam and claim it to be so important to our lives, yet we don't put the effort into ensuring our kids know what it is, a lot lack even the basics. If you know the basics, you can't be fooled into thinking it's something that it's not, and that is the foundation of routing our terrorism, routing out their strongest brainwashing tools.
David T
· 1 year ago
There are two battles to be fought here:
1. Actually persuading people who might be recruited into terrorism, or into Islamist politics, that their arguments are built on lies, and that their strategy is a dangerous dead end.
2. Trying to stop elements of the liberal establishment being seduced into alliances with Islamist groups.
The two tasks are connected, but separate ones.
Quilliam, if it achieves nothing else, has provided people who can at least take on the likes on Bungle, the Jamaatis, the MBers and the Hizbies: when they put on conferences, or appear on the BBC.
This is an absolutely vital task.
So, that's why I'm with Sid on this issue.
soru
· 1 year ago
Why not “Westophobia”? How else would you describe the various rantings of Islamists and their ilk?
Their countries' products are beautiful and precious, But their character is debauched and frivolous.
Fan Ye (died 445 CE)
David T
· 1 year ago
"If kids know fundamentally what islam is, then they cannot go astray"
That may well be the case.
However, the most important task is anti-sectarianism. This country is full of people with complex identities, some of which are religiously based in part. The attempt to coral people into religious categories - which is either presented as the "problem" or the "solution" - is a disaster.
If people want to get involved in their religion. So what. That's great. It is no business of the State or anybody elses.
The only solution is to treat all people as individual citizens: not as members of a confessional group.
cjcjc
· 1 year ago
If "one of the brightest people I’ve met ever" is the same person who wrote this:
"Does harbouring a secret longing for an inept successor, possibly unpleasant, maybe even scarily unattractive, make me a terrible person? Well, this is only a measure of my attachment to the place. And in any case, I have a feeling this is not to be - Demos deserves the best and the clean slate it needs to thrive. (I've wrestled my evil twin Skippy to the floor now, can't you tell?)"
Skippy?
The Bush Kangaroo?
tim
· 1 year ago
More likely, Skippy the soft nutty spread.
Sid
· 1 year ago
with difficult crunchy bits.
David T
· 1 year ago
Oh, I like it with the crunchy bits!
Ravi Naik
· 1 year ago
British Muslims actively interested in politics (trying to consume regular news). this is a broad term, which can be divided into those with a liberal outlook, those with a conservative outlook, those study political Islam, and those actively interested in what is going on in Iraq / Afghanistan. It is a broad bunch. As I say above, it is from this group that Quilliam Foundation needs to win over the angry radical types.
Many thanks for the definition. I actually in #1 had asked Sunny's definition of politicised British Muslims, but then I realised he had already defined it in the post, which is why I changed the content to avoid him repeating again. Too late I guess.
Are politicised British Muslims more in danger of becoming radicalised by extremists than British Whites by white power groups? I am curious as if the forces that push both groups to the dark side, follow a similar dynamic and are of similar strength.
Avi Cohen
· 1 year ago
Dave T - Can I ask you what you are doing to stop the more extreme elements of Zionism? Don't forget that these also cause loss of life and terrorise the civilian Palestinian population as we have seen with the videos which are emerging?
Also recently the UK had a Rabbi visit who advocated ethnic cleansing and may I ask what Harry's Place did to stop his visit?
Also what about the emrging trend within Political Judaism that denies that Palestinians exist?
Equally there are many that say that Muslims have no link to Jerusalem?
Thus you see there is an unsavoury elements within all faiths which is fuelling resentment.
Whilst I appreciate that your ire is with Hamas equally the extreme Political Movements in Judaism and Christianity are going unchecked and indeed are being supported by some governments?
Surely the best way to achieve peace and reduce the level of threat is to show that all extremists are to be shunned.
Also I am afraid that with respect the overreaction of people to IslamExpo will have a negative impact rather than a positive. Exactly what has been achieved? Nothing in my view when the Jewish community could have played a very positive role in engaging with and putting forth a view that was an opportunity lost for dialogue.
Somethign that can't be avoided is the fact that without dialogue with these people an opportunity is lost in making progress towards peace. Even Israel is now realising this and the Israeli public want dialogue and it isn't for people abroad to decide this shouldn't happen.
At the end of the day the simple fact is that peopel who fight for their freedom and dignity will do unsavoury things but that doesn't mean dialogue shouldn't happen. If by talking to Hamas a single life is saved then isn't that worthwhile, rather than not talking and many lives being lost.
It is high time that people realised that bot talking is counterproductive and Bush has realised this eigth years too late. Now he is starting to engage with Iran. Israel is engaging with Syria but thanks to those that said they shouldn't talk eight years of possible dialogue has been lost. Eight years in which progress towards peace could have been made.
Peace is negotiated and not imposed. Peace is always negotiated under fire and this has been the case throughout history. If there wasn't fire it wouldn't need peace negotiations now would it?
I did warn Sunny along with many others about Quilliam and sadly my early sentiments and fears are true.
Until Harry's Place realises that it needs to be objective regarding both sides and not a cheerleader for one, peace won't be achieved. No less than many Israeli Negotiators who have sat down with the Palestinians say this.
Killing and murder is to be condemned but condemned on both sides.
I ask you now to respectfully look at what you can contribute and realise that both sides are right and both are wrong. To move forwward needs engagement and dialogue. The last eight years under Bush have been a complete waste and now we need to rise above that.
Some of the people to whom you refer maybe linked to Hamas but they've been charged with no crime here or indeed in Israel. Therefore simply because Bush says they shouldn't be spoken to does that mean that will achieve anything?
Surely it is better to talk to them and try and change their views rather say they are to be boycotted?
There is suffering on both sides. They see suffering on their side and you see suffering on yours.
But to change the situation needs peopel to rise above that and talk and negotiate.
Andrew
· 1 year ago
What really counts is whether QF, or any other anti-extremism group, has credibility and influence with the disaffected Muslim youths on the street, and I don't see it having any.
One group/project that does appear to be having some impact, despite being government supported (Home and Foreign Offices), is the Radical Middle Way. This is because the government is working with credible Muslim groups; the anti-extremism message is not stuffed down young Muslims' throats (but does clearly state that "a rejection of all forms of terrorism"); and the speakers are all highly credible and respected scholars that can't just be written-off as government stooges by the extremists.
Avi Cohen
· 1 year ago
Sunny - "While I think it was fine for Martin Bright and others to pull out of IslamExpo because one of its organisers (linked to Hamas) was trying to sue Harry’s Place,"
Hold on this is sheer madness. If the party suing Harry's Place due to allegations of libel, then surely it is for the courts to decide who is right and not the bloggers. That is what the law is there for.
But that isn't an excuse to pull out because the law of the land needs to decide who is right.
But using this as a pretext to say people are right not to attend implies that the law of the land is irrelevant.
Sorry but the law is to protect everyone and to suggest that people shouldn't attend events because one party is suing another for libel means that people in the blog world are deciding who is right and wrong and not a court of law. Surely a step too far.
May I ask if you have listened to both sides and made this decision or is it merely on the basis of listenting to one side only?
How have you come to the conclusion that Brigth was right to pull out when you don't know the conclusion of what was said or wasn't said by either party.
The law has to protect everyone including those whose view we disagree.
cjcjc
· 1 year ago
If it turned out that the BNP had the greatest influence with white racist extremists - it is a legitimate political party which does not advocate violence - would you speak at their WhiteExpo?
How is IslamExpo and its backers different?
Sid
· 1 year ago
How is IslamExpo and its backers different?
There are white people attending IslamExpo.
Sid
· 1 year ago
Sorry but the law is to protect everyone and to suggest that people shouldn’t attend events because one party is suing another for libel means that people in the blog world are deciding who is right and wrong and not a court of law. Surely a step too far.
Avi
If your friends were attending a conference organised by a man who, it later transpired, was an ardent Zionist and was suing you for libel, would you remonstrate to them on the lines that they were ethically wrong to pull out because a court of law would decide right and wrong on their behalf, as you have above?
cjcjc
· 1 year ago
I am aware that Islam is a religion not a race.
My question is why do some extremists need a cosy chat and (needless to say) some taxpayers' money, while others need only outright hostility?
Avi Cohen
· 1 year ago
So who is deciding whose event is fit to speak at and whose isn't?
Does the Pro-Israeli Lobby get to decide which Muslim event is legitimate?
That is what happening in this case is it not?
Why is there little if any outcry and in fact support when speaking at Pro-Israeli events including those of the right wing?
Obama spoke at one such event and was widely praised here. So why condemnation of one and praise for the other?
This is an overreaction to an event where dialogue could have started on what is a complex situation in the Middle East.
Avi Cohen
· 1 year ago
Sid - "If your friends were attending a conference organised by a man who, it later transpired, was an ardent Zionist and was suing you for libel, would you remonstrate to them on the lines that they were ethically wrong to pull out because a court of law would decide right and wrong on their behalf, as you have above?"
Sid it is two different things. Would I stop my friends talking to people because I was accused of libel - no.
Tell me does Israel stop talking to Hamas or Hezbullah because they kill Israeli's and does Hamas and Hezbullah stop talking to Israel because they kill Palestinians/Lebanese/Arabs? No we've seen they all talk to each other. So your argument isn't even reality in the bitterness of the Middle Eastern Conflict.
Yes I would let my friends go. My situation is mine and that is different to engagement in dialogue with a wide audience. Can't you see that?
Bright gave this reason: "As David says, a member of Hamas has no reputation to defend. It is already strange enough that Hamas-UK is having such a rally in central London, but when it starts suing its critics that’s a step too far."
The critic is being sued for libel and not for being a critic, two very different things which Bright failed to point out.
The man in question to the best of my knowledge here and in Israel has broken no law. In fact Israel isn't requesting his extradition and neither is the USA. So given the grim reality of the Middle East surely it is better to talk than not?
Dave S
· 1 year ago
FAO: Ravi and Soru
Apologies for the off-topicness, bur Ravi and Soru (since you both appear to be reading this page), early this morning I posted quite long replies to you over on the Knife Crime thread:
I was away over the weekend so had to leave in the middle of a rather interesting discussion. I'd like to keep it going, if you would too?
Sunny
· 1 year ago
Osama bin Laden = George Bush? Not very mature Sunny.
Who said it was? But its possible to hate both of them isn't it? Or does it always have to be one or the other?
Qulliam Foundation is NOT on the government’s dole, unlike Demos with that half-idiot Fieschi who is too scared and witless to debate on Harry’s Place. Did you ever check Qulliam’s website before pushing this lie?
fuck off you twit. Why should she debate when she has sycophants like you talking out of their arse to deal with?
Most “politicised British Muslims” support mainstream parties. They don’t support the Islamists. But even if they did - even if some British Muslims have some sympathy with some of their aims - then you should be fighting hard against that. This doesn’t mean ‘working out how we can engage constructively with them’. It means taking them on, whenever and wherever you can.
David T - taking them on means what? Taking on their arguments or are you going to get involved in anti-bomb techniques?
But having said that, I am more in aligned with the QF than I am with the BMI, Sawalha or Takriti and the whole movement to legitimise the Muslim Brotherhood in Britain.
Of course. No one is doubting that. but my point here is about how QF can be effective, if it wants to be.
Sunny
· 1 year ago
David T - I'm happy to address your points regarding dealing with 'white politicised people' v 'Muslim politicised people' in a subsequent post. This was for now focused on the QF.
Avi Cohen
· 1 year ago
Sunny - "Of course. No one is doubting that. but my point here is about how QF can be effective, if it wants to be."
Look QF is part of the in fighting within the Muslim Community and despite what many people say and this has been my point for a while which many people didn't want to hear. Some of the best people who have fought extremism are the Salafi/Wahabi movement which QF and HP dislike. Who said so? None other than an ex-Senior member of the Met Police.
The simple fact is that without engaging the various sections of the Muslim community you won't get anywhere. People may dislike accutely a number of people at IslamExpo but equally important were the number of organisatiosn there who push forward with inter-faith and community work. So clearly they saw benefit in being there and showing Muslims a clear message of tolerance.
What has been the benefit of not talking to factions for the last 8 years. There hasn't been a single benefit and its made the situartion worse.
The various parties at each side may like this because it fulfills what they want but for the rest of us then I'd say we want them to talk and engage in dialogue.
Not going to IslamExpo was a missed opportunbity for all those that decided not to go and simply handed the right wing and neocons a victory of stalling on negotiations. It didn't achieve any more.
Avi Cohen
· 1 year ago
As regards QF they are failing because they simply fire barbs at the Muslim Community and its institutions with little engagement. They are on the outside shouting in much like SMC the earlier Govt favourite.
I am disappointed in their approach and each article they publish is losing them support.
I think QF needs to step back and enagge
Andrew
· 1 year ago
"I think QF needs to step back and enagge"
Do they know how to engage with Muslims? The people they engage with all seem to be in law enforcement of various kinds! See the homepage of their website.
With ref to #31, I still think the Radical Middle Way is a good example of how to go about things - and it is government-backed!
Sunny
· 1 year ago
If we engage with Islamic Extremists why not engage with BNP and support them too. Come on folks — I know this might be simplistic
We do actually engage with people who have BNP sympathies. I'll come back to this point in more detail soon.
If it turned out that the BNP had the greatest influence with white racist extremists - it is a legitimate political party which does not advocate violence - would you speak at their WhiteExpo?
I was talking about engaging with politicised Muslims, not specifically about IslamExpo. The only thing I mentioned about that was to say Martin Bright and others were justified in boycotting it.
I’m sorry the word ‘Westophobia’ riles you up, Sunny. The word ‘Islamophobia’ riles up people who don’t want to see people criticised for having anti-Muslim prejudice and agendas.
That's because its a stupid term. What does 'the west' constitute of? And does it include British Muslims or exclude them?
As for Islamophobia - well it depends on whether you hate the teachings in the Qu'ran (fine by me) or hate Muslims as a group. The latter would be Islamophobia in the same vein as anti-semitism.
Avi Cohen
· 1 year ago
"Do they know how to engage with Muslims? The people they engage with all seem to be in law enforcement of various kinds! See the homepage of their website."
That was my point. The great failing of QF is that they are failing to engage the Muslim Community. I refer you to the following excellent pieces:
This shows why the Government is doomed to fail if it continues to back Sufi Organisations that simply stigmatise other creeds.
It is clear that the government is being ill-advised by the chosen few organisations and again this applies to the wider questions in the Middle East.
Again the fact that not talking to organisations has been a hallmark of failure ofr 8 long years and if peopel are silly enough to believe it will work they are mistaken.
It hasn't worked throughout history and it won't work now.
Avi Cohen
· 1 year ago
Sunny - "I was talking about engaging with politicised Muslims, not specifically about IslamExpo. The only thing I mentioned about that was to say Martin Bright and others were justified in boycotting it."
How were they justified and what did it achieve?
At the present time we actually don't know who is right in this case and the courts will decide. So where is the justification based on two conflicting views of what was said? How can you justify teaming with one side or the other? Surely those on the outside of this dispute need to stay neutral - non?
IslamExpo was attended by a wide spectrum of Muslim Organisatiosn and much good could have come from enagagement.
Would it then be justified for example to boycott Bush and the neocons? Would you boycott Evangelicals who advocate war in the ME to bring the second coming? Why are you drawing the line where you have?
