Neo-Nazi supporter Asghar Bukhari, has written a long, incoherent and rambling piece on his MPACuk website, contextualising his own racism and support of neo-nazism.
Given that Bukhari is rather better at ranting than writing clearly, here’s a summary of his argument, for clarity’s sake:
1. First, Bukhari sets out the “Muslim perspective” of the Jewish people:
“The Jewish people had robbed the Palestinians of their land, not content with that, they massacred them, oppressed them brutally, and even going so far as murdering their children. Then anyone who spoke out against these Jews and what they were doing was silenced by being smeared as anti Semitic. “
2. Bukhari then goes on to explain that this is his view, and he regards it as “pretty much correct and true”
3. However, Bukhari explains that he met “a Palestinian man”. MPAC is, according to Bukhari, the “brainchild” of that unnamed Palestinian man.
4. The Palestinian man also taught him that “there were many Jews who fought for the Palestinians and even gave their lives for them”. This changed Bukhari’s view of Jews.
5. Bukhari has also found support for his partly reformed view about Jews in the Quran.
6. Nevertheless, Bukhari still is unrepentant:
When I got active I spoke like any Muslim who doesn’t know a thing about anti-Semitism. I used the word “Jew” a lot, and “Jews” when talking about Jews who supported Israel (Zionists), even today I don’t feel it is anti Semitic to use that term.
7. Muslims are unfairly victimised for apparently anti-Jewish rhetoric by Europeans who are guilty about their Holocaust, who then project their own guilt onto Muslims. The Jewish “lobby” exploits European guilt in order to stigmatise Muslims. However, Muslim rhetoric about Jews is not racist. Indeed:
What Europeans fail to remember however is millions of humans are dying or being oppressed right now at their hands too for another small word “Islam”.
8. Bukhari then goes on to explain a quasi-Damascene conversion which changed his view of the Jews:
I will never forget an eighty year old woman standing outside Marks and Spencer who came every week to picket. I always used to be amazed at her, and wonder how these so called “practicing” Muslim women pathetically never attended (they were too busy practicing for God to lift a finger for the oppressed). I am not great at small talk, but when I finally did find something to talk about; she told me she was Jewish. An eighty year old Jewish woman standing in the freezing cold, being attacked by pro-Israeli Jews, sometimes physically and always verbally, for a people that were not even her own. May God bless her, a Jewish woman better and more just then any Muslim woman I have ever met in my life.
9. As Bukhari’s involvement with Islamist politics deepened, he became more “hard nosed” about accusations of anti-semitism. Such accusations, argues Bukhari, are used like “a club” to silence supporters of Palestinians. He eventually realised that the accusers didn’t care if the accusations were true:
They had used this same strategy since the creation of Israel and even before, it was a brilliant tactic to stop Palestinian voices being heard by key influencers. Politicians or media people would not want to be linked to anti-Semitism themselves. Silencing anyone who could get to them with a racist slur was as good as gagging them; A tragic and efficient attack against freedom of speech that is never highlighted.
10. And now we get to an explanation of the Irving “mistake”:
To this day I believe that any pro-Muslim or pro-Palestinian person charged with anti-Semitism is almost definitely innocent. If ever I heard that they were calling someone anti-Semitic, I no longer believed it, and I still don’t. I may have got it wrong with Irving, but I’m not taking any blame for that, the way I see it is you can’t blame a man for not believing a compulsive liar because one time he was telling the truth. The Zionists were always lying and smearing people. For once they told the truth and complained when people didn’t believe them.
11. Neither can MPAC be blamed for republishing images and articles from neo-nazi sites. They shouldn’t have pulled the material when its provenence was identified, because it was accurate. In any event, MPAC didn’t recognise their sources as racist sites, and couldn’t be expected to do so.
12. And in any case, he doesn’t accept that the various neo-Nazi websites from which MPAC have sourced their material are necessarily neo-Nazi:
For a start, I don’t believe anything I hear from the Zionists at all, as I have said before. If they used such machinery on MPAC, I would be a fool to think they were not using it on all their opponents. Right now somewhere out there they are claiming MPAC is a neo-Nazi website or anti-Semitic or a Muslim extremist or hate website, any old thing to label us. If they could claim that about us, they could claim it about the next website. See now how tainted they have made the word anti-Semitic.
13. MPAC is the victim of an organised smear campaign, run by “Zionists” with machine like efficiency. By contrast, MPAC has simply made a number of small, insignificant mistakes, for which they should not be blamed because they are amateurs.
14. The “Apology”:
I know I don’t always get it right, but its better then doing nothing. I’m sorry if I have offended Jews or non Muslim people who are sympathetic to the Muslims and the Palestinians, by making mistakes in my battle to defend the Palestinians and the Muslims.
15. The Request for Assistance:
If anyone wants to speak to MPAC, from the Jewish community or anti racist campaigners and advise us to help us get it right, we are more then willing to listen and learn.
I doubt whether any assistance will be forthcoming. True anti-racists do not make a habit of instructing neo-Nazi supporters on the best way to disguise their racism.
Bukhari’s explanation of his support for David Irving is particularly telling. Bukhari explains that, he is blameless for supporting Irving because:
“you can’t blame a man for not believing a compulsive liar because one time he was telling the truth”
Let’s take a step back. What Bukhari is saying here is that he supported him because he has a policy of not believing Jewish “lies”.
In this instance, it is clear that the “lies” which Bukhari did not believe related to the truth of the Holocaust. We know this to be the case, because Bukhari wrote to Irving in order to support his “fight for the Truth“ and believes that Irving has suffered as a result of “trying to expose certain falsehoods perpetrated by the Jews‘.
Bukhari is unrepentant. It may be that he now accepts that the Holocaust took place, or that – contrary to Irving in 2000 – it was ordered by Hitler. However, the thrust of his article is that the Jews (excepting a minority) have a well-planned, co-ordinated strategy of lying about racism, with the purpose of oppressing and murdering millions of Muslims. Therefore, it is the Jews, not Bukhari, who are to blame for his support of Holocaust “revisionism”.
This article is, unwittingly, one of the most revealing pieces that Bukhari has written. He has revealed his true colours: his racism, his conspiracism, his mendacity, his bile, his arrogance and his incompetence. It demonstrates, clearly, that the only Muslim issue which attracts Bukhari’s butterfly-like mind is the conflict between “the Jews” and “the Muslims” in Israel/Palestine. Massacres of Muslims by Muslims, racism towards Asians which cannot be explained in terms of the millenial struggle between Muslims and Jews, socio-economic disadvantage, the struggle for civil rights, barely leave an impression on it.
That is the true nature of MPAC. It isn’t – as it misleadingly styles itself – a “civil liberties group”. It may be interested in what it describes as “non-violent Jihad and political activism”, but only in pursuit of its grievance-fixated and distorted world-view, in which the only issue which counts is the struggle of Muslims against Jewish power.
MPAC is finished.
UPDATE
As a small addendum to this piece, you might want to read this article by John Ware in Prospect, which explains why the Muslim Council of Britain has been thoroughly discredited and marginalised. Senior MCB officer, Inayat Bunglawala’s defence of Bukhari’s “overly idealistic” support of neo-Nazi David Irving, is but the latest example of the MCB’s unfitness for a role in public life.
MPAC and the MCB both take the view that John Ware – a distinguished and independent journalist – is part of an enormous web of Jewish deceit, which has been plotting to destroy the Muslims.
What MPAC and the MCB don’t realise is that it is that it is their own viciousness and stupidity which has destroyed their credibility. In that, they have needed no assistance from lobbies and global conspiracies.