Author Archives: Bob Pitt

Labour MP calls for Hizb ut-Tahrir ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

More than 300 Muslims attended a gathering on Thursday organised by a group which the Government wants banned.

The jam-packed meeting was organised by local members of Muslim group Hizb ut-Tahrir in direct response to Prime Minister Tony Blair’s proposals – announced on August 5 – to review security measures in light of last month’s terrorist attacks.

It was the first Hizb ut-Tahrir meeting since Tony Blair’s announcement. Dozens more meetings are due to take place up and down the country over the next few weeks.

The Hizb ut-Tahrir group has publicly condemned the London bombings of 7/7 and has a policy of non-violence.

All sorts of people were present at the gathering, which took place at the Cygnet Hotel in Dunstable Road, Luton, including Mayor Councillor Haji Abid.

Women and children as well as people from nearby towns including Watford, Hemel Hempsted, Bletchley and Milton Keynes also attended the meeting.

Several people made speeches including businessmen, councillors, solicitors and doctors.

When Luton businessman Meherban Khan was given the chance to speak he said: “I have been present at several Hizb ut-Tahrir meetings and, while I am not a member, I respect its beliefs. But I have to say I think Tony Blair is the Hitler of the 21st century.”

That remark brought cheers – not for the first time at the gathering – from the scores of people present.

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Observer witch-hunts MCB

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MCB logoUnder the headline “Radical links of UK’s ‘moderate’ Muslim group” (note the use of ironic quotation marks around “moderate”), the Observer tries to paint the Muslim Council of Britain as some sort of extremist organisation.

Predictably, the author Martin Bright quotes a comment from Salman Rushdie’s recent, much-reprinted article (see here) on the need for Islamic reform: “If Sir Iqbal Sacranie is the best Mr Blair can offer in the way of a good Muslim, we have a problem.”

A BBC Panorama documentary due to be screened next Sunday will apparently continue the campaign against the MCB, and it is the MCB’s protest about the content of that programme – see (pdf) here – that provides the hook for the Observer piece. See here.

The level of argument in the article is illustrated by this piece of “analysis” by Bright:

“The strain of Islamic ideology favoured by the MCB leadership and many of its affiliate organisations is inspired by Maulana Maududi, a 20th-century Islamic scholar little known in the West but hugely significant as a thinker across the Muslim world. His writings, which call for a global Islamic revival, influenced Sayyid Qutb, usually credited as the founding father of modern Islamic radicalism and one of the inspirations for al-Qaeda.”

So, by means of this amalgam, the MCB is associated with Osama bin Laden. The fact that Jamaat-i-Islami, the Pakistani party founded by Maududi, is a pragmatic, reformist, constitutionalist organisation that is part of mainstream politics in Pakistan and has participated in coalition governments – and whose methods are thus a million miles removed from the small-group terrorism of Al-Qaida – is carefully obscured. Instead, Bright tells us that Jamaat-i-Islami is “a radical party committed to the establishment of an Islamic state in Pakistan ruled by sharia law”.

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Observer accusations ‘preposterous’ says Iqbal Sacranie

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Top Muslim group denies extremist roots

Reuters, 14 August 2005

Britain’s leading Muslim lobby group, thrown into the spotlight by last month’s bombings in London, rejected an accusation on Sunday that its roots lay in extremist politics in Pakistan. Iqbal Sacranie, leader of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), said the allegation, made in the Observer newspaper, was “absolutely preposterous”.

“I can’t believe that anyone who knows anything about the MCB could take that statement seriously,” he told Reuters. In a lengthy report on the MCB, the Observer alleged the council’s leadership and some of its 400 diverse affiliates had “links with conservative Islamist movements in the Moslem world” and “the extremist politics of Pakistan”. It said the links were particularly strong with Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan’s leading mainstream Islamist party.

The MCB has come under close scrutiny since July 7, when four British Muslims – three of them ethnic Pakistanis – blew themselves up on London’s transport system, killing 52 people. The Observer singled out two MCB affiliate organisations – the Islamic Foundation and Jamiat Ahli-Hadith – for criticism, describing the latter as “an extremist sect”. The Islamic Foundation is an educational institution based in central England while Jamiat Ahli-Hadith is a religious group based in Birmingham.

Sacranie defended both groups, saying the MCB was proud to have them as affiliates. Neither of them was involved with extremist politics, he said. He said the MCB was a loose organisation and that the views of the council’s leadership did not always concur with those of its affiliates.

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‘Pakistanophobia’ spiralling in France

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The July 7 London attacks perpetrated by four British Muslims, including three of Pakistani origin, are having domino effects on the Pakistani minority in France, sparking an unprecedented Pakistanophobia.

“This close media and security scrutiny is really playing on the nerves of the Pakistanis in France,” Abdel Rahman Quraishi, the chairman of the Federation of Pakistani Organizations in France , told IslamOnline.net.

“A right-wing newspaper, for instance, launched a ferocious campaign against Pakistanis in France and placed them in one basket, calling them a ‘cause for concern.’”

Quraishi, who is also the imam of the main Pakistani mosque in Saint Denis, northern Paris , said the federation is planning to take legal action against the newspaper.

