Gary Monro’s blog

The Daily Ablution blog uncovered this story.

One of The Guardian’s trainee reporters - Dilpazier Aslam- is a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an extremist Muslim organisation banned all over the world (except in Labour’s Britain, of course).

The Daily Ablution has lots of comment on this - go take a look. I’ll just quote from The Independent which is now twisting the knife itself:

The Guardian newspaper is refusing to sack one of its staff reporters despite confirming that he is a member of one of Britain’s most extreme Islamist groups.

Late on Friday The Guardian released a statement to The Independent on Sunday saying: “Dilpazier Aslam is a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an organisation which is legal in this country.

So’s the BNP. When is their mole starting work on The Guardian, I wonder?

Here’s one of Hizb ut-Tahrir’s more recent escapades - this took place during the May election and is reported in This Is London:

The bitter election battle in the East End has spilled into violence, with extremist Muslims and anti-war protesters targeting George Galloway and Oona King.

Fighting broke out when Muslim fundamentalists tried to interrupt one of Galloway’s meetings, saying voting was un-Islamic. Not for them a few tuts and raised eye-brows though.

The men said they were angry at Mr Galloway’s attempt to woo Muslim voters. They said they were “setting up the gallows” for him and warned any Muslim who voted for his anti-war Respect party that they faced a “sentence of death”.

Galloway spoke to The Standard a few minutes after the attack:

“I was meeting people who live in the flats. Hizb-ut-Tahrir suddenly filled the room and blocked the door. I tried speaking calmly. They then said I was parading as a false prophet and served a sentence of death on me. They were claiming I was representing myself as a false deity and for this apostasy I would be sentenced to the gallows,” he said.

“They said they were setting up the gallows for me. Thank God my daughter was not with me. She was in the car outside. Otherwise there would have been nobody to call the police. The police saved my life.”

So this is the kind of organisation Mr Aslam associates with and this is the kind of person The Guardian employs. Some of Aslam’s writing in The Guardian is an apologist’s view of the London massacre. He starts his article by saying

I think what happened in London was a sad day and not the way to express your political anger.

A more underwhlemed expression of anger, dismay or condemnation you couldn’t imagine. Then his true feelings are displayed thus:

Second- and third-generation Muslims are without the don’t-rock-the-boat attitude that restricted our forefathers. We’re much sassier with our opinions, not caring if the boat rocks or not.

The don’t-rock-the-boat attitude of elders doesn’t mean the agitation wanes; it means it builds till it can be contained no more.

The Guardian - who would never dream of having a trainee BNP-supporting journalist on its staff (or somebody like me for that matter) - is keeping its mouth shut on the situation - the story is not being run in its own paper. In the meantime, they give a mouthpiece to the very kind of person that British Muslims are now starting realise they could do a lot better without.

The Independent says:

One [Guardian] source said: “There was a feeling that we genuinely wanted more diversity, and like all national newspapers we were still a bit ‘pale and male’ so we were keen to recruit from different backgrounds.”

Wonderful. If you were to complain your working environment was a bit too brown and female so you’re looking particularly to employ some white men you’d be slowly and painfully executed.

In the meantime, we watch to see what - if anything - the Guardian intends to do about this man.

There were already questions about whether the bombers were actually suicide bombers. Reuters has chipped in - with their own hat tip to The Mirror newspaper - with a report that says the police here aren’t using the word ’suicide’ to describe the bombers. I’m going to pay closer attention to the language the police use but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re keeping their options open.

The Daily Mirror report said several factors cast doubt on the suicide theory — two of the men had pregnant wives, they did not carry the explosives strapped to their bodies, and they bought return rail tickets from Luton to London.

I heard elsewhere they even bought parking tickets for their cars at Luton station. But it’s the lack of suicide notes - either religious rants or else something for their loved ones - that really puzzles.

It also makes one wonder about the charges the masterminds will face if they’re ever caught. I assume they’ll be charged with being accessories to murder with regards to the innocents that were slaughtered in London. If it transpires though that they deceived the bombers, telling them they were merely planting the bombs when, in fact, they would die in the explosions then surely they’ll receive murder charges for the actual killings of the bombers?

It’ll make an interesting trial. I hope we get to see it…

That nice Yusuf al-Qaradawi is coming back to England. The man who regards suicide attacks as “the highest form of Jihad” spent time as Red Ken’s special guest last year, upsetting all sorts of people. This year he’s coming to Manchester for a conference.

The Americans have already banned him from their country. Apart from their refusal to see suicide attacks as the highest form of Jihad they’re miffed about his ‘cyber jihad’ against their computers - which, incidentally, they believe was initiated from computers in the UK. Anyway, we’re not at all worried by people who hold violent, hateful or racist views - we’ve been hosting them for years.

So will Charles Clarke let this man into our country or won’t he? From The Telegraph:

Last Friday the Home Office outlined proposals aimed at restraining militants by making it a crime to glorify or condone terrorism. Ministers said that would cover statements suggesting that suicide bombers were martyrs.

Okay, so al-Qaradawi fits the bill. He’ll be banned, right? After all, he said about suicide bombings in Israel on Newsnight last year:

“It is not suicide; it is martyrdom in the name of God. I consider this type of martyrdom operation as an indication of the justice of Allah almighty. Allah is just.

“Through his infinite wisdom he has given the weak what the strong do not possess and that is the ability to turn their bodies into bombs as the Palestinians do.”

Has Mohammed Shafiq, of the Ramadhan Foundation, which organised the event, thoroughly checked out al-Qaradawi to make sure he’s not going to be an embarrassment to Muslims - especially at a time like this?

“He is a moderate and he says that what he has said has been taken out of context and we take his word on that. He is a respected figure in the Muslim community and that is why he has been invited: to help promote cultural and religious diversity.”

That’ll be a ‘no’ then.

The problem with many of these foreign Muslims is that they can sound very reasonable in some areas and then totally potty in others. Hence, al-Qaradawi’s condemnation of the 9/11 bombings was emphatic. Yet they don’t square with other views he holds - including these I picked from his own web-site, Islam Online.

I originally posted some of this information in a comment on Samizdata when one of its correspondents hinted I was over-stating the case when I described some of al-Qaradawi’s views as scary. Actually, I think his views are obscene - I was just trying to be nice. To read them click (more…)