Indigo Jo Blogs

Technorati Tags: ghayasuddin siddiqui, quilliam foundation, islamism

Last week the Quilliam Foundation, a think-tank founded by Ed Husain and his acolyte Maajid Nawaz, held its grand launch event at the British Museum in London. It was entitled "Reviving Western Islam & Uniting Against Extremism", and attended by, among other people, Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, Jemima Khan, Timothy Garton Ash, Dr Usama Hasan, Shaikh Abdul-Aziz Bukhari, Dr Musharraf Hussain of Nottingham (a prominent and fairly moderate Bareilawi imam), and Rachel North, a prominent survivor of the 2005 London bombings. All the speeches, and the question-and-answer session afterwards, are now available to be watched online. The first speech after the introduction was by Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, and I intend to concentrate on that here. (More: Abu Eesa.)

Continue reading "Challenging the future with a profound lack of history" »

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Before the week begins in earnest, I thought I might offer a round-up of stories which caught my eye the past week:

Stuart Jeffries in the Guardian on the stupid, racist gibberish which has followed the discovery of the woman and her children in the cellar in Austria. Some nonsense has been printed about how there must be something rotten in the Austrian psyche or something like that, probably derived from its wartime record, and the perpetrator himself tried to blame his "sickness" on growing up under Hitler. In fact, Austria was ruled by the Nazis for only seven years, compared to Germany's twelve, so you would expect a plethora of such cases to have appeared in Germany, but no. There have been just two cases, involving about a handful of perpetrators out of several million. What does such a thing about any population?

Hassan Butt has been busted. At last, also, the Observer acknowledges that there are critics of Hassan Butt who are not fanatics issuing threats to his life. They print that some people think Butt is a fantasist or was an MI5 informer; my theory is that he turned tail when times got tough for an extremist.

Yet another alleged adviser to the Quilliam Foundation, Shaikh Babikr Ahmad (the imam at Islamia school), turns out to have nothing to do with them.

Continue reading "Round-up: Austria, Hassan Butt, Julian Baggini in Rotherham, life in Yemen" »

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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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An unusually perceptive Ziauddin Sardar finally delivers a dissenting view of the media's lionising of "Sir Edward Husain" and his clique in today's Guardian, on the grounds that it ignores those who always resisted falling into the hands of the extremists:

The embrace of former extremists is a slap in the face for Muslims who have worked tirelessly to build a British Muslim identity and foster inclusion by constructive community activity. It's another attempt at the marginalisation of the overwhelming majority who never had a moment's doubt that Islam gives no sanction for such murderous and misguided perversion of belief.

I am troubled by the fact that former extremists are seen as the only people who know how to deal with extremism. Just because you have been an inmate of a mental hospital does not mean you are an expert in clinical psychology. But former extremists are being lionised because they confirm the basic tabloid prejudice that violence is a natural part of being a Muslim. So whose ignorance is being vindicated? Certainly the potential of an open, unapologetic belief in Islam as a valuable part of British society is not on the agenda.

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Technorati Tags: ed husain, andrew anthony, david edgar

The key name, here I think, is that of Ed Husain.

If you can really view someone who leaves an imperialist, anti-semitic, anti-democratic, ultra-religious party like Hizb ut-Tahrir and comes out in favour of democracy and religious tolerance as a defector moving rightwards, then it shows your political - not to mention, moral - compass is in urgent need of repair.

Continue reading "What don't people get about Ed Husain?" »

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The last couple of weeks there has been a controversy over a new book being co-written by Hassan Butt, former al-Muhajiroun activist and self-proclaimed terrorist fixer and fundraiser, and the British writer and "journalist" Shiv Malik. The two were hoping to tell the world about Butt's exploits in Pakistan after the 9/11 atrocities; the police had other ideas, and demanded that Malik hand over the unfinished manuscript. Nick Cohen hailed the two as "persecuted peacemakers" in this article for the Observer the Sunday before last. Some of us, however, are not so convinced by Butt's turn-around.

Continue reading "How sincere is Hassan Butt?" »

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Ed Husain showed up again in last Sunday's Observer (which I have finally got round to blogging after three days of early starts and long driving shifts), blowing the trumpet for an Egyptian preacher called Moez Masoud. I've not heard of him, but the English section of his website is full of links to well-known modern-traditionalist sites like Mas'ud Khan's and Zaytuna, and writings sourced from Shaikh Hamza Yusuf, Habib Ali Jifri and Abdul-Hakim Murad. Since I know little about him, I cannot comment on his standing but I do want to comment on what Ed himself says about him.

Continue reading "No great courage" »

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Abdullah Quilliam: Britain’s First Islamist? at Yahya Birt

Yahya Birt demolishes the attempt to rebrand Abdullah Quilliam, the pioneer British Muslim of the Victorian era, as some sort of mascot for the pacified "British Islam" being promoted by Ed Husain. Quilliam was, in fact, pro-Ottoman - i.e. in favour of retaining the caliphate as it existed - and opposed to British colonialism, and was hated and attacked by the bigots of his day (in Liverpool) rather than embraced, as Ed and his chums are.

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Sunday Telegraph:Bishop right to tackle no-go area in our minds

Ed Husain (who else?) has given the "Muslim response" to Michael Nazir-Ali's diatribe in last Sunday's Telegraph, alleging that no-go areas have appeared in various cities "where adherence to this ideology [of Islamic extremism] has become a mark of acceptability". Husain does not altogether agree with Nazir-Ali's thesis, but does not give the robust response the piece required.

Continue reading "Ed Husain on Nazir-Ali's "no-go" nonsense" »

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Technorati Tags: gillian gibbons

Last Thursday morning, Ed Husain and Massoud Shadjareh (of the Islamic Human Rights Commission) appeared on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 - you can download it until next Wednesday here (Real). It is obviously disappointing to hear them invite Ed Husain because of his total lack of authority other than having recently had a book published. The performance of Massoud Shadjareh, when pushed by the interviewer John Humphries, also left a lot to be desired. (More: Ummah Pulse.)

Continue reading "Today programme embarrassment" »

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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)" »

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