The rumour is doing the rounds that the Daily Telegraph’s chief political commentator, Peter Oborne wrote Baroness Warsi’s speech.
I find that very odd. It would mean that Oborne wrote a speech which, erm, praised himself:
I commend those who understand and condemn the cancer of Islamophobia…
….whether that be John Denham, Seumus Milne, Peter Oborne, or the Metropolitan Police…
If that is really the case, it would also be strange for Peter Oborne to have written an article praising a speech which – so it is said – he wrote himself.
I have my doubts. Peter Oborne’s article on the speech is so very much better than the speech itself. For a start, Baroness Warsi happily named those who she believes are stirring up hatred against Muslims, including the veteran Guardian journalist, Polly Toynbee, she couldn’t name the large number of Muslim organisations aligned with the most vicious Islamist parties or with obnoxious hate preachers, Oborne at least mentions Anjem Choudary and Hizb ut Tahrir:
The Islamic political organisation Hizbut-Tahrir (to give one example) gives its fealty not to the national state but to the misty vision of an international caliphate, something which has not existed in substantive form since the collapse of the Ottoman empire in 1922.
Hizb ut Tahrir, of course, is not the only Islamist party engaged in pushing extreme politics, racism and hatred against other cultural minorities. Preachers and politicians associated with number of such groups have been banned from the United Kingdom under this government, and its predecessor.
Let us hope that the next time that Baroness Warsi gives a speech, or Peter Oborne appears on a Muslim Council of Britain platform to talk about anti-Muslim bigotry, that they can name and shame those groups and their supporters.
