DOHA — Former Islamist Ed Husain felt the denial of a visa by the United Kingdom to Dr Yusuf Al Qaradawi, the well-known Islamic scholar based in Doha, was absolutely justified. Speaking to The Peninsula at the Four Seasons Hotel yesterday, Husain said: “He is a man who speaks two languages. There should be no exceptions in condemning the deaths of innocent people. When it comes to Jews, he thinks it is favourable to kill. It was right to refuse him a visa to the UK because his views have an audience there.”
Category Archives: UK
Tariq Ramadan – ‘dangerous radical’
“Fourest has rendered an invaluable service. She demonstrates with great skill that Ramadan is a dangerous radical who, far from modernizing Islam, is in fact attempting to Islamize modernity.”
Ibn Warraq reviews Caroline Fourest’s book Brother Tariq: The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan.
City Journal, 29 February 2008
Note that this English language edition of Fourest’s Frère Tariq is published in the UK by the right-wing think-tank the Social Affairs Unit and features an introduction by Labour MP Denis MacShane.
See also The Australian for the controversy over Tariq Ramadan’s current visit to Australia.
Update: The Australian has commissioned Mad Melanie Phillips to deliver a characteristic rant under the headline “Master of Islamist doublespeak“, which warns the people of Australia that Professor Ramadan is “probably the most dangerous Islamist in the Western world”!
See also “MP warns scholar on racist messages“.
‘Target Harry – British fanatics threaten him’
“Sneering Muslim fanatics labelled Prince Harry a target for assassins last night after his heroics against the Taliban.
“Harry’s perilous Army mission in Afghanistan was dismissed by British extremists as a mere publicity stunt. But they also claimed that by participating in an ‘illegal war’, the brave young Prince had made himself fair game for a terrorist attack.
“Tory MPs last night condemned the outpourings by three influential Islamic radicals as ‘highly irresponsible’. Andrew Rosindell, who represents Romford in Essex, said: ‘This is an appalling thing for them to say’.”
Who are these three “sneering Muslim fanatics”, I hear you ask. They’re Anjem Choudary, Omar Bakri … and Inayat Bunglawala! Along with a statement by Choudary, it’s a truncated quote from Inayat – “I am sure many Afghans opposed to the British presence will see him as a high-value target” – that provides the basis for the scaremongering headline.
The actual quotation, as reported in the Daily Telegraph, reads: “If he is still there I am sure many Afghans opposed to the British presence in Afghanistan will see him as a high-value target. We wish both him and his colleagues in the Army are brought back from Afghanistan out of harm’s way. The presence of foreign troops appears to be counter-productive, galvanising opposition.”
If I were Inayat, I’d sue.
Paintballs of terror
Inayat Bunglawala questions the conviction of the so-called paintball “terrorists”.
Nazir-Ali’s unsatisfying explanation
Yusuf Smith reports on an exchange of views with the Bishop of Rochester’s office.
Police to implement sharia law, claims Tory MP
Police will be trained on the importance of Sharia law and the Koran to Muslim communities, under new plans to fight extremism.
The lessons in Islamic faith and culture will become part of the formal training of constables working in towns and cities across the country. Chief constables say that – by understanding the community they are policing – officers will build better relationships.
These could prove crucial in rooting out extremism and preventing a terrorist attack, according to the Association of Chief Police Officers.
But critics have described the plan as “politically correct thinking”. Philip Davies, Conservative MP for Shipley, said: “Police officers are not there to implement Sharia law. They are there to implement British law. This idea is misguided. We will only get community cohesion when everybody signs up to being British and following British law.”
‘Respect brings people together’
A Muslim leader has opposed comments by Tory leader David Cameron in a speech in which he said the introduction of Sharia law would undermine British society. Speaking on the issue for the first time since the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, made his controversial comments, Mr Cameron said adopting elements of Sharia law would lead to a “legal apartheid” and “state multiculturalism”. Ishtiaq Ahmed also criticised Mr Cameron’s understanding of multiculturalism.
