In today’s rows Sadiq Khan offered us this line:
I’ve fought extremism all my life.
Oh really?
It’s simply not true. Let’s look at another episode in the record which makes this clear.
By 2012 the Islamist student group FOSIS was widely known and seen as part of the extremist problems at British universities. No wonder:
– In 2012 it was seeking to link up Islamic student society leaders and Haitham al-Haddad for training. Haddad was already one of the most notorious of hate preachers.
– Other extremists at FOSIS events in the four years up to 2012 included Daud Abdullah, Abdur Raheem Green, Ibrahim Hewitt, Uthman Lateef, Zahir Mahmood, Stephen Sizer, Azzam Tamimi, and Riyadh ul-Haq.
– In 2011 FOSIS backed Raed Salah, the horrid antisemitic “blood libel” sheikh. For a character witness it invoked Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas.
– Some foolish civil servants agreed to hold a recruitment event with FOSIS in 2011. Home Secretary Theresa May was aware of FOSIS’s real nature and she stepped in, furious. The event was cancelled.
– FOSIS even tried to disrupt the police investigation of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the UCL graduate and “undie bomber” who attempted to murder hundreds of people in an airliner over Detroit in 2009.
– Qasim Rafiq was FOSIS’s spokesman around this time. Like Abdulmutallab, he had served as president of UCL ISOC and counted the undie bomber as a “close friend”.
– FOSIS had also campaigned for Aafia Siddiqui, also known as “Lady al-Qaeda”. She is a gross antisemite and attempted murderer. For company in this cause FOSIS had the likes of Lauren Booth, Sulaiman Ghani, Ken O’Keefe, and Taji Mustafa.
There’s more, of course, but that’s enough to demonstrate why Theresa May was so concerned about FOSIS in 2012. Indeed, any reasonable person with little more than a passing acquaintance with extremism saw FOSIS as a worry.
Sadiq Khan was not among them. Decidedly not. In 2012 he was the star turn at a FOSIS conference, where he praised the extremist group.
Khan was also very honoured by an award from FOSIS.
Sadiq Khan MP said: “It is a huge honour to receive this award. It is crucial that university students realise how privileged they are to have the opportunity to have a university education.”
Indeed, let’s have more of all this, please.
Shadow Justice Secretary and Shadow Lord Chancellor, Sadiq Khan, opened the conference with an empowering and inspiring speech on the significance of Muslim students to be politically active. He thanked Muslims students for their contribution to British society and emphasised that engaging with local communities, whether Muslim or non-Muslim to promote community development was part of Islamic principles and one could do so without comprising their faith.
He added that his party had taken the Muslim vote for granted and praised FOSIS as an organisation “helping Muslim students fulfil their potential so they can make positive contributions to society.”
Today in Parliament Labour MPs shouted “racist” at David Cameron.
I think a rather good definition of racism is holding to a certain set of standards for one group and a far lower set for another.
The white far right versus “brown” Islamist extremists, for example.
Step forward the Labour Party of 2016.
