General-Medical-Council-Investigates-Allegations-Of-Islamophobia

by Donna Rachel Edmunds 4 Nov 2014 212 post a comment

A London doctor is being investigated by the General Medical Council (GMC) for alleged Islamophobia after posting criticism of ISIS and support for Israel on his private Facebook page. He was reported to the council by Faisel Alam, who described himself on the complaint form as a “concerned member of the public” but in reality has links to both Islamic and leftist organisations, as well as the Council itself.

Breitbart London has seen a copy of the complaint, the substance of which reads in full “This man is viciously Islamophobic and has used his Facebook to espouse his hatred towards this particular religious group (See attached file). I fear that his highly intolerable views towards this group of people will compromise his Duty of Care.”

But we have found a number of links between Mr Alam and extremist groups, mostly through his involvement with university campus Islamic Societies which have come under widespread scrutiny over recent years for hosting extremist speakers, creating terrorists, and taking millions of pounds in funding from Saudi and Middle Eastern sources.

Moreover, the file of evidence submitted by Alam to the GMC shows no evidence that the work of Dr Destree, an emergency medical practitioner from London, is anything less than satisfactory, leading to fellow doctors questioning why the investigation is going ahead at all.

The evidence submitted against Dr Destree consists of just five posts made to his private Facebook page, and two comments on another doctors’ page. One example consists of a photo of gun-wielding jihadists, some wearing marks, taking aim at around 50 fellow Muslims in a clear execution, to which he added the comment “VOILA - The true face of (sunni) Islam!”

In another, Dr Destree has commented on a picture posted to the social networking site by a friend and fellow doctor. The graphic image depicts dead Muslim women and children with the caption “One must not close one’s eyes to evil atrocities… the river runs red with blood from Gaza”. Dr Destree responded below “… because hamas is using its own people as human shields and cannon fodder. Can it be that you are falling for the terrorist’s propaganda?”

It was via this mutual Facebook friend that Faisel Alam was made aware of Dr Destree’s opinions (Alam ‘liked’ the post on Gaza).

The General Medical Council exists to set standards for the medical profession, and to licence doctors. It has the ability to restrict, or take away doctors’ registration if they consider that a doctor is not fit to practice. On its website, it lists cases in which it may investigate a complaint. They include serious mistakes in medical care, failure to properly examine patients, fraud, and breaches of patient’s confidentiality.

It adds “Our Fitness to Practise procedures focus on the most serious concerns, which call into question a doctor’s fitness to practise and right to retain unrestricted registration – that is his or her right to work.

“This might be because the doctor poses a risk to patients or because the doctor’s conduct is likely to undermine confidence in the profession.”

Yet there is no evidence that Dr Destree has allowed his opinions to colour his medical practice. Dr Destree is German and was married to a shia muslim woman for a number of years. As part of the package of evidence, Alam links to an article which describes how Dr Destree heavily criticised standards of cleanliness in the residential block for hospital staff at Yeovil District Hospital, even cutting short his locum contract thanks to what he described as a “sordid collection of filth” in the communal areas – filth which he feared could compromise hygiene standards within the hospital itself.

Even Alam admits within the body of evidence submitted that Dr Destree merely “MAY one day compromise his duty of care.”

In light of the clear lack of evidence, the decision by the GMC to investigate the complaint is highly suspect and wholly unprecedented. One fellow member of the GMC, who asked not to be named, told Breitbart London “Personal disputes between doctors are never investigated, period.

The fact is, vociferous complaints are a real danger to openness within the medical profession. Complaints to organisations at least should have had the benefit of local measures or actions being attempted before escalation. Personal referrals have no such screening and can be devastating.” That doctor has queried why the GMC didn’t turf out the complaint as soon as it was submitted.

However, the decision becomes less puzzling when one considers, that, far from being simply a “concerned member of public”, Alam, who is a postgradate medical student at University College London, sits on the Council as an education associate and so has personal links to the Council.