Sid
· 1 year ago
Avi Cohen, serious quesion. Are you Asghar Bukhari?
Avi Cohen
· 1 year ago
Sid - No and I don't care for your insinuation and slurs.
I don't like the way he does things and if you had looked at what I say then I am for engagement and meaningful dialogue to try and bring a resolution to the biggest cause of friction between Jews and Muslims.
The only reason you are sore is because your claims for QF and your maligning of creeds have evaporated and I've been vindicated :-)
Sid
· 1 year ago
Sid - No and I don’t care for your insinuation and slurs.
Slurs? I didn't think you thought so poorly of the guy. It's just that you have the same argument style, which can only be described as bludgeon with a blunt object. :)
I'm not sore about your views of the QF. As I recall, you've been *willing* them to fail as soon as they came on the scene. So any hint of failure will be claimed by you as some form of vindication, no matter what.
I still think they are the only Muslim organisation that comes anywhere near representing the views of people like myself. I'm not sure I want *every* Muslim group on the planet to represent the grassroots in say, Walthamstow. There are people who do that much better, who also think the QF is roughly heading in the right direction. What they do well is engage the media expertly.
That means that, if the token Muslim on the panel on Newsnight is going to be a QF guy instead of someone from a front for the Muslim Brotherhood or the Jamaati Islami, then I'm all for that. Frankly I've had enough of the radicals getting all the oxygen.
David T
· 1 year ago
"Avi Cohen"
I'd opppose the government engaging with members of Kach or Kahane Chai. I support this Government's banning of Moshe Feiglin from the UK.
Sunny:
David T - taking them on means what? Taking on their arguments or are you going to get involved in anti-bomb techniques?
Well, some of these guys are enthusiasts for the targeted murder of civilians: so perhaps we should.
But mostly what I mean is: doing everything we can to thwart them, combat their message, prevent them from recruiting, and so on.
Put it this way. The BNP has a "Red White and Blue" cultural festival every year. I don't think that "taking the BNP on" would involve appearing as a guest at that event.
I know you're in favour of the BNP getting a chance to put its message across in the mainstream media, but I'm not. Ditto Hamas/MB/BMI
We do actually engage with people who have BNP sympathies. I’ll come back to this point in more detail soon.
Of course we should engage with people who "have BNP sympathies". We should engage with them by - for example - explaining why we think that the BNP's policies are exercises in failure and viciousness, and by presenting a real alternative.
One thing we shouldn't be doing is participating in BNP run events, or appearing on BNP platforms alongside BNP figures.
I mean, there might be some value in doing so, just to say:
"You're vicious scum, and we'll be watching you like a hawk - one foot wrong, and you're for the high jump"
But if you turned up at a BNP event and said that, you'd probably not be invited back.
Another way to defeat the BNP - a small thing, admittedly - is not to show BNP supporters that you'll court Islamist groups, merely because they're part of an organisation which commits deliberate murders of random civilians. Because, you know, that might give the BNP ideas on how to be taken more seriously
Andrew:
The Radical Middle Way organised a meeting with the Muslim Brotherhood's Helbawy, and Cecic from Bosnia. Cecic called for all Muslims to work for the Caliphate.
I spoke to somebody from City Circle who had co-hosted the event, and they were utterly dismayed by this.
I see that the Radical Middle Way also includes MPACuk activists. MPACuk's Chief Executive, Asghar Bukhari donated money, and offered to raise money for David Irving, after he had lost his libel action against Penguin Books. MPACuk frequently nicks material from neo-Nazi sites, which they reproduce on their own site. Bukhari's brother, spoke for MPAC on Sky News after one of the Al Muhajiroun scum had been arrested. He said that the "Muslim community" would be very angry to see this man arrested.
MPAC is active in stirring up sectarian hatred.
We can do without this sort of influence in any "Radical Middle Way".
The only solution to this problem is to stop treating Muslim citizens as if they were part of a confessional block. Treat all citizens of this country as equal citizens.
David T
· 1 year ago
"Avi Cohen, serious quesion. Are you Asghar Bukhari?"
We have this problem all the time. We had a poster calling himself by the jewish name "Eugene Levine". On another board, a poster with a very similar style posed as a gay man.
When we checked the IP addresses they turned out to be.... Bob Pitt of Islamophobia-Watch.
Imagine! Pretending to be a Jew in order to attack Jews, and pretending to be a gay man in order to attack gays. What sort of person would do that!
David T
· 1 year ago
"That means that, if the token Muslim on the panel on Newsnight is going to be a QF guy instead of someone from a front for the Muslim Brotherhood or the Jamaati Islami, then I’m all for that. Frankly I’ve had enough of the radicals getting all the oxygen."
The fact is: QF never set out to take the message to kids on the street.
What it does do - and what desperately needs to be done - is to provide a public counterbalance to the Islamist groups, which have managed to represent themselves as "the voice of British Muslims", despite the fact that their message is rejected by the overwhelming majority of British Muslims.
Refresh
· 1 year ago
After having seen their first interview on Newsnight, I judged that QF would end up exactly here. Without substance and irrelevant except as useful propaganda tools.
Its a shame. They are on the same path paved by Hirsi Ali.
As for HP, without a doubt they are all about Israel and delight in twisting the knife. As someone else poignantly pointed out on CiF all their analysis points to one thing, being able to call someone anti-semitic. And as they also pointed out, it didn't matter whether the connections were remote to the allegation or not. Its usually someone who was connected to someone who may have heard someone who had been seen looking at someone else whilst they were asking the question 'What is this protocols business?'.
For HP to have gained so much traction is beyond belief. The fact that they too could well be contributing in the rise of the BNP is often overlooked.
The situation is dire. Its come to a point where only designated muslims are allowed to speak for muslims. And if they don't win the approval of DavidT, Martin Bright, Nick Cohen - they might as well give up.
As for the BNP, we know from Oborne's Channel 4 'Its shouldn't happen to a muslim' we saw that the BNP are looking for potential allies for their future plans. I am sure they need not look much further than HP for inspiration.
Sid
· 1 year ago
Another way to defeat the BNP - a small thing, admittedly - is not to show BNP supporters that you’ll court Islamist groups, merely because they’re part of an organisation which commits deliberate murders of random civilians. Because, you know, that might give the BNP ideas on how to be taken more seriously
Sadly, its not like they haven't used that strategy already.
Avi Cohen
· 1 year ago
Sid - First of all I am quite passionate about bringing together better relations between Jews, Christians and Muslims. Maybe I take this too seriously at times.
Again I think poorly of people who don't engage in dialogue and don't try to further community relations. Hence I also dislike Bakhri and his crew as well. Similarly I don't like Ariel Sharon, Bush and the neocons.
This is a small world and we have to live together.
As regards QF, I knew about them before they launched publicly and had high hopes but once things became clear I lost hope. I didn't will them to fail but they are heading that way and fast.
What good would QF do on Newsnight or Question Time when they are not a grassroots organisations. Its all hype. Look let me tell you that organisations that make a difference do so when they work particularly at grassroots.
I remember watching NewsNight and Majid Nawaz wouldn't even answer questions about funding or links with the neocons. Is that the type of organisation that will make a difference? No way.
I'd like to see Majid Nawaz go back to the drawing board and rethink some of what he is doing. Is Michael Gove really going to be able to influence Muslims? Hell no so why is he on their panel? Majid has never explained that or their neocon links.
I've spoken to many Muslims and they don't trust QF, in order for them to suceed they need to win that trust. These people are not extreme or radical.
You know telling Muslims that they don't need to get involved in the Middle East dispute, do you seriously think any government annointed organisation could say that the Jewish community? No. So it is pretty daft to say that to the Muslim community. We need both to be involved positively to get a resolution.
How you get support is to build from the ground up and not lecture a community from the British Museum on what they can and can't do.
Even the most ardent Zionist is now saying this that it needs engagement with Muslims and compromise. It took 50 years to learn that so please don't tell me it will take Muslims 50 years to follow suit.
Sunny
· 1 year ago
David T - its great that you can show links between different orgs but the Radical Middle Way is nothing like MPAC UK.
Its a bit like saying... Melanie Phillips loves Robert Spencer. RS is a dangerous racist who thinks all Muslim are nutters. Harry's Place links to Melanie Phillips. Ergo - you guys are supporters of Robert Spencer and that crew, despite avowing their support. RMW's links with Asghar Bukhari are tenuous at best.
Secondly, you say: But mostly what I mean is: doing everything we can to thwart them, combat their message, prevent them from recruiting, and so on.
Put it this way. The BNP has a “Red White and Blue” cultural festival every year. I don’t think that “taking the BNP on” would involve appearing as a guest at that event.
I'm unsure about what your point is. Should we not try and win arguments with the BNP? I think the no-platform policy is outdated. If the BNP invited me to have a 'debate' with them on their territory, most likely I'd do it. Does that mean I support their policies? Of course not. Martin Bright has appeared on Press TV a few times. Does that mean he agrees with the policies of the Iranian govt?
Lastly: The fact is: QF never set out to take the message to kids on the street.
Well, their aim specifically was counter-terrorism. Just being a counter balance to that nutjob Azzam Tamimi unfortunately won't solve our terrorism issue. The nutcases who want to blow us up don't really spend all their time reading the Evening Standard or watching Newsnight, know what I mean?
The question is whether you want to focus on challenging Islamists in the media, or on counter-terrorism. The latter is a dispassionate and different exercise. As far as I'm aware, QF set out to do the latter.
Sid
· 1 year ago
Addressing Refresh and Avi Cohen: I doubt either of you have ever seen, first hand, the kind of damage Islamists have done to a society. If you did, you wouldn't lend your support to proxies of the Muslim Brotherhood or Jamaati Islami so easily.
David T
· 1 year ago
... unless you are in fact a proxy of the MB of J-e-I
Refresh
· 1 year ago
Sid, I really don't understand why you presume I lend my support to any grouping. Is it because you know I am a muslim so follow a particular trajectory?
I don't know Sid, you often come across as that 'only muslim in the village' character. Only your views are relevant, and the only hold you have on other muslim commenters is this 'islamist' lark. In fact you've broadened and changed the term 'islamist' so much that it does only leave you in the village.
And you're welcome to it.
Sid
· 1 year ago
I don't know Refresh, but I often feel like I'm the only Muslim who has experienced the damage done by the Jamaati Islami to a society in *this* village.
I've never broadened the term of the term "Islamist". If anything I would like to contract and shrink it. But I limit it to political outfits like the MB and the JI.
Refresh
· 1 year ago
Very well put Avi. I too lost that hope with QF after that very same interview on Newsnight.
Refresh
· 1 year ago
Whatever you say Sid.
Avi Cohen
· 1 year ago
Dave T - With respect many Jews in Israel and the UK want to talk to Hamas and also reach a compromise. Just because people speak out it doesn't mean they aren't Jewish and in fact it shows the community itself is moving away from the neocon view and towards compromise. Which is why IJV was founded here and alternatives to AIPAC are starting in the USA.
Are you claiming that every Jewish person supports your point of view?
Eight years of farsical peace making by Bush bring us to this point, that is 8 lost years.
8 years of neocon madness and your complaining about just Hamas, whose rise is a result of the neocons.
"The fact is: QF never set out to take the message to kids on the street. "
So whats the bleedin point? Either they address the issue or they don't.
Look Dave until you recognise and acknowledge their is right and wrong both sides and we need to get them all talking towards progress then you won't see the end of this madness.
Tell me what has 8 years of Bush the darling of the right achieved? Nothing. Not a damn thing. That is what we have now. If Bush and the neocons had allowed progress then we wouldn't see Hamas as powerful would we? It was the frustration in lack of progress that is a systematic cause of the situation and people need to recognise that.
The rise of the very regimes you complain about is as a direct result of the lack of progress in making peace in a number of areas and the biggest is I/P. The people are ready to make peace but the leaders are not being allowed to.
But again I ask you - you've been very active in bashing Hamas and I don't have a problem with that but did you campaign against a Chief Rabbi coming here and advocating Ethnic Cleansing?
Sid
· 1 year ago
So whats the bleedin point? Either they address the issue or they don’t.
The issue rests with the kids on the street exclusively?
Avi Cohen
· 1 year ago
Sid - Frankly your are behaving extremely poorly. I don't lend support to any of the groups you mention. I despise them but am realistic about the need for dialogue.
I've challanged the very thinking you say I support by proxy since school so your claims are frankly bollocks. I've faced off peole saying Hitler was right so kindly stop your ludicrous claims.
This crap of your with us or agauist us is the kind of stupid doctrine that Bush supports and even he is seeing it dying. So for a writer at PP to hint at this is just poor.
As I said there has never been a peace without dialogue. Either we can be realistic and say that sides need to be brought together or sit by and say we won't talk to people. We've had 8 years of that and what did it achieve. You and Dave T haven't been able to answer that question.
Sid just because I and others say that there needs to be dialogue it doesn't means we support those parties. It is a practical acknowledgement that the situation needs to change. I hate extremism in religion as much as you but in order to stop this we need to address the issues.
Given the fact that the neocons have allowed Hamas to grow in power by saying we shouldn't talk to them means that we now have to to bring about peace.
It is that simple and as a PP writer you should see that. If you have an alternative I am happy to listen but as I said Israelis are saying the same.
Sid
· 1 year ago
Very well put Avi. I too lost that hope with QF after that very same interview on Newsnight.
I know many (muslim) folks who lost hope with Takriti after his hopeless blustering on various TV talk shows during the Salman Rushdie episode in the early 90s. I know even more who have developed a hatred for the MB after Azam Tamimi's ridiculous performance on Newsnight. And yet more after seeing Bungle's scowling arrogance on Newsnight however many times. Compared to them, the QF guys come across as sensible and engaging.
Refresh
· 1 year ago
'When we checked the IP addresses they turned out to be…. Bob Pitt of Islamophobia-Watch.'
Are you suggesting that Islamophobia-Watch wouldn't have jewish and gay supporters? Presumably the same PC could be used by other people. In fact, you probably know this, one public-facing IP could have a hundred users behind it.
And are you suggesting that Avi Cohen couldn't be jewish because he doesn't fall in-line with your agenda? I would be extremely careful with that line of thought.
Avi Cohen
· 1 year ago
Sid - "The issue rests with the kids on the street exclusively?"
Sid - face it you've lost this one, even Sunny is saying they said they would tackle the issue. The issue doesn't rest with the kids on the street as they don't get the money to tackle the issue it is orgs like QF.
That is a bit like saying skinheads are responsible for tackling racism!
Are young black kids responsible for tackling knife crime or is it the community and the community organisations?
David T
· 1 year ago
David T - its great that you can show links between different orgs but the Radical Middle Way is nothing like MPAC UK.
It isn't
But it does include the MPAC UK campaigns manager on its board.
Frankly, this is like putting together a campaign on how to deal with White Working Class Exclusion, and inviting Richard Barnbrook to participate.
Now why would you do that. Either - because you think, wrongly, that MPAC are a sensible moderate mainstream group; or - because you think, rightly, the MPAC represents the thinking of a large number of Muslims.
If that's so, then perhaps there is a need to listen seriously to the concerns of Muslims who have what appear to be extreme views. Perhaps we should be accomodating those views ....
But if that's the way we're proposing to act, then shouldn't we also be listening to the views of non-Muslim people, who hold racist views, and who want to repatriate immigrants?
