UK
Politicians Collaborate with Muslim Brotherhood Islamists?
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Speakers at the upcoming Global
Peace and Unity conference can be categorized as follows: 65% are anti-Semitic,
misogynist, homophobic and pro-terror preachers, 20% are public servants
offering political legitimacy and moral credibility to the other speakers, while
the remaining 15% could perhaps claim to be part of the conference's
"project dedicated to creating a more harmonious world."
"Peace and unity...thanks be to Allah...a fantastic
thing." — Simon Hughes MP, speaking to the Conference in 2008
At the end of this month, on November 23-24, UK politicians, in a crushing
betrayal of Britain's moderate Muslims, are planning join many of Britain's
most outspoken Islamist groups and preachers at the sixth Global Peace and
Unity conference, due to be held in London. Tens of thousands attend these
conferences; journalists applaud the initiative, and cabinet ministers,
political commentators and other policy-makers address its crowds.
Mohamed Ali Harrath, a leading
figure in the British Muslim community, founded and organized the Global
Peace and Unity conferences in 2005. He claims the events are designed to "promote
dialogue, exchange ideas and information, and work towards dispelling
misunderstandings surrounding the multiculturalism and co-existence of
faiths."
Speakers at this annual event, however, have included Ebrahim Rasool, a
vocal supporter of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, who has described
its founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, as an "inspiration;" as well as
Zakir Naik, an Indian Islamist preacher recently banned from entering the UK,
who has expressed support for suicide bombings and claims
that Jews "as a whole" are the enemies of Muslims.
In 2010, the Daily Telegraph reported
that, "items glorifying terrorism were on open sale [at the conference] …
Also available were 'shahada headbands' as worn by many Palestinian
suicide bombers... The headbands contain the personal testimony of the suicide
bombers."
Harrath, incidentally, has a conviction
in Tunisia for terrorism-related offenses, and the television station of which
he is CEO, the Islam Channel, has been accused by a Muslim think tank, the
Quilliam Foundation, of promoting
extremist groups and encouraging
hatred towards women, Jews and minority Muslim sects.
Mohamed Ali Harrath
(centre) with Ismail Haniyeh (right), leader of Hamas in Gaza, in 2008.
(Image source: Harry's Place)
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This year, Veritas Consultancy -- a company that also provides services to
groups such
as Interpal, a US-designated terrorist organization -- is handling
the logistics of the conference. Veritas Consultancy, however, has just one
director: Mohamed Ali Harrath.
Harrath is a leading
Muslim Brotherhood member; and the wealth of evidence that ties the conference,
its affiliates and the proposed speakers to Islamist networks seems inescapable.
Paul Goodman MP has described
the conferences as the "Royal Ascot of the British Islamist
calendar."
Despite these warnings, however, a number of public officials and
politicians from across the British political spectrum seem happy to share a
platform with leading Islamists and, in doing so, legitimize the organizers of
the conference as genuine representatives of British Islam.
Not everyone, however, has supported this involvement. A number of senior
politicians from across the spectrum have, in fact, disagreed very publicly
over the suitable response and degree of "engagement" with
Islamist-run Muslim community events.
In 2008, the then-Labour Government deemed another conference, IslamExpo, to
be beyond the pale, and banned its MPs from attending. This policy did not, at
the time, receive total support from senior politicians. One anonymous Labour
Party minister, unhappy with the ban, decried
the policy of boycott as "completely counterproductive," and added:
"You have to engage with those with influence over those you want to
influence."
In the same year, Policy Exchange, a think tank, circulated
a briefing paper highlighting the extremist ideology behind the Global Peace
and Unity conference. In response, Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats
and now the Deputy Prime Minister of Britain, condemned
the Policy Exchange report as "offensive," demanded its retraction
and, despite the wealth of evidence demonstrating the questionable company he
would be keeping, chose to speak
at the conference.
Clegg, after praising the "diversity and unity" of modern Britain,
said:
I say this with sadness: There were some people who didn't want me to come
and speak to you today. A think tank here in London, Policy Exchange, has been
distributing secret briefings against some speakers who you have heard, or will
hear, this weekend. They suggested people like me should not come to an event
like this. Let me be clear: of course I do not agree with the views of every
speaker at this event. I do believe in free speech, I do believe in a free
society where views are aired and expressed, not ignored and suppressed.
Clegg seems to have been under the misapprehension that the extremist
speakers were an aberration, when, in fact, their views were outspokenly
emblematic of the organizers' ideological designs. The more extreme preachers
were not accidental invitees -- they were presented as the conference's star
speakers.
