Geert Wilders has been an open and relentless preacher of hate, there is little difference between his views and those of the far right. We have no problem with the challenge of criticisms to our faith, but the film that will be screened tomorrow by Lord Pearson and Baroness Cox is nothing less than a cheap and tacky attempt to whip up hysteria against Muslims. 

Mr Wilders’ xenophobic and repugnant views have been identified by a Dutch court, and are now confirmed by his official exclusion to the United Kingdom. It is now time to ask why Peers of Realm who promote such demagogues without any censure are allowed to be regarded as mainstream, responsible leaders in our community. 

The Muslim Council of Britain on the denial of a visa to Yusuf Al Qaradawi:

The Muslim Council of Britain deplores the government’s decision to refuse a visa to the renowned Islamic scholar Dr Yusuf al-Qaradawi. 

The MCB recognizes the Prime Minister has been under immense pressure from the pro-Zionist and neo-conservative lobby in recent weeks to take this decision. It is regrettable that the government has finally given way to these unreasonable demands spearheaded by the Tory leader whose government had in fact allowed Dr Qaradawi to visit the UK five times between 1995-97. 

‘Yusuf Al Qaradawi enjoys unparalleled respect and influence throughout the Muslim world. I am afraid this decision will send the wrong message to Muslims everywhere about the state of British society and culture. Britain has had a long and established tradition of free speech, debate and intellectual pursuit. These principles are worth defending, especially if we would like to see them spread throughout the world,” said Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Britain. 

Yusuf Al Qaradawi on Hitler, Muslims and Jews:

Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the [Jews] people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Hitler. By means of all the things he did to them – even though they exaggerated this issue – he managed to put them in their place. This was divine punishment for them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers. […] To conclude my speech, I’d like to say that the only thing I hope for is that as my life approaches its end, Allah will give me an opportunity to go to the land of Jihad and resistance, even if in a wheelchair. I will shoot Allah’s enemies, the Jews, and they will throw a bomb at me, and thus, I will seal my life with martyrdom. Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds. Allah’s mercy and blessings upon you.

Will this government make a formal exclusion order against Qaradawi, as they have against Wilders?

Will exclusion orders be made against the Hezbollah propagandist Ibrahim Mousawi and Bilal Phillips and Yahya Ibrahim, the hate preachers – one banned from Australia and one from  the United States – who will tour British universities next month?

The post Muslim Council of Britain on Wilders and Qaradawi: Compare and Contrast appeared first on Jewcy.

But they did it, again:

The Muslim Council of Britain boycotted yesterday’s national Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration in protest at the Israeli offensive in Gaza this month. The decision not to send representatives from the umbrella body, which represents 500 Muslim organisations in Britain, was made at an MCB committee meeting last week. The committee overwhelmingly ruled out attendance at events marking the Holocaust due to take place over the next few days, but the decision has not been officially announced. The MCB believes that the memorial day will be used to “silence criticism of Israel”.

The Muslim Council of Britain was never happy with HMD. The only reason they ever attended in the first place, was that the Government had refused to engage with them, unless they did.

But things change so quickly. Sympathetic ministers have gradually been including MCB representatives in more and more discussions and consultation processes. Government ministers spoke alongside MCB activists, Holocaust deniers, and supporters of terrorism at the Global Peace and Unity Event.

So I’m really not surprised that the MCB felt happy to re-instate their boycott so quickly. They’ve got everything they want, and there’s no reason for them to keep up the pretense.

This year, the reason for the boycott is Gaza. Don’t bother yourself trying to work out what the commemoration of the slaughter of six million European Jews has to do with that. Every year, the MCB has a new excuse to boycott the event. Back in 2001 it was that:

“It includes the controversial question of alleged Armenian genocide as well as the so-called gay genocide.”

I suspect that the MCB committee is torn between those who see HMD as a day of solemn reflection on the tragic failure of Hitler to exterminate all the world’s Jews, and those who would like to sing, dance, and hand out sweet pastries to celebrate their joy at the partial success of the endeavour.

The post Muslim Council of Britain Boycotts Holocaust Memorial Day Again appeared first on Jewcy.

