Yes, another attempt by the Middle East Media Research Institute to stitch up Yusuf al-Qaradawi as an anti-semite.

It’s the usual cut and paste job, with paragraphs and even individual sentences taken out of a much longer speech and amalgamated. At least in this case MEMRI has actually provided ellipses which allow the reader to see how the thing has been chopped up and put back together, which is more than they did on a previous occasion. Even from MEMRI’s butchered version of Qaradawi’s speech it’s quite clear that his remarks – “Our war with the Jews is over land, brothers. We must understand this. If they had not plundered our land, there wouldn’t be a war between us” – are directed against Israelis, not against the world Jewish community. Just over a year ago, at a time when it was under pressure over its misrepresentation of Qaradawi, MEMRI published a much longer transcript of an interview in which he outlined his real views on Jews and Judaism.

Of course, this hasn’t prevented the warmongers at Harry’s Place from uncritically endorsing MEMRI’s latest stitch-up of Dr Q. Yet, only a few weeks ago, when MEMRI published an equally dishonest hatchet job on Tariq Ramadan, David T and his friends ignored this. The reason is rather obvious. Even Harry’s Place readers have posted favourable comments on Professor Ramadan during the Danish cartoons controversy, and a discussion of MEMRI’s distortion of his role would have exposed that organisation as the bunch of lying propagandists that they are, thus making it a bit difficult to present MEMRI as a reliable source of information on Qaradawi’s views.

But what can you expect from Harry’s Place? David T recently launched a witch-hunt against Christian CND treasurer Neil Berry, whom he falsely accused of writing anti-semitic articles. They were in fact written by an entirely different Neil Berry. But, what the heck, it was the same name, and that was good enough for David T. And this from a blog that claims to uphold Enlightenment values. You know, respecting scientific evidence rather than relying on irrational prejudice, that sort of thing.

I note that David Aaronovitch, who repeated David T’s slurs on Neil Berry in an article in the Jewish Chronicle, has also retracted and apologised.

Those great defenders of democracy over at Harry’s Place evidently dismiss the democratic right to protest when it’s Muslims who are exercising that right:

“This Danish cartoon business is rapidly turning into mainland Europe’s version of the Satanic Verses affair. Here’s how a man Ken Livingstone described as a moderate reacted yesterday to the escalating tension: ‘The wave of protest was triggered by Sheikh Yussef al-Qaradawi, head of the International Association of Muslim Scholars, who last night called on Muslims all over the world to observe ‘an international day of anger for God and his prophet’.”

Harry’s Place, 3 February 2006

Predictably, the right-wing press took the same line, referring to Qaradawi as a “leading hard-line Muslim cleric”.

Daily Telegraph, 3 February 2006

This would of course be the same Dr al-Qaradawi who has condemned violent demonstrations and called on Muslims to “express their anger in a prudent manner”.

See Islam Online, 6 February 2006

Followers of Islamophobia Watch will be familiar with Anthony Browne of “Islam really does want to conquer the world” notoriety, the man who was paid for an anti-immigration article by a right-wing US website. Well, Anthony has authored a new Civitas pamphlet entitled The Retreat of Reason, which attacks the scourge of political correctness. As you might expect, he repeats the endless right-wing refrain that multiculturalism has produced Muslim “ghettos” which in turn produced the July bombings in London.

See BBC News, 3 January 2006

Among the politically correct “myths” that Browne denounces is the view that anti-semitic attacks are carried out by white skinheads, whereas in reality (according to Browne) the perpetrators are young Muslims.

Civitas press release, 2 January 2006

And what is the source of Browne’s information? If you consult pp.12-13 of his pamphlet, you’ll find that it’s taken from a report entitled Manifestations of Anti-Semitism in the European Union commissioned by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, which the EUMC refused to distribute because of its unreliability. In his recently published book Beyond Chutzpah (p.35), Norman Finkelstein writes:

“the EUMC maintained that the report … was ‘biased’ and ‘lacking in empirical evidence’. EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana concurred that ‘it did not meet the criteria of consistency and quality of data’. In fact, the data assembled in the Manifestationsreport, the standards it used to measure anti-Semitism, and the conclusions it reached barely rose above the comical.”

Which hasn’t prevented Browne’s pamphlet being hailed by Melanie Phillips.

Postscript
Also worth noting are the following passages from Browne’s pamphlet:

“One of the most successful campaigns for victim status has been by Muslim groups in Britain, notably the Muslim Association of Britain, which increases its clout by inflating the number of Muslims in Britain by a million more than the official census, and by accusing anyone who tackles its extremist Islamist agenda of ‘Islamophobia’. Although it has a thoroughly oppressive agenda (supporting terrorism against innocent civilians, promoting the rights of husbands to beat their wives and the execution of gays), the MAB passes itself off as oppressed so convincingly that it has fooled the PC establishment, notably the Guardian, Independent and BBC, into promoting it unquestioningly” (p.43).

And further on: “Now, one of the biggest issues facing Britain is the rise of radical Islam among Britain’s growing Muslim communities. The politically correct response – and that of the British government – is to pander to Islamic militancy by, for example, curbing the freedom to debate Islam, creating tax-funded Islamic schools and campaigning for Muslim Turkey to be admitted as the biggest member of the European Union” (p.54).

But Browne is prepared to give credit where its due. He applauds “Peter Tatchell, a man of such uncompromising principles that he has infuriated many on the relativist left” – in particular with his hysterical campaign against Yusuf al-Qaradawi (p.25).