A couple of days ago a Shia man suffered nasty injuries after a confrontation involving Anjem Choudary and his supporters. Choudary is a thoroughly unrepresentative, as well as a thoroughly unpleasant, figure. He has been given far too much publicity by newspapers and broadcasters keen to attract prurient punters. Here Mehdi Hasan explains why his views are not representative.
The Muslim Council of Britain has issued a press release condemning this recent attack. The MCB has rather more claim to be representative than Anjem Choudary, and distances itself firmly from his ‘hate filled message’. However there is an inconsistency in the signals sent out by the press release. It has a strong title ‘Muslims stand united, resist divisive sectarian rhetoric’, and this is nicely supported by an epigraph from the Qur’an: ‘And hold fast, all of you together, to the rope of Allah, and do not separate.’
But then we get this:
The Muslim Council of Britain today affirms the unity of Muslims, particularly in the UK. We are a community with plural traditions and viewpoints, but united in our faith in Allah and his last Prophet. This is a view held by the vast majority of British Muslims.
It seems a shame that, in a post explicitly reminding people of the need to avoid sectarian strife, the writer felt they had to have a little dig at the Ahmadi, for whom Mohammad was not the last Prophet. Anti-Ahmadi bigotry isn’t the same problem here as it is in Pakistan of course, where they are effectively disenfranchised and subjected to attacks, but it is still an issue, as acknowledged by Tell MAMA, who explicitly include sectarian attacks on Ahmadis as an area of concern on their website.