I remember writing privately to the leaders of Stop the War expressing discomfort over signs equating the Star of David with the swastika and headbands glorifying suicide bombing, and getting an extremely hostile (and self-righteous) response for my trouble. Which didn’t stop me from turning out on the streets. … During the Spanish civil war the American poet Archibald MacLeish was attacked by Trotskyists for his willingness to support a democratically elected Spanish government led by communists, and dependent on the Soviet Union for arms. MacLeish replied:

“The man who refuses to defend his convictions, for fear he may defend them in the wrong company, has no convictions.”

DeeDee could have demonstrated the strength of his convictions by marching with these demonstrators, yesterday, in Melbourne:

Or, had he taken a trip to Calgary, he could have joined with the the Aryan Guard, who appear for some reason to have developed an affection for Hamas:

From the National Post:

Event organizer Shadi Abuid—who last made news a few years back as a university student when he brought to Calgary Norman Finkelstein, the popular anti-Israel author of “The Holocaust Industry”—told Canwest Global he was impressed with the “various groups uniting under one voice.” He explained that he had “directly told” the neo-Nazis that he’d prefer they didn’t join the march. “But in these demonstrations you can control the crowd but you can’t control the emotions . . . you can’t deny people’s right to walk,” he shrugged.

That’s true. Except, many of the same organizers behind Saturday’s march attempted to deny the freedom-to-demonstrate of an Israeli supporter just the other week. At a protest in front of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s constituency office in southwest Calgary January 2nd, Gazan supporters called the cops to complain when one man showed up waving an Israeli flag. There were 150 pro-Palestinian protestors, but the single Israeli supporter was told by police that he must leave or be charged with “inciting civil disorder,” according to this account (with photos). Protestors reportedly cursed at and threw shoes at the man. 

Finally, on a connected subject, and without spoiling it by googling, who said this:

I have long raged against any comparisons with the Second World War – whether of the Arafat-is-Hitler variety once deployed by Menachem Begin or of the anti-war-demonstrators-are-1930s-appeasers, most recently used by George Bush and Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara. And pro-Palestinian marchers should think twice before they start waffling about genocide when the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem once shook Hitler’s hand and said – in Berlin on 2 November 1943, to be precise – “The Germans know how to get rid of the Jews… They have definitely solved the Jewish problem.” The Grand Mufti, it need hardly be added, was a Palestinian. He lies today in a shabby grave about two miles from my Beirut home.

No, the real reason why “Gaza-Genocide” is a dangerous parallel is because it is not true. Gaza’s one and a half million refugees are treated outrageously enough, but they are not being herded into gas chambers or forced on death marches. That the Israeli army is a rabble is not in question – though I was amused to read one of Newsweek’s regular correspondents calling it “splendid” last week – but that does not mean they are all war criminals. The issue, surely, is that war crimes do appear to have been committed in Gaza. Firing at UN schools is a criminal act. It breaks every International Red Cross protocol. There is no excuse for the killing of so many women and children. 

(Via Norm and Tim Blair) Gene adds: Here’s one from Washington, DC:

The post Defending Your Convictions appeared first on Jewcy.

The London-based press watchdog, Arab Media Watch (AMW), has produced research demonstrating that British press reporting of the Middle East conflict has massively favoured the Israeli Ambassador to the almost complete exclusion of the Palestinian Ambassador.

A statement released by Arab Media Watch “expresses concern at the frequent use by the British press of Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor, compared with the near-total absence of his Palestinian counterpart Manuel Hassassian.”

AMW’s claim of bias is supported by London-based human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell:

“This research shows that the Israeli Ambassador has received 2,000% more UK national press coverage than his Palestinian opposite number, Ambassador Hassassian. Such bias does not give the British people a balanced perspective on the Israel-Palestine conflict and the tragic events in the Palestinian territories. The non-reportage of Mr Hassassian is particularly regrettable because he is a voice of Palestinian moderation, peace and constructive dialogue. By denying him coverage, the press is handing a propaganda victory to Israel and Hamas and allowing the hawks on both sides to dominate the public debate,” said Mr Tatchell.

According to AMW’s survey, from the time that Mr Prosor became Israeli Ambassador to the UK at the end of 2007 until the end of 2008, there have been 40 items (news articles, commentaries, editorials and letters) either by him, quoting him or mentioning him in British national newspapers.

