Are there some people we shouldn’t invite onto WHYS? « BBC World Have Your Say
Ros Atkins (presenter of BBC World Have Your Say) on how she booked Ed Husain to appear on her programme on the BBC World Service, only to have him pull out because a spokesman for Hizb-ut-Tahrir had also been invited. He also professed disgust that Dr Azzam Tamimi, a known Hamas sympathiser, was invited onto a panel discussion about the Middle East:
‘It’s fine for you to create nice comfortable conversations in your studio but I know the real impact. It can consolidate radical opinion. It offers publicuity and kudos. i can remember when I was in Hizb ut-Tahrir, we got a real kick whenever one of our guys got attention in the media.’
While I agree that unrepresentative extremists should not be given undue publicity at the expense of the community they claim to speak for (like Omar Bakri, and let us remember that Ed Husain was part of Omar Bakri’s HT and left around the same time), both HT and Hamas are substantial movements and it is ridiculous to shut them out of any discussion, because you then end up with half the picture. It is dishonest to then pretend that this is the whole, even if you tell yourself that the “decent” bit is all that matters.
Clearly Ed is not interested in debate at all, only in censorship. (Hat tip: MPACUK; more: Peace, Bruv.)
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I dont want groups like hizb tahrir or other extremists on TV, making out that they represent majority of muslims, they receive a lot of air time. Instead of focusing on the individual Ed Hussain, focus on what he is trying to achieve. He was on the Doha Debate for the BBC a few months ago and i agreed on everything he said, we need more Ed Hussain’s in this country.
This is yet another case of Ed Husain demonstrating just why he is unable to engage with those who he claims that he was a part of. Surely if he has so much inside info on HT then he should welcome being able to expose their folly live on air, this is precisely what the Quilliam Foundation manifesto itself claims to try and champion. So when the doors to dialogue with those who have incorrect understandings of Islam are opened up for Eddie Husain why does he refuse to enter them, yet boast to the whole (non-Muslim) world that he has strategies to counter their ideas?
This gets us to the point that many within the younger Muslim community have realised with this whole circus with Ed Husain, his claims are nothing short of the fables of a fantasist. An example of this is in his book The Islamist he claims that the murder of who he calls a “Nigerian student” was due to HT and Islamism, when the reality of the situation, as it involved people I know, was that the murder was related to gang violence. Yet in Ed Husain’s bizarre world, he managed to construe that it was due to Islamism.
Therefore, I remind about what Quilliam Foundation claim to uphold in their manifesto entitled ‘Pulling Together to Defeat Terrorism’, they claim on p.3 to want to ‘reach out to extremists’ but if Ed Husain has already run a mile at the mere thought of speaking to a member of HT (hardly one of your Abu Hamzas or Abdullah el-Faisal’s) then what about trying to engage with youth. Indeed, Ed Husain has no credibility with Muslim youth he only speaks at events for non-Muslims - he has yet to hold an event for a majority Muslim audience which would include those grassroots elements that he and Quilliam claim to want to reach out to.
As a result, I would suggest reading the Quilliam Foundation Manifesto entitled ‘Pulling Together to Tackle Extremism’ and compare it with these recent antics of Muhammad Mehbub ‘Ed’ Husain.