My question is this. What is it about the views of a small percentage of radicalised British Muslims - a cultural group which itself is very small - that means that we need to pay so much attention to it.
Is it the fact that there are 2000 people involved in violent jihadism?
Doesn't this mean that the BNP has made a terrible mistake by following the Parliamentary road? If their splinter groups started murdering people, wouldn't they be much more likely to be able to influence public policy?
If the BNP invited me to have a ‘debate’ with them on their territory, most likely I’d do it.
Would you sponsor a debate with them?
If you were a Government minister, would you participate in a debate, at their conference?
What if the BNP were trying to pretend that they weren't a racist organisation, and were engaged in a PR offensive to convince people that they'd left their neo-Nazi past behind them. Would you take part in a photo-opportunity for them, shaking hands with Nick Griffin?
Sid
· 1 year ago
Sid - Frankly your are behaving extremely poorly. I don’t lend support to any of the groups you mention. I despise them but am realistic about the need for dialogue.
Then prove you have no partisan affiliation by giving up your views on the MB and the JI. But wait, you already have. You're a big supporter of Saudi Salafism aren't you, given previous discussions. And we know that they're big funders of the Jamaati Isalmi in Bangladesh and Pakistan. So how exactly can you say that you don't lend support to any groups?
Refresh
· 1 year ago
#67 and so what?
You have to decide whether QF is fit for purpose, and not worry about scoring points of me.
Avi Cohen
· 1 year ago
Sid - "Compared to them, the QF guys come across as sensible and engaging."
No they don't thats the point. I concur with you regarding the performance of the aforementioned individuals but trust me Sid when I say QF came across like that. They refused to answer mqany questions, rewatch the newsnight.
Equally worrying is their links to the neocons which they won't answer.
David T
· 1 year ago
"Avi Cohen"
Dave T - With respect many Jews in Israel and the UK want to talk to Hamas and also reach a compromise.
Good. Israel has a Hamas problem. It is for the people living in that country to decide how they want to deal with it.
We don't have a Hamas problem in the United Kingdom, yet. And so there's no reason for us to engage with this tiny terrorist movement.
So whats the bleedin point? Either they address the issue or they don’t.
The main point, as far as I'm concerned, is to prevent the pro-Islamist sections on the British Left giving the false impression that British Muslims are supporters of Islamist clerical fascist movements.
We know that's not true.
QF helps to prevent that betrayal of British Muslims, and of all of us.
tim
· 1 year ago
If nothing else, the emergence of the QF will ensure that programmes such as Channel4 news can no longer put on two people such as Jafar and Tamimi to represent the breadth of Muslim opinion. One thick conspiracy nutjob and one racist shaheed wannabe would be representative if they appeared approximately one programme in twenty.
What damage was done by having people like this being portrayed as "representative" is difficult to measure. I'm sure the BNP loved it.
David T
· 1 year ago
The lesson we're giving the BNP is: if you're violent, no matter how small you are, you'll get attention and concessions.
Avi Cohen
· 1 year ago
Sid - frankly you are just using examples unjustly. With regards to Saudi Salafi's I refuted you and said they don't back violence and provided links to refute you. All I asked was that you didn't smear creeds you didn't agree with. After much debate as I recall you agreed to this. Now because of that you are back again shifting ground on what I said and that is just piss poor.
I don't advocate violence and have never liked MCB, MAB or others. But equally we are where we are and your frankly silly posturing and asking people to prove things is piss poor arguments.
If you bothered to read what I have said and present it fairly you'd know I have criticised MCB, MAB, MB and I admit I don't know enough about JI. Regarding the MB I've said to you time and again that they have dodgy view in aspirations of power based upon religion intermixed with Marxist thinking. I said it during our last argument on the subject so you have a bleedin cheek to say I need to prove my point of view.
Frankly your claims are crazy and it is the greatest shame that Sunny allows you to behave as you do.
Face it your boys at QF didn't do what they promised and even Sunny admits that was on their agenda, so rather than acknowledge that your attacking anyone that dares to highlight what they said.
Sid - Frankly it isn't my fault that you got it wrong and you need to be fair in your quotations of what I said.
Avi Cohen
· 1 year ago
"Dave T" - "QF helps to prevent that betrayal of British Muslims, and of all of us."
How??? They aren't addressing their own community so how will they prevent a betrayal?
The main point is that the neocons don't want Muslims to have a political voice in which to get their vierw across. Hence some pretty unsavoury tactics are being used.
Your poster boy Gove said as much in his articles.
Sid
· 1 year ago
Sid - Frankly it isn’t my fault that you got it wrong and you need to be fair in your quotations of what I said.
You live in a dream world of your own making. You're a legend in your own chatroom.
You live in England and you think that the street kids is all ther is to the Islamist issue. Its no wonder that anything anti-Islamists translates to anti-Muslim for morons like you. How do you get to be so wilfully ignorant?
You have no idea about the amount money that Saudis send to the Jamaati outfits in Pakistan and Bangladesh. You think you won our debate? Well of course you would, given your narrow parameters of engagement.
I can argue with you but I can't disabuse you of your total ignorance.
David T
· 1 year ago
Yeah.
Here's a question.
We had a series of bombings of cultural minority targets back in the 1990s. More recently, there have been a couple of White Supremacists who have been arrested, with caches of bombs: preparing for a "race war".
How should we deal with the problem of white kids, getting seduced into neo nazi terrorism?
Would you be in favour of ending immigration to this country? Should we have a ban on building places of worship for non-Christians? What about doing something to prevent the "mongrelisation" of the White Race? These are all issues which HUGELY motivate fascist terrorists.
Should we bring in the BNP to advise us on the best way to do keep white kids from becoming terrorists?
Let's put it another way. Why would you want to involve Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood in the United Kingdom in the process of preventing Muslim radicalisation in Britain?
There are only two reasons I can think somebody would want to do that.
1. You actually support the aims and politics of Islamist groups. Either because you're an Islamist. Or because you're on the extreme Left, but have recognised that the extreme Left has utterly run out of steam. So you're looking for Islamists and jihadists to "overthrow the system" for you.
2. You think that Muslims are walking timebombs, liable to explode at any moment. You don't think white non-Muslims are though. Therefore, you think that they need theocratic politicos to keep them on the straight and narrow. You hope to do a deal with those politicos. In other words, you're a racist.
Sunny
· 1 year ago
Frankly, this is like putting together a campaign on how to deal with White Working Class Exclusion, and inviting Richard Barnbrook to participate.
I'm assuming this means that since Richard Barnbrook has been elected to the London Assembly, you'll be boycotting anything by Boris Johnson?
If that’s so, then perhaps there is a need to listen seriously to the concerns of Muslims who have what appear to be extreme views. Perhaps we should be accomodating those views ….
What views do you think that RMW is incorporating from MPACUK? And do you have any evidence of it?
Doesn’t this mean that the BNP has made a terrible mistake by following the Parliamentary road? If their splinter groups started murdering people, wouldn’t they be much more likely to be able to influence public policy?
That's true. If the BNP were blowing people up, no doubt a lot of people would be worried about how to deal with them. No? Isn't that what Maggie Thatcher was doing when she basically took on the National Front's talking points?
If you were a Government minister, would you participate in a debate, at their conference?
Who is them? If the BNP have an elected representative, and since they're a legal parliamentary body - are you saying that the politicians and media should completely try to boycott them at every opportunity? I thought you were in favour of taking on their arguments?
The lesson we’re giving the BNP is: if you’re violent, no matter how small you are, you’ll get attention and concessions.
But we already know this. When there's a white BNP member with weapons, then the story doesn't get any media attention. when its a Muslim person doing something wrong, your friend Melanie Phillips and the rest tell us that Britain is dying.
You also didn't address this point: Its a bit like saying… Melanie Phillips loves Robert Spencer. RS is a dangerous racist who thinks all Muslim are nutters. Harry’s Place links to Melanie Phillips. Ergo - you guys are supporters of Robert Spencer and that crew, despite avowing their support.
David T
· 1 year ago
How??? They aren’t addressing their own community so how will they prevent a betrayal?
Because "Muslims" - as a block - don't make policy in this country. The Government does.
The Government decides on how do deal, generally, with community cohesion issues.
Until groups like Quilliam came along, the "Muslim voice" in Britain consisted of affiliates of tiny clerical fascist parties - J-e-I and the MB - telling the Government that they really had to base their policies on their guidance. So, for example, the MCB appointee to a festival of Muslim Culture - sponsored by the Government - advised that certain sorts of singers and dancers and musicians were prohibited. The MCB produced hilarious "guidance" for schools, which made absurd and prescriptive suggestions about what Muslim students could and could not do - suggestions which most ordinary Muslims just laughed at.
Worse, these guys appeared on the TV, acting like lunatics. You have no idea of how much hatred they stirred up.
Now the debate is balanced. Islamists can't hoodwink the Government into thinking they're speaking for Muslims as a whole.
As I've suggested before - and as Sunny used to believe - the only solution is to treat citizens as equals: not as members of cultural groups.
Sunny
· 1 year ago
As I’ve suggested before - and as Sunny used to believe - the only solution is to treat citizens as equals: not as members of cultural groups.
This is rather a cheap shot. I'd love for all of us to be treated as equals, and not members of cultural groups, if it wasn't for the fact that there is an entire side of the media and various "anti-Islamists" like Melanie Phillips, Rod Liddle etc who are intent of bunching them together and telling us how Muslim growth rates and any little incident will spell the death of British society.
Maybe if Harry's Place spent a bit more time documenting how the right and how MP and the rest attack Muslims as a cultural group, you'd spend less time asking why the left end up having to defend that identity.
And lastly, we all have different identities. I'm all for people being treated equally while accepting they have multiple identities that sometimes affect their behaviour and political allegiances (especially if the govt passes legislation that will disproportionately affect them).
tim
· 1 year ago
Avi Cohen wrote
"They aren’t addressing their own community so how will they prevent a betrayal?"
You might like to think about the fact that more Muslims vote Tory than send cheques to David Irving,think Sikhs are out to get them or want to blow themselves up. Bearing that in mind.
What is "their community"?
David T
· 1 year ago
I’m assuming this means that since Richard Barnbrook has been elected to the London Assembly, you’ll be boycotting anything by Boris Johnson?
If Barnbrook is appointed to a committee to advise Boris Johnson on how to deal with non-white minority groups, I will.
What views do you think that RMW is incorporating from MPACUK? And do you have any evidence of it?
I dunno. Perhaps they recommended that they involve the Muslim Brotherhood's Helbawy in their campaigning work.
Isn’t that what Maggie Thatcher was doing when she basically took on the National Front’s talking points?
It was indeed, and it was a disgrace.
And if you're happy for policy to be made in this way, then I'd just like to say: I'll miss you very much Sunny, when you're packed off back "home"!!
Actually, perhaps I'll be packed off back "home" as well.
Should we argue against the BNP. Yes.
Should we take part in photo ops, and help them pretend that they're not racists? No.
When there’s a white BNP member with weapons, then the story doesn’t get any media attention. when its a Muslim person doing something wrong, your friend Melanie Phillips and the rest tell us that Britain is dying.
The mistake the neo nazis have made, is that they've not killed anybody recently. Copeland got a LOT of attention.
Perhaps if a neo Nazi killed you and me, then the BNP could reap the benefits.
I don't understand your last point, but I'm off...
Sid
· 1 year ago
Now the debate is balanced. Islamists can’t hoodwink the Government into thinking they’re speaking for Muslims as a whole.
Translate that to a decade and a half of hoodwikning by my reckoning. And untold damage to the social fabric which makes 3rd generation Brits who identify radical, right-wing outfits based on the baggage of generations of cultural and religious loyalties.
David T
· 1 year ago
You might like to think about the fact that more Muslims vote Tory than send cheques to David Irving,think Sikhs are out to get them or want to blow themselves up. Bearing that in mind.
What is “their community”?
"Avi Cohen" is a disgusting Islamophobic racist, who spreads lies about British Muslims.
I really hope he isn't actually Jewish. He is a shande!!
Ravi Naik
· 1 year ago
This is rather a cheap shot. I’d love for all of us to be treated as equals, and not members of cultural groups, if it wasn’t for the fact that there is an entire side of the media and various “anti-Islamists” like Melanie Phillips, Rod Liddle etc who are intent of bunching them together and telling us how Muslim growth rates and any little incident will spell the death of British society"
So... let me get this straight. The reason why Muslims need to be seen as a group instead of free thinking individuals, is because Islamophobes bunch them together?
The real problem of having a "Muslim" bloc is that individuals lose voice, and their message gets hijacked by Muslim organisations... which makes it even easier for Mel and others to attack.
So, let's do the right thing rather than letting Islamophobes dictate our narrative.
deadmenonleave
· 1 year ago
David T: "We had a poster calling himself by the jewish name 'Eugene Levine'."
This name was clearly an anglicised version of the famous German revolutionary Eugen Leviné, who was of Jewish origin but is well known to have rejected Judaism in favour of atheism and communism. He was executed for his part in the 1919 Bavarian Soviet.
Sunny
· 1 year ago
If Barnbrook is appointed to a committee to advise Boris Johnson on how to deal with non-white minority groups, I will.
And who is appointed Hamas to deal with our foreign policy? Or who is appointing Muslims to deal with non-Muslim affairs?
I dunno. Perhaps they recommended that they involve the Muslim Brotherhood’s Helbawy in their campaigning work
This is a wild stab in the dark re: a Muslim org you know very little about and most likely haven't been to any of their events. So until you find any stronger links or find examples of how MPAC uk policy is informing their work then I can't really take any smear by association seriously.
It was indeed, and it was a disgrace.
So in other words there IS a national political party that panders to a white racist party as you said. Presumably, this means you won't be supporting anything by Michael Gove, Dean Godson or anyone who is currently associated with the Conservative Party?
The point isn't about who is dictating policy, because frankly the idea that these Muslim groups are dictating policy is rather laughable.
The question is - who do you associate with. I thought thats what we were discussing.
So if we don't deal with politicians who start adopting the language of racists, you wouldn't do anything to do with the Tories or anyone close to them. After all, the tories have far more impact on policy making than any Muslim group. Right?
Ravi: So… let me get this straight. The reason why Muslims need to be seen as a group instead of free thinking individuals, is because Islamophobes bunch them together?
No - we're talking about the tendency of people to bunch Muslims together. David T seems to think that somehow I've decided to bunch them all together again and am advocating the Islamists start dictating govt policy. I'm doing no such thing.
I'm saying if we want to condemn people who bunch Muslims together - it would be reasonable to spend more time attacking right wingers and others like Melanie Phillips, Michael Gove etc who do that more than the left (incl myself).
Iain
· 1 year ago
Michael Gove is not an Islamophobe. He has never attacked Muslims as a group. He has criticised Islamists. You have defamed him.
Miran
· 1 year ago
I think Sunny's hit the nail on the head with this one:
A good, moderate Muslim: one who does not organise himself politically, does not stand up for himself. Cuddly, does what he is told.
Bad extremists Muslim: those who organise themselves as Muslims and seek to engage and at times challenge the political process as Muslims.
That was the mistake of the MCB, it got political, awkward, unlike the pliant City Circle.
Nyrone
· 1 year ago
'westophobia???' classic!
So, did anyone here actually go to the Islam-Expo? Because the description currently being bandied around about what it entailed doesn't really fit reality.
