Militant Islam Monitor > Articles > Faux moderate British Muslim Initiative exploits terrorist attacks to portray Muslims as the victims of non existent backlash

Faux moderate British Muslim Initiative exploits terrorist attacks to portray Muslims as the victims of non existent backlash

July 12, 2007

Terror Linked Muslim Initiative In UK Uses Bombings To Promote Views

By Beila Rabinowitz and William Mayer

July 11, 2007 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - Each new terrorist attack seems to bring with it a new Islamist group to the fore - itself tied to terrorism - which uses the event as an opportunity to portray itself as moderate through transparent campaigns of feigned denunciation of terrorism.

The British Muslim Initiative [BMI] has recently been propagating such a deception - loudly condemning the recent foiled plots in the UK in newspaper ads.

However a closer look at the group reveals that it and its membership advocate the same jihadist agenda as those who were arrested for the failed plots.

BMI is neither mainstream nor is it moderate.

This "good Islamist - bad Islamist" dichotomy is part of a wider strategy, as Dutch Islam specialist Hans Janssen states, "moderate Muslims too, strive after an Islamic society, "they intentionally make use of radicals to enforce their wishes." http://www.nisnews.nl/public/240307_2.htm

Janssen's analysis cogently sums up BMI's strategy.

The group's spokesman Ishtiham Hibatullah boasted that "doctors made up the bulk of those who joined the PR campaign and noted that the government appears to be showing dhimmitude towards Muslims, gloating over new PM Gordon Brown's handling of events, "There have been no draconian laws rushed through or raids. The general perception in the Muslim community is that things have changed." [source, http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/5458E4D1-D649-4C9D-B5DA-3F6F45535FC7.htm]

According to their mission statement the BMI was, "Formed by justice, peace and human rights activists, the British Muslim Initiative (BMI) is a campaign organisation which seeks to fight racism and Islamaphobia, combat the challenges Muslims face around the world, encourage Muslim participation in British public life, and improve relations between the West and the Muslim world." http://www.bminitiative.net/BMI/EN/aboutus.aspx?ID=9&table=cat

Significantly, BMI's assertion of "Islamophobia" ignores the obvious connection between Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism.

Such tactics allow BMI - and other Islamist groups - to cynically exploit terror attacks, intending to create a smokescreen where allegations of discrimination serve to shield their own radicalism.

The BMI website advertises an Al Quds day event which included speakers such as Azzam Tamimi a known Hamas operative who created an uproar when he praised suicide bombers in a 2004 BBC interview.

"Why, if it is so glorious and honourable to do this, why don't you do it?" asked the interviewer. "If I have the opportunity I would do it," Tamimi, who was born in Hebron, answered. "If I can go to Palestine and sacrifice myself, I would do it. "Why not? You see, sacrificing myself for Palestine is a noble cause. It is the straight way to pleasing my God and I would do it if I had the opportunity." [source, http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51607

Another speaker at this event was Yvonne Ridley who has praised and justified suicide bombers, declaring that, "Muslims have lost confidence since September 11th. Something as simple as suicide bombers being martyrs is being denied by prominent sheikhs. The dictionary definition of a martyr is a person who gives up their life for a cause - suicide bombers are martyrs."

The BMI press release, constructed for consumption by a gullible media presented a very different picture, and serves as a template for Islamist propaganda using the following techniques:

1. Pretend the ethnicity of the perpetrators is still in doubt or of no consequence. A stunning example of this tactic can be seen in the statement made by the spiritual leader of the mosque where doctor Bilal Abdullah [the driver of the car bomb whose passenger and fellow doctor set himself on fire during the Glasgow airport incident] worshipped. "Sejad Mekic, the imam at the Cambridge mosque which Abdullah also attended, gave a sermon on Friday condemning all acts of terror. However, he later said he had doubts that the incident at Glasgow airport was a terrorist attack, saying it could have been a car accident. "I still haven't made my conclusion," he said. When it was pointed out that containers of petrol were reportedly found in the car, he said: "Maybe they used to sell petrol." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/08/nterr308.xml
2. Claim that religion has nothing to do with the acts committed by the terrorists, even to the point of denying that they are Muslim.
3. Issue unctuous praise of the authorities for not cracking down on Muslims and urge Muslims to cooperate with the authorities to "bring to justice" the perpetrators" as if this requires nothing more than simple police action.
4. Portray Muslims as victims of a non existent backlash - implying that they will be targeted by "Islamophobes" and urging Muslims to be "vigilant."