In contrast, during the same period, Ambassador Hassassian has been mentioned only twice in the UK national press – both times in the Guardian, quoted in two articles by Middle East editor Ian Black. This is 20 times fewer mentions than Mr Prosor.

Mr Prosor has been reported in the following newspapers:

Newspaper                 No. of              % of                                     Items              Items

Daily Telegraph            16                     40 The Times                      6                     15 The Guardian                 5                     12.5 The Independent            5                     12.5 Daily Mail                      3                      7.5 The Sun                          1                      2.5 Daily Mirror                   1                      2.5 Daily Star                       1                      2.5 News of the World         1                      2.5 The Observer                 1                      2.5

“For the sake of balance, this should be rectified, particularly given the importance of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the frequency with which it is reported, and the regular use of Prosor,” said AMW chairman Sharif Hikmat Nashashibi. Our findings call into question Prosor’s complaint in the Telegraph that ‘coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is routinely tainted with bias’ against his country. Prosor’s views are clearly and overwhelmingly more prevalent than his Palestinian counterpart.”

Nashashibi added:

“Hassassian is an able and eloquent spokesman who is readily available to the media.  Making use of him would contribute to a sense of even-handedness in British press coverage, which would benefit readers.”

AMW expresses particular concern over the coverage by the Telegraph, not just because of the frequent platform it provides Mr Prosor, but because AMW has been writing to the newspaper since July 2008 requesting an explanation for the total absence of Hassassian in its pages. We have yet to receive a reply, though we have been promised one three times.

Here is a breakdown of the national press coverage of the Israeli Ambassador

Mr Prosor has authored six commentaries:

–   three in the Telegraph –   two in the Guardian –   one in the Sun

A further four commentaries quoted him: three in the Telegraph (two by Con Coughlin, one by David Hughes), one in the Times (Hugo Rifkind)

Mr Prosor was quoted in 18 news articles:  six in the Telegraph (including by Martin Beckford, Tim Butcher, Duncan Gardham and  Con Coughlin), four in the Times (James Hider and Richard Beeston), three in the Independent (two by Donald Macintyre, one by Ian Johnston),  one each in the Mail (Liz Thomas), Guardian (Toni O’Loughlin), Daily Mirror (Andrew Gregory), Daily Star (anonymous) and Observer (David Hills)

He was mentioned in a further 10 news articles: two each in the Telegraph (Charlotte Bailey and Tom Peterkin), the Mail (Alex Brummer and  anonymous), Guardian (Rory McCarthy and Toni O’Loughlin) the Independent (Ian Herbert, Andy McSmith and Mark Hughes), and  once each in the Times (Ruth Gledhill) and News of the World (anonymous)

The Telegraph also published a letter by Prosor, and an editorial mentioning him.

This one-sided coverage of the Israeli Ambassador to the exclusion of the Palestinian Ambassador is evidence of partisanship, which does not ensure balance, understanding or progress towards a solution to the Middle East conflict.

My thoughts are as follows.

First of all, as anybody who works in PR will know, the frequency with which a prominent person appears in a newspaper is directly proportional to the effort that a person put into getting themselves into print. If the Palestinian Ambassador isn’t appearing in print, the most likely explanation is either that he is no good at punting himself around news organisations, or that he is keeping a low profile.

One reason that the Ambassador might be keeping a low profile, since the Hamas coup, and particularly since the start of the Gaza conflict, is that there are a number of questions that would inevitably be asked by a journalist, that a sensible Fatah aligned diplomat might not want asked. He might well want to avoid questions – particularly during the Fatah-Hamas unity negotiations – that would have highlighted the depth of the split between the two parties, and the subsequent civil war in which many Palestinians were killed, and Fatah activists repressed and defeated. I can understand perfectly why he might wish to avoid  washing his country’s dirty linen in public.

It is also no secret that Fatah has, at the very least, mixed emotions at the destruction visited upon its enemies, Hamas, accompanied as it is by the deaths of many unaligned and wholly innocent Palestinians in Gaza. Pretty much anything he might say would be seized upon by Hamas, and used against the Palestinian authority.

