“The MCB has been unwavering in urging Muslims to help the police find anyone associated with terrorist attacks. In the past its leadership went to Iraq to try to help free British hostages. Those conducting what I consider a witch-hunt against the MCB are doing great harm to the fight against terrorism. They must ask themselves in what way they are helping the fight against terrorism by waging a campaign of demonisation and spin against this representative body of British Muslim organisations.”
Author Archives: Bob Pitt
UK anti-terror panel says Iraq war fans extremism
A British government anti-terror working group concluded that the Iraq war is “undeniably a factor” in fanning extremism, and proposed forming a media unit to challenge the stereotyped media portrayal of Muslims, reported a leading British daily Friday, September 16. “British foreign policy in the world cannot be left unconsidered as a factor in the motivations of extremists,” the group said in a confidential report leaked to The Independent.
The Working Together to Prevent Extremism: Tackling Extremism and Radicalization report was drawn up after meetings between leading Muslims and government officials, said the daily. The 13-member taskforce, chosen by the Home Office, includes prominent Muslim figures such as famed Swiss scholar Tariq Ramadan, Inayat Bunglawala, the media officer of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) and MP Shahid Malik.
Beaten for being Muslim
Muslims have called for greater police protection following a wave of Islamophobic hate in Scotland after the 7/7 bombings.
In one of the worst incidents, Mohammed Shezad, 31, and another family member were viciously attacked by a gang outside their business in the Dennistoun area of Glasgow.
The attack left Shezad in intensive care fighting for his life. He suffered multiple stab wounds to his chest, arm, face and skull.
The BBC Panorama Special – some background
The BBC Panorama Special that provided the hook for the Observer‘s witch-hunt of the Muslim Council of Britain was originally scheduled to be broadcast on 14 August but has been postponed for a week. It will now be shown next Sunday at 10.15pm.
The BBC has announced that its intrepid reporter John Ware “spent the weeks since the London bombs traveling to Britain’s Muslim communities, to discover whether their leaders can tackle the growth of extremism in their midst”. (See here.)
It was in fact Ware’s hostile questioning of Iqbal Sacranie during the making of the programme that was the immediate cause of the MCB’s complaint to the BBC. The MCB have claimed that Ware devoted the interview almost exclusively to questions concerning the attitude of the MCB and its affiliates towards the Palestine-Israel conflict. (See here – pdf.)
This is not the first contentious Panorama programme that Ware has been centrally involved in. In July 2003 he was the writer and presenter of another Panorama Special, in this case dealing with alleged abuse of the asylum system. On the day of the broadcast, Ware published an article in the Daily Mail (23 July 2003) based on and publicising his programme. It was headlined: “For years the Mail has been attacked for its refusal to be silent on the asylum crisis. Tonight’s Panorama says we were utterly justified.”
Hailing the programme for supposedly having broken “a 35-year taboo on discussing the topic of immigration” that had followed Enoch Powell’s 1968 rivers of blood speech, Ware wrote: “If you, as a taxpayer, have been waiting in a queue for a house, a hospital appointment or a place for your child at a school, and someone from another country who has paid no taxes jumps ahead, you would have to be saintly not to feel resentful.” Particularly so, “if the queue-jumper had fooled the immigration authorities into believing he had been persecuted, when he hadn’t, and when his real purpose was to get here for a better life”.
The BBC was condemned by the then home secretary, David Blunkett, for “pursuing a Powellite anti-immigration agenda”. To quote the Guardian report, Blunkett “singled out for criticism the BBC1 Panorama special, the Asylum Game, and its writer and presenter, John Ware, for producing a ‘poorly researched and overspun documentary’ which repeated unchallenged the claims of ‘the rightwing anti-immigration pressure group, Migration Watch’.” (See here and here.)
However, both the programme and Ware’s article were applauded by Anthony Browne in the Spectator. (See here.)
It seems that Ware is much admired by Browne, who has achieved notoriety for his own provocative attacks on migrants in general and Muslims in particular – just recently, during the furore over his Times article accusing MAB and Yusuf al-Qaradawi of being “Islamic fascists”, Browne was exposed as having contributed to a racist US website. (See here and here.)
In the Times article Browne portrayed the Panorama reporter as a victim of political correctness, complaining that “John Ware, one of the BBC’s most-respected reporters, spent years trying to make a programme on Islamic fundamentalism in Britain, but was repeatedly blocked by senior editors who feared it was too sensitive”. (See here.)
