Via Pickled Politics, with their memorable headline "Labour lose brown person to Tories", someone I knew as a union activist at Aberystwyth has joined the Conservative party just months after standing against the party chairman, Francis Maude, in his home seat of Horsham in Sussex. I have to say I didn't know Mr Chishti that well at Aber, to the extent that I can't quite remember what position he held in the union, but I do remember him being around. I also remember that people misspelled his surname as "Christi" even back then, and the same mistake has been repeated now that he's made the news. Chishti refers to a town in Afghanistan (called Chisht) from which the Chishti Sufi order originated. The order has many followers in both India and Pakistan, and he may be descended from the order's originator Khwaja Moinuddeen Chishti, or maybe not. Anyway, his name's definitely not Christi.
Noticeably he cites the Labour party's more authoritarian turn even since 2005:
Mr Chishti says since standing as a Labour candidate in 2005, the party "has become far more authoritarian", particularly with its attempts to introduce a crime of glorifying terrorism.
"Being a practising barrister myself, I don't even know what that means, actually," he said.
Also at PP it's noted that a blogger claims he received a personal email from the sacked Sunday Telegraph Editor Sarah Sands claiming that she was fired because she published an article by Patrick Sookhdeo. The sacking is blamed on a campaign by bloggers, notably Islamophobia Watch, something on which they elaborate here. I can't imagine that this is the only reason she was sacked; as Peter Wilby points out in this week's New Statesman:
[Dominic] Lawson's Sunday Telegraph was at the heart of right-wing thinking. He was replaced by Sarah Sands, who presumably with management support, made it jollier and girlier - though she also signed Niall Ferguson, a Harvard professor who is almost the only right-wing columnist now worth reading. After less than nine months, Sands was fired. Her replacement, Patience Wheatcroft, the former Times business editor, is a serious Tory. The transformation is instant. Gone are the light headline typefaces that Sands favoured, the italicised standfirsts, the ragged setting on news stories. Gone, too, are the readers' letters on spanking which I have highlighted previously, and any frivolity in the news pages.
In other words, Sands wasn't seen as serious enough to edit a "serious Tory" paper. The redesign, by the way, was no great success either; I heard of it being mistaken on newsstands for a regional paper because of the new banner typeface. I can't imagine that Sands was fired just for the Sookhdeo piece because Dominic Lawson was not fired after publishing four far more inflammatory articles by "Will Cummins" in July 2004. In fact, Lawson has since become a columnist on the Independent! The Sookhdeo article that caused the controversy, anyway, was inaccurate, libellous even, but even if Lawson didn't get the push over Cummins, perhaps the Telegraph company no longer wanted to be seen as a natural home for madmen, bigots and ignoramuses?
Agree with you partly about Lawson/Sands - but different owners, different eras and different circumstances y'know. Whilst Lawson acted as a High Priest of the Far-Right Tory view, he was doing no more than acting as an elegant mouth-piece for Black and Amiel. Lawson's pet obsessions of Ulster, Christianity and (in my view at least) Israel were shared by the paper's owners.
In the post-Black era, I am not sure the Barclays would have gone for that sort of thing, and hence whilst Lawson could have gotten away with printing lies, Sands perhaps did not.
All that is of course pure speculation - Sands' departure may have nothing to do with Sokhdeo, but at the very least, the timing is interesting. If the problem was only that she had taken the paper more down-market, I am sure a strong talking to from the CEO or even the owners would have worked. After all, Sands could think she was merely doing the owners' bidding in making the ST more girly - she was listening to the Telegraph's own marketing and ad men, who wanted to change the paper's target demographic from crusty-old men (with little cash and lots to rant about) to energetic young women (with lots of cash and even more to spend it on!). To be fired for following the advice of the Marketing men appointed by the owner seems a tad unfair.
Yusuf,
Arent you a Tory? You know I am American brother and it is easy for me to be alienation from the Republican Party in my country because of all the religious politics they throw in the mix but the Tories seem comfortably secular yet socially traditional.
the Tories seem comfortably secular yet socially traditional
You forgot to add wonderfully bigoted and alarmingly racist :-)
Wait a minute!!! Is Bikhair an American brother or a Saudi sister?
Abu AbdurRahman,
You know my husband and I decided, InshaAllah that our third son would be named AbdurRahman. Its a great name.
Ok, I am speaking out of ignorance, are the Tories really racist in the same way the Republicans are racist? I am speaking about their economic and social policies, not particular people and their particular views within the party. If they are anti Immigration, well that is another issue we would have to separate from their traditional party platform.
George,
No and No, I am an American sister, with, what some might describe as a Saudi desposition.