You’ll know all about Engage: the Islamist think tank that shares a name with an anti-racist organisation, that holds gender segregated public meetings “due to limitations of space“, and seeks to combat Islamophobia by promoting anti-semitism.
This Engage might seem a silly organisation. You might ask yourself , “why do they bother”? But when you remember that its Chief Executive is Inayat Bunglawala, everything should become clear.
We first encountered Engage back in May, when an insider leaked me the the business plan for a “Islamophobia Media Monitoring and Response Agency”.
Engage was launched at the end of October 2008. MPACuk announced the initiative in characteristic bumptious style. As far as they’re concerned, the function of Engage is to “prioritise Jihad”, by which they mean “getting MPs deselected”:
Currently any reformer of the Ummah will tell you that the Ummah are passive defeatists. Their mindsets have been moulded by the Mosques and other groups that do not prioritise Jihad (defending the Ummah), but instead focus the mind on minor points of Fiqh – the way they were taught to do when studying Islam under leaders who simply live in another era. Think about why most Muslims sisters know more about the permissibility of nail varnish rather than stopping an attack on Iran. Yet credit is due to Engage – in their maiden speech they have told the Muslim community that it needs to buck up and get active. So far, so brave.
Full marks so far! However, they lose a strategic point since their presentation missed the need for Muslims to join all political parties, not just register to vote. It takes up to 70,000 votes to remove an Islamophobic MP, and yet an Islamophobic MP can be blocked from getting the seat in the first place if just 200 Muslims joined the local party.
They put up a powerpoint presentation, explaining how Engage worked. Then, sadly, they took it down again:
Powerpoint slides removed at the request of Engage because of breach of copyright.
But, not to worry. Somebody has put them up here. Here’s another copy.
What interesting facts does the Engage presentation contain?
Well, it looks as if they’d like to target Jack Straw’s seat. I can’t imagine that this will endear them to the Labour Party. But then, they also seem upset by the rise of centre-right politics, highlighting the election of Angela Merkel as a matter of concern. Not sure they can do much about that.
The presentation also sets out the structure of Engage. The CEO is our old friend, Inayat Bunglawala, of course. Other players are as follows:
Trustees
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Mohammed Ali – the CEO of the Islam Channel and wanted by Interpol for terrorism offences.
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Sir Iqbal “Death, perhaps, is a bit too easy for him”Sacranie.
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Sufyan Ismail – an “Islamic” tax consultant.
Employees
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Carl Arrindell (PR Executive) – a former disqualified director.
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Bob Lambert (Policy Research Specialist) – a retired copper, formerly of the Muslim Contact Unit, responsible for handing the Finsbury Park Mosque over to Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood trustees.
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Shehnaz Bunglawala (Project Implementation) – keep it in the family!
But here’s the really impressive thing. Their three year budget for this project is £1 million, of which they have raised £400,000. Good going!
It will be wasted money. Engage will continue to serve up the usual blend of warmed over anti-semitism, support for jihadist groups, and complaints about over-reporting of terrorist plots, that has failed as a strategy for winning the hearts of Government and the public to date.
A comment on the MPACuk forum sums it up well:
The Engage stand was something different, they had one chap representing, and all he could say was;
“Everyone keeps asking me what the difference between you (engage) and MPAC is?”
He had no definitive answer, and worse still most of his pitch was like MPAC’s but not as beleivable.
Spot on.
Half the senior staff are members of the Bunglawala family. One of the trustees risk arrest for terrorist crimes, while the other is a fanatic. And they’re doing the same thing as a group that already exists.
That’s their problem.
