Ahmad Nofal and the Home Office

Ahmad Nofal on Al-Hiwar TV

Here’s another test for the government that failed to stop Raed Salah from entering the country, even though he has been banned.

This Saturday Salah will speak at Brent Town Hall. The “Prevent” policy review states:

Propagandists for terrorism and for ideologies taken up by terrorists should not be permitted to make use of publicly owned venues. Local authorities and others must be ready to take appropriate action.

So has anyone in government done anything at all to convince Brent Council that it is making a bad mistake by hosting a hate preacher with a horrific record?

A bigger test looms.

Salah will be accompanied at the Saturday event and another in Manchester on Sunday by Ahmad Nofal (also spelled Nawfal and Noufal). He too should be banned from the UK if the government is to deliver on its promises to get tough on foreign hate preachers.

Nofal has been a prominent figure in the Jordanian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood since the 1980s. He is currently a professor of sharia (Islamic law) at the University of Jordan.

It is no surprise to find a Brother going in for Holocaust denial. In an interview on a Saudi TV channel in November 2005, Nofal endorsed French Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy in graphic terms:

“Roger Garoudy said: ‘If we take the number of gas chambers and the maximal daily capacity of an oven, and multiply them by the period you Zionists, claim the Holocaust lasted – even if we multiply the number of ovens by the maximal [capacity], the figure is grossly exaggerated. The number of those burned [sic] was 600,000. You added another zero, and turned it into six million.'”

When you sink to this level of hatred, supporting the murder of civilians is easy. In March 2008 hate preacher Yusuf Al-Qaradawi’s Islam Online published a fatwa on “Relations during War, Jihad: Rulings & Regulations”. It was written by the managing editor of the website’s sharia department. It was also signed by others. The first listed signatory was “Dr. Ahmad Nawfal, professor of Shari`ah in Jordan”.

The fatwa stressed that Islamic rules of war were morally far superior to “Zionist” rules. For example, it stated:

That is why we are going to highlight and affirm the difference between their [Zionist] wars and our morality-based wars where women, old people, and civilians are not to be killed, and as long as the person in question is not a warrior.

Perversely, the fatwa actually ended with an explicit endorsement of the murder of Israeli civilians:

Contemporary Opinions on Killing Civilians

In a fatwa issued by Sheikh Faysal Mawlawi, vice president of the European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR), concerning killing civilians in wars especially from Jews, he said,

Originally, it is prohibited to kill civilians, women, and children, but certain cases are exempted from this:

1. When all individuals on the enemy side participate in war, as then the term “civilian” would not apply to them.

2. When civilians do things to help militants, as then what they do would be regarded as a “military action.”

3. When warriors use civilians, women, and children as a shield and there is no way for Muslim warriors to reach those militants except by killing those civilians.

4. When the enemies kill Muslim civilians, for then their civilians may be treated the same.

5. When a civilian “accepts” usurping a (Muslim) land, he is considered an occupier, and is not a civilian any more.

6. When children themselves are not intended (or targeted) to be killed (deliberately) without doing anything wrong or committing any crime.

It is well known that Israelis, men and women, indulge in war against Palestinians, so they are warriors. They are also usurpers of the (Palestinian) land, because the Jews in Palestine have emigrated from various countries, and they have no right in this land. In Islam, it is obligatory to liberate any Islamic land from occupation. It should also be known that jihad against the Jews is not because they are Jews, but because they are usurpers and warriors.

The same opinion was adopted by:

Dr. Ahmad Nawfal, professor of Shari`ah in Jordan

According to British Islamist Azzam Tamimi, Nofal has done his own bit for violence in the past:

The Ikhwan [Brotherhood] of Jordan had been taking active part in the guerilla warfare against Israel from Jordan. However, as they saw an imminent clash between the PLO and the Jordanian regime they decided to disband their own Fidayeen (fidā’īyūn: guerillas) and close down their bases known at the time as Qawa’id al-Shuyukh (basis of the Sheikhs) eight months before the September tragic ‘civil war’ broke out. Of the prominent Ikhwan members that operated out of these bases were Abdallah Azzam and Ahmad Nawfal who both later left for Egypt to pursue their post-graduate education. In the eighties Abdallah Azzam settled in Peshawar as part of the pan- Islamic effort to aid the Afghani cause and was mysteriously assassinated together with two of his sons in 1989.

American terrorism investigator Steven Emerson has reported similar information:

Mr. Saleh’s home in the Bronx was used as a haven for known terrorists visiting the United States, including Jordanian militant Ahmed Noufal who has been directly involved in sponsoring and organizing Hamas terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians.

According to this academic paper, Nofal also helped Hamas gets its sick message together in the terrorist group’s early years:

The leadership of the Jordanian Brotherhood was instrumental in drafting the Covenant of Hamas that was published in August 1988. A number of Palestinian leaders of the Brotherhood assumed the tasks of Hamas public relations officers, or even of a sort of leadership in exile. Among these were Dr. Ahmad Nawfal (who had been active in the Islamic student movement), Ibrahim Ghawsha and others.