The Palestinian Authority is also essentially a bystander in this conflict. It isn’t firing missiles. It isn’t even in control of the Gaza strip. Why would the Palestinian Ambassador want to demonstrate its marginality, by press exposure that highlighted its impotence, at this time.

I suspect that Arab Media Watch knows all this too.

The post The Palestinian Ambassador’s Voice appeared first on Jewcy.

The demonstrators threw eggs. The police found some of those demonstrators had brought knives and bricks. High Street Kensington Tube was closed, as a result of the disorder. (Photos to follow).

This is what the Trotskyite-Hamas alliance is planning for future demonstrations:

Think of 100,000 descending on one building. If they decide to go inside the police will need extra forces. There are only, roughly 30,000 officers in London.

That’s why they’re panicking. Good. Roobin | Homepage | 7 Jan, 10:48 | #

you only need to get within throwing distance Antonovich | 7 Jan, 10:49 | #

It is vital that Hamas keeps up the fight until the Israelis are forced to end the action. On no account must they accept a ceasefire on Israel’s terms. attila | 7 Jan, 11:22 | #

Just got this:

Can everyone who is coming to the protest in London on 10th Jan please bring balloons filled with RED paint/dye/powder so we can paint the israeli embassy in red. This is just another stunt like the shoes that were thrown last saturday, we will fly red balloons to outline the bloodshed. Dave S | Homepage | 7 Jan, 13:58 | #

Photos from last night:

Photos (c) Adrian Korsner, Sound Images Photography

And here are the pro-Hamas demonstrators outside the Israeli Embassy last week:

Some comments:

Keep rioting!!! Best pics yet! insurrection now ah ah ah …u make laught ….. to hacked palistian people this is my ansewr to you ……GO FUK YOURSELF COP LOVER ……………..you are the only asshole …..or u are a cop or you are cop lover so once more GO FUK YOURSELF …………spark in athens , fire in paris insurrection is coming ………. and we are getting prepared ……..see you in the barricades anon

so george galloway fucks off again! great example of the class warrior georgie boy, now do us all a favour and fuck off up yer own arse

tosy

The post At the Israeli Embassy Last Night… appeared first on Jewcy.

He’s speaker at the Global Peace and Unity Event, who had this to say about the Holocaust:

All of these Polish Jews which Hitler was supposedly trying to exterminate, that’s another point, by the way, Hitler never intended to mass-destroy the Jews. There are a number of books out on this written by Christians, you should read them. The Hoax of the Holocaust, I advise you to read this book and write this down, the Hoax of the Holocaust, a very good book. All of this is false propaganda and I know it sounds so far-fetched, but read it. The evidences [sic] are very strong. And they’re talking about newspaper articles, clippings, everything and look up yourself what Hitler really wanted to do. We’re not defending Hitler, by the way, but the Jews, the way that they portray him, also is not correct.

Well, here he is again, at a recent lecture posted in the last few days to Youtube.

Qadhi begins by talking about the MoToons. He argues that he is not calling for criminalisation of insulting or depicting Mohammed. He explains that “I understand, in this country, that’s not going to be possible”. Instead, what Qadhi calls for is what he terms “self imposed silencing”. Qadhi wants the MoToons to become “culturally taboo”.

And then he hits us with it:

David Irving is a famous – or I should say infamous – historian. And he became infamous because he wrote many books talking about the Holocaust, and saying that this figure of six million is too many. It wasn’t six. It was lesser than that.

He wasn’t denying the Holocaust. What he was doing was questioning the history of the Holocaust.

Now I stand here and I say unequivocally, “I do not support David Irving”. I am not a Holocaust denier. I am not.

But, what I find amazing was that nobody – not one single person – stood up and said, “You know what, he’s a historian. He should have the right to write his books and papers. Nobody did that. And in fact, laws were passed against him. And as I said, there are thirteen countries which have anti-Holocaust laws. Not just to deny. To question the figure ’six million’. If somebody says, “No, there were in fact five and a half million”, some countries will put you in jail for that.

And so it so happened that the Jews of all these countries that took David Irving to court. Even though he wasn’t living there! And the courts all ruled with the Jews of those countries. So much so, that when David Irving visited the country of Austria – a democratic, a secular, a western country – Austria had already passed a law against him. The court case had already been closed and shut. He was guilty. And so as he stood up to deliver his speech, lo and behold the police came – he’s a British citizen – the police came and arrested him. And put him in jail where he remained for almost one year. For what crime? For what crime?

