Mr Blair's Muslim advisers

[Adrian II]

Last Sunday The Times reported that advisers appointed by Tony Blair after the London bombings have proposed to him to scrap the Jewish Holocaust Memorial Day because it is offensive to Muslims. Apparently, they want to replace it with a Genocide Day that would recognise the mass murder of Muslims in Palestine, Chechnya and Bosnia as well as people of other faiths. It seems that Sir Iqbal Sacranie, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, is backing the proposal.

Now The Telegraph is reporting that another adviser of Blair, Mr Ahmad Thomson of the Association of Muslim Lawyers, thinks the Prime Minister has fallen victim to a ‘sinister group of Jews and Freemasons’. According to Mr Thomson, ‘pressure was put on Tony Blair before the invasion [of Iraq]. The way it works is that pressure is put on people to arrive at certain decisions. It is part of the Zionist plan and it is shaping events.’ The paper also reports that Mr Thomson wrote a book in 1994 in which he said Freemasons and Jews controlled the governments of Europe and America and described the claim that six million Jews died in the Holocaust as a ‘big lie’.

With these advisers, does Mr Blair need any terrorists at all?

[English assassin]

Alas, this is the same Sir Iqbal Sacranie, knighted because he was the acceptable face of moderate Islam, who said of Salman Rushdie that death was in many ways too easy for him.

Yes, we are in trouble.

[Geoffrey S]

Yeah, I caught these in the Telegraph.

Last Sunday The Times reported that advisers appointed by Tony Blair after the London bombings have proposed to him to scrap the Jewish Holocaust Memorial Day because it is offensive to Muslims. Apparently, they want to replace it with a Genocide Day that would recognise the mass murder of Muslims in Palestine, Chechnya and Bosnia as well as people of other faiths. It seems that Sir Iqbal Sacranie, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, is backing the proposal.

I can vaguely see some sort of logic to this. "The message of the Holocaust was ‘never again’, and for that message to have practical effect on the world community it has to be inclusive. We can never have double standards in terms of human life." Sounds okay to me, but these advisors blow any credibility out of the water by tying this proposal to some perceived anti-Muslim bias. I do however believe that there are many other cases of genocide which need to be publicly recognized, which could be achieved by a day (or preferably a week) dedicated to showing the various forms of genocide performed in the past and present; purely using such a proposal to bash Jews as these advisors are doing is most certainly not appropriate.

The statement by Thomson is clearly ludicrous. What a man like that is doing advising the prime minister is anyone's guess.

[Proletariat]

McCarthy piles on.

Meanwhile, the Guardian reported last week that the 7/7 attacks appear only to have strengthened the resolve of those in Blair's government hell-bent on a strategy of "engagement" with militant Islam — gripped by the delusion that such cross-pollination will eventually transform the jihadists rather than sustain the alarming transformation of England itself. Thus they are moving toward approval of a visa allowing the reentry of Shiekh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an influential Mulsim Brotherhood cleric (and a trustee of the Oxford University Center for Islamic Studies) who supports suicide bombers in Iraq and Israel, the stoning of homosexuals, wife-beating, female genital mutilation, and other charming aspects of the Islamist agenda.

It's a good thing the Brits are only "tackling" extremism. Who knows what they would do if they decided to start promoting it?

http://www.nationalreview.com/mccart...0509120806.asp

[King Ragnar]

Gah Muslims trying to tell us British how to run or country, what a joke the government has turned into. It should only be British people allowed to have any say in how our country is run.

[Dâriûsh]

If this Iqbal Sacranie actually supported the Fatwa on Salman Rushdie, why then has he not been sacked? Such a man should certainly not hold such an important post.

Gah Muslims trying to tell us British how to run or country, what a joke the government has turned into. It should only be British people allowed to have any say in how our country is run.

If they are citizens, are they not British too? Or does citizenship only apply to white Protestants?

[King Ragnar]

I am not relgious nor did i say anything about colour of skin, i just beleive it is wrong that they are trying to change our ways they are guest in my country and should respect everyone and thing and learn the way of our culture.

[GoreBag]

They're not guests. They're as British as you are.

[King Ragnar]

They're not guests. They're as British as you are.

Your joking right?

[Taffy_is_a_Taff]

NeonGod:
Other than holding citizenship (and thus being able to say you are "British"), does Britishness not imply certain cultural traits that are not automatically displayed by every Tom, Dick and Harry who aquires a passport?

[Adrian II]

If this Iqbal Sacranie actually supported the Fatwa on Salman Rushdie, why then has he not been sacked? Such a man should certainly not hold such an important post.

More importantly, who does he represent? According to Rushdie, who is putting up a fine fight at the moment (he just has another great op-ed in The Times), Mr Sacranie is totally irrelevant in the bigger frame of British islam.

[Adrian II]

McCarthy piles on.

