The row over the SNP controlled Scottish Government’s £215,000 grant to the Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood front group, the Scottish Islamic Foundation, rumbles on.
It is now absolutely crystal clear that Alex Salmond’s administration is gifting of large sums of public money to a group that is the British franchise of Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood. They will use this money to promote to Scottish Muslims the ideology of that group. Only a lunatic would think the spread of that particular form of Islamism in Scotland would be anything but a disaster for all Scottish people, Muslim or not.
It was pretty well known that Osama “Caliphate Now” Saeed is a Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood supporter. Originally, the Scottish representative of the Muslim Association of Britain, the British Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood franchise, he has now set up what is clearly yet another local franchise of this clerical fascist terrorist organisation.
It has now emerged that the grant was made, after a meeting with Mohammed Sawalha.
Alex Salmond agreed to hand over £215,000 for an Islamic festival in Scotland following a meeting with a former military commander of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
Documents obtained by The Sunday Times reveal Salmond approved the grant following the meeting between culture minister Linda Fabiani and Mohammed Sawalha, who is alleged to have directed terror operations in the West Bank.
The meeting, in January, was also attended by Osama Saeed, founder of the Scottish Islamic Foundation (SIF) and an SNP activist who is expected to contest the Glasgow Central seat at the next Westminster election. Sawalha was invited to take part in the meeting to discuss the funding of IslamFest in Glasgow next year.
The event, being organised by the SIF, is modelled on London’s IslamExpo, run by Sawalha. IslamExpo was boycotted by UK ministers earlier this year because of its links to Hamas.
The £215,000 Scottish government grant for the Islamic festival was given to the SIF, which has so far received £415,000 of taxpayers’ money. Sawalha, president of the British Muslim Initiative, was named in US court documents as a leading militant in the early 1990s “in charge of Hamas terrorist operations within the West Bank”.
The documents alleged he met two “conspirators” accused of laundering millions of dollars to finance the group’s activities. In 2006, the BBC’s Panorama accused him of directing funds to Hamas’s armed wing.
Sawalha, you’ll recall, is the man who has threatened to sue me for defamation over what his lawyers described as a “malicious translation”.
Sawalha is described on the Muslim Brotherhood’s own website as “the manager of the political committee of the Muslim Brotherhood in Britain.
He has never questioned Panorama’s description of him as a fugitive Hamas commander. How could he? So, of course, when asked whether he was indeed a Hamas activist, he could not deny it:
Asked if he denied his involvement with Hamas, Sawalha said: “I am supporting the Palestinian cause. This is not something I am ashamed of. I’ve been here 17 years. I’m working in this country for good relations between Muslims and non-Muslims.”
Yeah. I think we’ve seen what Hamas’ idea of “good relations” looks like in practice.
In fact, the only person who appears to be agnostic about the nature of the group that Scotland is chucking cash at, is the culture minister, Linda Fabiani:
A spokesman for Fabiani added: “It would be inappropriate to have routine matters determined by unproven allegations against any individual who has not been questioned in this country for any wrongdoing.”
Handing over nearly a quarter of a million pounds to a terrorist front group should not be a ‘routine matter’.
Hat tip: Alec Macpherson