It would now appear that Ware has got his way, and that he has made a documentary exposing Islamic “fundamentalism” in the form of an attack on Britain’s most mainstream Muslim organisation, the MCB.
Of course, we can’t say for sure till we’ve seen the programme. However, Ware did give us a foretaste of his approach when he persuaded Radio 4’s Today programme to broadcast an item on the MCB last month. This gave only a passing mention to the organisation’s role in combating extremism in Britain and instead concentrated on attacking the MCB over its attitude towards suicide bombings in Israel. (See here.)
So, when the MCB complains that “nearly all the questions that were put to Sir Iqbal Sacranie by the Panorama team were directly or indirectly about Israel. These included questions to do with the Holocaust Memorial Day, Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi and Shaykh Ahmad Yasin”, judging by the Today broadcast we can only conclude that their accusation is entirely accurate.
‘Can infidels be innocents?’ Daniel Pipes asks
Daniel Pipes explains that fatwas issued by mainstream Muslim organisations condemning terrorists for taking the lives of innocent people are meaningless … because some extremists reject the view that non-Muslims are innocent.
So when the British Muslim Forum stated in July that “Islam strictly, strongly and severely condemns the use of violence and the destruction of innocent lives”, according to Pipes this did not necessarily include “those traveling on the Underground and bus lines in London earlier in the month”.
MAB Stands firm with MCB and Islamic Foundation
The Muslim Association of Britain rejects Martin Bright’s attack on the Muslim Council of Britain and the Islamic Foundation in a leading article in today’s The Observer.
With this attack on the official umbrella Muslim organisation and one of the most respectable and reputable Muslim educational organisations in the West, Muslims in Britain would be excused for believing that we are witnessing an all-out attack on Muslim organisations.
IHRC condemns Observer attack on MCB
“IHRC denounces yesterday’s vitriolic attack by Martin Bright in the Observer on the Muslim Council of Britain and its affiliates Jamiat-ahl-I-Hadith and the Islamic Foundation. IHRC strongly urges all campaigners to contact the Observer to complain about its shocking attack on both the MCB and on Islamic beliefs and values.”
Islamic Human Rights Commission action alert, 15 August 2005
FOSIS expresses confidence in MCB and its leadership
“The Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS) of UK and Ireland is alarmed at the attempts by some sections of the media to portray the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) and its leadership as either ‘extremist’ or having links to ‘extremism’. We reject the supposition that MCB is unrepresentative and does not reflect the opinions of the mainstream of the British Muslim community.”
Let’s stop pretending Muslim hardliners are a tiny minority – Express
Let’s stop pretending Muslim hardliners are a tiny minority
By Leo McKinstry
Daily Express, 15 August 2005
Since the July bombings in London, there has been a remorseless barrage of official propaganda telling us we have nothing to fear from Islam. It is a religion of peace, we are told, compatible with the western values of democracy, freedom and equality. Politicians, police chiefs, broadcasters and church leaders have queued up to warn against judging the overwhelming majority of moderate Muslims by the actions of a few criminals.
Typical of this attitude was the claim of Brian Paddick, Metropolitan Police deputy assistant commissioner, that “Islam and terrorism are two words that do not go together”.
But it is increasingly difficult to sustain this pretence in the face of all the evidence of dangerous Islamic fundamentalism in our midst. Far from existing only on the lunatic fringes, the hardliners are part of the Muslim mainstream. An investigation by BBC’s Panorama, to be aired next Sunday, has highlighted the extremism at the heart of the Muslim Council of Britain, the most important Islamic organisation in the country.
Anti-terror plans could be counter-productive, warns London Mayor
The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, Monday expressed serious reservations about the government’s new anti-terror plans, particularly extending the exclusion and deportation powers of the Home Secretary.
In response to the Home Office’s consultation document on the new proposals, Livingstone also raised concern about the government’s list of ‘unacceptable behaviors’ and called people to be allowed to express their views on issues as the Middle East conflict.
“People such as the founders of the United States, the founder of Israel, opponents of Ian Smith’s regime in ‘Rhodesia’ (Zimbabwe), Nelson Mandela and the Yasser Arafat have all been branded terrorists by someone at one time or another,” the mayor said.
“But nothing would have been gained by us banning either side in those conflicts. Today it would be totally counter-productive as it would reduce the trust, and therefore the information, from the communities whose help is indispensable to the police,” he warned.
See also GLA press release, 15 August 2005