I went as a Non-Muslim and found it to be an impressive, peaceful atmosphere filled with wide-ranging discussion, dialogue, debate and engagement about various issues affecting Muslims and Non-Muslims in this country and elsewhere. It was a thought-provoking event, that really bears little relation to how it's being portrayed by its critics in the mainstream...It was not a cheerleading, all-agreed, terrorist-symphasising event...there were plenty of openly critical panelists in most of the debates, who sharply dissected Islamism and women’s rights with the sharpest of knives...
People can freely delude themselves into believing it was some BNP-style Terrorist Rally with Hamas-loving Jihadists holding guns and screaming ‘Cut the heads off non-believers' all you like, but it was absolutely nothing like that at all...it was more of a cultural carnival, with broad debates, picnics, face-painting, cloths sales, public service recruitment drives, theatre performances, writers workshops, book sales, food...everyone was polite, friendly and willing to communicate openly...in fact, I remarked to my friend that Islam-Expo appeared to be where Islam and Capitalism meet...it was a broad meeting point for Muslims and Non-Muslims and I think the government have missed a big opportunity by just boycotting it...It’s not perfect, but it had an enormous amount of good things going for it, and now many of the Muslims that turned up will feel abandoned by their government.
The conclusion I reached, was that the Government simply doesn't want any politicized Muslims at all...they want the shop-keepers with their heads down or pro-government 'British flag waving' so-called 'moderate and loyal' Muslims...this is absurd, and whilst the entire cabinet stay in absolute denial about the anger of Muslims over injustices in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine ETC...the more disconnection and there will be. Many Muslims feel these days that they are not even allowed to be angry about what's happening in Iraq and Palestine...is that how de-political you have to be for the Government to praise you as a 'loyal and good' Muslim?
If that is what it takes...they are going to be waiting forever for these imaginary ‘Moderate Muslims’.
Miran
· 1 year ago
Auntie Hazel Blears at the Policy Exchange yesterday
"The fact remains that most British Muslims, like the wider community, are not politically active, do not sit on committees, and do not attend seminars and meetings. They are working hard, bringing up families, planning their holidays, and going about their business."
Sid - It is you that lives in a dreamworld because frankly you were exposed with regards to blaming creeds you disagree with for everything, hell if you like doing that and using PP for that then it is PP that is all the poorer for allowing you to spread your nonsense.
You agreed at the time that you would be more specific but you are back to your old nonsense and that is a disgrace and not wholly accurate.
You agreed at the time that you would be more careful about how your portrayed things.
The research work that I linked to in this thread from an ex senior member of the Met validates what I say and proves your position is simply one of nonsense and not a complete or fair picture and you obviously hate that.
The reason you love QF is because they support your position but they are a failure and even Sunny has said that they promised much more. But you don't want to admit that so prefer to attack me.
Your opinion is backed by QF and some Sufi's who want political backinghurrah. What I say is backed by the US State Dept, the Met Police as well as people like Yahya Birt and at least one member of QF. The fact that you find it soooooo damn hard to acknowledge that even within creeds there is differences makes your analysis all the poorer.
Avi Cohen
· 1 year ago
Also as regards QF I think they stil have the potential to succeed. In Majid Nawaz I think they have potential to do some good within the Muslim Commuity.
I think that the way for them to succeed is to not get into creed based politics within the Muslim Comunity here and in the UK and address issues head on.
They need to engage with the Muslim Community and hold some events within the community and aimed at the community.
Also finance is an issue you've raised a number of times so they need to work with the Saudi's and others to address the issue rather than just blame them in print - so they need to work to resolve the issue. If that doesn't work then they need to relook at alteratives.
At the moment QF isn't helping itself to prosper.
cjcjc
· 1 year ago
this is absurd, and whilst the entire cabinet stay in absolute denial about the anger of Muslims over injustices in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine ETC…the more disconnection and there will be
No-one expects anyone to mindlessly wave a flag, but I assume you can also understand the disconnect with non-Muslims who are getting a bit tired of some fellow citizens' apparently constant anger.
And are the vast majority of Muslims not in fact behaving as Blears suggests?
Andrew
· 1 year ago
The government is going to set up its own group:
"The British government is to fund a board of Islamic theologians in an attempt to sideline violent extremists."
IF the scholars are highly credible ones for angry young Muslims (such as Tariq Ramadan), it might just have some effect.
This does pose the question of whether or not the government has given up on groups such as the Quilliam Foundation and is now going for 'direct action'.
Avi Cohen
· 1 year ago
The problem with the Govt approach is that it is still rooted extensively in Blairite policy which is to say that there is nothing wrong with foreign policy which causes injustice which causes resentment which causes extremism which causes some to go towards terrorism.
So whilst tackling the last element the cause isn't being addressed. Thus people see no change and you get the disconnect.
QF and SMC saying that Muslims need not care about foreign policy is naive at best.
Thus Govt needs to at listen to the foreign policy concerns of Muslims and non-Muslims and build a just foreign policy.
Equally Govt needs to encourage the interfaith work that is being done largely without finance, here I refer to the excellent work of organisations such as Aliph-Aleph.
This issue cannot be solved by people connected to Oxford and Cambrideg as most of society has little if any connection to them.
The Govt also needs to stop its crass stupidity in not sending peope to events such as IslamExpo, if you are not there you can't be heard it really is that simple.
The last person who can help sort out this problem is Hazel Blears as a simple look at her approach and comments show she is ill-suited to do this.
As I said the last 8 years have shown the grand failures of government policy so why use the same people with the same tired ideas to resolve this.
This issue isn't going to be solved in the media, it will take grassroots work and that is something that more generally government is ill able ot do on a range of issues. That is one of the great failings of Thatcher and Balir in that government became detached from the grassroots.
I say get Ministers out into the community to actually talk to people. I say again how many ministers and shadow ministers attend local events. Hardly any. Thus how do people expect to get heard. That is a general issue and not just one linked to Muslims. I have seen at first hand Muslims and Jews trying without success to get ministers to attend hugely succesful interfaith events and this understandibly causes frustrations.
Some of the best work is being done on a voluntary basis by organisations that have no funding and is paid for by people who just go on trying to change things. This needs to stop and government needs to fund these grassroots events.
What impact will a lot of people sitting in places such as Oxford and Cambridge have on grassroots? It will be QF and SMC all over again, too much theory and little activity.
The great failing of the MCB after 7/7 was graphically illustrated on the news when lots of young people waited to talk to the MCB leadership and they simply didn't address them. Govt is the same. So until this happens then how d you get rid of the frustrations? Simply put you don't.
David T
· 1 year ago
Er.
We have elections.
The government do not need to take their lead from any self selected groups claiming to speak for this or that constituency.
Stop trying to subvert democracy.
Bob Pitt
· 1 year ago
David T: "We had a poster calling himself by the jewish name 'Eugene Levine'.... Imagine! Pretending to be a Jew in order to attack Jews.... What sort of person would do that!"
I find it odd that while David Toube is always eager to expose what he claims are the pseudonyms under which other people post, he never posts under his own name.
Indeed, when he blogged at CiF he did so under the pseudonym of "David Tate". Imagine! Pretending not to be a Jew in order to attack Muslims. What sort of person would do that?
On the actual subject of this thread, I'm surprised that Blears' speech to Policy Exchange yesterday hasn't provoked more comment. As we noted on Islamophobia Watch:
"Not content with imposing a government boycott of one of the most popular and mainstream Muslim events of the year, Blears chooses to announce her justification for this disgraceful decision from the platform of a Tory think tank notorious for its hostility to British Muslims. It's difficult to see this as anything other than a conscious provocation directed against the Muslim community."
In his Guardian article yesterday Seumas Milne quoted an unnamed government minister as describing the DCLG's approach as "completely counterproductive" in terms of improving relations between Muslims and non-Muslims or countering terrorism.
That's putting it mildly, in my opinion. I would say that Blears, along with the likes of Azhar Ali and Ed Husain, is in fact actively promoting the alienation of Muslim communities and encouraging recruitment to terrorist groupuscules.
Avi Cohen
· 1 year ago
Dave T - stop talking your nonsense. If the Govt listened to the electorate then they wouldn't pander so much to the Pro-Israeli Lobby now would they?
Most of the electorate support a Palestinian state including most Jews (which you don't like to hear)and here I include my mate the Chuief Rabbi but the Govt doesn't give a hoot about that. Instead they listen to a small minority and form policy from there so stop bloody harping on about democracy.
"The government do not need to take their lead from any self selected groups claiming to speak for this or that constituency."
Then why the bloody hell do lobby groups exist if the freakin govt don't listen to them eh?
If government actually listened to the people then your pin up boy Daniel Pipes would haven't been put into his position by Bush would he even when Congress and the Senate refused to ratify him.
Govt listens to influential lobbies and people that is a fact.
Also did the electorate want to go to war in Iraq - hell no. The support came once the troops were there and people felt they should support the boys and girls. So where was your Blairocracy then?
David T
· 1 year ago
Sorry, I thought everybody here was in favour of a Palestinian state alongside an Israeli one.
Hamas certainly isn't in favour of that, though.
Avi Cohen
· 1 year ago
"Sorry, I thought everybody here was in favour of a Palestinian state alongside an Israeli one."
Are you? Do you agree to a Palestinian State on the pre '67 Borders with East Jerusalem as its capital living in security?
Do you believe this has to be done now or as Danny boy says that Israel has to crush the Palestinians first?
"Hamas certainly isn’t in favour of that, though."
Oh please. They are just posturing and have said that they will recognise Israel once a peace is reached. So has Iran. So has the Middle East.
Why would they recognise Israel before Israel recognises them and vice versa? Both sides are posturing. Do you believe that Israel doesn't talk to Hamas?
The challange to Hamas is to show they can govern responsibly at the moment they don't have to show this because no one treats them like a government. The acid test is when they have to do this.
Have you ever noticed that Israel only makes peace when your poster boys in the USA are not involved?
David T
· 1 year ago
See below:
Are you? Do you agree to a Palestinian State on the pre ‘67 Borders with East Jerusalem as its capital living in security?
YES
Do you believe this has to be done now or as Danny boy says that Israel has to crush the Palestinians first?
NOW. ANY PALESTINIAN GOVT MUST TAKE ON INTERNAL FORCES LIKELY TO SCUPPER SUCH AN AGREEMENT.
“Hamas certainly isn’t in favour of that, though.”
Oh please. They are just posturing and have said that they will recognise Israel once a peace is reached. So has Iran. So has the Middle East.
IRAN HASN'T
MOST OTHER ME STATES WOULD, IF THEY THOUGHT THEY NEEDED TO IN ORDER TO OUTFLANK IRAN
HAMAS HAS MADE IT VERY CLEAR THAT THEY HAVE A DOCTRINAL PROBLEM WITH ACCEPTING THE EXISTENCE OF A NON ISLAMIC STATE ON ISLAMIC LAND. TOUGH. UNLESS THEY WANT TO KEEP ON FIGHTING THEY'LL HAVE TO. I'D BE AMAZED IF HAMAS EVER EXPLICITLY RECOGNISED ISRAEL AS A PERMANENT FEATURE IN THE REGION. THEY REGARD THAT AS A THEOLOGICAL IMPOSSIBILITY
The challange to Hamas is to show they can govern responsibly at the moment they don’t have to show this because no one treats them like a government. The acid test is when they have to do this.
OH, I'M A BIG FAN OF ISLAMISTS COMING TO POWER. THEY TEND TO TURN OUT TO BE INCOMPETENT AND CORRUPT. LOOK AT IRAN. SUNNI ISLAMIST GOVERNMENTS IN THE MIDDLE EAST NEED TO BE GIVEN THE CHANCE TO FAIL.
tim
· 1 year ago
"Have you ever noticed that Israel only makes peace when your poster boys in the USA are not involved?"
Tell that to Sadats family. Numpty
Dave Rich
· 1 year ago
Are you the Avi Cohen who used to play for Liverpool? I preferred you when you kicked balls instead of talking them.
Sid
· 1 year ago
Avi Cohen #95:
Sid - It is you that lives in a dreamworld because frankly you were exposed with regards to blaming creeds you disagree with for everything, hell if you like doing that and using PP for that then it is PP that is all the poorer for allowing you to spread your nonsense.
You agreed at the time that you would be more specific but you are back to your old nonsense and that is a disgrace and not wholly accurate.
You agreed at the time that you would be more careful about how your portrayed things.
Avi, these conversations you had with me in which I had an epiphany and agreed with your every word and "evidence" might have happened in your head, but I don't recognise them to have happened in reality.
You're clueless about the Jamaati Islami or the nature of client-patron politics in SouthAsia and even more so on the tentacular growth of Islamist politics in South Asia in the last 20 years.
The JI political outfits in Southasia are heavily funded by Salafi and Wahhabi interests in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. We also know that the JI have affiliations with senior board members of the MCB and a particular Muslim charity in the UK.
Here is Adam Stahl on the matter of Saudi funding of Islamist radical outfits in Bangladesh:
It is noteworthy that the JI and IOJ, though radical, are not involved in executing terrorist attacks. They are, however believed to be connected to underground militant Islamist terror organizations, which have carried out well organized and fatal attacks against governmental and non-governmental targets, such as suicide attacks on the cultural wing of Bangladesh’s Communist Party as well as a recent stabbing of a university professor, Abdul Alim.3 Though a multitude of Bangladeshi Islamist terror organizations exist, one group is worthy of attention: Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (The Party of Holy Warriors). The organization is Bangladesh’s largest Islamist terror organization.4 It receives funds from foreign patrons, such as Saudi Arabian and Kuwaiti Islamic charities, proving that international support for their cause exists beyond Bangladesh’s borders. The purpose of this paper is to briefly observe the structure, and tactics as well as the financing and stated goals of the Jama’atul Mujahideen-Bangladesh.
And are you seriously saying that your claim that Saudi-based Salafis do not fund terrorist outfits around the world is backed by "the US State Dept, the Met Police as well as people like Yahya Birt and at least one member of QF"?
That's some bad juju you're smoking there mate.
Avi Cohen
· 1 year ago
Sid - You are busy writing your work of fictional commentary again and I don't have time for your nonsense. I never said you agreed with every word so stop misquoting me.
After highlighting the excess of your Sufi brethren you agreed that you needed to be more specific when discussing creeds and said you would clarify more in future. If you can't be bothered to write fairly then that reflects poorly upon you.
I accepted then and I accept now your word of the negative influence of MB and JI.
I understand your passion about these issues and I accept you've confronted these people and for that I applauded you then and still do. But as I keep saying to you when you get into portraying entire creeds unfairly then that detracts from your writing and argument.
If you make a commitment and then can't even be bothered to recall it then that is an issue for you and not me. I suggest you read the thread, and as an editor of PP that should be easy enough.
I don't intend to cover Saudi Salafi's again as I've given you enoug evidence from the sources above in previous threads and if you can't be bothered recalling the previous discussion then chances are you won't even bother reading the evidence.
I refer you to the Report by an ex-member of the Met who said that Saudi Based Salafis in Brixtonhave provided some of the best cooperation on combating terrorism and extremism. He didn't even acknowledge your Sufi/Brailwee brothers that you love to promote. So if you have an issue contact him and say he is incorrect.
The Sufi's are using this opportunity to gain influence with western governments but so far have provided little tangible results for taxpayers money.
