RESPECT – the ricketty coalition between the Muslim Brotherhood, the Socialist Workers Party, and the pro-Baathist Galloway – is presently touring university campuses and community halls throughout Britain.
We know a fair bit about Galloway and Rees. But a little less about the Muslim Brotherhood’s Salma Yaqoob: the Birmingham ‘community leader’ who sought to pour petrol on troubled waters by complaing in the wake of the Birmingham riots that Afro-Carribeans were getting all the government grants, and Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, none at all. We also know that she moonlights as spokeswoman for Birmingham Central Mosque: an institution chaired by Dr “Dancing Cows” Naseem, the conspiracy theorist and advocate of capital punishment for homosexuality, who is the largest single funder of RESPECT, providing more than 50% of the funds the party reported to the Electoral Commission.
There’s a nice piece by Salma Yaqoob on the Channel 4 website which explains how she came to join the clerical fascists of the Muslim Brotherhood:
I was born in Bradford but grew up in Birmingham. Unlike other parents locally and even within my own extended family, my father was very pro-education. Interested in trying to understand the reasons behind mass Jewish genocide in Nazi Germany, I studied psychology at university and became a psychotherapist.
Growing up, I mistakenly held Islam responsible for the sometimes negative treatment of women in Pakistani culture. I even considered converting to Christianity but believed that text for text, the Quran was more progressive for women than the Bible. I soon realised that practices like forced marriage were un-Islamic and more about culture, and I returned to Islam. I started wearing the hijab at 18, having seen how western women were sexually exploited and pressurised to look attractive. The hijab gave me modesty, energy and permission to be myself.
After 11 September 2001, I went into Birmingham city centre and a man spat at me. I had never experienced racism before but I was more shocked that nobody else did anything. I had been absolutely livid about the Twin Towers attacks but nothing could justify the bombing of Afghanistan, so I went along to the Birmingham Stop the War Coalition where I was elected chairperson. That is how I became involved in politics, having been a psychotherapist, wife and mother of two kids. I see Islam being persecuted and feel the injustice of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
There’s one part of the resume missing.
The key point in Salma’s political awakening wasn’t joining the Birmingham Stop the War Coalition.
Rather, it was her involvement with the Justice for Britons in Yemen campaign, two years earlier, for which she was Press Officer: sometimes under her own name (see Word document) and sometimes under the nom de guerre of Sally Jacobs.
The Justice for Britons in Yemen campaign was set up to rally support for eight British muslim lads – one of them Abu Hamza‘s son, and another his stepson – who got themselves into a spot of bother in Yemen six years ago.
Forget about Mike’s Place suicide bombers, Omar Khan Sharif and Asif Mohammed. These blokes in Yemen were probably the United Kingdom’s first home grown jihadists, and our Salma was right up there in the front line in the campaign to defend them.
