The Guardian’s Editorial today:
In praise of … the Maryam Centre
It is heartening to see that East London Mosque in Whitechapel is expanding
A month after a mosque in north London was destroyed in an arson attack, it is heartening to see that East London Mosque in Whitechapel is expanding. When it gets fully under way, the Maryam Centre will offer a range of projects and services for women in the community – a prayer hall, counselling, a gym – as well as house a school and a visitor centre for non-Muslims. The centre will make the mosque very much more than just a provider of religious services. With 25,000 worshipers attending a week, and that is outside Ramadan, the mosque has already become a key hub for the community. Its original purpose in 1910 was as a place of worship for sailors and travellers who came to Tower Hamlets. It took most of the last century to establish a permanent base in Whitechapel.
Today it is the living and growing answer to those on the extreme right who vilify mosques as the home of fundamentalists.
Oh dear.
Oh dearie me.
As anybody who has paid any attention to the events hosted by the East London Mosque/London Muslim Centre will know, this institution is one of the primary outlets of hate preaching and bigotry in London. The East London Mosque is the home of the Islamic Forum Europe, which controls the institution, and indeed the DCLG which observed that the ELM/LMC is the base for the far Right Islamist party: Jamaat-e-Islami. It was established by Choudhry Mueen Uddin, a Jamaat-e-Islami activist who is facing a war crimes trial in Bangladesh, where he is accused of having run death squads which abducted and murdered Bangladeshi patriots and intellectuals in the 1970s. In one particularly disturbing incident, these death squads sliced off the breasts of a woman journalist, and left her to die.
Those on the extreme right in Britain, who vilify all mosques as the home of fundamentalists, have done terrible things: but I don’t believe that they have ever sliced off the breasts of liberal Bangladeshi women.
If you want to know more about the hatred spewed from the East London Mosque, every week, you need only browse some entries on the institution. Here are just a few examples from the past few months:
In July, the Friday sermon at the East London Mosque, was delivered by a hate preacher who has been banned from Sheffield Hallam university: Assim al-Hakeem. Assim al-Hakeem teaches that apostates must be killed. He’d like to see Christians and Jews executed in an Islamic state for “talking against Mohammed“. He is vituperatively anti-gay, and preaches that women have no place in political leadership.
In May, the ELM/LMC hosted Abu Abdissalam, a hate preacher who has been banned by Tower Hamlets from appearing on its premises. He discourages Muslims from working with the police, because he claims that they are engaged in a “war against Islam”. He is also a significant supporter of Ali al Timimi, who was convicted of recruiting (pdf) young men for jihad against America in the aftermath of September 11. Timimi also called for the decapitation of Shia Muslims, and promoted hatred of Jews.
In March, the ELM/LMC hosted Khalid Al-Fikri, an Islamist hate preacher. He is an outspoken supporter of both terrorist organisations and convicted terrorists, and also spews hatred against Shia Muslims:
Shia are one of the worst and greatest enemies against our ummah nowadays
In February, the ELM/LMC held a rally for the convicted Al Qaeda terrorist, Aafia Siddiqui.
The ELM/LMC offers platforms, time and time again, against those who preach hatred and support the execution of gays. They do this, despite lyingly claiming to have stopped.
Over the last six financial years the East London Mosque has received £2.9 million in public sector funding. They use this money to underwrite the propagation of this hatred.
The Guardian knows all this. The information has been in the public arena for years. The claim by the Guardian that:
Today it is the living and growing answer to those on the extreme right who vilify mosques as the home of fundamentalists.
… is true. Unfortunately, it provides all the evidence they need to rally support to their hateful cause.
As Hope not Hate has observed, Islamist and fascist hatemongers are “two sides of the same coin“. You can’t fight one without the other.
But the Guardian goes one step further. It has thrown its lot in with one group of fascists.
Good luck in pointing this out, or posting any of the evidence in The Guardian comment thread. They’ve deleted every example which illustrates the disgrace of their politics.