The Hamas covenant is a horrifying charter for genocidal antisemitism. A sample:

The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.

Nofal also cropped up in America in the early 1990s, when Hamas and other extremists faced much less pressure there than they do today. Back then, America was a promised land for propaganda and fundraising. Sure enough, Nofal appears in “Jihad in America”, a documentary by terrorism investigator Steven Emerson which was broadcast by PBS in 1995. He praised terrorist acts at a meeting in the USA in 1992:

Nofal: All those operations that comfort our hearts, all of them were perpetrated by Muslims. Isn’t it so? The operation of the bus. Aren’t you following history, who’s behind it, the killing of Kahane, who is behind it? These lessons speak for themselves.

Emerson: Sheikh Ahmed Nofal is a known recruiter of Hamas terrorists in Jordan. One of the operations he was applauding is this terrorist act in Israel. An Islamic fundamentalist commandeered a bus and drove it off a cliff. Sixteen people, including one American were killed. One of ICPI’s most prominent members is Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, seen here, sitting next to Sheik Nofal at another ICPI conference.

Rahman is the “blind sheikh” who was a leading figure in extremist circles in the USA at the time. Rahman was later convicted for his leading role in the early 1990s New York bombing plots, which targeted tunnels under the Hudson, the headquarters of the UN, and FBI offices in the city.

Nofal also appeared at conferences of the Muslim Arab Youth Association (MAYA) in the USA. MAYA promoted extremists such as Tunisian Islamist Rashid Al-Ghannoushi, Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, and Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook. It was a virulently antisemitic organisation and a strong supporter of terrorism. This scene from a 1994 conference in Chicago captures the atmosphere of MAYA’s hateful rallies:

Last December, about 5,000 people packed the Hyatt Regency hotel in downtown Chicago for the annual meeting of the Muslim Arab Youth Association. Midway through the meeting, a speaker suddenly announced that a Palestinian policeman had bombed a Jerusalem bus, killing himself and wounding 12 Israelis.

“Allah Akhbar,” roared the crowd, offering spontaneous praise.

The Palestinian Forum in Britain (PFB) is organising the events featuring Nofal. It is a political association based in London. It frequently invites extremists to its meetings in the UK, including foreign hate preachers. For example, it has been the host of Egyptian preacher Wagdi Ghoneim, a promoter of vicious antisemitism and a caller to jihad. Ghoneim is now banned from the UK as well as several other countries in the West and the Arab world.

The PFB’s spokesman is Zaher Al-Birawi, a high profile participant in aid convoys to Gaza that serve Hamas. He is close to the leadership of Hamas. For example, this picture shows him (fourth from left) sitting right next to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh at a ceremony in Gaza honouring one of the aid convoys for its material and political support for Hamas.

Zaher Al-Birawi with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza. To Al-Birawi’s right one sees Kevin Ovenden, a trustee of Viva Palestina, a registered British charity. It is George Galloway’s Hamas support operation. Mahmoud Al-Zahar, an infamous Hamas hardliner, is to Haniyeh’s left.

The PFB events’ sponsors include two London-based Islamist broadcasters – Islam Channel and Al-Hiwar.

Islam Channel is headed by Mohamed Ali Harrath, a Tunisian exile based in London since the 1990s. The channel has promoted several extremists in numerous broadcasts, according to the Quilliam Foundation and other critics. Just this month Ali Harrath was received by Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza in recognition for his participation in an aid convoy that provided material and political support to Hamas.

Islam Channel CEO Mohamed Ali Harrath (centre) with Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas

Al-Hiwar broadcasts in Arabic. Its key figures are Azzam Tamimi, who is notorious for his backing of suicide bombings of Israeli civilians and support for Hamas; Anas Al-Tikriti, the head of an Islamist lobby group called the Cordoba Foundation; and operative for Hamas Zaher Al-Birawi. Al-Hiwar has featured Ahmad Nofal in its programming.

The third sponsor of the PFB events is Human Appeal International (HAI), a registered British charity based in Manchester. A key figure in HAI – and designated contact in Charity Commission records – is Muin Shabib (also spelled Moin). He was identified as an important Hamas operative by the FBI in the early 1990s when it was investigating the American funding network of the terrorist group. In an interview with the FBI in 1994, Shabib admitted supporting Hamas financially and politically.

Shabib ended up on the list of “unindicted co-conspirators” in the Holy Land Foundation case. It shattered the Hamas network in America.

HAI made a contribution of goods worth £750,000 to last year’s flotilla to Gaza. The flotilla was led by IHH, a Turkish charity which is one of the world’s largest and most enthusiastic backers of Hamas. Notable figures on the flotilla included some of the leading Hamas supporters in the West and senior members of Muslim Brotherhood chapters in the Arab world.

This April HAI was honoured at a Hamas ceremony in Gaza alongside other charities for its services to Hamas. One can see its logo in the photograph below from the ceremony (sixth from right).