Dominic Grieve MP, despite attending the conference, markedly expressed
his disappointment at the choice of fellow speakers, and named several whose
views he regarded as abhorrent.
By the time of the fifth Global Peace and Unity conference, there had been
enough warning from counter-extremism activists for a few politicians to take
note. In 2010, Prime Minister David Cameron decided to ban
his party's chairwoman, Baroness Warsi, from addressing the conference.
This month, the upcoming Sixth Peace and Unity Conference has announced speakers gathered
from among the usual litany of Muslim Brotherhood supporters and apologists:
·
Yasir Qadhi, who claims
the Holocaust is a hoax and has said, "Why are Jews studying Islam? There
is a reason, not that they want to help us, they want to destroy us … Know that
the Yahood [Jews] and the Kuffar [non-believers] like this type of thing."
·
Yusuf Islam, the former singer known as Cat
Stevens, who has called
for apostates and adulterous women to be stoned to death.
·
Ken Livingstone, the former Mayor of London and
a noted
supporter of the anti-Semitic and pro-terror Muslim Brotherhood leader Yusuf
Al-Qaradawi. Livingstone has also claimed
that Jews will not vote for him because of their wealth.
·
Said Rageah, a Canadian Islamist preacher and
"instructor" at the extremist Al Maghrib Institute who has preached
that God should "destroy" the enemies of Islam and that the
Christians and Jews are "damned."
·
Farooq Murad, son of the "Supreme
leader" of Bangladesh's violent jihadi group Jamaat-e-Islami, is also secretary
general of the Muslim Council of Britain. A report
published by the Department for Communities and Local Government explicitly
links the Muslim Council of Britain to Jamaat-e-Islami, which committed acts of
genocide during the 1971 Bangladesh war of independence. Murad is also a trustee
of the Islamic Foundation. In 2003, The Times reported
that two Islamic Foundation trustees were on the UN sanctions list of people
associated with the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
·
Tahir-ul-Qadri, a Pakistani politician who
lobbied to ensure that those who blaspheme should
be executed. Qadri has incited
hatred against Pakistan's much-persecuted Ahmadiyya minority, whom Qadri has described
as "heretics."
·
Yusuf Estes, who advises
husbands to beat their wives and advocates the killing of homosexuals.
·
Iqbal Sacranie, a leading British Islamist who said
of author Salman Rushdie, "Death, perhaps, is a bit too easy for
him." Sacranie is a trustee of iEngage, an extreme Islamist organization
which has lobbied
government ministers to establish relations with the terror group Hamas and has
harangued
Muslim human rights activists who express opposition to Islamist extremism.
·
Sarah Joseph, editor of the Islamist magazine Emel,
which has expressed
support for the extremist East London Mosque. Joseph is a long-standing member
of the Islamic Society of Britain, a leading
Islamist lobby group. Joseph's defence of "political Islam" is praised on the Muslim
Brotherhood's own website.
·
Muhammad Al-Ya'qoubi, a Syrian cleric who has denounced freedom of
expression as blasphemous and a "false ideal." Ya'qoubi also condemned
the Grand Mufti of Syria's expressed hope for reconciliation between Muslims
and Jews.
·
Shabir Ally, President of the Islamic
Information & Dawah Centre International, describes homosexuality
as "sinful" and claims
those who commit "such acts" will be "destroyed."
·
Shady Al-Suleiman, who calls for the killing of
women who engage in pre-marital sex: "Remember that if there is an Islamic
state the punishment of zina [sex outside marriage], the punishment of those
who commit zina, if they have never been married before, they will be lashed
100 lashes. If they are married while they committed zina, or previously been
married and divorced, and they committed zina, then their punishment is stoning
to death."
·
Muhammad Abdul Bari, a former Secretary General
of the Muslim Council of Britain who, during his time at the Council, invited
Delwar Hossain Sayeedi, the Jamaat-e-Islami vice-president -- since then,
sentenced to death in Bangladesh for his involvement in acts of genocide in the
1971 war of independence -- to speak at the East London Mosque, of which Bari
is also chairman. Further, Bari has, in addition, defended
the mosque's previous involvement with Anwar Al-Awlaki, the late Al Qaeda
leader, whom the U.S. killed in Yemen with a drone strike.
·
Mohammad Ijaz ul-Haq, a Pakistani politician who
has said
that an appropriate response to the decision to award Salman Rushdie a
knighthood is suicide attacks. "If somebody has to attack by strapping
bombs to his body to protect the honour of the Prophet," he said,
"then it is justified." Ul-Haq is also, as noted
by the conference organizers themselves, a vocal supporter of nuclear engineer
Abdul Qadeer Khan, who helped Iran, Libya and North Korea to develop nuclear
weapons.
