From the communications person at King’s Church Manchester:
The church leaders reviewed the material and they and I had a meeting yesterday afternoon with the event organisers during which concerns were expressed to the event organisers.
It was stated by the church leaders that Muhamad Musa al-Shareef would not be allowed to speak at or even attend this event. Apparently he hasn’t actually got a visa yet but if he did get it, he would still not be allowed to attend.
The event is a cultural community family event and we have received assurances that the event will have no political content whatsoever. They were very happy to remove him from the program.
Please could you communicate this to anyone you may be in contact with as I’ve just had a phone call asking if the “Hate Event” is open for anyone to attend.
While we are grateful for you to bring the issue to our attention, the matter is now resolved and we would appreciate it if you would now put the record straight.
Contrary to your blog statement that we were not treating this as an urgent matter, we certainly did.
It is good that King’s Church has made it clear Muhammad Musa al-Shareef is not welcome, surely based on his beliefs that some people who choose to become Christians deserve the death penalty for apostasy, and that human rights are an invention of “the Christians, the atheists and the fornicators”.
It is possible that al-Shareef has been refused a visa – we will find out soon enough if the Government has indeed banned him from this country. This should explain why the event organisers are “happy” to remove him from the programme.
However, it appears odd that the event is now being described as a “family event” with “no political content whatsoever”, for the following reasons:
1. Al-Shareef is still advertised as a speaker at the PRB event.
2. Why would the PRB invite a speaker who also works as a political commentator, from another continent, for a “family event”?
3. What is Azzam “Kaboom” Tamimi, the advocate of suicide bombings in Israel, doing at this “family event”?
4. What interest does journalist Abdel Bari Atwan, the man who will “dance in Trafalgar Square” if Iran attacks Israel, have in this “family event”?
5. The Palestinian Forum in Britain (PFB) is clearly a political group. For instance, its latest two events were protests outside 10 Downing Street, and outside Parliament, respectively. In both cases, the PFB included the tagline “Call on the UK government to take an action!” It is hard to believe that the PFB would thus organise a national conference with no political content whatsoever.
6. Why does the group organising this “family event with no political content whatsoever”, have a daily political protest in Westminster?
7. The PFB recently hosted a party for the antisemitic political leader Raed Salah.
Finally, I would like to ask King’s Church Manchester, why they have accepted the assurances of a group that was happy to invite someone who wants Christians to be killed, onto their church premises. And indeed, why they agreed to host such a group in the first place.
These questions ought to be answered as soon as possible, and treated as an urgent matter.
