There is to be a demonstration for calling for protection of the Pahari people and peace in Chittagong Hill Tracts on Sunday 28 February.
On Saturday 20th February, an outbreak of violence against the Jumma people of Khagrachari in Rangamati caused the deaths of 4 people, hundreds of homes torched, destruction of a temple and a church, and many dozens still missing.The random violence against the Pahari people has continued unabated.
The oppression of the Chakma and Pahari peoples has been going on for decades and incidents of this kind form part of a long-standing conflict.
We urge the end to the attacks and violence against the Paharis in Bangladesh.
Please come and show your support and solidarity for the Jumma people in Bangladesh.
Three weeks after the Channel 4 Dispatches documentary comes the resignation of Lutfur Ali, second in command at Tower Hamlets council and a close associate of the IFE. Andrew Gilligan with some background:
Lutfur Ali, one of the key figures in the fundamentalist Islamic Forum of Europe/ East London Mosque’s influence over Tower Hamlets Council, has tonight resigned, the council confirmed. Mr Ali was the second most powerful officer on the council and his departure is a major blow to the fundamentalists. The IFE’s opponents are overjoyed. “This is the tipping point,” says Badrul Islam, one of the main local opponents of the group.
Mr Ali, a close associate of the IFE, was appointed assistant chief executive of the council on £125,000 a year despite a negative headhunter report and a misleading CV. He featured heavily in my Channel 4 Dispatches documentary on fundamentalist infiltration into London politics.
This is the NDTV interview with Gita Sahgal. It is the most comprehensive account she has provided of her side of the Amnesty-Moazzam Begg-Cageprisoners controversy since it started more than a month ago.
Amnesty International have not distanced themselves from their position of partnering and giving platform to the ‘violent jihad’ doctrine advocated by Begg and Cageprisoners. If anything, they have climbed deeper into bed with Begg and have tightened their embrace of the jihadi “human rights” group.
Gita mentions briefly how Amnesty have changed their position from denying outright the accusation they endorse Begg’s political views and have turned 180 degrees. It is possible that Amnesty are now at the cusp of releasing a statement in which they justify the use of “defensive jihad” and do not consider it antithetical to human rights. If that is the case, this will be the unravelling of Amnesty.
How dare George Galloway invoke antisemitism in the name of his filthy politics. Have a look:
The same sleight of hand was in play a century ago, when old religious prejudices against Jews became fused with anti-immigration rhetoric and transformed into a prejudice directed at an ethnic, cultural group, which increasingly became defined as that scientifically inaccurate category – race.
It is no exaggeration to say that you can pore over parliamentary debates, politicians’ speeches and media exposes a century ago in London’s East End and, by substituting Muslim for Jew, find exact parallels with today’s prejudiced ravings.
This from a man who defended the blood libel of Swedish journalist Donald Bostrom, even resorting to a vile Mengele slur:
The subject of this letter before action is a joke that I made on Socialist Unity, in which I suggested that a fundraising t shirt for Viva Palestina contained an arabic phrase that translated as:
The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.” (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem)
the ferocious but charming miriam shaviv over at the jc is blogging a number of “daily proposals to transform the british jewish community” during march. i was discussing this with my redoubtable other half over friday night dinner and we thought the following might be worth submission:
1. transparency at the jewish leadership council
ok, we know who the board of deputies are. we know what it’s for. we know how it’s funded. we know how you get to be on it. we know who it represents. now, we have this new organisation called the “jewish leadership council”. on it, you have various movers and shakers, you’ve got the vc/banking/property tycoons, you’ve got the charity/safety/israel activists, you’ve got synagogue movement machers, you’ve got access, you’ve got international connections, you’ve got lords, baronesses, knights and the chair of ujs – you’ve got two women and no rabbis, for some reason. you’ve got no haredim, for some other reason. you’ve got leaders from the most broad-based and influential organisations in the community – but what are they for? clearly, this is an influential bunch of people, but who chooses them? who decided that there should be a jewish leadership council in the first place? how are they accountable? what is their strategy? what is their relationship with the board? how is it funded? i for one would like to know.
