The Quilliam Foundation has issued a press release alleging that its Director, Maajid Nawaz, was attacked by a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir while in Pakistan. Needless to say, the allegation was repeated uncritically by the likes of Harry’s Place. Tayyib Muqeem, the HT member accused of carrying out the assault, has now circulated his own account of the events.
Statement by Tayyib Muqeem on his alleged ‘attack’ on Quilliam Foundation director Maajid Nawaz
May Allah be my witness, along with the two other witnesses with me, and the scores of customers & staff present at the ‘Jamin Java’ cafe in Lahore, Pakistan. None of them are Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) members, and the media are free to verify the facts from them. I speak from the heart and I speak the truth, being a Northerner from the UK, I’m a frank person and don’t like to mince my words. My name is Tayyib Muqeem, I’m proud to announce that I’m a member of Hizb ut Tahrir and currently live and work in Lahore, Pakistan as an English Language Teacher.
On the 14th May very late at night I was working on my laptop computer in the Cafe, when somebody who I had never met or spoken to in my life, namely Maajid Nawaz, approached me unexpectedly. Contrary to his claim, I was not waiting to attack him. Maajid was in the Cafe with a girl, and because of what I know of him from the news, his renowned scaremongering and exaggerations, not to mention his £1 million a year backing from the British authorities and likely collusion with British intelligence; I did not want to entertain a conversation with him and didn’t want to reply to his greetings. I believed his greetings were a cynical, insincere and an opportunist attempt to trap me into some sort of debate that he would later use for his own ends. I knew very well that Maajid Nawaz was touring Pakistani universities on a Government funded mission to continue a malicious campaign against Islam and to spread confusion amongst Muslim students, being an educationist I was infuriated, but helpless nevertheless.
I also feared for my safety because Maajid’s business partner at the Quilliam Foundation, Ed Husain, proudly admitted when he was in Damascus, Syria, that he reported two members of Hizb ut-Tahrir to the notorious Syrian Baathist dictatorship. Like all Baath Party regimes, e.g. under Saddam Hussain, the Syrian secret police are known to routinely torture, and they acted quickly to arrest those two individuals, all thanks to Ed. In the café Maajid continued to arrogantly, rudely insist on talking to me and shaking my hand, making a scene, goading me and gesturing me haughtily. I asked him to leave me alone at least three times, so that I could continue with my work.
In the end I stood up frustrated with his harassing of me at my table, and asked him to leave me alone again. Maajid provocatively came into my personal space, into my private comfort zone, in an acrimonious way. I then attempted to merely push him away from me, but in his cowardly reaction he moved towards me and one of my hands intended to push him away slightly pushed the side of his head, which made him loose balance and he fell onto a nearby sofa. I was in control of my emotions and again asked him to leave me alone. I soon left the café before he did, freely and without coercion.
So contrary to the Maajid Nawaz’s Quilliam Foundation press statement & their briefing of the media which sadly didn’t decide to check the facts, I didn’t approach him, I didn’t wait for him outside, I didn’t follow him from Britain, I didn’t punch him, He didn’t go to the floor, It wasn’t premeditated, I wasn’t forced out of the Café by the staff, and Hizb ut-Tahrir does not need to renounce violence because since the founding of the party, it has been avowedly against using violence to achieve it’s aims, and has condemned 9/11, 7/7, the Madrid bombings, and other such activities as Haram.
I find it highly suspicious, considering I had never met or spoken to Maajid before, how he knew me, and recognised me in a Cafe in Lahore? How did he get all of the information about me which he released in a press statement within a couple of hours of the incident in the middle of the night?
Furthermore, my students at the university where I teach are now being contacted by Quilliam’s hosts in Pakistan (a ‘Ms Sabeeha’, Director of Bargad a local NGO originating from Gujranwala, Pakistan) to confirm my designation at the establishment and requesting to hold talks here! So rather than ‘violent, vigilante’ members of the Hizb going after Maajid, it is HE who is in fact hounding us! All to fulfill the anti-Islam agenda of his backers in the West.
What is laughable is the duplicitous ‘challenge’ in the Quilliam Foundation press statement “to meet ideas with ideas”; this is clearly designed to appeal to fair minded people, and liberals. If they really believed in this; why did Ed Husain loose his nerve & refuse to participate on BBC radio interview, when the BBC also invited a HT member to respond to his (false) accusations? If they wanted “to meet ideas with ideas” why did Ed Husain report 2 British members of HT in Damascus to the Syrian authorities? If they wanted “to meet ideas with ideas” why did they campaign to Ban Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi from entering Britain, but campaigned to allow Geert Wilders (who made the Danish film ‘Fitnah’) to enter Britain? If they wanted “to meet ideas with ideas” why they refuse to sit in a discussion on Islam Channel with Azad Ali from East London Mosque, and demand Azad Ali is banned from the show if they are to attend?
Qulliam’s constant stream of manipulative, exaggerating, attention seeking, Muslim bashing, sycophantic public statements are full of fear mongering about the ‘Islamist’ threat, and is aimed not at sincere discussion but malicious typecasting or pigeon holing of all Islamic activists into the “potential terrorist” category, without recognizing the fact that 99% of all Islamic movements are peaceful and actively discourage terrorism since it is clearly a prohibited (haram) method in Islam. Their real target is to achieve the British Government’s stated aims in the Contest 2 policy document, namely to eradicate political Islam and to discredit Shariah Law, Jihad and the call for the reestablishment of the Caliphate as extremist ideas.
Finally, their trigger happy press releases were exposed when they had to retract information in their press release attacking Islam Channel & Sheikh Yasir Al-Qadi, after what I suspect was a legal threat. My character has also been attacked in the media thanks to these liars, Maajid Nawaz approached me, he harassed me, he entered my private space so I too am seeking legal advice and they may soon be hearing from my lawyers.