This is a guest post by Tom Wilson
There was something slightly surreal about seeing a group as fringe as MEMO (Middle East Monitor) holding an event in one of the Palace of Westminster’s grander committee rooms, but then that is an integral part of living in an open democracy: a system that incidentally was repeatedly knocked by both some of the members of the panel and the audience during the course of the event. MEMO was hosting the launch of the report ‘The Cold War on British Muslims: an examination of Policy Exchange and The Centre for Social Cohesion’ and so from the title I had assumed it was fairly predictable what was going to be said. However as the proceedings of the evening’s event unfolded it became apparent that things were taking a tone that even I had not fully anticipated.
First, Dr Daud Abdullah, the director of MEMO, spoke of how Muslims had been encouraged to integrate into British democracy, only to labelled infiltrators and driven out. Next, in a somewhat convoluted fashion, Dr Abdullah seemed to imply that there was some kind of causal relationship between Mr Cameron’s comments in Munich regarding Multiculturalism and the campaigns of the EDL. From this the Director of MEMO then went onto claim that things could still get worse, referring to what he called the events of the 22nd of July in Norway. As though to suggest that think-tanks such as The Centre for Social Cohesion (CSC) and Policy Exchange take one on a trajectory, via the echelons of the EDL, that ultimately end in Anders Breivik styled politically inspired murders.
We also heard from David Miller, one of the authors of the report and co-founder of SpinWatch from which Powerbase was launched; the Wikepedia-esque database that indulges in a somewhat paranoid detailing of allegedly neoconservative networks of influence and control. Although according to Tom Griffin, one of the other authors of the report, it is the CSC that in fact deals in conspiracy theories about anti-Western subversion. David Miller provided another particularly bizarre moment when, during the Q&A, he addressed a member of the East London Mosque as ‘Brother’ in a manner often reserved for use between religiously observant Muslims. This as it happens was in an expression of partial agreement with the young man who had just treated us all to a diatribe about how in the current government there apparently is no democracy, that our leaders are war criminals, that they are akin to the crusaders, that the war on terror is in truth a war on Muslims and that the time for talking is over and, rather chillingly, now is the time for action, whatever that is supposed to mean. Still, so far, so to be expected.
It was only when the authors of the report came to present their findings on the funding of the organizations covered by the report that the really shocking nature of the accusations being made became apparent. The panel had already made quite clear that they believed Policy Exchange and the CSC to be responsible for whipping up anti-Muslim feeling, but as it became clear that the other primary emphasis was to be the issue of funding I waited with bated breath to see which dubious group individuals had been found to be funding the think-tanks in question. To my almost disbelief, panellist Tom Mills began to expound upon how their research had uncovered that the very same people who had funded the CSC and Policy Exchange had also funded Jewish causes and pro-Israel organizations, in other words that the funders were themselves Jewish. By all accounts, the CSC has been funded by the Bernard Lewis Family Charitable Trust, the Lewis family we were told owns hotels in Israel. Policy Exchange, it was revealed, is funded by the Charles Wolfson Charitable Trust, which the report itself states ‘funds a host of Jewish organizations’ and initiatives run by Rabbi Sidney Brichto. Likewise it was mentioned that the CSC had as a funder Stanley Kalms, who it was stressed had funded projects involving Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. I started to feel as though I was attending some kind of crackpot event about global Jewish conspiracies. Who was to blame for the proliferation of anti-Muslim feeling in Britain? The Jews and Jewish money, obviously. The truth is that the report itself does make mention of the many non-Jewish and non-Israel linked funders, and yet at this Parliamentary event it seems that it was only the Jewish ones that were being detailed.
Clearly it was too much to expect that MEMO could organize an event where Israel and Jews would not come under attack. Indeed one audience member took the message quite to heart when he asserted that there had not been any problems in the region prior to the creation of Israel. And this was not so far from what was said by Anas Altikriti, CEO of The Cordoba Foundation, and also a member of the panel that evening where he expressed his pleasure at the fact that Cordoba was sponsoring this report. It may however be worth mentioning that The Cordoba Foundation has been described by David Cameron as ‘a front for the Muslim Brotherhood’ and that it was ordered to repay public money it had been given in 2007 on account of the Foundation having provided a platform for Hiz but-Tahrir, or that in 2009 Cordoba sponsored an event at which a video talk by al-Qaeda theorist Anwar Al-Awlaki was scheduled to be shown. So perhaps, if the funding of political organizations is of concern, it might not be a bad idea to hold some investigations into the funding of MEMO, The Cordoba Foundation and indeed the report in question.
