May 2008 Archives

Several months ago, Douglas Murray and myself were approached by Paul Cruickshank, a research fellow at New York University's Center on Law and Security, who wanted some help with an article which he was co-writing together with Peter Bergen about the intellectual challanges facing al-Qaeda.

Douglas and I spent over two hours briefing Cruickshank about Islamist movements in the UK and put him in touch with several British Muslims who could help him further. Cruickshank and Bergen's resulting article 'The Great Unraveling' was published as the cover story of this week's issue of The New Republic. Unfortunately, however, the authors seem to have seriously misunderstood the nature of the threat that Islamic extremists pose to British society.

Continuing a recent trend among Church of England high-ups of wading into contentious issues, Bishop of Rochester Michael Nazir-Ali has written that radical Islam is poised to fill what he calls a moral vacuum left in Britain by Christianity's long withdrawing roar.

"[Britain's] systems of governance, of the rule of law, of the assumption of trust in common life all find their inspiration in Scripture," argues Nazir-Ali in the current issue of Standpoint, a new magazine for which the Centre for Social Cohesion's director Douglas Murray is a monthly columnist.

Douglas Murray, the director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, has been interviewed for a Neo-Constant, a new online journal covering politics and foreign affairs.

In the interview, Murray discusses terrorism, liberal interventionism and contemporary anti-Semitism. The interview is available online here.

On Thursday, Nicky Reilly, a 22-year old man from Plymouth attempted to explode several bombs in a restaurant in Exeter. Police reported that bombs were packed with nails in an attempt to maximise casualties among the lunctime diners - who were mainly women and children.

Interestingly, police reported that the suspect was a recent convert to Islam. Only two weeks ago, Andrew Ibrahim, another recent convert to Islam was charged under the Terrorism Act after police discovered home-made bombs in his house in Bristol. It seems unlikely that the two incidents in England's usual tranquil South-West are un-related.

The Centre for Social Cohesion and the Henry Jackson Society today co-hosted a seminar in the House of Commons, which was delivered by Daniel Kimmage of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

A variety of MPs, think tank experts, journalists and opinion formers gathered to hear Kimmage present his recent report entitled 'The Al-Qaeda Media Nexus', which analysed the ways in which al-Qaeda are using the internet.

Yesterday Hazel Blears, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, was questioned in parliament about the government's strategy of using members of the Muslim Brotherhood to tackle Islamic extremism in the UK. Two Conservative MPs, David Heathcoat-Amory and Paul Goodman, in particular, tackled her over the government's decision to work with the Muslim Association of Britain and the Cordoba Foundation, both of which are run by prominent supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood. The transcript in Hansard reads:

The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Hazel Blears): I have held regular meetings with a range of partners, including Muslim communities, the police, the Local Government Association, parliamentarians from both Houses and others with an interest in the preventing violent extremism programme. We are working closely with these partners at every level—local, national and international—to build the resilience of local communities so that they are able to stand up to the messages of extremism.

Last week I posted a blog here suggesting many of the ills currently bedevilling our society, including most notably the current knife-crime epidemic in the capital, were attributable to the Bible and its teachings having ceased to be the focus of religious education in many state schools.

That suggestion elicited several sceptical comments. These variously claimed that it was too late to put the clock back, and, in any case, the Bible wasn’t a particularly good source of moral instruction. It was open to infinite interpretation, contained some pretty dubious moral teachings, and was capable of informing the moral outlook of some very violent societies, the United States being cited as one.

The Muslim Association of Britain's website is presently advertising the upcoming conference 'Minorities in the Media – A United Solution', a high-profile event dedicated to improving minority representation in the British media.

It is unclear why MAB (the British branch of the right-wing Muslim Brotherhood movement) is promoting a conference featuring left-wing speakers such as Jeremy Dear, from the National Union of Journalists, and Zohra Moosa, a Muslim feminist. However MAB's attention will surely be focused on the only panel dealing solely and specifically with Muslims issues.

Two men have been arrested at the University of Nottingham under the Terrorism Act.

Police said the men, aged 30 and 22, were arrested on Wednesday morning. One is reported to be a student and the other a former student. Campus premises related to the two men are being searched.

The West Midlands Police and Crown Prosecution Service have today been forced to apologise 'unreservedly' in the High Court and pay £50,000 damages to Channel 4's Dispatches programme 'Undercover Mosque.' Readers will remember that the Dispatches programme, broadcast last year (and view-able here), showed preachers at a number of British mosques making comments which were anti-semitic, sexist and homophobic.

But in an astounding decision, the police decided to investigate not the preachers of hate, but the Dispatches crew themselves, attempting to charge them with stirring up racial hatred.

Who can fail but to be deeply moved, if not humbled, by the magnanimous words of compassion spoken by the mother of sixteen year old Jimmy Mizen, London’s latest teenage murder victim?

They were directed at the family of her son’s suspected killer, another local teenager for whom the police are searching and whose family the victim’s own are believed to know.

Hassan Butt, a former member of al-Muhajiroun who claims to have rejected jihadist ideology, has been arrested by British police under anti-terrorism laws.

Butt was arrested at Manchester airport on Saturday as he tried to board a flight to the city of Lahore in Pakistan. According to the Manchester Evening News he had brought his ticket for the flight just 45 minutes before it was due to depart.

Peace campaigner and former hostage in Iraq Norman Kember has said that he is helping to fund radical preacher's Abu Qatada's bail.

Abu Qatada, who won an appeal against deportation which the government is currently trying to overturn, had appealed for Kember's release when he was captured by the militant Swords of Truth group in Iraq in 2005.

Cambridge and Edinburgh universities today announced plans to open new research centres for Islamic studies.

The centres are being funded to the tune of £16 million by Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud, chairman of the Kingdom Foundation.

The jury in the airline bomb plot have listened to recordings in which an alleged plotter is giving another lessons in how to present a suicide video.

The conversations allegedly took place in 2006, and were picked up by an undercover recording device placed in the east London flat which the prosecution claims the men used as a bomb factory.

Another May, another Mayor mercifully less prone than some to praising preachers of hate, and now, to add further icing to the cake of all who long for this country to return to the days when it was a tolerant, peaceful and civilised place in which to live, another moderate Muslim organisation to join the recently launched Quilliam Foundation in tackling the pockets of extremism and intolerance that remain among Britain’s Muslim community.

British Muslims for Secular Democracy (BMSD) held their officially launch event in central London yesterday.

Their official launch consisted of a debate chaired by Baroness Faulkner called ‘The Secular State – the best option for Muslims?’ The panel consisted of BMSD chair Yasmin Alibhai Brown, Ed Husain, Usama Hasan and Inayat Bunglawala.

Sohaib Saeed, a spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), the UK-branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, has begun a campaign on Facebook.com against the Quilliam Foundation, a new thinktank which aims to tackle Islamic extremism among British Muslim.

Saeed's Facebook group, titled 'The Quilliam Foundation does NOT represent Islam', accuses the group of "seeking to cuddle up close with the Government and be the new absolute word in True-Pacifist-Islam-Not-Nasty-Islamism."