BMI's press release:

"The British Muslim Initiative (BMI) emphatically condemns yesterday's attempts to bomb the city of London and today's incident in Glasgow airport.
Whoever was responsible for planting the devices clearly intended to cause maximum damage and loss of innocent lives. We urge all British Muslims to fully cooperate with the authorities to apprehend and bring to justice the perpetrators.
'We are utterly appalled by this sinister plot and commend the professionalism of the security services in aborting it,' said BMI's President, Mr. Muhammad Sawalha.
The BMI notes with concern that elements on the far right of the and Islamophobes are already seeking to exploit this unfortunate crisis to advance their agenda. We call on the Muslim community to remain vigilant and supportive of the investigations until they are concluded.
END
For further information please contact: Ihtisham Hibatullah on 07786 257120
British Muslim Initiative
30th June 2007
http://www.bminitiative.net/BMI/EN/details_home.aspx?ID=179&table=sub

Instead of accepting claims by radical Islamic organizations that they are moderate - buttressed by Muslim doctors' signatures on meaningless boilerplate statements - at face value, citizens of the UK should be demanding that their government ensure that Muslim doctors are fully vetted and uphold the Hippocratic Oath to "do no harm" rather than taking the oath of allegiance [the bayat] to al-Qaeda.

http://www.pipelinenews.org/index.cfm?page=bmi71107.htm

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MIM: The MCI is an offshoot of the Muslim Council of Britain (even their website formats are similiar). In 2005 they were exposed but it did not stop it's then leader Iqbal Sacranie from being given a knighthood in 2006. When Ayatollah Khomeini announced a fatwa against Salman Rushdie it was Sacranie who said that "death was too easy for him". The MCB has been in the forefront of the recent condemnation of the knighthood of Salman Rushdie with Muslim groups like the MCB justifying the terror attacks and calls for his beheading on the grounds that it was a normal reaction in the wake of what they regard as an insult to Islam.

Radical links of UK's 'moderate' Muslim group

The Muslim Council of Britain has been courted by the government and lauded by the Foreign Office but critics tell a different and more disturbing story. Martin Bright reports

Sunday August 14, 2005
The Observer

The Muslim Council of Britain is officially the moderate face of Islam. Its pronouncements condemning the London bombings have been welcomed by the government as a model response for mainstream Muslims. The MCB's secretary general, Iqbal Sacranie, has recently been knighted and senior figures within the organisation have the ear of ministers.

But an Observer investigation can reveal that, far from being moderate, the Muslim Council of Britain has its origins in the extreme orthodox politics in Pakistan. And as its influence increases through Whitehall, many within the Muslim community are growing concerned that this self-appointed organisation is crowding out other, genuinely moderate, voices of Muslim Britain.

traditions within Islam, the leadership of the Muslim Council of Britain and some of its affiliates sympathise with and have links to conservative Islamist movements in the Muslim world and in particular Pakistan's Jamaat-i-Islami, a radical party committed to the establishment of an Islamic state in Pakistan ruled by sharia law.

One of the MCB's affiliate organisations, Leicester's Islamic Foundation, was founded by Khurshid Ahmad, a senior figure in Jamaat-i-Islami.

Another is Birmingham-based Jamiat Ahl-e-Hadith, an extremist sect whose website says: 'The disbelievers are misguided and their ways based on sick or deviant views concerning their societies, their universe and their very existence.' It urges its adherents not to wear Western hats, walk dogs, watch sport or soap operas and forbids 'mingling and shaking hands between men and women'.

Jamaat-i-Islami activists in Pakistan have been involved in protests against images of women on adverts in public places. The organisation's founder, Maulana Maududi, was a fierce opponent of feminism who believed that women should be kept in purdah - seclusion from male company. Although the MCB's leadership distances itself from some of these teachings, it has been criticised for having no women prominently involved in the organisation.

Last week, Salman Rushdie warned in an article in the Times that Sacranie had been a prominent critic during the Satanic Verses affair and advised that the MCB leader should not be viewed as a moderate. In 1989, Sacranie said 'death was perhaps too easy' for the writer. Rushdie also criticised Sacranie for boycotting January's Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony. 'If Sir Iqbal Sacranie is the best Mr Blair can offer in the way of a good Muslim, we have a problem,' said Rushdie. A Panorama documentary to be screened next Sunday will also be highly critical.