Again Yayha Birt said that the Saudi's fund things with little regard for how money is used. This has changed. The member of QF questioned the methodology of the Sufi's in portraying Jihad.
The US State Dept on their website acknowledges that there are a number of orgs claiming to be Salafi and the Saudi Salfi's deplore terrorism even in Israel.
Your lumping together of creeds you dislike does you a dis-service in trying to eradicate this problem because you are alienating people that agree with your view by claiming incorrectly they are something they are not.
I don't intend to comment again on you continual denials despite numerous links to refute what you say.
Sid
· 1 year ago
Hey Avi, don't shoot the messenger.
The JI and it's terrorist offshoot, the Taliban-like militia JMB, regard *themselves* as Salafi and "Ahle-Hadith".
The Saudis and Kuwaitis are funding these organisations they happen to share dogmatic interpretation. Not because as you like to claim, they happen to "have little regard for how the money is used". If that's what Birt says then either he is deeply mistaken or he is being misrepresented or he is lying.
And I quote again:
The Kuwaiti Revival Islamic Heritage Society (RIHS), a financier of the JMB, is an international organization that has succeeded in spreading Whabbism within numerous Muslim countries.48 Funds from the RIHS have aided in the construction of “…1,000 mosques, 10 madrassas, four orphanage-cum- madrassas, and a kidney dialysis centre across the country. The mosques and madrassas were later proved to be centers of militant activities of the JMB.”49 In 2005, more evidence of foreign links to Bangladeshi militant Islam came to light with the arrest of Maolana Abu Noman Muhammad Amanullah, who admitted to having direct links to the 17 August 2005 nationwide bombings; Amanullah was an Imam of the RIHS-funded Ahle Hadith mosque at Andariapara.50 In 2002, US Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil placed both a criminal and international jihadist tag on the RIHS. The Treasury Department held that the RIHS ”had been stealing from widows and orphans to fund al-Qaeda terrorism”.51 This led the US Department of State to blacklist the RIHS on 9 September 2002 for providing financial assistance to Islamist terrorists.
Seems to me that you are claiming these Saudi funders to be pretty stupid if they're funding so many initiatives without regard to how the money is being spent or by whom! The point is, this claim to "ignorance" is a pretty shoddy excuse.
The Queen of Fiddlesticks
· 1 year ago
I think I will start a new political party ... it's called "OMGSU!" all everyone does is fight till no one even knows what they are talking about anymore. something was said somewhere about political Islam being spawned by people getting wrapped up in current events... I think that could be said about alot of bloggers too!! ... here in NYC the kids are bringing the 80's back... cause they are tired of fighting, violence etc !! I think we should take a cue from them.. for the rest of today anyway!
"I can't stand this indecision married with a lack of vision everybody wants to rule the world.."
“Oh dear, perhaps they have a point, better not say anything to disparage Nick Griffin … if they’re having a rally I should go along to show that I’m not TOTALLY opposed to them”
Actually i would; well after a fashion.
I wouldn't attend one of their 'rallys' but then i don't attend anyone elses 'rallys' either (demonstrations stopped being an effective political tool half a century ago). But i certainly wouldn't have any objection to finding out about and trying to empathise with the problems that were alienating BNP supporters. I made a similar point in relation to the fuss over the 'BNP ballerina'; disparaging and humiliating her wouldn't allow any kind of connection to be made to deal with the fear or hate she was feeling.
The Good Friday agreement didn't come about by people steadfastly refusing to have anything to do with each other. Choosing to ignore or dismissing out of hand a particular philosophy or ideology is just juvenile.
muhammad mushtaq
· 1 year ago
the way to make muslims liberal is to make the state more liberal
every western country where the state is liberal the muslims are basically hedonists and not terrorists
take canada
muslim girls are mostly focused on looking hot and muslim guys are mostly focused on chasing ass
All Comments
Besides, why did Demos NOT INVITE Qulliam to the panels at Islam Expo, if Demos cared so much for engagement and real debate?
The busybodies of Demos who are funded by government monies have totally failed in this project. Good riddance of the Fieschi - her one-way article on Harry's Place was quite juvenile and devoid of "complexity" (a favorite meaningless reactionary lefty trope). Glad to see my income tax not going to waste no more.
Get an education - what did you major in college Sunny? Seriously.
Seems you want to fit them in a Sunny-size box, but it's their box.
Why not "Westophobia"? How else would you describe the various rantings of Islamists and their ilk? It's hatred of the West and Western values, just as "Islamophobia" means hatred of Islam and its values.
Don't be prejudiced! ;-)
I understand that cheques for the BMI conference that Fieschi's Demos sponsored, were made out to the BMI. In other words, to attend a Demos event, you had to pay Hamas' British sister organisation.
You say:
"More broadly - this is part of a discussion on how to engage with politicised British Muslims. Nick Cohen et al take an absolutist approach that basically equates all of them with the BNP and then say the government should ignore them. I think this is not only simplistic, but oblivious to what is going on at ground level. "
Listen mate. A high percentage of "politicised white British people" in Barking support the BNP: a party which would like to pack you up, and deport you. What liberals and progressives do when they encounter politics like this, is to work out how to oppose and defeat it.
Most "politicised British Muslims" support mainstream parties. They don't support the Islamists. But even if they did - even if some British Muslims have some sympathy with some of their aims - then you should be fighting hard against that. This doesn't mean 'working out how we can engage constructively with them'. It means taking them on, whenever and wherever you can.
"I haven't voted for the BNP before but, you know, a lot of what they say about immigration makes sense!"
You wouldn't say
"Oh dear, perhaps they have a point, better not say anything to disparage Nick Griffin ... if they're having a rally I should go along to show that I'm not TOTALLY opposed to them"
Curious how in all these articles by the likes of Sunny, about why we should engage with "radical" Islam, the authors bang on about how non violent the majority of British Muslims are. True I am sure, but then they omit to mention how surveys show that a significant percentage of young Muslims are at least sympathetic to the aims of al Qaeda, as they relate to developing a european wide islamic caliphate and imposing it on the rest of us.
Does this mean we should engage with them or oppose them? I think we should be showing up the radical extremists for what they are, including how they dissemble. And I think Ken's identity politics as a solution, handing out favours to selected minorities and using Jasper as the school bully, are outdated and we need a new approach.
Maybe I am wrong, but I don't believe the Islam Expo rally is going to lead to a similar set of physical attacks. I see Nick Cohen thinks the Expo is "at the beginning of a continuum whose terminus is psychopathic hatred" - I wonder if his co thinker David T could let me know what terrible things this Expo will lead to, how the psychopathic hatred it is stirring up will be expressed. Nick also says that Demos might be negotiating with Muslim Brotherhood about the rights of "Women’s rights? The Jews, the gays, the apostates, the free thinkers, the secularists, the liberals, the democrats". Are the Muslim Brotherhood using Islam Expo to negotiate legal limits on the rights of democrats ? Does stopping Shahid Malik attending the Expo stop this secret plan to attack gays ? Or is this all a bit of a fantasy by people who want to be "policing the boundaries of respectable discourse ".
A quick bit of research shows that BMI Ltd has never filed accounts, and uses as its office the home address of Mohammed Sawalha, named by the BBC as a Hamas fugitive organiser.
BRITISH MUSLIM INITIATIVE LIMITED
*****
##### STRAND
LONDON
NW9 5QJ
Company No. 05703363
Status: Active
Date of Incorporation: 09/02/2006
Country of Origin: United Kingdom
Company Type: PRI/LTD BY GUAR/NSC (Private, limited by guarantee, no share capital)
Nature of Business (SIC(03)):
7487 - Other business activities
Accounting Reference Date: 28/02
Last Accounts Made Up To: (NO ACCOUNTS FILED)
Next Accounts Due: 09/12/2007 OVERDUE
Last Return Made Up To: 09/02/2007
Next Return Due: 08/03/2008 OVERDUE
By the way, public opinion in Iraq and life in Iraq as a democracy is getting better by the day. And guess what the war was not about Oil as we pay exactly the same amount for Iraqi Oil as we do for Russian or Saudi Oil. Second, the Iraqi Government is also standing up to the US Government and US troops and others would only be there as long as Iraqi Government wants it.
So those beating on the Iraq war (And I am not talking about those who disagreed with what happened immediately after the initial conflict) needs to give it a rest. As that is no reason for any British Muslim to take up arms against our own country. And those who do it are bloody criminals and should be opposed not engaged with. Because if you engage with them then you engage with BNP too at least they have a love for this country.
Btw, Demos and Catherine Fieschi do great work even if you do not always agree with them. They have made some excellent policy work which has in turn become Government policy including on citizen engagement. So, attacking Demos as government funded do nothing body is not factual.
What was that offering advice on.
Given that in percentage terms the muslim population of the UK is little more than nominal is there just the faintest possibility that this is all just becoming self-reinforcing and snowballing way beyond perspective?
Reading some of the comment on the issue anyone would think that muslims were from a different planet and have a 0% integration rate. Granted, some of this may well be internet hot-air and wannabe shock-jocks.
So many of these groups look rather like the People's Front of Judea.
Community engagement policy is simple - get off your backside and involve yourself in the big wide civil society that exists out there. It really is that simple.
Less over-analysis, more doing.
Ed Husain and Maajid Nawaz: Most of my secular, pro-democracy Muslim friends (and that's pretty much all of them) and myself were anti-Islamist way before these two men were still handing out Hizbut Tahrir leaflets outside some Newham mosque. I don't articulate my engagement with the modern world in the terms of men who seem to have arrived so recently to it.
And yes, I have met some bon-fide ex-Jihadis in Walthamstow who have more effect in a single session aimed at diffusing the effects of "recruiters" than 100 op-eds in the Evening Standard by Ed.
But having said that, I am more in aligned with the QF than I am with the BMI, Sawalha or Takriti and the whole movement to legitimise the Muslim Brotherhood in Britain.
Similarly with Nick Cohen. I am pretty much opposed to everything he writes but when it comes to his anti-Islamist stance, there is no ambiguity towards my support of the cause against the Muslim Brotherhood. And if that means being a fellow traveller with a pro-war, pro-torture hack, then that's the way it is.
But I won't be supporting the BMI or the Muslim Brotherhood simply because Cohen and Husain write dodgy articles.
Presumably the word 'Westophobia' upsets you because you think it's inappropriate and missing the point to focus on the virulent hatred that Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood and Marxists like Seamus Milne have for the West.
Your own position is moving closer to Milne's by the day.
It also focuses on teaching kids about Islam, rather than warning the away from the bogey man. If kids know fundamentally what islam is, then they cannot go astray. The major flaw of the Muslim comunity is that we put so much emphasis on Islam and claim it to be so important to our lives, yet we don't put the effort into ensuring our kids know what it is, a lot lack even the basics. If you know the basics, you can't be fooled into thinking it's something that it's not, and that is the foundation of routing our terrorism, routing out their strongest brainwashing tools.
1. Actually persuading people who might be recruited into terrorism, or into Islamist politics, that their arguments are built on lies, and that their strategy is a dangerous dead end.
2. Trying to stop elements of the liberal establishment being seduced into alliances with Islamist groups.
The two tasks are connected, but separate ones.
Quilliam, if it achieves nothing else, has provided people who can at least take on the likes on Bungle, the Jamaatis, the MBers and the Hizbies: when they put on conferences, or appear on the BBC.
This is an absolutely vital task.
So, that's why I'm with Sid on this issue.
The polite term is Occidentalism.
Their countries' products are beautiful and precious,
But their character is debauched and frivolous.
Fan Ye (died 445 CE)
That may well be the case.
However, the most important task is anti-sectarianism. This country is full of people with complex identities, some of which are religiously based in part. The attempt to coral people into religious categories - which is either presented as the "problem" or the "solution" - is a disaster.
If people want to get involved in their religion. So what. That's great. It is no business of the State or anybody elses.
The only solution is to treat all people as individual citizens: not as members of a confessional group.
http://www.newstatesman.com/middle-east/2008/07...
then you need to meet more people.
Skippy?
The Bush Kangaroo?
Many thanks for the definition. I actually in #1 had asked Sunny's definition of politicised British Muslims, but then I realised he had already defined it in the post, which is why I changed the content to avoid him repeating again. Too late I guess.
Are politicised British Muslims more in danger of becoming radicalised by extremists than British Whites by white power groups? I am curious as if the forces that push both groups to the dark side, follow a similar dynamic and are of similar strength.
Also recently the UK had a Rabbi visit who advocated ethnic cleansing and may I ask what Harry's Place did to stop his visit?
Also what about the emrging trend within Political Judaism that denies that Palestinians exist?
Equally there are many that say that Muslims have no link to Jerusalem?
Thus you see there is an unsavoury elements within all faiths which is fuelling resentment.
Whilst I appreciate that your ire is with Hamas equally the extreme Political Movements in Judaism and Christianity are going unchecked and indeed are being supported by some governments?
Surely the best way to achieve peace and reduce the level of threat is to show that all extremists are to be shunned.
Also I am afraid that with respect the overreaction of people to IslamExpo will have a negative impact rather than a positive. Exactly what has been achieved? Nothing in my view when the Jewish community could have played a very positive role in engaging with and putting forth a view that was an opportunity lost for dialogue.
Somethign that can't be avoided is the fact that without dialogue with these people an opportunity is lost in making progress towards peace. Even Israel is now realising this and the Israeli public want dialogue and it isn't for people abroad to decide this shouldn't happen.
At the end of the day the simple fact is that peopel who fight for their freedom and dignity will do unsavoury things but that doesn't mean dialogue shouldn't happen. If by talking to Hamas a single life is saved then isn't that worthwhile, rather than not talking and many lives being lost.
It is high time that people realised that bot talking is counterproductive and Bush has realised this eigth years too late. Now he is starting to engage with Iran. Israel is engaging with Syria but thanks to those that said they shouldn't talk eight years of possible dialogue has been lost. Eight years in which progress towards peace could have been made.
Peace is negotiated and not imposed. Peace is always negotiated under fire and this has been the case throughout history. If there wasn't fire it wouldn't need peace negotiations now would it?
I did warn Sunny along with many others about Quilliam and sadly my early sentiments and fears are true.
Until Harry's Place realises that it needs to be objective regarding both sides and not a cheerleader for one, peace won't be achieved. No less than many Israeli Negotiators who have sat down with the Palestinians say this.
Killing and murder is to be condemned but condemned on both sides.
I ask you now to respectfully look at what you can contribute and realise that both sides are right and both are wrong. To move forwward needs engagement and dialogue. The last eight years under Bush have been a complete waste and now we need to rise above that.
Some of the people to whom you refer maybe linked to Hamas but they've been charged with no crime here or indeed in Israel. Therefore simply because Bush says they shouldn't be spoken to does that mean that will achieve anything?
Surely it is better to talk to them and try and change their views rather say they are to be boycotted?
There is suffering on both sides. They see suffering on their side and you see suffering on yours.
But to change the situation needs peopel to rise above that and talk and negotiate.
One group/project that does appear to be having some impact, despite being government supported (Home and Foreign Offices), is the Radical Middle Way. This is because the government is working with credible Muslim groups; the anti-extremism message is not stuffed down young Muslims' throats (but does clearly state that "a rejection of all forms of terrorism"); and the speakers are all highly credible and respected scholars that can't just be written-off as government stooges by the extremists.