His judgement on the question of ‘Islamophobia’ is also brought into question when one considers that he is also head of Student Affairs for the Kings College, London Islamic Society and has links to a number of other university campus Islamic Societies, which collectively have been noted as hotbeds of extremism for a number of years now.

A 2010 report by the Centre for Social Cohesion titled Radical Islam on UK Campuses detailed the extremist speakers invited to speak at University campuses, and the terrorist atrocities they encouraged. For King’s College, it notes speakers including Anwar al-Awlaki, a senior al-Qaeda talent recruiter, according to the US government, who was described by Al Arabiya as the “bin Laden of the internet”. He was killed by a US drone strike in Yemen in 2011. And amongst the alumni of KCL’s Islamic Society are Asif Hanif and Omar Khan Sharif, who in 2003 carried out the suicide bombing at Mike’s Place, a Tel Aviv bar, killing three and injuring 50 people.

This summer, Alam took part in the Oxford Centre for Islamic Study’s (OCIS) Young Muslim Leadership Program. The Centre drew criticism in 2008, along with seven other institutions, for taking funding from Saudi Arabia and Muslim organisations to promote an anti-Western view of Islam and Middle Eastern affairs. Between them, the eight universities received over £233.5 million in funding.

Despite the criticism, the funding continued. In 2011, the Centre for Social Cohesion identified £1m in funding from the King Abdul Aziz Foundation for Research and Archives, a direct arm of the Saudi Government, paid to Oxford University. OCIS also accepted a further £20m directly from King Fahd, for which speakers from Saudi were regularly welcomed to present to the students.

The money appears to have been well spent, at least in Alam’s case. Enrolling on the summer program, Alam changed his Facebook profile picture to a portrait of himself standing next to a banner for the OCIS. During the banter in the comments, a friend asks “Is Shaykh Akram on your programme?” (Thought to be a reference to Shaykh Mohammed Akram Nadwi, an Islamic scholar from Jaunpur, India).

Alam replied “Grand Mufti Faisel Al-Britani is on the programme bro”, an indication of his ambitions to be the most senior official of Sunni religious law in the UK. The post does not yet exist.

Another picture on his Facebook account depicts Alam at the House of Lords, posing with AbdoolKarim Vakil, chair of the Research and Documentation Committee of the Muslim Council of Britain, and Shenaz Bunglawala of the organisation Muslim Engagement and Development (MEND) (both of which condemn any criticism of Islam or Muslims as “Islamophobia) – and the left wing commentator Owen Jones.

The links between the left and Islamic forces are widely documented by now – David Horowitz wrote his book Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left in 2006, whilst the One Law for All Campaign (which lobbies the UK government to end Sharia and religious courts as being anti-human rights), published its report Siding with the Oppressor: the Pro-Islamic Left in 2013.

Alam conforms entirely to this tendency, posting links to Marxist blog site Lenin’s Tomb on his Twitter page and blaming the Government for radicalisation of British jihadis. Until recently he sat on the Medical Students Committee for the British Medical Association, the UK’s only recognised trade union for doctors which promotes an anti-competitive model of healthcare for Britain.

The ruling on Alam’s complaint against Dr Destree isn’t due for another five months, but if upheld, it will conform to a pattern of increasing politicisation of the health service as a vehicle for promoting left wing versions of ‘tolerance’ and ‘equality’.

Last week Breitbart London reported that, as of next March, all prospective medical students will have to pass face-to-face interviews designed to assess how well they conform to the values of the NHS – values that include “a wider social duty to promote equality through the services it provides.”

Mr Alam is studying for his MBBS Medicine as a postgraduate student, having already gained a BSc in Biomedical Science. He has never practiced medicine, but exemplifies the new approach to recruitment that the NHS appears to be promoting.

Dr Destree, on the other hand, is in his mid-50s and has many years of exemplary medical experience behind him. The decision of the General Medical Council to even investigate this allegation tells us much about the values that lie at the heart of the healthcare industry in modern Britain.