The MCB has now written to the BBC's director general, Mark Thompson, to complain about the programme in which reporter John Ware will challenge Sacranie to justify his boycott of Holocaust Memorial Day and clarify the MCB's position on Palestinian suicide bombers. In the letter, Inayat Bunglawala, the MCB's media spokesman says: 'It appears that the Panorama team is more interested in furthering a pro-Israeli agenda than assessing the work of Muslim organisations in the UK.'

The origins of the Muslim Council of Britain can be traced to the storm around the publication of the Satanic Verses in 1988. India was the first country to ban the book and many Muslim countries followed suit. Opposition to the book in Britain united people committed to a traditionalist view of Islam, of which the founders of the Muslim Council of Britain was a part.

The MCB was officially founded in November 1997, shortly after Tony Blair came to power, and has had a close relationship with the Labour government ever since. Its detractors claim it was the creature of Jack Straw, but his predecessor as Home Secretary, Michael Howard, also played a role in its establishment as a semi-official channel of communication with British Muslims. It remains particularly influential within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which has a little-known outreach department which works with Britain's Muslims. The FCO pamphlet Muslims in Britain is essentially an MCB publication and the official ministerial celebration of the Muslim festival of Eid is organised jointly with the MCB.

The Observer has learnt that the MCB used its influence in Whitehall to gain a place on the board of trustees of the Festival of Muslim Cultures, planned for next year. This extravaganza is designed to demonstrate the diversity and vibrancy of Muslim culture. The festival is funded by the British Council and has Prince Charles as its patron, but it has been told that it will need to be compliant with Islamic 'sharia law' in order to gain the MCB's full support.

The organisers are now concerned that the festival will lose political backing if they invite performers who are seen to be 'un-Islamic'.

Festival organisers already hope to invite the Uzbek singer, Sevara Nezarkhan, who does not wear the headscarf or 'hijab' and has worked with Jewish 'klezmer' musicians. It also intends to exhibit the 14th-century world history of Rashid al-Din, which represents the human form and the prophet Mohammed himself, thought by some strict Muslims to be forbidden. Other performers could include the Senegalese musician Youssou N'Dour and the Bangladeshi-British dancer Akram Khan.

The Observer understands that the Foreign Office insisted that the festival organisers involved the MCB before they would give them their full backing. As a result, an MCB nominee has been taken on to the festival's board of trustees. One source close to the festival organisers said: 'We constantly found our efforts were being blocked and it kept coming back to the MCB and its sympathisers within Whitehall.'

The chairman of the festival's trustees, Raficq Abdulla, said: 'We will welcome the MCB's trustee and hope his contribution will prove valuable. But we insist that the festival is not dominated by any ideology. The aim is to capture the values of Muslim cultures and bring them into the British mainstream. We are not here to be the mouthpiece of any Muslim organisation.'

The strain of Islamic ideology favoured by the MCB leadership and many of its affiliate organisations is inspired by Maulana Maududi, a 20th-century Islamic scholar little known in the West but hugely significant as a thinker across the Muslim world. His writings, which call for a global Islamic revival, influenced Sayyid Qutb, usually credited as the founding father of modern Islamic radicalism and one of the inspirations for al-Qaeda.

In Maududi's worldview all humanity was split into believers (practising Muslims) and non-believers, whom he describes as 'barbarians'. He was deeply critical of notions such as nationalism and feminism and called on Muslims to purge themselves of Western influence.

In 1941 he formed Jamaat-i-Islami and remained its leader until 1972. His writings do not advocate terrorism. But the language of Jihad in Islam, written in 1930, may seem violent to a Western reader: 'The objective of Islamic "jihad" is to eliminate the rule of an un-Islamic system and establish in its stead an Islamic system of state rule. Islam does not intend to confine this revolution to a single state or a few countries; the aim of Islam is to bring about a universal revolution.'

Abdul-Rehman Malik, contributing editor of Muslim magazine Q-News, said: 'Maududi saw the world in the same way that Sayyid Qutb saw the world: they both divided humanity into true believers or those in a state of ignorance. Many of the affiliates of The Muslim Council of Britain are inspired by Maududi's ideology.'

Malik said that its leaders needed to be clearer about its position on suicide bombers. 'You cannot be equivocal about innocent people. An innocent person in Tel Aviv is the same as an innocent person in Baghdad or London. The MCB has never clarified any of the critical issues and now the chickens are coming home to roost.'

The MCB's Inayat Bunglawala said he had a deep respect for Maududi and defended the MCB's affiliation to Khurshid Ahmad's Islamic Foundation. He said: 'Maududi is a very important Muslim thinker. The book that brought me to practise Islam was Now Let Us Be Muslims by Maududi. As for Jamaat-i-Islami, it is a perfectly legal body in Pakistan. There is no suggestion that the Islamic Foundation has done anything wrong. They have done fantastic work in publishing literature on Islam, including works for children.'

