Islamism

Muhammad Al-Yaqoubi, the GPU and “Community Cohesion”

Here is a message from the chairman of the “Global Peace and Unity” (GPU) conference, Mohamed Ali Harrath:

The GPU offers a crucial platform for interfaith dialogue and exchange of ideas towards fostering mutual understanding between people from every faith and background in a bid for greater community cohesion.

This is funny coming from a man who says that Jews control the media and America.

Not to mention the fact that GPU speakers include Shady Alsuleiman, a promoter of al Qaeda preacher and recruiter Anwar Al-Awlaki, and grotesque antisemite Zaghloul Al-Naggar.

Syrian preacher Muhammad Al-Yaqoubi is another scheduled speaker at the event. During the Mohammed cartoons controversy, he made his own views on “community cohesion” perfectly clear: freedom of expression must go.

This is why the West now has more courage, especially with these wrong and false ideals like freedom of religion’ or ‘freedom of expression’. In Islam I do not allow under the banner of ‘freedom of expression’ someone to come and curse or insult a Prophet of Allah (swt).

Now the West has crossed every red line in respect of norms and ethics and I don’t think Muslims should tolerate this. If you’re asking me about how to react, how to respond, I believe we should show the highest angry level of response.

We should tell the West that this is a red line you can never cross. When someone comes to claim God on Facebook, as happened recently, or when someone comes to call for the drawing of Rasulullah on Facebook, the government where Facebook is registered should have rules and limitations on the ‘freedom of expression’, and the same in Denmark.

Denmark isn’t really a big country, and so we could have taught the West a great lesson, and every other country, that we don’t fear any country that follows the same pattern and that they will get the same treatment from the Islamic world.

There must be strict limits to “interfaith dialogue” as well. When the Grand Mufti of Syria made some conciliatory remarks about Christians and Jews, he went much too far:

In defence of the Prophet Muhammad, Shaykh Muhammad al-Yaqoubi delivered this past Friday a speech rebuking the Mufti of Syria, Shaykh Ahmad Hassoun, for his scandalous blasphemy against the Prophet. He also demanded that the Mufti resign and leave public service out of embarrassment and shame before his Lord Allah and the Prophet.

On Tuesday January 19, 2010, the Mufti of Syria made some very troubling remarks about the Prophet of Islam in front of an American delegation lead by the Orthodox Rabbi Marc Gopin.

The Mufti’s remarks, which were published in the Jerusalem Post and aired on Israeli Army Radio, included: “If the Prophet Muhammad had asked me to deem Christians or Jews heretics, I would have deemed Muhammad himself a heretic…If Muhammad had commanded us to kill people, I would have told him he was not a Prophet…”

In his speech, Shaykh al-Yaqoubi explained, “We know that Moses and Jesus are prophets only because our Prophet Muhammad told us so. Had he told us otherwise, we would have had to believe him.” He added, “Believing in Moses and Jesus does not imply the validity of Judaism and Christianity of today.”

What is particularly troubling about the Mufti’s remarks is that according to Jerusalem Post, the Israeli Army Radio aired Mufti Hassoun’s statements to encourage Palestinians to protect Jewish settlers at the illegally occupied Palestinian territories.

Shaykh al-Yaqoubi ended his speech by asking Mufti Hassoun to resign his job out of embarrassment before Allah and His Messenger and protect the dignity of Islam and the integrity of the Ulema of Syria.

For Al-Yaqoubi, jihad is important too. Here he is speaking up for murderers in Iraq in 2004:

Parts of the sermon were openly political. Al-Yaqoubi, who is considered a moderate, spoke approvingly of jihad in the battlefield, of “fighting in order to liberate your country, as the Iraqis are doing.”

The sermon built to an impassioned, rapid-fire crescendo, in which, almost shouting, al-Yaqoubi seemed to divide jihad into foreign and domestic spheres, with appropriate action for each. “Wherever the American troops are — wherever they are, they are going to be defeated,” he yelped. But “here in this country,” he instructed Muslims to “leave jihad to those who are fighting jihad,” and “work peacefully” to represent Islam.

Six years on, he is still preaching jihad in Iraq, and Palestine too, as you will see in this lecture on jihad:

We have our brothers in Iraq fighting for the liberation of Iraq. We have our brothers in Palestine fighting for the liberation of Palestine.

Yes, just the man to bring to Britain to promote “greater community cohesion”.