Hold on this is sheer madness. If the party suing Harry's Place due to allegations of libel, then surely it is for the courts to decide who is right and not the bloggers. That is what the law is there for.
But that isn't an excuse to pull out because the law of the land needs to decide who is right.
But using this as a pretext to say people are right not to attend implies that the law of the land is irrelevant.
Sorry but the law is to protect everyone and to suggest that people shouldn't attend events because one party is suing another for libel means that people in the blog world are deciding who is right and wrong and not a court of law. Surely a step too far.
May I ask if you have listened to both sides and made this decision or is it merely on the basis of listenting to one side only?
How have you come to the conclusion that Brigth was right to pull out when you don't know the conclusion of what was said or wasn't said by either party.
The law has to protect everyone including those whose view we disagree.
How is IslamExpo and its backers different?
There are white people attending IslamExpo.
Avi
If your friends were attending a conference organised by a man who, it later transpired, was an ardent Zionist and was suing you for libel, would you remonstrate to them on the lines that they were ethically wrong to pull out because a court of law would decide right and wrong on their behalf, as you have above?
My question is why do some extremists need a cosy chat and (needless to say) some taxpayers' money, while others need only outright hostility?
Does the Pro-Israeli Lobby get to decide which Muslim event is legitimate?
That is what happening in this case is it not?
Why is there little if any outcry and in fact support when speaking at Pro-Israeli events including those of the right wing?
Obama spoke at one such event and was widely praised here. So why condemnation of one and praise for the other?
This is an overreaction to an event where dialogue could have started on what is a complex situation in the Middle East.
Sid it is two different things. Would I stop my friends talking to people because I was accused of libel - no.
Tell me does Israel stop talking to Hamas or Hezbullah because they kill Israeli's and does Hamas and Hezbullah stop talking to Israel because they kill Palestinians/Lebanese/Arabs? No we've seen they all talk to each other. So your argument isn't even reality in the bitterness of the Middle Eastern Conflict.
Yes I would let my friends go. My situation is mine and that is different to engagement in dialogue with a wide audience. Can't you see that?
Bright gave this reason:
"As David says, a member of Hamas has no reputation to defend. It is already strange enough that Hamas-UK is having such a rally in central London, but when it starts suing its critics that’s a step too far."
The critic is being sued for libel and not for being a critic, two very different things which Bright failed to point out.
The man in question to the best of my knowledge here and in Israel has broken no law. In fact Israel isn't
requesting his extradition and neither is the USA. So given the grim reality of the Middle East surely it is better to talk than not?
Apologies for the off-topicness, bur Ravi and Soru (since you both appear to be reading this page), early this morning I posted quite long replies to you over on the Knife Crime thread:
http://www.pickledpolitics.com/archives/2147
I was away over the weekend so had to leave in the middle of a rather interesting discussion. I'd like to keep it going, if you would too?
Who said it was? But its possible to hate both of them isn't it? Or does it always have to be one or the other?
Qulliam Foundation is NOT on the government’s dole, unlike Demos with that half-idiot Fieschi who is too scared and witless to debate on Harry’s Place. Did you ever check Qulliam’s website before pushing this lie?
fuck off you twit. Why should she debate when she has sycophants like you talking out of their arse to deal with?
Most “politicised British Muslims” support mainstream parties. They don’t support the Islamists. But even if they did - even if some British Muslims have some sympathy with some of their aims - then you should be fighting hard against that. This doesn’t mean ‘working out how we can engage constructively with them’. It means taking them on, whenever and wherever you can.
David T - taking them on means what? Taking on their arguments or are you going to get involved in anti-bomb techniques?
But having said that, I am more in aligned with the QF than I am with the BMI, Sawalha or Takriti and the whole movement to legitimise the Muslim Brotherhood in Britain.
Of course. No one is doubting that. but my point here is about how QF can be effective, if it wants to be.
Look QF is part of the in fighting within the Muslim Community and despite what many people say and this has been my point for a while which many people didn't want to hear. Some of the best people who have fought extremism are the Salafi/Wahabi movement which QF and HP dislike. Who said so? None other than an ex-Senior member of the Met Police.
The simple fact is that without engaging the various sections of the Muslim community you won't get anywhere. People may dislike accutely a number of people at IslamExpo but equally important were the number of organisatiosn there who push forward with inter-faith and community work. So clearly they saw benefit in being there and showing Muslims a clear message of tolerance.
What has been the benefit of not talking to factions for the last 8 years. There hasn't been a single benefit and its made the situartion worse.
The various parties at each side may like this because it fulfills what they want but for the rest of us then I'd say we want them to talk and engage in dialogue.
Not going to IslamExpo was a missed opportunbity for all those that decided not to go and simply handed the right wing and neocons a victory of stalling on negotiations. It didn't achieve any more.
I am disappointed in their approach and each article they publish is losing them support.
I think QF needs to step back and enagge
Do they know how to engage with Muslims? The people they engage with all seem to be in law enforcement of various kinds! See the homepage of their website.
With ref to #31, I still think the Radical Middle Way is a good example of how to go about things - and it is government-backed!
We do actually engage with people who have BNP sympathies. I'll come back to this point in more detail soon.
If it turned out that the BNP had the greatest influence with white racist extremists - it is a legitimate political party which does not advocate violence - would you speak at their WhiteExpo?
I was talking about engaging with politicised Muslims, not specifically about IslamExpo. The only thing I mentioned about that was to say Martin Bright and others were justified in boycotting it.
I’m sorry the word ‘Westophobia’ riles you up, Sunny. The word ‘Islamophobia’ riles up people who don’t want to see people criticised for having anti-Muslim prejudice and agendas.
That's because its a stupid term. What does 'the west' constitute of? And does it include British Muslims or exclude them?
As for Islamophobia - well it depends on whether you hate the teachings in the Qu'ran (fine by me) or hate Muslims as a group. The latter would be Islamophobia in the same vein as anti-semitism.
That was my point. The great failing of QF is that they are failing to engage the Muslim Community. I refer you to the following excellent pieces:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/ju...
http://www.springerlink.com/content/p321l1475x1...
This shows why the Government is doomed to fail if it continues to back Sufi Organisations that simply stigmatise other creeds.
It is clear that the government is being ill-advised by the chosen few organisations and again this applies to the wider questions in the Middle East.
Again the fact that not talking to organisations has been a hallmark of failure ofr 8 long years and if peopel are silly enough to believe it will work they are mistaken.
It hasn't worked throughout history and it won't work now.
How were they justified and what did it achieve?
At the present time we actually don't know who is right in this case and the courts will decide. So where is the justification based on two conflicting views of what was said? How can you justify teaming with one side or the other? Surely those on the outside of this dispute need to stay neutral - non?
IslamExpo was attended by a wide spectrum of Muslim Organisatiosn and much good could have come from enagagement.
Would it then be justified for example to boycott Bush and the neocons? Would you boycott Evangelicals who advocate war in the ME to bring the second coming? Why are you drawing the line where you have?
I don't like the way he does things and if you had looked at what I say then I am for engagement and meaningful dialogue to try and bring a resolution to the biggest cause of friction between Jews and Muslims.
The only reason you are sore is because your claims for QF and your maligning of creeds have evaporated and I've been vindicated :-)
Slurs? I didn't think you thought so poorly of the guy. It's just that you have the same argument style, which can only be described as bludgeon with a blunt object. :)
I'm not sore about your views of the QF. As I recall, you've been *willing* them to fail as soon as they came on the scene. So any hint of failure will be claimed by you as some form of vindication, no matter what.
I still think they are the only Muslim organisation that comes anywhere near representing the views of people like myself. I'm not sure I want *every* Muslim group on the planet to represent the grassroots in say, Walthamstow. There are people who do that much better, who also think the QF is roughly heading in the right direction. What they do well is engage the media expertly.
That means that, if the token Muslim on the panel on Newsnight is going to be a QF guy instead of someone from a front for the Muslim Brotherhood or the Jamaati Islami, then I'm all for that. Frankly I've had enough of the radicals getting all the oxygen.
I'd opppose the government engaging with members of Kach or Kahane Chai. I support this Government's banning of Moshe Feiglin from the UK.
Sunny:
David T - taking them on means what? Taking on their arguments or are you going to get involved in anti-bomb techniques?
Well, some of these guys are enthusiasts for the targeted murder of civilians: so perhaps we should.
But mostly what I mean is: doing everything we can to thwart them, combat their message, prevent them from recruiting, and so on.
Put it this way. The BNP has a "Red White and Blue" cultural festival every year. I don't think that "taking the BNP on" would involve appearing as a guest at that event.
I know you're in favour of the BNP getting a chance to put its message across in the mainstream media, but I'm not. Ditto Hamas/MB/BMI
We do actually engage with people who have BNP sympathies. I’ll come back to this point in more detail soon.
Of course we should engage with people who "have BNP sympathies". We should engage with them by - for example - explaining why we think that the BNP's policies are exercises in failure and viciousness, and by presenting a real alternative.
One thing we shouldn't be doing is participating in BNP run events, or appearing on BNP platforms alongside BNP figures.
I mean, there might be some value in doing so, just to say:
"You're vicious scum, and we'll be watching you like a hawk - one foot wrong, and you're for the high jump"
But if you turned up at a BNP event and said that, you'd probably not be invited back.
Another way to defeat the BNP - a small thing, admittedly - is not to show BNP supporters that you'll court Islamist groups, merely because they're part of an organisation which commits deliberate murders of random civilians.
Because, you know, that might give the BNP ideas on how to be taken more seriously
Andrew:
The Radical Middle Way organised a meeting with the Muslim Brotherhood's Helbawy, and Cecic from Bosnia. Cecic called for all Muslims to work for the Caliphate.
I spoke to somebody from City Circle who had co-hosted the event, and they were utterly dismayed by this.
I see that the Radical Middle Way also includes MPACuk activists. MPACuk's Chief Executive, Asghar Bukhari donated money, and offered to raise money for David Irving, after he had lost his libel action against Penguin Books. MPACuk frequently nicks material from neo-Nazi sites, which they reproduce on their own site. Bukhari's brother, spoke for MPAC on Sky News after one of the Al Muhajiroun scum had been arrested. He said that the "Muslim community" would be very angry to see this man arrested.
MPAC is active in stirring up sectarian hatred.
We can do without this sort of influence in any "Radical Middle Way".
The only solution to this problem is to stop treating Muslim citizens as if they were part of a confessional block. Treat all citizens of this country as equal citizens.
We have this problem all the time. We had a poster calling himself by the jewish name "Eugene Levine". On another board, a poster with a very similar style posed as a gay man.
When we checked the IP addresses they turned out to be.... Bob Pitt of Islamophobia-Watch.
Imagine! Pretending to be a Jew in order to attack Jews, and pretending to be a gay man in order to attack gays. What sort of person would do that!
The fact is: QF never set out to take the message to kids on the street.
What it does do - and what desperately needs to be done - is to provide a public counterbalance to the Islamist groups, which have managed to represent themselves as "the voice of British Muslims", despite the fact that their message is rejected by the overwhelming majority of British Muslims.
Its a shame. They are on the same path paved by Hirsi Ali.
As for HP, without a doubt they are all about Israel and delight in twisting the knife. As someone else poignantly pointed out on CiF all their analysis points to one thing, being able to call someone anti-semitic. And as they also pointed out, it didn't matter whether the connections were remote to the allegation or not. Its usually someone who was connected to someone who may have heard someone who had been seen looking at someone else whilst they were asking the question 'What is this protocols business?'.
For HP to have gained so much traction is beyond belief. The fact that they too could well be contributing in the rise of the BNP is often overlooked.
The situation is dire. Its come to a point where only designated muslims are allowed to speak for muslims. And if they don't win the approval of DavidT, Martin Bright, Nick Cohen - they might as well give up.
As for the BNP, we know from Oborne's Channel 4 'Its shouldn't happen to a muslim' we saw that the BNP are looking for potential allies for their future plans. I am sure they need not look much further than HP for inspiration.
Because, you know, that might give the BNP ideas on how to be taken more seriously
Sadly, its not like they haven't used that strategy already.
Again I think poorly of people who don't engage in dialogue and don't try to further community relations. Hence I also dislike Bakhri and his crew as well. Similarly I don't like Ariel Sharon, Bush and the neocons.
This is a small world and we have to live together.
As regards QF, I knew about them before they launched publicly and had high hopes but once things became clear I lost hope. I didn't will them to fail but they are heading that way and fast.
What good would QF do on Newsnight or Question Time when they are not a grassroots organisations. Its all hype. Look let me tell you that organisations that make a difference do so when they work particularly at grassroots.
I remember watching NewsNight and Majid Nawaz wouldn't even answer questions about funding or links with the neocons. Is that the type of organisation that will make a difference? No way.
I'd like to see Majid Nawaz go back to the drawing board and rethink some of what he is doing. Is Michael Gove really going to be able to influence Muslims? Hell no so why is he on their panel? Majid has never explained that or their neocon links.
I've spoken to many Muslims and they don't trust QF, in order for them to suceed they need to win that trust. These people are not extreme or radical.
You know telling Muslims that they don't need to get involved in the Middle East dispute, do you seriously think any government annointed organisation could say that the Jewish community? No. So it is pretty daft to say that to the Muslim community. We need both to be involved positively to get a resolution.
How you get support is to build from the ground up and not lecture a community from the British Museum on what they can and can't do.
Even the most ardent Zionist is now saying this that it needs engagement with Muslims and compromise. It took 50 years to learn that so please don't tell me it will take Muslims 50 years to follow suit.
Its a bit like saying... Melanie Phillips loves Robert Spencer. RS is a dangerous racist who thinks all Muslim are nutters. Harry's Place links to Melanie Phillips. Ergo - you guys are supporters of Robert Spencer and that crew, despite avowing their support. RMW's links with Asghar Bukhari are tenuous at best.
Secondly, you say:
But mostly what I mean is: doing everything we can to thwart them, combat their message, prevent them from recruiting, and so on.
Put it this way. The BNP has a “Red White and Blue” cultural festival every year. I don’t think that “taking the BNP on” would involve appearing as a guest at that event.
I'm unsure about what your point is. Should we not try and win arguments with the BNP? I think the no-platform policy is outdated. If the BNP invited me to have a 'debate' with them on their territory, most likely I'd do it. Does that mean I support their policies? Of course not. Martin Bright has appeared on Press TV a few times. Does that mean he agrees with the policies of the Iranian govt?
Lastly:
The fact is: QF never set out to take the message to kids on the street.
Well, their aim specifically was counter-terrorism. Just being a counter balance to that nutjob Azzam Tamimi unfortunately won't solve our terrorism issue. The nutcases who want to blow us up don't really spend all their time reading the Evening Standard or watching Newsnight, know what I mean?
The question is whether you want to focus on challenging Islamists in the media, or on counter-terrorism. The latter is a dispassionate and different exercise. As far as I'm aware, QF set out to do the latter.
I don't know Sid, you often come across as that 'only muslim in the village' character. Only your views are relevant, and the only hold you have on other muslim commenters is this 'islamist' lark. In fact you've broadened and changed the term 'islamist' so much that it does only leave you in the village.
And you're welcome to it.
I've never broadened the term of the term "Islamist". If anything I would like to contract and shrink it. But I limit it to political outfits like the MB and the JI.
Are you claiming that every Jewish person supports your point of view?
Eight years of farsical peace making by Bush bring us to this point, that is 8 lost years.