“A delegation representing the Pakistani minority went to the British embassy in Paris immediately after the attacks and offered heartfelt condolences,” he recalled.

Islam Online, 14 August 2005

Hate crimes on the rise

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Racially aggravated crime in the Thames Valley has risen by almost 40 per cent since the London bombings.

Police revealed that from when the terrorists struck on July 7, to August 1, there were 146 reported hate crimes compared to 105 during the same period last year.

And the fear among officers is that the figure may rise due to the hot summer weather, school holidays, and more people out drinking.

A Thames Valley police spokesman said: “We believe no members of our community should suffer because of the actions of terrorists and no one should use these attacks as an excuse to divide our communities or to threaten and harm individuals.

“Our officers will deal robustly with any incidents of hate crime and we urge the community to report any such incidents to us.”

He added: “Though there has been an increase in offences, the figures are still extremely low, and we have been working hard with communities to encourage people to come forward and report these incidents.”

Police said the detection rate for racial crime had gone up to 34 per cent compared to 16 per cent last year.

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Showing solidarity with Muslims insults gays – Rod Liddle

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Rod_Liddle“The chief constable of Nottinghamshire police, Steve Green, has just bought 20,000 green ribbons for his officers to wear to that they can ‘show solidarity’ with the county’s Muslim community…. I suppose some people might find it a little sinister that the politically neutral police should have started making such a public declaration of allegiance. If you were gay, for example, you might wonder if the green ribbon meant that the entire police force supported Islam’s rigorous approach to homosexuality.”

Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times, 14 August 2005

MCB responds to the Observer’s ‘investigation’

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In an extraordinary attack today, The Observer (Sunday 14th August 2005) has published a front page article, a two page ‘Investigation’ on pages eight and nine, together with an editorial, all seeking to vilify the Muslim Council of Britain.

Over three years ago, the Home Affairs editor at The Observer, Martin Bright, achieved some notoriety amongst British Muslims when he penned a cover story for the New Statesman (10th December 2001) entitled ‘The Great Koran Con Trick.’ In that piece, Bright tried his hardest – and quite miserably failed – to disprove the Divine origin of the Holy Qur’an.

So it was surprising to say the least to see that the front page story (‘Muslim Leaders in Feud With BBC’ and ‘Radical Links of UK’s ‘moderate’ Muslim Group’) in The Observer today was authored by the very same Martin Bright. Given Bright’s background we were not exactly anticipating reading a work of meticulous research and even-handedness. And we were proven correct in our assumption straight away.

MCB Press release, 14 August 2005

‘Islamic radicals run brainwashing camps in Lake District’

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Islamic extremists are running “indoctrination” camps in Britain’s national parks, a senior police officer has warned. “Wherever there’s a national park, you’ll find them – the Yorkshire Dales, the Lake District, the West Highlands.”

Colin Cramphorn, the Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, says that the police need greater powers to combat the extremists’ efforts to radicalise young Muslims.

Mr Cramphorn, whose West Yorkshire force has played a leading role in the investigation into the July 7 bombings of London – the suicide bomber team was based on his patch – made his comments in an interview for The Spectator magazine.

Mr Cramphorn said: “Consider the training camps run in this country by the extremists. They’re not like IRA camps in Donegal where people are learning how to fire mortars. They’re actually pure indoctrination camps. It’s much more than just a few white-water-rafting trips in Wales.”

Mr Cramphorn, a former deputy chief constable of the RUC, voiced frustration at the extent of the authorities’ powers to combat such activities. He said that there might be lessons to be learned from the security and legal system evolved to tackle terrorism in Ulster. He added: “All we can do now is track them.”

Times, 12 August 2005

Update:  “The chief constable was using national parks as an analogy,” a West Yorkshire police spokeswoman explains. “He was not talking about camps as physical locations.”

Inayat Bunglawala on Bakri ban

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Omar Bakri“Bakri has been the source of an immense amount of frustration and dismay to Muslims ever since he came to these shores 20 years ago,” said Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB).

“With his very provocative language, he has contributed enormously to the demonisation of British Muslims. Far from being a leading Islamic jurist, he was not even the imam of any mosque. No mosque would have him apart from Finsbury Park. He is from the extreme fringe. Most Muslims would want nothing to do with him. He is derided by his peers for his half-baked ideas.

“He is someone who courted the media spotlight and now he has a symbiotic relationship with the tabloids. He didn’t have a platform before but now the tabloids have given him that platform. He is a very convenient bogeyman and they can use him to scare the pants off their readers.

“An example of how distorted his moral compass is that he said that if he knew of a planned attack he would not tell the police. The idea that Muslims cannot hand over a Muslim to a non-Muslim is absolute nonsense. There is a not a single verse in the Qur’an that suggests this. Quite the opposite, we are taught to be upholders of justice, preventing evil.

“No Muslim would shed any tears if he was not allowed back in because he has helped to create the climate of anger.”

But Mr Bunglawala said there should be caution on the issue of banning him as “there is a danger that it creates a precedent”.

Guardian, 13 August 2005

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