This is a guest post by Khadija Burlington Smythe
Salaam, infidels! Don’t think your earlier apathetic response to the persecution of Sheikh Mo Dawah went unnoticed. Where were the phone calls to Amnesty, the messages to Cage Prisoners? But we wish to give you another chance, particularly as the values Harry’s Place stands for – liberty, freedom of expression, justice – were all in fact invented by Islam.
Sheikh Mo Dawah is rightly famed as a community leader and all-round intellectual. And now he has written a truly seminal work – the Medina Carta – like the Magna Carta, but much better.
Britain stands at a crossroads.
Before her are two paths.
One of shamelessness, secularism and doom.
The other path leads to salvation, Utopia, and social harmony inspired by the principles of Islam.
Mo Dawah is destined to be spoken of in the same breath as Henry VIII, Oliver Cromwell, William Wilberforce and Cat Stevens as one of the greatest Englishmen who ever lived.
In this Manifesto of Genius he outlines exactly what went wrong with British civilisation.
Shining through the Sheikh’s words is his commitment to a plural and diverse society – for he recognizes that the paths to Islam are plural and diverse. And there is no greater supporter of freedom of speech than him – which makes it all the more upsetting when so many people abuse that freedom and force him to report them to Twitter or to their employer.
As Sheikh Mo Dawah observed recently, I have been researching the relationship between Islam and the novels of Jane Austen. Since first sharing my views with the Sheikh, I have refined my theory, and now conclude that Jane Austen had in fact already reverted when she wrote Northanger Abbey. It is evident from the text that the path taken by the heroine, Catherine Morland, is an allegory for reversion to Islam, symbolized in her marriage to Henry Tilney.
So it follows, as night follows day, that the false friends and trashy novels which lead Catherine astray represent the many obstacles and hindrances in the way of those seeking the truth – secularists, atheists, rationalists, feminists, Zionists, Muslim so-called liberals, liberal so-called Muslims, supercilious academics who insist you back up your claims with sources, Ahmadis, second rate Islamophobic ‘historians’, Humanist Extremists, Muslimahs who fail to properly a-veil themselves of the freedoms granted in the West, lightweight Muslims who seem more interested in deviationist Zionist chefs* than the well being of the Ummah, snarky ex-Muslims, and people who ask difficult questions.
Surrounded by such foes, and many more too numerous and various to list, it is hardly surprising that the Sheikh and I both think our vibrant, diverse, multicultural and above all tolerant society is under threat. We urge you to exercise your freedom and listen to the Sheikh’s message of Da’wah – before it is too late.
*Khadija adds There are many malicious people out there who delight in taking the words of their opponents out of context and bringing them up again and again like cattle chewing the cud. So I will remind such mischief makers that both Mo Dawah and myself are unrivalled in our support for the Jewish and LGBT communities. Here are some wise words from the Medina Carta which are very pertinent here.
If we understand that disagreeing with Islam is a form of taking it out of context we diagnose the malady. And every malady must be placed in the context of a cure … This is the main civil rights humanitarian struggle of the age. To prevent our words being taken out of context by recontextualising the minds of those who would do so.