8 years of neocon madness and your complaining about just Hamas, whose rise is a result of the neocons.
"The fact is: QF never set out to take the message to kids on the street. "
So whats the bleedin point? Either they address the issue or they don't.
Look Dave until you recognise and acknowledge their is right and wrong both sides and we need to get them all talking towards progress then you won't see the end of this madness.
Tell me what has 8 years of Bush the darling of the right achieved? Nothing. Not a damn thing. That is what we have now. If Bush and the neocons had allowed progress then we wouldn't see Hamas as powerful would we? It was the frustration in lack of progress that is a systematic cause of the situation and people need to recognise that.
The rise of the very regimes you complain about is as a direct result of the lack of progress in making peace in a number of areas and the biggest is I/P. The people are ready to make peace but the leaders are not being allowed to.
But again I ask you - you've been very active in bashing Hamas and I don't have a problem with that but did you campaign against a Chief Rabbi coming here and advocating Ethnic Cleansing?
The issue rests with the kids on the street exclusively?
I've challanged the very thinking you say I support by proxy since school so your claims are frankly bollocks. I've faced off peole saying Hitler was right so kindly stop your ludicrous claims.
This crap of your with us or agauist us is the kind of stupid doctrine that Bush supports and even he is seeing it dying. So for a writer at PP to hint at this is just poor.
As I said there has never been a peace without dialogue. Either we can be realistic and say that sides need to be brought together or sit by and say we won't talk to people. We've had 8 years of that and what did it achieve. You and Dave T haven't been able to answer that question.
Sid just because I and others say that there needs to be dialogue it doesn't means we support those parties. It is a practical acknowledgement that the situation needs to change. I hate extremism in religion as much as you but in order to stop this we need to address the issues.
Given the fact that the neocons have allowed Hamas to grow in power by saying we shouldn't talk to them means that we now have to to bring about peace.
It is that simple and as a PP writer you should see that. If you have an alternative I am happy to listen but as I said Israelis are saying the same.
I know many (muslim) folks who lost hope with Takriti after his hopeless blustering on various TV talk shows during the Salman Rushdie episode in the early 90s. I know even more who have developed a hatred for the MB after Azam Tamimi's ridiculous performance on Newsnight. And yet more after seeing Bungle's scowling arrogance on Newsnight however many times. Compared to them, the QF guys come across as sensible and engaging.
Are you suggesting that Islamophobia-Watch wouldn't have jewish and gay supporters? Presumably the same PC could be used by other people. In fact, you probably know this, one public-facing IP could have a hundred users behind it.
And are you suggesting that Avi Cohen couldn't be jewish because he doesn't fall in-line with your agenda? I would be extremely careful with that line of thought.
Sid - face it you've lost this one, even Sunny is saying they said they would tackle the issue. The issue doesn't rest with the kids on the street as they don't get the money to tackle the issue it is orgs like QF.
That is a bit like saying skinheads are responsible for tackling racism!
Are young black kids responsible for tackling knife crime or is it the community and the community organisations?
It isn't
But it does include the MPAC UK campaigns manager on its board.
Frankly, this is like putting together a campaign on how to deal with White Working Class Exclusion, and inviting Richard Barnbrook to participate.
Now why would you do that. Either
- because you think, wrongly, that MPAC are a sensible moderate mainstream group; or
- because you think, rightly, the MPAC represents the thinking of a large number of Muslims.
If that's so, then perhaps there is a need to listen seriously to the concerns of Muslims who have what appear to be extreme views. Perhaps we should be accomodating those views ....
But if that's the way we're proposing to act, then shouldn't we also be listening to the views of non-Muslim people, who hold racist views, and who want to repatriate immigrants?
My question is this. What is it about the views of a small percentage of radicalised British Muslims - a cultural group which itself is very small - that means that we need to pay so much attention to it.
Is it the fact that there are 2000 people involved in violent jihadism?
Doesn't this mean that the BNP has made a terrible mistake by following the Parliamentary road? If their splinter groups started murdering people, wouldn't they be much more likely to be able to influence public policy?
If the BNP invited me to have a ‘debate’ with them on their territory, most likely I’d do it.
Would you sponsor a debate with them?
If you were a Government minister, would you participate in a debate, at their conference?
What if the BNP were trying to pretend that they weren't a racist organisation, and were engaged in a PR offensive to convince people that they'd left their neo-Nazi past behind them.
Would you take part in a photo-opportunity for them, shaking hands with Nick Griffin?
Then prove you have no partisan affiliation by giving up your views on the MB and the JI. But wait, you already have. You're a big supporter of Saudi Salafism aren't you, given previous discussions. And we know that they're big funders of the Jamaati Isalmi in Bangladesh and Pakistan. So how exactly can you say that you don't lend support to any groups?
You have to decide whether QF is fit for purpose, and not worry about scoring points of me.
No they don't thats the point. I concur with you regarding the performance of the aforementioned individuals but trust me Sid when I say QF came across like that. They refused to answer mqany questions, rewatch the newsnight.
Equally worrying is their links to the neocons which they won't answer.
Dave T - With respect many Jews in Israel and the UK want to talk to Hamas and also reach a compromise.
Good. Israel has a Hamas problem. It is for the people living in that country to decide how they want to deal with it.
We don't have a Hamas problem in the United Kingdom, yet. And so there's no reason for us to engage with this tiny terrorist movement.
So whats the bleedin point? Either they address the issue or they don’t.
The main point, as far as I'm concerned, is to prevent the pro-Islamist sections on the British Left giving the false impression that British Muslims are supporters of Islamist clerical fascist movements.
We know that's not true.
QF helps to prevent that betrayal of British Muslims, and of all of us.
One thick conspiracy nutjob and one racist shaheed wannabe would be representative if they appeared approximately one programme in twenty.
What damage was done by having people like this being portrayed as "representative" is difficult to measure.
I'm sure the BNP loved it.
I don't advocate violence and have never liked MCB, MAB or others. But equally we are where we are and your frankly silly posturing and asking people to prove things is piss poor arguments.
If you bothered to read what I have said and present it fairly you'd know I have criticised MCB, MAB, MB and I admit I don't know enough about JI. Regarding the MB I've said to you time and again that they have dodgy view in aspirations of power based upon religion intermixed with Marxist thinking. I said it during our last argument on the subject so you have a bleedin cheek to say I need to prove my point of view.
Frankly your claims are crazy and it is the greatest shame that Sunny allows you to behave as you do.
Face it your boys at QF didn't do what they promised and even Sunny admits that was on their agenda, so rather than acknowledge that your attacking anyone that dares to highlight what they said.
Sid - Frankly it isn't my fault that you got it wrong and you need to be fair in your quotations of what I said.
How??? They aren't addressing their own community so how will they prevent a betrayal?
The main point is that the neocons don't want Muslims to have a political voice in which to get their vierw across. Hence some pretty unsavoury tactics are being used.
Your poster boy Gove said as much in his articles.
You live in a dream world of your own making. You're a legend in your own chatroom.
You live in England and you think that the street kids is all ther is to the Islamist issue. Its no wonder that anything anti-Islamists translates to anti-Muslim for morons like you. How do you get to be so wilfully ignorant?
You have no idea about the amount money that Saudis send to the Jamaati outfits in Pakistan and Bangladesh.
You think you won our debate? Well of course you would, given your narrow parameters of engagement.
I can argue with you but I can't disabuse you of your total ignorance.
Here's a question.
We had a series of bombings of cultural minority targets back in the 1990s. More recently, there have been a couple of White Supremacists who have been arrested, with caches of bombs: preparing for a "race war".
How should we deal with the problem of white kids, getting seduced into neo nazi terrorism?
Would you be in favour of ending immigration to this country? Should we have a ban on building places of worship for non-Christians? What about doing something to prevent the "mongrelisation" of the White Race? These are all issues which HUGELY motivate fascist terrorists.
Should we bring in the BNP to advise us on the best way to do keep white kids from becoming terrorists?
Let's put it another way. Why would you want to involve Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood in the United Kingdom in the process of preventing Muslim radicalisation in Britain?
There are only two reasons I can think somebody would want to do that.
1. You actually support the aims and politics of Islamist groups. Either because you're an Islamist. Or because you're on the extreme Left, but have recognised that the extreme Left has utterly run out of steam. So you're looking for Islamists and jihadists to "overthrow the system" for you.
2. You think that Muslims are walking timebombs, liable to explode at any moment. You don't think white non-Muslims are though. Therefore, you think that they need theocratic politicos to keep them on the straight and narrow. You hope to do a deal with those politicos. In other words, you're a racist.
I'm assuming this means that since Richard Barnbrook has been elected to the London Assembly, you'll be boycotting anything by Boris Johnson?
If that’s so, then perhaps there is a need to listen seriously to the concerns of Muslims who have what appear to be extreme views. Perhaps we should be accomodating those views ….
What views do you think that RMW is incorporating from MPACUK? And do you have any evidence of it?
Doesn’t this mean that the BNP has made a terrible mistake by following the Parliamentary road? If their splinter groups started murdering people, wouldn’t they be much more likely to be able to influence public policy?
That's true. If the BNP were blowing people up, no doubt a lot of people would be worried about how to deal with them. No? Isn't that what Maggie Thatcher was doing when she basically took on the National Front's talking points?
If you were a Government minister, would you participate in a debate, at their conference?
Who is them? If the BNP have an elected representative, and since they're a legal parliamentary body - are you saying that the politicians and media should completely try to boycott them at every opportunity? I thought you were in favour of taking on their arguments?
The lesson we’re giving the BNP is: if you’re violent, no matter how small you are, you’ll get attention and concessions.
But we already know this. When there's a white BNP member with weapons, then the story doesn't get any media attention. when its a Muslim person doing something wrong, your friend Melanie Phillips and the rest tell us that Britain is dying.
You also didn't address this point:
Its a bit like saying… Melanie Phillips loves Robert Spencer. RS is a dangerous racist who thinks all Muslim are nutters. Harry’s Place links to Melanie Phillips. Ergo - you guys are supporters of Robert Spencer and that crew, despite avowing their support.
Because "Muslims" - as a block - don't make policy in this country. The Government does.
The Government decides on how do deal, generally, with community cohesion issues.
Until groups like Quilliam came along, the "Muslim voice" in Britain consisted of affiliates of tiny clerical fascist parties - J-e-I and the MB - telling the Government that they really had to base their policies on their guidance.
So, for example, the MCB appointee to a festival of Muslim Culture - sponsored by the Government - advised that certain sorts of singers and dancers and musicians were prohibited.
The MCB produced hilarious "guidance" for schools, which made absurd and prescriptive suggestions about what Muslim students could and could not do - suggestions which most ordinary Muslims just laughed at.
Worse, these guys appeared on the TV, acting like lunatics. You have no idea of how much hatred they stirred up.
Now the debate is balanced. Islamists can't hoodwink the Government into thinking they're speaking for Muslims as a whole.
As I've suggested before - and as Sunny used to believe - the only solution is to treat citizens as equals: not as members of cultural groups.
This is rather a cheap shot. I'd love for all of us to be treated as equals, and not members of cultural groups, if it wasn't for the fact that there is an entire side of the media and various "anti-Islamists" like Melanie Phillips, Rod Liddle etc who are intent of bunching them together and telling us how Muslim growth rates and any little incident will spell the death of British society.
Maybe if Harry's Place spent a bit more time documenting how the right and how MP and the rest attack Muslims as a cultural group, you'd spend less time asking why the left end up having to defend that identity.
And lastly, we all have different identities. I'm all for people being treated equally while accepting they have multiple identities that sometimes affect their behaviour and political allegiances (especially if the govt passes legislation that will disproportionately affect them).
"They aren’t addressing their own community so how will they prevent a betrayal?"
You might like to think about the fact that more Muslims vote Tory than send cheques to David Irving,think Sikhs are out to get them or want to blow themselves up.
Bearing that in mind.
What is "their community"?
If Barnbrook is appointed to a committee to advise Boris Johnson on how to deal with non-white minority groups, I will.
What views do you think that RMW is incorporating from MPACUK? And do you have any evidence of it?
I dunno. Perhaps they recommended that they involve the Muslim Brotherhood's Helbawy in their campaigning work.
Isn’t that what Maggie Thatcher was doing when she basically took on the National Front’s talking points?
It was indeed, and it was a disgrace.
And if you're happy for policy to be made in this way, then I'd just like to say: I'll miss you very much Sunny, when you're packed off back "home"!!
Actually, perhaps I'll be packed off back "home" as well.
Should we argue against the BNP. Yes.
Should we take part in photo ops, and help them pretend that they're not racists? No.
When there’s a white BNP member with weapons, then the story doesn’t get any media attention. when its a Muslim person doing something wrong, your friend Melanie Phillips and the rest tell us that Britain is dying.
The mistake the neo nazis have made, is that they've not killed anybody recently. Copeland got a LOT of attention.
Perhaps if a neo Nazi killed you and me, then the BNP could reap the benefits.
I don't understand your last point, but I'm off...
Translate that to a decade and a half of hoodwikning by my reckoning. And untold damage to the social fabric which makes 3rd generation Brits who identify radical, right-wing outfits based on the baggage of generations of cultural and religious loyalties.
Bearing that in mind.
What is “their community”?
"Avi Cohen" is a disgusting Islamophobic racist, who spreads lies about British Muslims.
I really hope he isn't actually Jewish. He is a shande!!
So... let me get this straight. The reason why Muslims need to be seen as a group instead of free thinking individuals, is because Islamophobes bunch them together?
The real problem of having a "Muslim" bloc is that individuals lose voice, and their message gets hijacked by Muslim organisations... which makes it even easier for Mel and others to attack.
So, let's do the right thing rather than letting Islamophobes dictate our narrative.
This name was clearly an anglicised version of the famous German revolutionary Eugen Leviné, who was of Jewish origin but is well known to have rejected Judaism in favour of atheism and communism. He was executed for his part in the 1919 Bavarian Soviet.
And who is appointed Hamas to deal with our foreign policy? Or who is appointing Muslims to deal with non-Muslim affairs?
I dunno. Perhaps they recommended that they involve the Muslim Brotherhood’s Helbawy in their campaigning work
This is a wild stab in the dark re: a Muslim org you know very little about and most likely haven't been to any of their events. So until you find any stronger links or find examples of how MPAC uk policy is informing their work then I can't really take any smear by association seriously.
It was indeed, and it was a disgrace.
So in other words there IS a national political party that panders to a white racist party as you said. Presumably, this means you won't be supporting anything by Michael Gove, Dean Godson or anyone who is currently associated with the Conservative Party?
The point isn't about who is dictating policy, because frankly the idea that these Muslim groups are dictating policy is rather laughable.
The question is - who do you associate with. I thought thats what we were discussing.
So if we don't deal with politicians who start adopting the language of racists, you wouldn't do anything to do with the Tories or anyone close to them. After all, the tories have far more impact on policy making than any Muslim group. Right?
Ravi: So… let me get this straight. The reason why Muslims need to be seen as a group instead of free thinking individuals, is because Islamophobes bunch them together?
No - we're talking about the tendency of people to bunch Muslims together. David T seems to think that somehow I've decided to bunch them all together again and am advocating the Islamists start dictating govt policy. I'm doing no such thing.