It is a pity he calls Tariq Ramadan some ugly names mainly because on account of his father who was a co-founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood has gone through changes, and so has Mr Ramadan. I have spoken to him on several occasions and he seemed quite OK to me.

As for his father, well, as John Kennedy used to say: 'We all have fathers, don't we?' And John Kennedy could know because he had one mother of a father. Eh wait... that can't be right...

Never mind...

Psst.. that Mr McCarthy himself doesn't happen to be the son of.. you know?...

[Dâriûsh]

More importantly, who does he represent? According to Rushdie, who is putting up a fine fight at the moment (he just has another great op-ed in The Times), Mr Sacranie is totally irrelevant in the bigger frame of British islam.

He is chairman of the MCB. That means his words and actions still carry weight. And that is dangerous when he displays such an attitude towards free speech.

Maybe he uttered that nonsense to appease the Al-Muhajiroun.

[Adrian II]

He is chairman of the MCB. That means his words and actions still carry weight. And that is dangerous when he displays such an attitude towards free speech.

I know, but Rushdie would contend that the MCB does not really represent anyone either. Of course hate speech remains hate speech, even from the mouth of a (hypothetically) isolated Iqbal.

[GoreBag]

NeonGod:
Other than holding citizenship (and thus being able to say you are "British"), does Britishness not imply certain cultural traits that are not automatically displayed by every Tom, Dick and Harry who aquires a passport?

Passport? No. Being born and raised there? Yes.

[sharrukin]

His maternal grandfather, an Egyptian, is Hassan Al-Banna, who in 1929 founded the Muslim Brotherhood, the most important Islamist movement of the twentieth century. His father, an exile in Geneva, was one of its most active promoters. And his brother Hani – with whom Tariq denies having connections – directs, also in Geneva, an Islamic center accused of contact with the terrorist network of Al-Qaeda...

"I then came back to Geneva and completed a PhD in Arabic and Islamic Studies. The focus was on Islamic Reformism, with special reference to Hasan al-Banna. This formed the basis of my book, Aux Sources de Renouveau Musulman (To the Sources for Muslim Revival). That said, my first teacher was my father." Tariq Ramadan

His text was so unequivocally favorable to Hassan Al-Banna that the professors of the nearby university of Fribourg, refused to grant him a diploma. Tariq then had himself admitted to the university of Geneva, where a jury from the Faculty of Letters grantrd him a doctorate.

He has praised the brutal Islamist policies of the Sudanese politician Hassan Al-Turabi. Mr. Turabi in turn called Mr. Ramadan the "future of Islam." Hassan Al-Turabi hosted Osama bin Laden and was the mentor of Al-Qaeda’s strategist, the Egyptian Ayman Al-Zawahiri.

French counterintelligence officers had grown so suspicious of Hani and Tariq Ramadan's surreptitious links with the Brotherhood that both, being Swiss subjects, were refused visas to enter France in 1996 on suspicion of having links with an Algerian Islamist who had recently initiated a terrorist campaign in Paris.

Ahmed Brahim, an Algerian indicted for Al-Qaeda activities, had "routine contacts" with Mr. Ramadan, according to a Spanish judge (Baltasar Garzón) in 1999. As part of an investigation into an Al-Qaeda cell in Spain, he was named as one of the “usual contacts” for Ahmed Brahim, considered to be one of Al-Qaeda’s treasurers indicted in April 2002 by magistrate Garzon.

Djamel Beghal, leader of a group accused of planning to attack the American embassy in Paris, stated in his 2001 trial that he had studied Tariq Ramadan. This took place in 1994 and Tariq Ramadan claimed that he didn't begin teaching until 1997 however;

- Péril islamiste? (with Alain Gresh) (Complexe, 1995)
- Islam, le face à face des civilisations, Quel projet pour quel modernité? (Les deux Rives, 1995, 2000)
- Les musulmans dans la laïcité, responsabilités et droits des musulmans dans les sociétés occidentales (Tawhid, 1994, 2001)

Along with nearly all Islamists, Mr. Ramadan has denied that there is "any certain proof" that Bin Laden was behind 9/11.

He publicly refers to the Islamist atrocities of 9/11, Bali, and Madrid as "interventions," minimizing them to the point of near-endorsement.

Intelligence agencies suspect that Mr. Ramadan (along with his brother Hani) coordinated a meeting at the Hôtel Penta in Geneva for Ayman al-Zawahiri, deputy head of Al-Qaeda, and Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheikh, now in a Minnesota prison. Hani Ramadan, an Islamist theoretician who endorses stoning for adultery and considers AIDS to be a divine punishment from god. Paris daily Le Monde ("The Ill-Understood Sharia") Hani Ramadan stated that the stoning of adulterous women was fully justified "not only as a punishment, but as a purification." Tariq Ramadan was asked by France's minister of the interior, Nicolas Sarkozy, if he approved of his brother's stance. He suggested a “total and absolute moratorium, to give us the time to go back to our fundamental texts… and to determine precisely the necessary conditions”.

