This is a guest post by Mr Greene
The last time you saw Azad Ali he was probably on Channel 4’s Dispatches saying
“Democracy, if it means at the expense of not implementing the sharia, of course no one agrees with that”.
Well, you’ll be glad to know that he’s back.
The civil servant who first came to prominence for using his (Islamic Forum Europe) blog to praise Abdullah Azzam and justify killing British troops, before attempting to sue the Daily Mail for reporting these facts (only to be told by Justice Eady that his case had about it “an absence of reality”) has now been elected the Chair of the Muslim Safety Forum (MSF). That is, according to a Facebook message that I received earlier from Rubel Ali, Muslim Safety Forum Project Administrator. For those not so familiar with the MSF, it’s an IFE linked organisation which, like IFE, is based at the London Muslim Centre.
This means that Azad Ali is now heading up an organisation which claims to have pretty impressive links with government and the police. Unfortunately, it’s rather difficult to find out more up-to-date information about the MSF because their website, according to Google, “has hosted malicious software over the past 90 days” and so may “harm your computer”.
Presumably his role at the MSF involves standing up for the rights of all Muslims. Let’s listen (mp3) to what Azad has to say on the topic of threats to Muslims, for example ‘Atif’, a reporter for Channel 4’s Dispatches.
“Yes, Atif, we’ve got a picture of you and a lot more than you thought we had. We’ve tracked you down to different places. And if people are gonna turn what I’ve just said into a threat, that’s their fault, innit?”
Oh dear. Perhaps the MSF’s new Chair should report himself to, I don’t know, the MSF?
Anyway, in March of this year, Andrew Gilligan reported that, in 2006, then Met chief Sir Ian Blair had entered into an agreement with Ali, making him a “trusted interlocutor”. Ali was then – as he is once again – Chair of the MSF.
“A Met spokesman said the 2006 agreement between Sir Ian and Mr Ali, which was subject to annual renewal, was not renewed after it expired in December 2007, although links between the Met and the MSF continued. The spokesman said: “We are currently working with the Muslim Safety Forum to review how it can best represent London’s diverse Muslim Communities so that we can better understand and then act on their concerns about safety and security.”
So, as of March this year, the Met was not prepared to work with Ali but they had continuing links with the MSF.
The return of Azad Ali as the MSF’s Chair will presumably see the Met kick their relationship with the MSF into touch. After all, they cannot possibly justify working with an organisation headed up by a man who thinks that Anwar al-Awlaki “has an uncanny way of explaining things to people which is endearing” and who threatens journalists who expose Islamist infiltration of East London politics, right?
