Gary Monro’s blog

Thanks to Samizdata…

The UK blogosphere has been following this story for a while. It concerns The Guardian’s employment of a trainee journalist Dilpazier Aslam - a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an extremist Muslim organisation banned all over the world (except in Labour’s Britain, of course).

The Guardian isn’t taking things very well. Under the headline Aslam targeted by bloggers the paper is quite obviously very irritated by us bloggers and doesn’t seem minded to disguise the fact.

First of all, it seems to blame right-wing (right-wing being the Guardian/BBC blanket phrase to imply all sorts of nasty attributes for people who don’t think in the way they do) US bloggers for the campaign against their man and then quotes some of the sillier things some of these bloggers have said (some nonsense about ’send me his head’).

The Guardian lays into the chap who is generally (I think) credited with actually being the source of this story:

Scott Burgess, a blogger from New Orleans who recently moved to London, spends his time indoors posting repeated attacks on the Guardian for its stance on the environment, its columnists such as Polly Toynbee, and its recent intervention in the US presidential election campaign.

He pitched into Mr Aslam, who as it happened, beat him to the traineeship on the Guardian. Googling the 27-year-old Muslim’s name, Mr Burgess picked up some articles the journalist had openly written in the past for Hizb ut-Tahrir websites and denounced him on his blogspot, The Daily Ablution, saying: “He is on record supporting a world-dominant Islamic state.”

While snarling at the blogosphere for their impertinence….

Mr Burgess fished out a website article written by Mr Aslam before September 11 for Hizb ut-Tahrir. He quoted one line: “Establishment of Khilafah [the worldwide Islamic caliphate] is our only solution, to fight fire with fire, the state of Israel versus the Khilafah state.”

… The Guardian also quoted the blogosphere in its own defence:

A fellow blogger, Dsquared, promptly accused him of using quotes out of context. “It is more than four years old, written when the author was a teenager, before 9/11 and during a really nasty episode early in the intifada. How many people posting on this blog would like to have their teenage scribblings used as an assessment of their politics as an adult?

“The way you’ve used these excerpts is a bit spintastic and if this is the worst you can dig up, I don’t think the Guardian can be blamed for not rumbling him.”

Then the poor hack (there’s no name given for this article’s writer) takes a snotty swipe at a few others - and not just bloggers either but fellow ‘proper’ journalists:

Perhaps the most extreme blog was posted by “dreadpundit”, a right-wing New Yorker using the name “Bluto”. He wrote: “Okay, Dilpazier, I’ve decided to bow to your ‘logic’ - sauce for the goose and all that. That’s why I’m issuing a secular fatwah and asking for some loyal Briton to saw off your head and ship it to me (use Fed-Ex, please, so I can get a morning delivery, and do remember the dry ice, also, a videotape of the “execution”).”

In the Independent on Sunday, Shiv Malik, also briefly a Guardian intern, accused the hapless Aslam of mounting “a sting by Hizb ut-Tahrir to infiltrate the mainstream media”.

And in the tabloid Sun, their attack-dog columnist, Richard Littlejohn, took the opportunity to claim: “A Guardian journalist has been unmasked as an Islamist extremist”.

The Guardian regains some - but only some - composure in the end:

The episode was a striking illustration of the way that blogs and bloggers can heat up the temperature and seek to settle scores - as well as raise legitimate concerns about journalism and transparency - when something awful happens in the streets of London.

Ah. It’s nice to see the ordinary working-class joes of this world giving it large-scale to big corporate interests.

And that’s a line I could have stolen from The Guardian itself…

The Guardian has produced this ICM poll.

As anybody with more than three functioning brain cells could predict, a small percentage of Muslims believe (or say they believe) that the bombings were justified - and, even, that more would be justified.

Add just a couple more brain cells and you can do the sums: in a country with 1.8 million Muslims even a small percentage is still a lot of people.

So we’re informed that 63% per cent of Muslims had considered leaving the UK in the wake of the bombings. Big deal. If that figure is true, I reckon it’s at least as representative of the UK’s population overall as it is of British Muslims. I’m sure 63% of the entire UK population has at least once considered life abroad before. I have; every time I see Blair on television I reach for my passport.

Much more worryingly though is this:

A small rump, potentially running into thousands, told ICM of their support for the attacks on July 7 which killed 56 and left hundreds wounded - and 5% said that more attacks would be justified. Those findings are troubling for those urgently trying to assess the pool of potential suicide bombers.

Drawing on those additional brain cells, if there are 1.1 million Muslims over the age of 18 (as The Guardian says there are) then 5% is over 50,000 people. If just 1% of that 50,000 is actually prepared to involve himself directly in attacks on the British public then we have at least 500 people walking around willing to commit murder and mayhem in the UK.

And that is seriously bad news.

One in five polled said Muslim communities had integrated with society too much already, while 40% said more was needed and a third said the level was about right.

I wonder what ‘too much’ means - and how they came to that conclusion? Are these conservatives who regard not wearing a burka as integrating too much? Or simply moderates who regard drinking and fornication as integrating too much? The 40% offer some hope for the future. British Muslims will always be better Muslims than foreign, non-integrated ones.

More than half wanted foreign Muslim clerics barred or thrown out of Britain, but a very sizeable minority, 38%, opposed that.

Thrown out just for being foreign? Maybe British Muslims feel that way because, first, they recognise that the uncompromising violence that some of these foreign imams bring with them is not only objectionable but it’s getting them a bad name; and, second, perhaps they recognise a need for a British Islam - as opposed to an Afghani one or an Iranian one.

It does seem that there’s a polarisation - and a huge gulf - between those that emphatically reject violence carried out in their name and those that support it. The latter are very much the minority but, worryingly, they still represent a substantial number of people.

Keeping the cheerleaders to and organisers of terror out of the UK has got to be the government’s first major step.

So - do we know if this chap is still scheduled to visit our green and pleasant land?

According to The Scotsman Britain is worth a few bob these days:

In a report entitled Capital Stocks, Capital Consumption and Non Financial Balance Sheets, it [the Office for National Statistics] valued Britain at £5,843 trillion - an increase of £404 billion on the previous year.

This was arrived at by adding up the value of the nation’s capital items such as buildings, roads and financial assets.

Housing continued to be the most valuable asset with a total value of £3.43 trillion - up 12 per cent on the previous year and making up 59 per cent of the country’s total wealth.

Trouble is, of course, you can never be sure whether the accounting is honest or another of Gordon Brown’s little wheezes…

In life, whatever you think, whatever you conclude, whatever you say and whatever you choose to do - or choose not to do - you achieve something. You get a result. You might not like the result you get but you get one. It’s impossible not to.

Elevated Life blog