For daring to question the figures of the Holocaust.

He goes on to claim that nobody, and not one major media outlet opposed Irving’s jailing.

Where to start. Let’s do a list.

1. David Irving is a Holocaust denier. He was held to be so in a court case, which he himself had brought against a writer and a publisher, in which he alleged defamation.

2. David Irving’s most recent position has been to play down the number of Jews murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust. Before that, his argument was that Hitler himself had known nothing of the plan. Before that, he argued that there was no such plan at all.

This is a familiar path, trod by Holocaust deniers, who cannot circumvent the evidence, and therefore play the ‘numbers’ game.

3. David Irving was not convicted of arguing that only “five and a half million” Jews were murdered by the Nazis. I think it very unlikely that somebody would be prosecuted if they engaged in such debate, seriously. Rather, he was convicted for denying that Jews were gassed at Auschwitz,  for claiming that Hitler had known nothing of what had happened, and many other similar statements. Upon his arrest, he claimed to have ‘changed his mind’.

The judge in his case said:

He showed no signs that he attempted to change his views after the arrest warrant was issued 16 years ago in Austria. … He served as an example for the right wing for decades. He is comparable to a prostitute who hasn’t changed her ways. … Irving is a falsifier of history and anything but a proper historian. In the world of David Irving there were no gas chambers and no plan to murder the Jews. He’s continued to deny the fact that the Holocaust was genocide orchestrated from the highest ranks of the Nazi state.

4. David Irving is a neo Nazi. He went to Austria, not to speak at a historical conference, but at a rally of neo Nazis. He did so knowing that Austria was a country which criminalises Holocaust denial, and intending to run the risk of prosecution.

5. I do not support the criminalisation of Holocaust denial. The reason that countries with Nazi pasts, and involvement in the genocide of European Jews in the 1940s criminalise Holocaust denial, is because the only people who do so are not historians – as Qadhi claims they are – but Nazis and liars. I do not think that lying should generally be a criminal offence, and I believe that there are better ways to fight Nazis than criminalising one aspect of their customary conduct.

6. The “Jews of all these countries” did not take David Irving to court. The prosecutor of Austria took him to court.

7.  I opposed Irving’s jailing. So did Oliver Kamm, Stephen Pollard, and Norman Geras. Arguments for and against his jailing were canvassed widely in all newspapers at the time. Here is a collection of them in The Guardian. You’ll see that one of his defenders is Index on Censorship. And here is Oliver Kamm in the Jewish Chronicle, this week, denouncing Irving’s jailing.

So, what can we say about Qadhi?

Remember, this is a man who spoke on the platform of the Global Peace and Unity Event, this year: a conference organised by the Islam Channel, which is run by Mr Mohammed Ali Harrath, who is a convicted terrorist.

Other speakers included prominent parliamentarians from all the major political parties. Only the Tory denounced the cranks and extremists who followed and preceded him onto the platform.

The post Qadhi Does It Again appeared first on Jewcy.

For the whole of my adult life, it irked me when my fellow Jews would routinely and without compunction, accuse anti-Zionists of being anti-Semitic, and conflate anti-Israeli sentiment with the Nazis.

I felt that the latter eroded the memory and the magnitude of the Holocaust, and that the former was a slightly more elegant way of telling people with whom one took issue, to shut the hell up.

Only this week did I realize my error.

It turns out, that when Jews suspected that the Jihadi hated the Jew the way the Nazi hated the Jew, they were right. After all this time, I am embarrassed to admit that only when the monsters entered Chabad House in Mumbai, did I understand.

Richard Silverstein is still in denial mode. In fact, he is in super charged high-octane denial mode.

Following his very silly CiF article, in which he attempted to argue that it was “anti-Israeli, though not necessarily antisemitic” for Islamist terrorists to murder, deliberately, any Jew that they could find in Mumbai, and that Hamas “eschew the language of religious jihad to portray their struggle”, he has returned to the fray.