Mr. Ramadan's address appears in a register of Al Taqwa Bank, an organization the State Department accuses of supporting Islamist terrorism.

Asked by the Italian magazine Panorama if the killing of civilians is right, Mr. Ramadan unambiguously responded that "In Palestine, Iraq, Chechnya, there is a situation of oppression, repression and dictatorship. It is legitimate for Muslims to resist fascism that kills the innocent."

Ramadan wrote the magazine, alleging that it misquoted him. Unfortunately for Ramadan, the interview with him was taped. So he is clearly willing to lie when it suits his purposes.

“Taqiyya” is the religiously-sanctioned doctrine, with its origins in Shi’a Islam but now practiced by non-Shi’a as well, of deliberate dissimulation about religious matters that may be undertaken to protect Islam, and the Believers.

As an advisor he doesn't really seem like the wisest choice, and if he was Christian or Jewish, he wouldn't have a snowballs chance in Hades of being considered for such a post!

[Marcellus]

Passport? No. Being born and raised there? Yes.

Exactly. The idea that all British muslims are completely alien to our culture and are generally outsiders is quite simply absurd.

[Adrian II]

Along with nearly all Islamists, Mr. Ramadan has denied that there is "any certain proof" that Bin Laden was behind 9/11.

Yes, I recognize all the usual nonsense about Ramadan. Bad research, paranoid conclusions.

I picked out this particular accusation because it has been used over and over in the U.S. on the authority of people like Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes, who is fervently pro-Israel and therefore has an axe to grind with Ramadan.

His evidence that Ramadan denies Bin Laden's culpability for 9/11 consists of an interview given by Ramadan and published on 22 September, 2001. That was just over a week after the Twin Towers attack, a time when nobody could claim to know exactly what went on and western intelligence services, including the Americans, were groping for information.

Here is the original text as published by that magazine, the village paper La Gruyère. Shall we translate together, Sharrukin? Close your ears, children, for you are about to hear the hate-filled words of an islamist lunatic...

Ben Laden est-il bien le principal responsable des récentes attaques contre New York?

Tariq Ramadan: Jusqu’à maintenant, les enquêteurs n’ont pas apporté de preuves définitives et claires de sa culpabilité. La probabilité est grande, mais quelques questions demeurent sans réponse: la différence entre l’extrême sophistication en amont et le cumul des maladresses après l’attentat est impressionnante. Pourquoi laisser de pareilles traces et ne pas revendiquer ces attentats? Il y a encore trop d’incohérences pour que l’on puisse déjà désigner définitivement les coupables. Mais quels qu’ils soient, Ben Laden ou un autre, il faut qu’on les trouve et qu’on les juge.

Translation:

Is Bin Laden indeed the prime suspect of the recent attacks against New York?

Tariq Ramadan: Until now detectives have not brought definitive and clear evidence of his responsability. It is highly probable, but some questions remain unanswered: the contrast between the extreme sophistication before and the cumulation of blunders after the attack is impressive. Why leave such traces and yet not claim the attack? There are still too many incoherences for us to point conclusively at the perpetrators at this stage. But whoever they are, Bin Laden or someone else, it is necessary that they are found and put on trial.

[Navaros]

With these advisers, does Mr Blair need any terrorists at all?

the implication of your original post seems to be that Mr. Blair's "Muslim Advisers' should not actually be Koran-believing Muslims, but instead they should be yes-men who claim to be Muslim despite the fact that they do not care at all about what the Koran truly says.

i respect that for once there are Muslim Advisers who are not yes-men like that

of course Blair will probably just keep replacing them until he does get such yes-men. that's obviously his only purpose in having "Muslim Advisers". he does not care about Muslims. it's just a PR stunt.

[Adrian II]

the implication of your original post seems to be that Mr. Blair's "Muslim Advisers' should not actually be Koran-believing Muslims, but instead they should be yes-men who claim to be Muslim despite the fact that they do not care at all about what the Koran truly says.

Tariq Ramadan is also a Blair adviser and a Quran scholar. The so-called Quran-believers that you are so fond of might take a leaf from Mr Ramadan's views on the Quran and anti-semitism:

To my regret, anti-Semitic utterances have been heard not only from frustrated and confused young Muslims, but also from certain Muslim intellectuals and imams, who in every crisis or political backsliding see the hand of the `Jewish lobby.' There is nothing in Islam that gives legitimization to Judeophobia, xenophobia and the rejection of any human being because of his religion or the group to which he belongs. Anti-Semitism has no justification in Islam, the message of which demands respect for the Jewish religion and spirit, which are considered a noble expression of the People of the Book.
[..]
The social and political forces in the Muslim communities must act to educate toward the delegitimization of elements of anti-Semitism. Leaders and imams have the responsibility to disseminate an unequivocal message about the profound connections between Islam and Judaism and Islam's recognition of Moses and the Torah. Despite what is happening today in Israel and Palestine, despite [Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon's policy, despite the feelings of anger and frustration - those responsible for all the Muslim political and social organizations must open a clear dialogue that distinguishes between criticism of Israel's policy, and anti-Semitic and Judeophobic statements and actions. This is lacking today and this is a great responsibility.

