Indigo Jo Blogs

Charles Moore, well-known writer for the Telegraph and Spectator and known among us for articles like this one from 2005, calling for the Muslims to bring forward a Gandhi (my response here), gave a lecture to the Centre for Policy Studies Monday before last entitled "How to beat the Scargills of Islam". Arthur Scargill was the leader of the miners' union in the early 1980s who led a major, but unsuccessful, strike against coal mine closures; he is a byword, at least among British conservatives, for intransigent and unreasonable trade union behaviour. Moore's proposition appears to be that many of the alleged leaders of the Muslims in the UK today, like Scargill, have serious flaws in their legitimacy. You can read the lecture here (PDF) and an article based on it in the Spectator here.

Continue reading "Who are the "Scargills of Islam", then?" »

Posted by Indigo Jo at 7:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

muslimmatters.org » Tarek Fatah (and…) Does NOT Represent Me: Muslims 101 for Media

Muslim Matters (in this case Amad) on the media's insistence on relying on fringe figures for details of what is wrong with the Muslim community. In this country the most popular recently have been the Ed Husain set, and before that the so-called Sufi Muslim Council who even got a meeting with Ruth Kelly; in the USA and Canada, they have tended to be "liberal Muslims" with a clearly-expressed contempt for ordinary practising Muslims. He also has recommendations as to whom the media should talk to, who do represent the views of mainstream Muslims.

Posted by Indigo Jo at 6:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

David T today posted an alert at Harry's Place about an article at MPACUK calling on Muslims to expose 8 so-called Sufis who did the "research" on which the recent Policy Exchange report relied. Those involved were unable to comment for the Newsnight expose, which showed that some (but not all) of the receipts were not genuine, because they were on a religious retreat in Mauritania. MPACUK's tone is typically harsh:

You would have to be sitting in a darkened room repeating the name of Allah since 7/7 to be unaware that the new front against Muslims by the Government is being led by Sufi cults.

It's an old Russian trick, they used Sufi sects to pacify the Mujahadeen who were fighting for their freedom from occupation. These Sufi cults taught them to forget the world and be content sitting in darkened rooms repeating the name of Allah over and over and over again. The British used it in India too, creating groups who focused on every minor ritual and repeated the words 'no politics' over and over and over again...anyone guess who they are? ...

However as we have been reporting on this website, Newsnight uncovered that these Sufi researchers had in fact forged the receipts to prove the case.

These Sufi researchers then fled the country to Mauritania for what the Zio-Con think tank called 'religious purification'!

MPAC now wants to find out exactly who these Sufis are, who are working for the Zio-Con think tank. There were 8 Sufis who worked for them, and all apparently have gone abroad to hide while the storm is raging. They worked, according to Policy Exchange for over a year on the project, so some Muslim out there must have come into contact with them.

Who are they, what are their backgrounds ... MPACUK will dig deeper and expose every last detail of the Sufis who tried to destroy their own community.

Continue reading "Hunt down the Sufis?" »

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BBC - Radio 4 Woman's Hour - Ingrid Mattson

This is an interview I heard today while out driving; Ingrid Mattson (president of the Islamic Society of North America and the first female, first non-immigrant and first convert to hold that post) tells basically her life story, talks a bit about her new book "The Story of the Koran", and fields a few questions on Islam and what it offers women. The download is in Real format and will probably keep up for a week.

Posted by Indigo Jo at 10:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

To start off, now that it really is Eid and I've got the time and energy to type, Eid Mubarak everybody.

Anyway ...

All this Ramadan, I've been working on the assumption that today was going to be Eid, largely on the basis that moonsighting.com published their usual diagram of where the moon could be sighted last night. It was crystal clear - the moon could only be sighted clearly in one tiny corner of the south Pacific, and might be visible with instruments in the far south of South America, in the sparsely populated south of Chile and Argentina (where there are probably very few Muslims). It would have been fine by me if Eid was actually yesterday, because I could have done my driving job (delivering timber and heavy bags of powdered plaster and cement) on six hours of sleep rather than five, but then, fasting itself isn't meant to be easy or convenient, is it? (More: Ginny [1], [2], Muslim Apple, Svend White.)

Continue reading "A senseless Eid scandal" »

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Last night, Shiraz Maher, a friend of Ed Husain's who was also a member of Hizb-ut-Tahrir in England (much more recently), fronted a BBC Panorama documentary entitled "How I Became a Muslim Extremist". He made a lame attempt to demonstrate a link between the party and terrorism, but his lack of evidence for such a link was obvious. Towards the end, he brought on Ed Husain, alleging that his mobile number and family's address was posted on the internet and that there had been a smear campaign against them. The BBC have also published a statement from HT on their website.

Continue reading "Shiraz Maher fails to prove his point (again)" »

Posted by Indigo Jo at 1:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

MPACUK - MPACUK & HT Discuss Indonesia Caliphate Conference

This is a Google Video of a recent discussion on BBC News 24 between Zulfi Bukhari of MPACUK and Nazreen Nawaz of Hizb-ut-Tahreer, regarding the recent HT-organised conference in Indonesia. The discussion is about whether Islam is or isn't compatible with democracy; Dr Nawaz responds by raising the issue of whether democracy is really the only way of attaining accountable governance. Zulfi Bukhari says that HT have always been anti-western and anti-democratic, and favour a caliph elected for life.

(I should add that bringing democracy to the Muslim world faces a significant problem that nobody seems to address, preferring to accuse anyone who doesn't support doing so at gunpoint of thinking Arabs, or other Muslims, are undeserving or incapable of democracy, and are thus racist. Western democracy routinely empowers minorities, meaning political minorities - either by transforming the largest minority of votes - and sometimes not even that - into a majority of seats in the legislature, or by empowering minor parties to form coalitions with major ones in order to dominate the legislature. We have learned to live with this in the West; it can't be assumed that other peoples, Muslim or otherwise, would want to.)

Posted by Indigo Jo at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (1)

Technorati Tags: city+circle, ehsan+masood, independent+jewish+voices, MCB, muslim+council+of+britain, brian+klug, sunny+hundal

Last Friday night I went to a City Circle event in London entitled Independent Voices: Challenging the Myth of Monolithic Communities, addressed by two founders of dissenting ethnic organisations, namely Brian Klug of Independent Jewish Voices and Sunny Hundal of the New Generation Network (and Pickled Politics) as well as Ehsan Masood, who writes for Prospect magazine. The blurb read:

If there is a myth of a community monolith, whose interests does it serve? Politicians who want to outsource responsibility for dealing with diverse citizens by dealing with individual "community leaders" responsible for their own flock, expected to regulate themselves and their own problems. Or maybe "community leaders" benefit by promoting themselves and their own views by making everyone follow one particular line, and who may enact measures to silence or marginalise dissenting voices within their own communities. Or do those outside these communities who seek to stereotype and stigmatise them by saying they are all the same benefit most by this arrangement?

Or, or the other side of the argument, are these independent voices truly independent? Do they not merely reflect a dominant liberal consensus suspicious of difference? Do they serve to misconstrue community interests as always parochial and self-serving? Why are they often perceived or labelled as being "less religious" or "secular"? Do they have a positive agenda beyond criticising the parochial nature of community organisations? If dissent is often challenged within communities, what form does it take and is its power to marginalise overstated?

Continue reading "City Circle: Monolithic Communities" »

Posted by Indigo Jo at 7:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)