It is pretty well known that Islamists in the West habitually say one thing to their English speaking audience, and another thing to their Arabic speaking audience.
Here’s Mohammad Sawalha, President of the British Muslim Initiative, speaking to Al Jazeera in Arabic about his demonstration against last Sunday’s celebration of the foundation of the State of Israel:
The President of the British Muslim Initiative – Mohammad Sawalha – said in a speech to Al Jazeera:
“We, the Arab and Islamic community, gather here today to express our resentment at the celebrations by the Jewish community and the [evil Jew/Jewish evil] in Britain”
[والوبيل اليهودي في بريطانيا]
Translation by DaveM
Apart from the British Muslim Initiative, Sawalha has been active in a large number of other ventures. He is the past President of the Muslim Association of Britain. He was the founder of IslamExpo, and is registered as the holder of the IslamExpo domain name. He is also a trustee of the Finsbury Park Mosque: which was taken over from Abu Hamza by the Muslim Association of Britain, with the help of Detective Inspector Bob Lambert.
All of the organisations that Sawalha is associated with have one thing in common. They are fronts for Hamas/the Muslim Brotherhood.
Sawalha also was one of the signatories to the letter from various “Muslim organisations” endorsing Ken Livingstone: a large number of whom are closely associated with various Muslim Brotherhood organisations.
Sawalha was also one of the subjects of the BBC Panorama documentary on Hamas fundraising in the United Kingdom [better formatted here]. That documentary made the following claims:
- Sawalha is said to have master minded much of Hamas’ political and military strategy.
- Sawalha was one of the senior activists in the dawah portals of Hamas. He was involved, let’s say, with the background of the finance, the logistic assistance.
- In London, Sawalha is alleged to have directed funds, both for Hamas’ armed wing, and for spreading its missionary dawah
Therefore, it is no surprise to hear him giving a speech to the Arabic media about “the evil Jew in Britain”.
Of course, you won’t hear the British Muslim Initiative saying anything like this in any of the many comment pieces Sawalha’s team write for the Guardian.
UPDATE
Al Jazeera has now changed the text to refer to “the Jewish Lobby”.
The original text contained the word الوبيل . It means “evil” or “noxious” or “dreaded” or “disasterous”. We’ve asked other Arabic speakers, and they’ve confirmed that, combined with the word “Jew”, the sense of the phrase is “Evil Jew” or “Jewish evil”.
That word has been replaced with “lobby”, اللوبي. The words don’t look at all similar. So this isn’t a spelling mistake.
If we wait a little bit longer, I bet they’ll change it to “the Zionist Lobby”.
UPDATE 2:
The British Muslim Initiative have published a press release about this article. They’ve posted it on here, but not on their own website!
British Muslim Initiative
http://www.bminitiative.comNews release
Attention: news desk
For immediate useZionist Racist website lies in order to justify its hate-rhetoric
While ‘Harry’s Place’ may not be known as a bastion of truth and balanced comment – not even in the remotest sense of these words – its latest blunder shows it as an entirely incompetent source of information.
In ‘reporting’ the anti-Israel demonstration that took place at Trafalgar Square on Sunday the 29th of June, the moderator of the said blog quoted BMI president Mohammed Sawalha’s comment to Al-Jazeera as: “We, the Arab and Islamic community, gather here today to express our resentment at the celebrations by the Jewish community and the evil/noxious Jew in Britain” – Translated by DaveM.
What is beyond doubt is that DaveM seems to be an entirely incapable and dangerously incompetent translator, clearly failing to understand and hence translate the simple word ‘Lobby’. This word is pronounced in Arabic identically to the way it is in English, and is written phonetically in identical style.
It is of course possible that DaveM and the moderators of this vile blog-space – which has made it its mission to attack Islam and Muslims in whatever underhand methods it can get away with – deliberately skewed the word ‘Lobby’ to turn it into some other word and make it seem as though it means ‘evil/noxious’, in order to portray not only Mohammed Sawalha, but BMI and all the projects that Mr. Sawalha is linked to, as ‘Jew-haters’ and ‘anti-Semitic’.
This was immediately picked up by the likes of Melanie Phillips who wrote in The Spectator, quoting this error and using it as fact to further her campaign to demonise an individual who has done for community relations and cultural dialogue far more than she can ever lay claim to.
Anas Altikriti, spokesman of BMI, commented earlier: ‘This particular blog-space and its moderators are nonentities and insignificant. However, its danger lies in that in the past some corners of our mainstream media have picked up on its drivel and used it as fact.
This is another example of not only very basic incompetence at play, but pure evil that sees no shame or wrong in plainly lying for the purpose of demonising certain individuals and organisations, regardless of reality or facts”.
BMI have alerted its legal advisors to this matter and will be monitoring the blog-site in question as well as any quoting of this error by any other media outlet, and will be pursuing measures to bring those who do to account.
Hilariously, their line is that we have:
“deliberately skewed the word ‘Lobby’ to turn it into some other word and make it seem as though it means ‘evil/noxious’”
They could have said “Oh, he’s been misquoted by Al Jazeera – in Arabic, “Jewish evil” sounds really like “Jewish Lobby”. Or even “It’s just a spelling mistake – there are only a few letters’ difference between “evil” and “lobby”.
Here is a screen shot of the Al Jazeera article. It is very clear that the phrase “Jewish Lobby” did not appear in the original article. Until it was amended:
So, now I’m being threatened with legal action. That’s always a good tactic: as David Irving discovered.
Given that the BMI is the sister organisation of Hamas, and Mohammad Sawalha has been identified by the BBC as a senior Hamas activist, I should be grateful that they’re not threatening to send round “martyrs” to explode themselves in front of me.
Put it this way. There’s clear evidence what the Al Jazeera article originally said. It would be wholly unsurprising that a man who is apparently a Hamas activist would give an interview in Arabic in which he railed against “Jewish evil”. That is, after all, one of Hamas’ favourite themes.
And if the argument is that he was demonstrating against the “Jewish Community” and the “Jewish Lobby” rather than “Jewish Evil”… well, that’s not a great defence, is it?