I'm saying if we want to condemn people who bunch Muslims together - it would be reasonable to spend more time attacking right wingers and others like Melanie Phillips, Michael Gove etc who do that more than the left (incl myself).
A good, moderate Muslim: one who does not organise himself politically, does not stand up for himself. Cuddly, does what he is told.
Bad extremists Muslim: those who organise themselves as Muslims and seek to engage and at times challenge the political process as Muslims.
That was the mistake of the MCB, it got political, awkward, unlike the pliant City Circle.
So, did anyone here actually go to the Islam-Expo?
Because the description currently being bandied around about what it entailed doesn't really fit reality.
I went as a Non-Muslim and found it to be an impressive, peaceful atmosphere filled with wide-ranging discussion, dialogue, debate and engagement about various issues affecting Muslims and Non-Muslims in this country and elsewhere. It was a thought-provoking event, that really bears little relation to how it's being portrayed by its critics in the mainstream...It was not a cheerleading, all-agreed, terrorist-symphasising event...there were plenty of openly critical panelists in most of the debates, who sharply dissected Islamism and women’s rights with the sharpest of knives...
People can freely delude themselves into believing it was some BNP-style Terrorist Rally with Hamas-loving Jihadists holding guns and screaming ‘Cut the heads off non-believers' all you like, but it was absolutely nothing like that at all...it was more of a cultural carnival, with broad debates, picnics, face-painting, cloths sales, public service recruitment drives, theatre performances, writers workshops, book sales, food...everyone was polite, friendly and willing to communicate openly...in fact, I remarked to my friend that Islam-Expo appeared to be where Islam and Capitalism meet...it was a broad meeting point for Muslims and Non-Muslims and I think the government have missed a big opportunity by just boycotting it...It’s not perfect, but it had an enormous amount of good things going for it, and now many of the Muslims that turned up will feel abandoned by their government.
The conclusion I reached, was that the Government simply doesn't want any politicized Muslims at all...they want the shop-keepers with their heads down or pro-government 'British flag waving' so-called 'moderate and loyal' Muslims...this is absurd, and whilst the entire cabinet stay in absolute denial about the anger of Muslims over injustices in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine ETC...the more disconnection and there will be. Many Muslims feel these days that they are not even allowed to be angry about what's happening in Iraq and Palestine...is that how de-political you have to be for the Government to praise you as a 'loyal and good' Muslim?
If that is what it takes...they are going to be waiting forever for these imaginary ‘Moderate Muslims’.
"The fact remains that most British Muslims, like the wider community, are not politically active, do not sit on committees, and do not attend seminars and meetings. They are working hard, bringing up families, planning their holidays, and going about their business."
http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/Events.aspx?id...
You agreed at the time that you would be more specific but you are back to your old nonsense and that is a disgrace and not wholly accurate.
You agreed at the time that you would be more careful about how your portrayed things.
The research work that I linked to in this thread from an ex senior member of the Met validates what I say and proves your position is simply one of nonsense and not a complete or fair picture and you obviously hate that.
The reason you love QF is because they support your position but they are a failure and even Sunny has said that they promised much more. But you don't want to admit that so prefer to attack me.
Your opinion is backed by QF and some Sufi's who want political backinghurrah. What I say is backed by the US State Dept, the Met Police as well as people like Yahya Birt and at least one member of QF. The fact that you find it soooooo damn hard to acknowledge that even within creeds there is differences makes your analysis all the poorer.
I think that the way for them to succeed is to not get into creed based politics within the Muslim Comunity here and in the UK and address issues head on.
They need to engage with the Muslim Community and hold some events within the community and aimed at the community.
Also finance is an issue you've raised a number of times so they need to work with the Saudi's and others to address the issue rather than just blame them in print - so they need to work to resolve the issue. If that doesn't work then they need to relook at alteratives.
At the moment QF isn't helping itself to prosper.
No-one expects anyone to mindlessly wave a flag, but I assume you can also understand the disconnect with non-Muslims who are getting a bit tired of some fellow citizens' apparently constant anger.
And are the vast majority of Muslims not in fact behaving as Blears suggests?
"The British government is to fund a board of Islamic theologians in an attempt to sideline violent extremists."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7512626.stm
IF the scholars are highly credible ones for angry young Muslims (such as Tariq Ramadan), it might just have some effect.
This does pose the question of whether or not the government has given up on groups such as the Quilliam Foundation and is now going for 'direct action'.
So whilst tackling the last element the cause isn't being addressed. Thus people see no change and you get the disconnect.
QF and SMC saying that Muslims need not care about foreign policy is naive at best.
Thus Govt needs to at listen to the foreign policy concerns of Muslims and non-Muslims and build a just foreign policy.
Equally Govt needs to encourage the interfaith work that is being done largely without finance, here I refer to the excellent work of organisations such as Aliph-Aleph.
This issue cannot be solved by people connected to Oxford and Cambrideg as most of society has little if any connection to them.
The Govt also needs to stop its crass stupidity in not sending peope to events such as IslamExpo, if you are not there you can't be heard it really is that simple.
The last person who can help sort out this problem is Hazel Blears as a simple look at her approach and comments show she is ill-suited to do this.
As I said the last 8 years have shown the grand failures of government policy so why use the same people with the same tired ideas to resolve this.
This issue isn't going to be solved in the media, it will take grassroots work and that is something that more generally government is ill able ot do on a range of issues. That is one of the great failings of Thatcher and Balir in that government became detached from the grassroots.
I say get Ministers out into the community to actually talk to people. I say again how many ministers and shadow ministers attend local events. Hardly any. Thus how do people expect to get heard. That is a general issue and not just one linked to Muslims. I have seen at first hand Muslims and Jews trying without success to get ministers to attend hugely succesful interfaith events and this understandibly causes frustrations.
Some of the best work is being done on a voluntary basis by organisations that have no funding and is paid for by people who just go on trying to change things. This needs to stop and government needs to fund these grassroots events.
What impact will a lot of people sitting in places such as Oxford and Cambridge have on grassroots? It will be QF and SMC all over again, too much theory and little activity.
The great failing of the MCB after 7/7 was graphically illustrated on the news when lots of young people waited to talk to the MCB leadership and they simply didn't address them. Govt is the same. So until this happens then how d you get rid of the frustrations? Simply put you don't.
We have elections.
The government do not need to take their lead from any self selected groups claiming to speak for this or that constituency.
Stop trying to subvert democracy.
I find it odd that while David Toube is always eager to expose what he claims are the pseudonyms under which other people post, he never posts under his own name.
Indeed, when he blogged at CiF he did so under the pseudonym of "David Tate". Imagine! Pretending not to be a Jew in order to attack Muslims. What sort of person would do that?
On the actual subject of this thread, I'm surprised that Blears' speech to Policy Exchange yesterday hasn't provoked more comment. As we noted on Islamophobia Watch:
"Not content with imposing a government boycott of one of the most popular and mainstream Muslim events of the year, Blears chooses to announce her justification for this disgraceful decision from the platform of a Tory think tank notorious for its hostility to British Muslims. It's difficult to see this as anything other than a conscious provocation directed against the Muslim community."
http://tinyurl.com/63vzxo
In his Guardian article yesterday Seumas Milne quoted an unnamed government minister as describing the DCLG's approach as "completely counterproductive" in terms of improving relations between Muslims and non-Muslims or countering terrorism.
That's putting it mildly, in my opinion. I would say that Blears, along with the likes of Azhar Ali and Ed Husain, is in fact actively promoting the alienation of Muslim communities and encouraging recruitment to terrorist groupuscules.
Most of the electorate support a Palestinian state including most Jews (which you don't like to hear)and here I include my mate the Chuief Rabbi but the Govt doesn't give a hoot about that. Instead they listen to a small minority and form policy from there so stop bloody harping on about democracy.
"The government do not need to take their lead from any self selected groups claiming to speak for this or that constituency."
Then why the bloody hell do lobby groups exist if the freakin govt don't listen to them eh?
If government actually listened to the people then your pin up boy Daniel Pipes would haven't been put into his position by Bush would he even when Congress and the Senate refused to ratify him.
Govt listens to influential lobbies and people that is a fact.
Also did the electorate want to go to war in Iraq - hell no. The support came once the troops were there and people felt they should support the boys and girls. So where was your Blairocracy then?
Hamas certainly isn't in favour of that, though.
Are you? Do you agree to a Palestinian State on the pre '67 Borders with East Jerusalem as its capital living in security?
Do you believe this has to be done now or as Danny boy says that Israel has to crush the Palestinians first?
"Hamas certainly isn’t in favour of that, though."
Oh please. They are just posturing and have said that they will recognise Israel once a peace is reached. So has Iran. So has the Middle East.
Why would they recognise Israel before Israel recognises them and vice versa? Both sides are posturing. Do you believe that Israel doesn't talk to Hamas?
The challange to Hamas is to show they can govern responsibly at the moment they don't have to show this because no one treats them like a government. The acid test is when they have to do this.
Have you ever noticed that Israel only makes peace when your poster boys in the USA are not involved?
Are you? Do you agree to a Palestinian State on the pre ‘67 Borders with East Jerusalem as its capital living in security?
YES
Do you believe this has to be done now or as Danny boy says that Israel has to crush the Palestinians first?
NOW. ANY PALESTINIAN GOVT MUST TAKE ON INTERNAL FORCES LIKELY TO SCUPPER SUCH AN AGREEMENT.
“Hamas certainly isn’t in favour of that, though.”
Oh please. They are just posturing and have said that they will recognise Israel once a peace is reached. So has Iran. So has the Middle East.
IRAN HASN'T
MOST OTHER ME STATES WOULD, IF THEY THOUGHT THEY NEEDED TO IN ORDER TO OUTFLANK IRAN
HAMAS HAS MADE IT VERY CLEAR THAT THEY HAVE A DOCTRINAL PROBLEM WITH ACCEPTING THE EXISTENCE OF A NON ISLAMIC STATE ON ISLAMIC LAND. TOUGH. UNLESS THEY WANT TO KEEP ON FIGHTING THEY'LL HAVE TO. I'D BE AMAZED IF HAMAS EVER EXPLICITLY RECOGNISED ISRAEL AS A PERMANENT FEATURE IN THE REGION. THEY REGARD THAT AS A THEOLOGICAL IMPOSSIBILITY
The challange to Hamas is to show they can govern responsibly at the moment they don’t have to show this because no one treats them like a government. The acid test is when they have to do this.
OH, I'M A BIG FAN OF ISLAMISTS COMING TO POWER. THEY TEND TO TURN OUT TO BE INCOMPETENT AND CORRUPT. LOOK AT IRAN. SUNNI ISLAMIST GOVERNMENTS IN THE MIDDLE EAST NEED TO BE GIVEN THE CHANCE TO FAIL.
Tell that to Sadats family. Numpty
Sid - It is you that lives in a dreamworld because frankly you were exposed with regards to blaming creeds you disagree with for everything, hell if you like doing that and using PP for that then it is PP that is all the poorer for allowing you to spread your nonsense.
You agreed at the time that you would be more specific but you are back to your old nonsense and that is a disgrace and not wholly accurate.
You agreed at the time that you would be more careful about how your portrayed things.
Avi, these conversations you had with me in which I had an epiphany and agreed with your every word and "evidence" might have happened in your head, but I don't recognise them to have happened in reality.
You're clueless about the Jamaati Islami or the nature of client-patron politics in SouthAsia and even more so on the tentacular growth of Islamist politics in South Asia in the last 20 years.
The JI political outfits in Southasia are heavily funded by Salafi and Wahhabi interests in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
We also know that the JI have affiliations with senior board members of the MCB and a particular Muslim charity in the UK.
Here is Adam Stahl on the matter of Saudi funding of Islamist radical outfits in Bangladesh:
And are you seriously saying that your claim that Saudi-based Salafis do not fund terrorist outfits around the world is backed by "the US State Dept, the Met Police as well as people like Yahya Birt and at least one member of QF"?
That's some bad juju you're smoking there mate.
After highlighting the excess of your Sufi brethren you agreed that you needed to be more specific when discussing creeds and said you would clarify more in future. If you can't be bothered to write fairly then that reflects poorly upon you.
I accepted then and I accept now your word of the negative influence of MB and JI.
I understand your passion about these issues and I accept you've confronted these people and for that I applauded you then and still do. But as I keep saying to you when you get into portraying entire creeds unfairly then that detracts from your writing and argument.
If you make a commitment and then can't even be bothered to recall it then that is an issue for you and not me. I suggest you read the thread, and as an editor of PP that should be easy enough.
I don't intend to cover Saudi Salafi's again as I've given you enoug evidence from the sources above in previous threads and if you can't be bothered recalling the previous discussion then chances are you won't even bother reading the evidence.
I refer you to the Report by an ex-member of the Met who said that Saudi Based Salafis in Brixtonhave provided some of the best cooperation on combating terrorism and extremism. He didn't even acknowledge your Sufi/Brailwee brothers that you love to promote. So if you have an issue contact him and say he is incorrect.
The Sufi's are using this opportunity to gain influence with western governments but so far have provided little tangible results for taxpayers money.
Again Yayha Birt said that the Saudi's fund things with little regard for how money is used. This has changed. The member of QF questioned the methodology of the Sufi's in portraying Jihad.
The US State Dept on their website acknowledges that there are a number of orgs claiming to be Salafi and the Saudi Salfi's deplore terrorism even in Israel.
Your lumping together of creeds you dislike does you a dis-service in trying to eradicate this problem because you are alienating people that agree with your view by claiming incorrectly they are something they are not.
I don't intend to comment again on you continual denials despite numerous links to refute what you say.
The JI and it's terrorist offshoot, the Taliban-like militia JMB, regard *themselves* as Salafi and "Ahle-Hadith".
The Saudis and Kuwaitis are funding these organisations they happen to share dogmatic interpretation. Not because as you like to claim, they happen to "have little regard for how the money is used". If that's what Birt says then either he is deeply mistaken or he is being misrepresented or he is lying.
And I quote again:
Seems to me that you are claiming these Saudi funders to be pretty stupid if they're funding so many initiatives without regard to how the money is being spent or by whom! The point is, this claim to "ignorance" is a pretty shoddy excuse.
all everyone does is fight till no one even knows what they are talking about anymore.
something was said somewhere about political Islam being spawned by people getting wrapped up in current events...
I think that could be said about alot of bloggers too!!
... here in NYC the kids are bringing the 80's back... cause they are tired of fighting, violence etc !!
I think we should take a cue from them.. for the rest of today anyway!
"I can't stand this indecision married with a lack of vision
everybody wants to rule the world.."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOA4ixV-3jU
http://islamic-considerations.blogspot.com/
Actually i would; well after a fashion.
I wouldn't attend one of their 'rallys' but then i don't attend anyone elses 'rallys' either (demonstrations stopped being an effective political tool half a century ago). But i certainly wouldn't have any objection to finding out about and trying to empathise with the problems that were alienating BNP supporters. I made a similar point in relation to the fuss over the 'BNP ballerina'; disparaging and humiliating her wouldn't allow any kind of connection to be made to deal with the fear or hate she was feeling.
The Good Friday agreement didn't come about by people steadfastly refusing to have anything to do with each other. Choosing to ignore or dismissing out of hand a particular philosophy or ideology is just juvenile.
every western country where the state is liberal the muslims are basically hedonists and not terrorists
take canada
muslim girls are mostly focused on looking hot and muslim guys are mostly focused on chasing ass