I wouldn’t normally bother to reply to an attack by former Workers Revolutionary Party activist, Bob Pitt, on us. However, it is instructive to look at his latest post, as an object lesson on the alliance between parts of the far Left and Britain’s Islamist lobby.
Bob Pitt is a former member of the now largely defunct Trotskyite party, the Workers Revolutionary Party. The WRP was essentially a rape-cult run by a repeat sexual offender, Gerry Healy, who took money from Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein, in return for spying on trade unionists and other dissidents, and spreading racist conspiracy theories about “Zionist” plots.
He now runs Islamophobia Watch – a website devoted to attacking Muslim liberals and … spreading conspiracy theories about “Zionist” plots.
Have a read of Bob Pitt’s attack on this article, which points out that the Guardian has appointed Nadiya Takolia to write their religious affairs column. Nadiya Takolia works for Engage, an an NGO which attacks Muslim liberals while defending hate preachers and Islamist political parties and institutions, and which attacks the police for arresting terrorist suspects.
The first thing you’ll notice about Bob Pitt’s article, is that he takes no issue with the description of Engage. How could he? There is very little to distinguish the editorial line of Islamophobia-Watch from Engage. He’s proud of attacking Muslim liberals, defending hate preachers, and supporting Islamist political institutions. Indeed, he thinks that this is exactly what people ought to be doing.
Secondly, you’ll notice that Bob Pitt is full of love for An Nahda, the Muslim Brotherhood franchise in Tunisia:
It is notable that Lips provides no details of the politics of this Islamist party – and that is hardly surprising, since An Nahda has in fact played a central role in the transition to democracy in Tunisia and looks likely to form the largest party in parliament after the elections later this month.
When An Nahda founder, Rachad Ghannoushi returned to Tunisia from exile in the United Kingdom, this is what happened:
Thousands of his supporters, including many veiled women, cheered him at the airport. It was weeks after the fall of President Ben Ali, and the interim government had just lifted media restrictions and allowed banned political parties like Ennahda to register. Alongside Ghannouchi’s supporters at the airport was a small group of protesters carrying signs saying, ‘No Islamism, No Theocracy, No Sharia and No Stupidity!’
An Nahda is unlikely to win the elections in Tunisia outright, but it will be a large and important party. That is because liberals, secularists and socialists were repressed under Ben Ali, and are behind the curve: divided and trying to get the knack of politics. The Islamist block, by contrast, organised well in exile in the United Kingdom, and are ahead of the curve.
Ghannoushi himself is an antisemite, who believes in the fraudulent Nazi “Franklin Prophecy“:
Americans did not follow their wise leader Franklin’s advice when he warned them of what Jews could do in America if they were left to their wishes.
Here are the statesmen to whom Ghannoushi dedicated his masterpiece, Civil Liberties in the Islamic State:
I dedicate it also to my symbolic fathers and on top of the list the shahid Hassan al-Bannah, Mawlana Abu al-A’la al-Mawdudi, al-shahid Sayyed Qutb, our professor Malek Ben Nabi, and the mujaddid and leader Hassan al-Turabi. I also dedicate it to the leader of the modern Islamic revolution al-Imam al-Khomayni, and shahid and ‘allamah al-Sadr …
I expect you’ll recognise a few of those names!
You’d hope that anybody who regarded themselves as a progressive would support liberals and secularists, and not a religious party from an extreme and totalitarian tradition. But of course, Pitt is very far from being a progressive.
A final note. Here’s Bob Pitt’s conclusion:
The ineptitude of Lucy Lips’ attack on Nadiya Takolia should not distract attention from the purpose of the exercise, which is to destroy the career of a young Muslim woman in the early stages of establishing herself as a journalist. … They really are the lowest form of human scum.
The objection to Nadiya Takolia is that she works for an organisation which attacks Muslim liberals while defending hate preachers and Islamist political parties and institutions, and which attacks the police for arresting terrorist suspects. However, Bob Pitt conflates Islam and Muslims, with specific Islamist political organisations: precisely as Muslim haters like Stop the Islamisation of Europe do.
Pitt’s argument is akin to claiming that anti-fascists oppose the BNP activists “just for being British”!
