Occasionally, the odd person queries our description of the Muslim Association of Britain and the British Muslim Initiative as the British franchise of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Indeed, back in 2004, the MAB appeared to be claiming that it was not a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, but that it merely had a member or two who happened to be active in that organisation, “back in their home countries”:
MAB reserves the right to be proud of the humane notions and principles of the Muslim Brotherhood, who has proven to be an inspiration to Muslims, Arab and otherwise for many decades.
We also reserve the right to disagree with or divert from the opinion and line of the Muslim Brotherhood, or any other organization, Muslim or otherwise on any issue at hand.
How very strange then, that a few month’s earlier, the Muslim Brotherhood’s website IslamOnline described Mr Sawalha as:
manager of the political committee of the International Organization of the Brothers [i.e. the Muslim Brotherhood] in Britain
وأضافت أن “محمد صوالحة المسئول باللجنة السياسية للتنظيم الدولي للإخوان في بريطاني
(translation by DaveM)
Here is a screenshot, just in case the description turns out to have been an unfortunate typographical error, and is corrected.
That’s another feather in the cap of the man who the BBC identified in 2006 as a fugitive Hamas commander.
Mr Sawalha went on to found the British Muslim Initiative, and through it, established IslamExpo.
All these organisations are one and the same.
Government ministers pulled out of IslamExpo this weekend. However, Demos sponsored and participated in a debate at IslamExpo and a seminar on “Political Islam”. That’s right: a left of centre think tank worked with a clerical fascist party to organise a conference about its racist, genocidal theocratic political programme.
Now, I know that Demos started life as the tail end of the Communist Party of Great Britain. But they were fluffy Eurocommunists, weren’t they? I hope they’re not going to pick up ideas on “everyday democracy” from the Muslim Brotherhood: a party whose “Blueprint” was described as follows by an Egyptian commentator:
“The Muslim Brotherhood has laid down its first detailed political platform, which would bar women and Christians from becoming Egypt’s president and establish a board of Muslim clerics to oversee the government, reminiscent of Iran’s Islamic state….
“It establishes a religious state,” said Abdel Moneim Said, head of the leading Al Ahram Center for Strategic and Political Studies. “It’s an assassination to the civic state.””
With any luck, though, Demos will oppose the Muslim Brotherhood, rather than allying with it, if any attempt is made to promote their politics in the United Kingdom. Nothing to worry about, as long as the Muslim Brotherhood only triumphs in far-away countries and imposes its programme on people of whom we know nothing, eh?
NB: If the British Muslim Initiative believes that we have mistranslated the passage in question, ask us to correct the piece nicely, rather than threatening to sue us for libel.
(Hat tip: BBC)
