Islamism,  UK Politics

The Global Peace and Unity Event: Extremists, Bigots, Supporters of Terrorism… and Senior Labour Politicians

A couple of months ago, the fascist British National Party held a rally in a field in Derbyshire. Anti-racist groups (and the Socialist Workers’ Party) converged on the site of the so-called “Red White and Blue Festival” to voice their opposition.

By contrast, this year’s Global Peace and Unity Event, organised by the pro-Muslim Brotherhood Islam Channel, is attended by The Rev Jesse Jackson, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and a number of senior Labour politicians.

Yet there is scarcely a speaker at the GPU Event who is not an extremist, bigot, or a supporter of terrorism. Some are all three.

First the good news. Past GPU events have been sponsored by the Metropolitan Police. Since the unlamented retirement of the Muslim Contact Unit’s Detective Inspector Bob Lambert – who pioneered the strategy of promoting Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood as a counterweight to Al Qaeda – sponsorship now seems to have ended. Neither is the former Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, anywhere to be seen. Boris Johnson has merely sent a nice note.

The bad news is this. The following senior Labour politicians are participating in the GPU Event:

  • Lord Nazir Ahmed – Hosted the neo Nazi “Israel Shamir” when he held a meeting at the Houses of Parliament.
  • Sadiq Khan – Minister for Community Cohesion.
  • Stephen Timms – Minister of State for Employment and Welfare Reform at the Department for Work and Pensions and Labour Party Vice Chair for Faith Groups

The Tory Deputy Mayor, Richard Barnes is also taking part in this event.

Let’s have a look at the other participants in this event, shall we? Who will these senior politicians be sharing a platform with?

Imam Johari Abdul-Malik

“People even under the pressures that you and I know about, the deen of Islam is growing because people see even within all of this struggle it is better to be a Muslim under these conditions than to be a kaffir under any conditions… before Allah closes our eyes for the last time you will see Islam move from being the second largest religion in America-that’s where we are now- to being the first religion in America.”

Sheikh Yasir Qadhi

All of these Polish Jews which Hitler was supposedly trying to exterminate, that’s another point, by the way, Hitler never intended to mass-destroy the Jews. There are a number of books out on this written by Christians, you should read them. The Hoax of the Holocaust, I advise you to read this book and write this down, the Hoax of the Holocaust, a very good book. All of this is false propaganda and I know it sounds so far-fetched, but read it. The evidences [sic] are very strong. And they’re talking about newspaper articles, clippings, everything and look up yourself what Hitler really wanted to do. We’re not defending Hitler, by the way, but the Jews, the way that they portray him, also is not correct.

William Rodriguez

In his lawsuit, Rodriquez made hundreds of allegations, including – but not limited to – allegations that the Twin Towers were destroyed by means of “controlled demolitions”; that members of the FDNY were ordered, on instructions of the CIA, not to talk about it; that the FDNY conspired with Larry Silverstein to deliberately destroy 7WTC; that missiles were fired at the Twin Towers from “pods” affixed to the underside of the planes that struck them; that FEMA is working with the US government to create “American Gulag” concentration camps which FEMA will run once the government’s plan to impose martial law is in place; that phone calls made by some of the victims, as reported by their family members, were not actually made but were “faked” by the government using “voice morphing” technology; that a missile, not American Airlines Flight 77, struck the Pentagon; that United Airlines Flight 93 was shot down by the US military; that the defendants had foreknowledge of the attacks and actively conspired to bring them about; that the defendants engaged in kidnapping, arson, murder, treason, conspiracy, trafficking in narcotics, embezzlement, securities fraud, insider trading, identity and credit card theft, blackmail, trafficking in humans, and the abduction and sale of women and children for sex.

Imran Khan

Khan actually said we should feel the degradation of modern Muslims in the context of Hitler and the Germans after Versailles. He used this example to accentuate the reason for “Muslim rage” — there was poor Germany belittled and humiliated, like the Muslim world today. He recounted being confronted by a fellow Pakistani after 9/11 who asked, “Do you not feel ashamed?” and he told the adoring crowd he did not see what there was to be ashamed of, and anyway, 9/11 was an excuse for the criminal Washington neocons to start a New Crusade against Islam.

To illustrate the level of extremism to which this event had degenerated, one of the organisers actually took the mike and said the event team wished to distance themselves from Khan’s 9/11 views.

Sheikh Yusuf Estes

Last October, I listened to an online audio sermon by an American Muslim preacher, Sheik Yusuf Estes, who was scheduled to speak at West Virginia University as a guest of the Muslim Student Association. He soon moved to the subject of disobedient wives, and his recommendations mirrored the literal reading of 4:34. First, “tell them.” Second, “leave the bed.” Finally: “Roll up a newspaper and give her a crack. Or take a yardstick, something like this, and you can hit.”

When I telephoned Estes later to ask about the sermon, he said that he had been trying to limit how and when men could hit their wives. He realized that he had to revisit the issue, he told me, when some Canadian Muslim men asked him if they could use the Sunday newspaper to give their wives “a crack.”

Yet even those doing the 4:34 dance seem to realize that there’s a problem. When I went back to listen to the audio clip later, the offensive language had been removed.

Ebrahim Rasool

On 21 March 2004, a rally of 1000 mostly Muslim protestors was held at the Watsonia sports ground in Athlone, Cape Town to protest against Israel’s “targeted killing” of Yassin. One of the featured speakers was Ebrahim Rasool, at that time the finance minister for the Western Cape and the provincial leader of the ANC in the province. Rasool’s speech was surprisingly militant. He described Yassin as “one of the greatest inspirations” to Muslims and quoted with approval Yassin’s teaching that “whoever dies, without having fought in the way of Allah or even having desire to fight in the way of Allah, dies on a twing of hypocrisy”. He also prayed that Palestinians “stand up to these enemies and never succumb, that they fight and they fight under a flag of Islam”, and he called on his audience to “face the enemies—they are all over the world”.

Mohammad Ijaz ul Haq

The award of a knighthood to the author Salman Rushdie justifies suicide attacks, a Pakistani government minister said today.
“This is an occasion for the 1.5 billion Muslims to look at the seriousness of this decision,” Mohammed Ijaz ul-Haq, religious affairs minister, told the Pakistani parliament in Islamabad. “The west is accusing Muslims of extremism and terrorism. If someone exploded a bomb on his body he would be right to do so unless the British government apologises and withdraws the ‘sir’ title.”

Other participants include:

The Government is spending millions of pounds on attempts to find out why British Muslims are drawn into extremist politics. In an era in which schoolchildren are being encouraged to engage in violent jihad,  schools are being urged to report students being drawn into extremism. The courts have been full, for the past three years, with terrorist trial after terrorist trial.

Yet it is at events like the Global Peace and Unity Event that British Muslims are being inducted into political and religious extremism.

And, by permitting senior Labour politicians to attend this event, the Government is both encouraging and endorsing this politics.