Richard Silverstein’s new theme is that, to point out that Islamists set out to kill Jews because they are Jews makes you a “Jewish Jihadi“:

Yes, I know.  Jihadis are supposed to be Muslim.  After all, Islam created the concept.  But I’m afraid that it’s somehow rubbed off on many right wing Jews.  They need to see all of Islam arrayed against all of Judaism in a holy war in which we will all fight to the death.

Here he is, on Engage, calling the commentators “my little Jewish holy warriors“ 

What appears to have upset Richard Silverstein is the suggestion that when Islamists write into their constitutional documents, religious texts such as this:

The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said:

“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.” (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).

… they actually might mean it.

This is Silverstein’s central argument:

If you want to characterize the attack as anti-Semitic, you have to have some idea of how the terrorists saw the target. Imposing your own interpretation of their motives on the attack would be as if a Jew killed a Palestinian and Muslims claimed to know the killer’s mind and stated with certainty that he hated all Muslims and the attack was part of a holy war against Islam. How would they know unless the killer said so explicitly (which the Mumbai killers did not)?

Talk about “imposing your own interpretation of their motives”! Richard Silverstein deals the Islamists a grave insult. What he is saying, effectively, is that they are not doing what they do for God, but for temporal reasons. Silverstein is telling Islamists that they don’t take their religious obligation, at all seriously.

By contrast, Silverstein has no difficulty in identifying the racist and religious motive that underpins attacks by religious settlers in Hebron on Palestinians. Odd that.

What Silverstein misses is this. Even if the Islamist terrorists had no theological perspective on their Jew-killing mission – frankly, to think that, you can never have listened to Islamists – the decision to kill any Jew ‘for Palestine’ would still be an antisemitic act.

Jeez – how explicit do I have to make this, Richard:

The murderers who carried out this lynching might well have been terribly upset about the way that the American Civil War turned out. I’m certain that they were, in fact.

This was still a racist murder.

Do you get it, Richard?

He is never going to get it, is he?

The post “I’m Only Seeing It Now”: Some Leftists Begin to Grasp the Anti-Semitic Nature of Jihadism appeared first on Jewcy.

I do like religion, however. That is, I like attractive Gurdwaras, Mosques, Renaissance choral music, and Thought For The Day with the Reverend Dr Giles Fraser, the Vicar of Putney. You know, that sort of thing, rather than the sort of religion that involves fulminating against comedy musicals, or chopping people’s heads off on Youtube.

In particular, I like to sing carols, especially if you get to do it in a pleasant 13th century church – even more so, if there are mince pies afterwards.

Lots of Jews enjoy attending the services of other religions, too. The Reverend Dr Giles Fraser, the Vicar of Putney has made a career of it.

But not all Jews behave as well in Church as the Reverent Dr Giles Fraser, the Vicar of Putney. Take, for example, this lot. Instead of sitting properly in their pews, they ran up and down the aisles screaming, and looking for other Jews to kick.

Or these guys. Instead of singing nice carols like good children, they’ve made up some rather horrid ones instead. And they’re doing it in St James’s Piccadilly, later tonight. So they’re repaying the hospitality of the Church of England, by making it look as if they’re complicit in mocking Jews. Were I Rowan Williams, I’d be furious!

Come on Jews! Stop letting the side down!

The post Jews in Pews appeared first on Jewcy.

A jury on Monday determined that the Holy Land Foundation and five men who worked with the Muslim charity were guilty of three dozen counts related to the illegal funneling of at least $12 million to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

The unanimous verdicts are a complete victory for the government, which streamlined its case and worked hard to carefully educate jurors on the complex, massive evidence presented in the trial. Guilty verdicts were read on 108 separate charges.

…

Opening statements at the Earle Cabell Federal Courthouse in downtown Dallas began Sept. 22. Over the past two months, prosecutors attempted to prove that five former charity organizers used Holy Land, once the largest Muslim charity in the U.S., to funnel an estimated $60 million to the militant group — most of it before 1995.

Hamas was designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. in 1995, and the trial centered on the $12 million the government said Holy Land and supporters funneled to the group after that date.

Defense attorneys argued that the foundation was a legitimate, non-political charity that helped distressed Palestinians under Israeli occupation. They accused the government of bending to Israeli pressure to prosecute the charity, and of relying on old evidence predating the 1995 designation.