A spokesman for the Islamic Foundation confirmed that Khurshid Ahmad was chairman of its board of trustees. 'The Islamic Foundation does not have links with the Jamaat-i-Islami. We promote assimilation, integration and encourage community cohesion. We do publish books by Maududi, but we feel these are books of merit to British Muslims.'

Sacranie said he believed that recent attacks on the Muslim Council of Britain were inspired by a pro-Israeli lobby in the British media. 'The MCB carries out its activities through its affiliates. There are more than 400 organisations involved, representing 56 nationalities. Yes there is a following for Maududi in the UK. I am not a scholar, but in many areas I am inspired by what he has to say and in others I am not.'

There is no suggestion that Sacranie and other prominent figures in the Muslim Council of Britain are anything but genuine in their condemnation of the terrorist bombings of the 7 July. But their claims to represent a moderate or progressive tendency in Islam are becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.

The biggest test for the MCB will be its reaction to the more challenging aspects of the Festival of Muslim cultures. On this Sacranie was clear: 'If any activities are seen to contradict the teachings of Islam, then we will oppose them. If you organise a festival in the name of Islam then it must be Islamic. We will advise them accordingly.'

There are those in Britain struggling to transform the austere image Islam has in this country, including the organisers of the Festival of Muslim Cultures, who will not find his words

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1548786,00.html

MIM: Speech given at Expo Islamia in 2006 which expresses thanks to the Al Qaeda linked Muslim Aid "charity" which was run by Yusuf Islam aka Cat Stevens. Islam was the former treasurer of the Muslim Council of Britain and members of the MCB board were listed as trustees of Muslim Aid. In 2002 the Spanish police linked Muslim AId to Al Qaeda and th the funding of jihad fighters in Bosnia. The webmaster of Muslim Aid is Iqbal Asaria known as "webmaster for Al Qaeda". Asaria is also associated with the CDLR and MIRA whose director was linked to the Taliban. MIRA was designated a terrorist entity in 2005 by the US Department of Treasury.

Expoislamia 2006 -A Call to Humanity- Review

Welcome remarks by Habibur Rahman- Central president of IFE in the Expoislamia brochure.

As-salamu-alaykum wa-rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu

All praises are due to Allah, the Lord of the Worlds. And may the peace and blessings be upon Muhammad Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam – the mercy upon the Worlds. On behalf of Islamic Forum Europe, Young Muslim Organisation and Muslimaat I am delighted to welcome you to Expoislamia 2006.

This is indeed a momentous occasion; not only is this the 5th and largest expoislamia to date but it is also the first time a convention of this scale organised in the north of the UK.

Expoislamia – A Call to Humanity has been organised to appeal to a broad spectrum of the community, with particular emphasis on the youth. This is reflected in the programme variety, ranging from enlightening speeches to performances by Martial Artists and Nasheed groups. The speeches will outline the value of engaging with the wider society and reinforce the promotion of the common good for all of humanity.The event will highlight the need for building stronger Muslim communities, confident with its identity of being Muslim whilst playing a positive role in society.

In keeping to the tradition of the past, and in materialising our aim for a strong and vibrant community, the event aims to also raise awareness and funds for the very noble cause of the Oldham Muslim Centre (OMC). The OMC – modelled after the very successful London Muslim Centre – will house a Mosque, community centre and many other much needed services. It is a very ambitious project which once built will become a magnificent resource for Muslims in the North and will bring much benefit to all communities.

The OMC is a huge challenge but behind every challenge lies opportunities for enhancement and growth. Your response to the call to attend this event from up and down the country and support this noble project has been phenomenal and I thank you for that. It is particularly important that people of this region fully engage and take it forward. I pray that Allah binds us together so that we can complete this vital task as a sign of our devotion to Him and our commitment to this society.

May I finish by expressing my gratitude to the multitudes who have been working tirelessly to make Expoislamia 2006 a reality; to all those who have supported the event, especially Muslim Aid and most importantly, you the participants who have sacrificed your time and money and many who have braved a very long journey with your families. I hope all of you will have a wonderful day in which you will meet new people, enjoy the lighter programmes and benefit from the knowledgeable and renowned line up of international scholars.

Focus ref no: FCS16, 31 Jul 2007

http://www.islamicforumeurope.com/live/ife.php?doc=focusdetail&itemId=16

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