In an earlier post, I speculated whether members of the IFE might direct any violence and intimidation towards members of the Bangladeshi community who had spoken out against the Jamaati front in the Dispatches expose. There has been furious protest by supporters and members of the IFE who have pleaded that the organisation has never been involved in violence in its 20 year history and is a staunch supporter of “community cohesion”.
But Andrew Gilligan reports that last week, the IFE’s Azad Ali made the following statement on a webcast, directed at the undercover journalist “Atif” who was filmed in the Dispatches documentary:
“We’ve tracked you down,” said the IFE’s community affairs co-ordinator, Azad Ali, in a webcast targeting the Channel 4 reporter “Atif”, who went undercover at the IFE’s headquarters, the East London Mosque, filming the group’s true views – and its boasts that it controlled the local Tower Hamlets council. “Yes, Atif, we’ve got a picture of you and a lot more than you thought we had. We’ve tracked you down to different places. And if people are gonna turn what I’ve just said into a threat, that’s their fault, innit?”
The Sunday Express has published an apology to the East London Mosque for an article it published in December which reported on the ELM’s record of hosting radical extremist preachers at the London Muslim Centre, including video-linked lectures by Anwar al-Awlaki, while he was located in Yemen.
The text of the Sunday Express apology reads:
“Our article of December 27, 2009 “Jet bomb ordered by 9/11 spiritual leader” stated that Anwar al Awlaki, the Yemen based cleric said to have inspired the failed plot to blow up a plane bound for Detroit, had spoken at the “radical” East London Mosque (ELM).
‘We would like to make clear that ELM works tirelessly to promote religious and social tolerance and to oppose violent extremism in all its forms. ELM tells us that it was not aware of any credible allegation of violent extremism against Anwar al Awlaki prior to the single occasion on which he spoke at the London Muslim Centre (LMC) at an event organised by an external organisation. ELM does not promote or support Anwar al Awlaki. ELM would not now permit Anwar al Awlaki to speak at ELM or the LMC.”
Amnesty International have tried to claim that it has never promoted the views of Moazzam Begg or Cageprisoners, only his experiences. But from an article on a speech delivered to Amnesty USA in Washington DC in 2008, it is clear that Moazzam Begg was expounding on both his experiences and his own personal views.
Moazzam Begg is spokesman for the Human Rights organization, Cageprisoners, with whom he has been working since his release from Guantanamo Bay in 2005. He regularly lectures around the world speaking about the effects of the ‘War on Terror’ and detention without trial. He is also author of,Enemy Combatant: A British Muslim’s Journey to Guantanamo and Back. It is the first book to be published by a former Guantánamo Bay prisoner.
Ian McEwan took a real incident that happened at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) and used it as a plot device in the narrative of the protagonist in his new novel, Solar.
Nick Cohen recognises the incident in McEwan’s storyline and recollects the real events that took place at the ICA which involved comedian Chris Morris, author Martin Amis, Andrew Anthony on the panel and an ICA auditorium audience full of irate, sanctimonious, post-modernist, middle class liberals in a marvellous article on what ails the British left. Luckily, Padraig Reidy of Index on Censorship was also in the audience that night.
Here is Reidy’s hilarious account of the events at the ICA from a CiF piece from 2007, ‘When liberals attack!’:
It was at this point that TV’s greatest satirist [Chris Morris], the shaggy-haired Swift of our age, took his turn to speak.
Terry Eagleton is interviewed by the Culture Editor of the New Statesman. Asked about his very public spat with Martin Amis two years ago, Eagleton replies:
I’m interested in the way a whole stratum of the liberal literati (Rushdie, to some extent Ian McEwan, A C Grayling, obviously Amis and Hitchens) – the very people you’d have expected to be guardians of the liberal flame of tolerance and understanding – have, at the very first assault, rushed into these caricatured postures driven by panic. I’m very struck by how those who are making ugly, illiberal, supremacist noises about the superiority of the west are precisely the sort of literary and liberal characters from whom you’d expect more imagination, openness and sensitivity.