Holy Land was formed in the late 1980s, and was shut down by U.S. government regulators in December 2001. The case was indicted in 2004.

…

“I suspect that they will be viewed much the same way that Mandela was viewed by the black South African population — as freedom fighters who have dedicated their lives to the liberation of Palestine,” William Moffitt, the Virginia defense attorney who represented two former university professors, Abdelhaleem Ashqar and Sami Al-Arian, said before the Holy Land verdicts. 

If the nature of the defence was that the murderous, theocratic terrorist group, Hamas, is the equivalent of the African National Congress, I am not surprised the jury convicted.

I will have more to say about the significance of the success of this federal prosecution over the next few days. In short, the trial did not simply look at the involvement of the named defendants in the funding of Hamas. It considered the whole apparatus that was constructed around pro-Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood advocacy and activism in North America, and named a number of ‘unindicted co-conspirators’, who each had a role to play in the process.

One of those named was the ersatz civil rights organisation, the Council on American Islamic Relations.

The documents disclosed during the Holy Land Foundation trial demonstrated that Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood has been pursuing a strategy of setting up a series of front groups, with innocuous sounding names – some posing as cultural associations, some as civil liberties outfits – with the aim of fundraising and advocating for their Islamist terrorist politics. You may remember that they described their aim, thus:

The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ’sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.

Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood is pursuing precisely the same strategy in this country. Just as in the United States, CAIR has been invited, at its own urging, to partner with the State, the British Muslim Brotherhood front groups have pursued precisely the same strategy.

In Scotland, the Muslim Brotherhood and Scottish Nationalist Party PPC, Osama Saeed’s Scottish Islamic Foundation is hosting a mini-tour:

Belief in Action Tour with CAIR

Date: 26th November 2008 Time: 19:00 – 21:00 Location: Aberdeen, Dundee and Kirkaldy

Two senior members from the Council on American Islamic Relations will be touring Scotland in advance of their appearance at the Scottish Muslim Futures conference.

CAIR are arguably the most advanced Muslim organisation in the West at dealing with public affairs.

Yaser Tabbara is Director of Community Development at CAIR’s Washington DC HQ.

Ahmed Rehab is is the Council on American Islamic Relations-Chicago’s Executive Director and CAIR’s National Strategic Communications Director

I’ll have more to say on the improbably named Ahmed Rehab in a later post, as well.

Incidentally, shouldn’t somebody now revoke their visas, quickly?

It is a sign of how well the “Grand Jihad” is going in Scotland, that the Osama Saeed was invited to participate in the Scottish Nationalist Party’s anti-Trident commission, as a representative of the SIF. It has also received a grant from the SNP Government of £400,000.

The guilty verdicts in this trial, should be the tug that starts the whole sweater unraveling. The BBC has picked up the story.

I wonder how many lessons will be drawn from it.

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Anybody who reads Harry’s Place regularly will know why I think this subject deserves attention. In short, I think that any attempt to impose a theocratic system of government that executes homosexuals and religious dissenters, and entrenches constitutional and legal inequality between men and women, and Muslims and non-Muslims, should be resisted by anybody who regards themselves as politically progressive. This issue is an important one, for two reason. First, this country is facing a very real and constant threat from British Islamist terrorists. Secondly, specific Islamist groups have been working very diligently over the last few years, to form strong political bonds with liberal and progressive organisations, and Government: and in some cases, have been very successful at achieving their aims.

There are two types of people who disagree with me: Islamists and their fellow travellers, and anti-Muslim bigots. They both do so from a perspective that is pretty much identical. Islamist politicians argue that their religion requires that an Islamic state be created, and that any Muslim who disagrees is no true Muslim. And that is precisely what the anti-Muslim bigots say, as well. The fellow travellers defend the flank, by slandering as an “Islamophobe”, any attempt to criticise Islamist groups, or politicians.

It should be pretty easy, by now, to spot an anti-Muslim bigot. The giveaways, for me, include the following:

– Muslims are thought of an a homogenous bloc, without differentiation (sometimes referred to as “The Muslims”)

– Muslims are presented as either conspirators or dupes of a Muslim conspiracy to subvert the West.