Source: Ramadan in 2002 in Haaretz

[sharrukin]

Yes, I recognize all the usual nonsense about Ramadan. Bad research, paranoid conclusions.

I picked out this particular accusation because it has been used over and over in the U.S. on the authority of people like Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes, who is fervently pro-Israel and therefore has an axe to grind with Ramadan.

It is not only the US who is saying these things but many French scholars and French intelligence agencies as well. His connections to extremist groups is entirely too close for him to be the best choice as an advisor to a head of state.

Why is in not possible to find an actual moderate muslim advisor? The definition of a moderate muslim seems to be one who doesn't actually carry out terrorist attacks. That seems to be part of a rather low opinion of muslims in general. There ARE moderate muslims and we do a disservice to them by pandering to more extreme groups.

This guy if he was an advisor to Bush and a Christian with a similar attitude would be just as unacceptable.

[Adrian II]

It is not only the US who is saying these things but many French scholars and French intelligence agencies as well. His connections to extremist groups is entirely too close for him to be the best choice as an advisor to a head of state.

Scholars and intelligence agencies my foot. Here is Ramadan's point by point refutation.

Ramadan is the sort of person we need in this situation, one who can build bridges yet is not afraid to speak his mind.

[PanzerJaeger]

Hehe, a Genocide Day? Jewish Freemason conspiracies? Holocaust denials? And these are supposed to be moderate muslims?

After the attacks, why in the world would he let muslims influence him?

[Adrian II]

Hehe, a Genocide Day? Jewish Freemason conspiracies? Holocaust denials? And these are supposed to be moderate muslims?

After the attacks, why in the world would he let muslims influence him?

Remember that the selfsame Sacranie said in 1989 that 'death is too easy' for Salman Rushdie. But the shoe is on the other foot these days and Rushdie is on a roll. Has anybody read his new novel Shalimar the Clown yet? Read it. Anyway, as Rushdie wrote some weeks ago in a scorching op-ed in The Telegraph: 'If Sir Iqbal Sacranie is the best Blair can offer in the way of a good Muslim, we have a problem. The Sacranie case illustrates the weakness of the Blair government’s strategy of relying on traditional, but essentially orthodox, Muslims to help eradicate Islamist radicalism.'

[Beirut]

Panzer,

Your PM box is full, so I have to ask you here to edit your comment about Muslims, it does not comply with Org. rules.

Thank you.

[Proletariat]

Whoops, nevermind.

[Proletariat]

It is a pity he calls Tariq Ramadan some ugly names mainly because on account of his father who was a co-founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood has gone through changes, and so has Mr Ramadan. I have spoken to him on several occasions and he seemed quite OK to me.

I don't know much about him, but I'm looking forward to you and sharrukin sorting it out.

As for his father, well, as John Kennedy used to say: 'We all have fathers, don't we?' And John Kennedy could know because he had one mother of a father. Eh wait... that can't be right...

How far does apple fall, again?

Psst.. that Mr McCarthy himself doesn't happen to be the son of.. you know?...

Touche! (But seriously, who knows. I was wondering in which way that would be brought up.)

[Strike For The South]

Wow what hiphopocrsy take out the holiday for the jews becuase its offensive but put ours in there becuase were represed

[Incongruous]

I think the message some people are trying to get across is.

If you come to live in Britain, you are expected to accept it's society and history. I believ that, if you were born in Britain you are British among all other titles, to not be so is slapping the rest of Britain in the face and saying "thanks for allowing me to grow up in your society and recieving this education, thanks for giving me a job. But well, I feel more Pakistani (or wherever their family derives from) than British so I am going to start to mouth off about what's wrong with Britain, how much it neglects minorities".
I'm sorry but this sort of thing deos not stand, the fact is that immigranst and first generation Brits should be bloody thankful they live in the country and are not at the monent being shot in soem god awfull third world nation.

I am not immigrant bashing (my mother has no British blood in her) but sometimes some of the things that are said annoy me.

[Devastatin Dave]

My, my, quite a bit of intolerance here, especially coming from our usual preachers of tolerance. My, my...

BTW Beirut, how much editing will be required for all the folks that continuosly slam Christians? Suprise, suprise, there is only one religion that is allowed to be criticised, but you can't touch the sacred cow (no offence to any Hindus) Islam.