·
Yisroel Dovid Weiss, a spokesman for the
extremist sect Neturei Karta, who attended
and spoke at Iran's Holocaust-denial conference in 2007. Weiss is an outspoken
supporter of former Iranian President Ahmadinejad and claims
that Zionists have exploited the Holocaust to further their own aims.
·
Riah Abu El-Assal, a former Bishop of
Jerusalem,who has offered his support to the Palestinian terror group Hamas by saying
that, "When the Hamas government came about, I was the first religious
leader in the Christian community to go and say, "okay, congratulations.
Now in what way can we be of help? And what way can we assist to bring the
reality of the situation with the Palestinian people to the world at
large?"
·
Abdul Wahid-Pedersen, a Danish Imam who has defended the stoning
of adulterous women, and who founded the Independent Scandinavian Relief Agency
in 1988 and served as its Secretary General until, however, in 2004, the Agency
was closed down after its close affiliate was deemed
by the U.S. government to be part of Al Qaeda's funding network.
·
Muhammad Al Shareef, founder of the Al Maghrib
Institute, pupils of which included
the 2008 "underwear bomber," Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Shareef has written a paper
entitled, "Why the Jews Were Cursed" -- in which he claims that Jews
control the media and murder prophets. He goes on to advise that Muslims should
not "take Jews as our close allies." Shareef also calls
on Christians to "join the [Muslim] ranks and start to stand up and speak
against things like this [homosexuality]…praise to God that you are
homophobic."
·
Jamal Badawi, a Canadian Islamist, and included
in an internal Muslim Brotherhood list of activists in 1992. In 2006, Badawi
described suicide bombers as "freedom fighters," similar to those
fighting the Nazis or the Japanese kamikazes fighting the Americans. Three
years later Badawi proclaimed
that Hamas terrorists were fighting jihad and that those who were killed were
martyrs. He also condemned
moderate Muslims who criticised Islamist terror groups.
The conference's list of "Supporters" and "Associates"
includes organizations such as Interpal, designated a
terrorist organization in the United States; Human Appeal International, which
the CIA claims
to act as a conduit to terror organizations; Islamic Help, which funds
organizations run by senior Hamas leaders; Muslim Aid, which funded
a number of terrorist front groups; Muslim Hands, a charity accused by Israel of having links
to Hamas; the London-based Palestinian Return Centre, an Islamist lobby group considered
by intelligence agencies to be a front for Hamas; and Al-Hiwar TV, a Muslim
Brotherhood-controlled television station that was recently
fined $158,000 for broadcasting a speech that advocated murder as a
punishment for blasphemy.
In light of this assortment of speakers and supporters, have British
politicians sought to distance themselves from that array of views?
Not in the least: Politicians and public officials speaking at the upcoming
event include Andrew
Slaughter MP, the shadow Justice Minister; Sadiq Khan, the Shadow Secretary of
State for Justice; Lord Falconer of Thoroton QC, a Labour Peer; Simon Hughes
MP, deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats; Khurshid Drabu, a senior
immigration Judge; and Shahid Malik, former Minister for International
Development. Malik met with
Hamas leaders in 2012.
Most remarkably, alongside the extremist organizations, two other
"supporters" of the conference include the Metropolitan Police and
the City of London Police.
Does the focus on the extremist speakers and the affiliated extremist groups
unfairly impose guilt-by-association upon the conference organizers?
Apparently not: Of the 29 announced conference speakers, six are public
officials or politicians. Of the remaining 23 announced speakers, 19 have
expressed extremist views, as listed above.
In other words, the conference speakers can be categorized as follows: 65%
are self-proclaimed anti-Semitic, misogynist, homophobic and pro-terror
preachers, 20% are public servants offering legitimacy and moral credibility to
them, while the remaining 15% could perhaps claim to be part of the conference's "project
dedicated to creating a more harmonious world" -- or, as Simon Hughes MP told the conference in
2008, "Peace and unity...thanks be to Allah...a fantastic thing."
It is all the more astounding, then, that leading politicians have chosen to
proclaim the men who espouse these views as cheerleaders for "peace and
unity" and a "diverse...tolerant Britain."
The abundance of information already published about the Global Peace and
Unity Conferences suggests that politicians are not oblivious to the sort of
ideas to which they offer their political legitimacy; rather, they are
perfectly cognizant, but have chosen collaboration over criticism. In doing so,
are these public servants not actually promoting radical Islamism as the future
of Western Islam, and betraying genuinely moderate Muslims everywhere?
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