Mr Ahmed, of the Bradford Council of Mosques, said: “In a country where people feel free to be able to live according to their ways of life while sharing certain basic values, then I think that enables people to contribute to – and take ownership of – their community. If society respects people’s cultural identities, values and heritage, it brings people together and creates an atmosphere of co-operation and support.”
Councillor Martin Smith, Bradford Council’s executive member for community safety, said: “Mr Cameron may feel like that if he is not in day-to-day contact with the situation, but those of us in Bradford who are in day-to-day contact with the Asian community feel there is a great understanding of where the situation needs to go. It’s not possible to say multiculturalism is not working in Bradford.”
Warming up old food
Five Chinese Crackers debunks the Mail‘s recycled “Muslim medics refuse to roll up their sleeves in hygiene crackdown” story.
Britain sent hundreds to face torture
Britain sent hundreds to face torture
By Louise Nousratpour
Morning Star, 26 February 2008
FORMER SAS soldier Ben Griffin revealed yesterday that British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan were “deeply involved” in US torture flights.
Since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, British special forces, operating in a joint US/UK task force, have been responsible for the detention of “hundreds, if not thousands” of individuals, he said. These detainees have since ended up in Baghdad’s infamous Abu Ghraib prison, Guantanamo Bay and other secret CIA locations.
“During my time as member of the US/UK task force, three of my colleagues witnessed a brutal interrogation in which near-drowning and electric cattle prods were used,” Mr Griffin told a Stop the War Coalition press conference. “The special forces’ policy of detention and not arrest was regarded as a clumsy legal tool used to distance British soldiers from the whole process. But my colleagues and I were in no doubt that anyone we detained, including non-combatants, would subsequently be tortured.”
Last week, Foreign Secretary David Miliband admitted to MPs that two US rendition flights transporting terror suspects had landed on British soil. But Mr Griffin said that this “pales into insignificance” to the actions of British forces, adding: “For the government to claim that they only became aware of the use of British territory this week is disingenuous.”
He rejected claims that the British army had acted as a bulwark against US torture in Iraq and Afghanistan, arguing: “In my experience, the opposite is true – that British soldiers have become more like their US counterparts. The British army has accepted illegality as the norm.”
Sharia law ‘would undermine British society’ – Cameron
Muslim Sharia law would undermine society if it was introduced in Britain, Conservative leader David Cameron said today. Mr Cameron said it would in fact lead to a “legal apartheid”. He added that “state multiculturalism” was also the wrong way to tackle integration.
He said: “I don’t believe that by introducing Sharia law, we will make Muslims somehow feel more British – more content with life here and more happy to work for a common good.
“In my view the opposite is the case: I think it would be to head in the wrong direction. The reality is that the introduction of Sharia law for Muslims is actually the logical endpoint of the now discredited doctrine of state multiculturalism instituting, quite literally, a legal apartheid to entrench what is the cultural apartheid in too many parts of our country.
“This wouldn’t strengthen society – it would undermine it. It would alienate other communities who would resent this preferential treatment. It would provide succour to the separatists who want to isolate and divide communities from the mainstream. And it would – crucially – weaken, destabilise and demoralise those Muslims who embrace liberal values and desperately want to integrate fully in British society.”
Speaking alongside Trevor Phillips, the chairman of Equality and Human Rights Commission, Mr Cameron attacked the Government’s idea of multiculturalism. He said:
“I believe that state multiculturalism is a wrong-headed doctrine that has had disastrous results. It has fostered difference between communities. And it has stopped us from strengthening our collective identity. Indeed, it has deliberately weakened it. By concentrating on defining the various cultures that have come to call Britain home, we have forgotten to define the most important one: our own. So we now have a situation where the children of first-generation immigrants – children, let us remember, who have been born and raised here – feel more divorced from life in Britain than their parents.”
Daily Telegraph, 26 February 2008
See also the Guardian, 26 February 2008
Full text of Cameron’s speech here