– Muslims are attempting to take over the West by outbreeding non-Muslims.

– Any Muslim who denies this is either engaging in “Taqiyya” or has simply yet to realise the true nature of their religion.

I’m sure that most of you could identify other good examples. It doesn’t matter to the anti-Muslim bigot, that Muslims almost always reject Islamist politics when they’re given the choice to vote for it. As far as anti-Muslim bigots are concerned, that’s probably just part of their fiendish plan. Bigots can’t be reasoned with.

Can you imagine – have you even tried to imagine – what it must feel like to be a Muslim in this country, and to come across this sort of indiscriminate bile. I can. If you read a lot of hate speech, directed at your cultural group, you begin to internalise it. It does very strange things to you. If you’re Jewish, and you read article after article which tells you that you are part of a plot to trick the USA into war, to murder children, to control the banking industry and the media: that exposure begins to change the way you think of yourself. Are you really that bad? Do your friends think of you like that? You might find yourself worrying about whether a politician, journalist, or public figure is Jewish – might he be part of the conspiracy? Of course, there’s no conspiracy, but then is the Mearsheimer and Walt theory really so far fetched? What about Atzmon’s “Jewish Power” theories? What about Kevin MacDonald – David Irving’s expert witness – who believes that Jewish genes make Jews need to trick non-Jews in order to survive? Which of these criticisms are ‘beyond the pale’, and which are valid? Is there a germ of truth in even the worst of all this?

Anybody who is a member of any cultural minority group that has been at the sharp end of a campaign of vilification, will be familiar with what this feels like. It is hugely damaging. You might have thought that you were a complicated person, with a beautiful kaleidoscopic identity, negotiating the many joys and hazards of cosmopolitan life. But no. You’re one of “the Muslims”. Or “a Jew”. Or “a Gay”. You find yourself becoming a caricature of yourself, of the thing that others hate.

Then there’s the flip side of all this. Some people will actively seek you out, because they have decided that you’re part of a tragic victimised group, and they want to be your special friend. Pretty yucky when it is some sappy no-hope loner who has cottoned on to you. Even worse, when it is the Socialist Workers’ Party that wants to hold your hand. But I repeat myself…

This is what British Muslims live with, today.

None of this means that you should never criticise the precepts of a religion. Religions are just collections of ideas and practices. They have no particular sanctity.

Neither does it mean that there is no connection between Islam and Islamist politics. Of course there is. It couldn’t identify as a religious politics, if there wasn’t. However, you shouldn’t fall into the trap of thinking that religions that claim to be monolithic, unchanging, and directly transmitted by God, really do have those qualities. Follow any religion through the ages, and see how it changes. Look beyond the claims of coherence and universality, and look at the variation in its practice. If the Bible tells us anything of value it is this. Humans are schizmatic. We disagree with each other. We love to innovate and disobey. What matters about a religion is how it is practiced, and what its adherents say and do. For a bigot or an Islamist to lecture a Muslim who does not want a theocratic state on his supposed failings as a Muslim, is not only grossly offensive: it utterly misunderstands the diverse and mutable nature of religious faith and practice.

So, what can be done about this?

When I write articles about Islamist politics, I name the specific groups that I am talking about: Al Muhajiroun, Hizb ut Tahrir, Jamaat e Islami, Hezbollah or Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood, and their various front organisations. There are a limited number of people in this country who are involved in this politics. We know who they are. We can and do identify them, and chronicle their activities. That is the way to defeat Islamism.

Alternatively, if you’d prefer, ramble on in a vague way about the misdeeds of “the Muslims”, while throwing out the odd quip about paedophilia every now and then. That is the way to make Muslims in this country feel extremely exposed, and make you look like a complete wanker.

As you know, I maintain an open comments policy. However Harry’s Place’s editorial line on this subject is very clear. We are opposed to the politics of specific Islamist groups, the accomodation of those groups on the liberal Left, and within Government. We will also not stand for the whipping up of anti-Muslim bigotry.

Don’t stand by and let hatemongering go by, unopposed. I do not moderate comments, because I trust our side to win all the arguments. But that will only happen if you challenge anti-Muslim bigotry, and do not let it slide by.

In addition, remember that fighting your corner is good combat practice.

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