The man said to be the leader of the alleged plot to plot up trans-Atlantic airliners has admitted planning to set off bombs in Heathrow airport - although he said that the explosions were intended to cause "disruption" rather than to kill.
When the airliner plotters were arrested in August 2006, Azzam al-Tamimi from the Muslim Association of Britain, the Muslim Brotherhood's British wing, described the arrests as a "hoax". Writing in The Guardian, he said that "I have a feeling that all the Muslims detained in connection with the recent police operation to foil and alleged plot are innocent and will soon be proven so."
He added that "If the government is confident that it has a case against the detained Muslims then have them tried in a court of law. Instead what we are witnessing is a campaign of misinformation that deludes the public into believing that the group is guilty of what is nothing but mere suspicion and most probably false intelligence from the Pakistanis."
The news that the first of the alleged plotters has admitted planning to set off bombs is embarrassing for the Muslim Brotherhood - coming just as group embarks on a fresh attempt to present itself as a representative of the British Muslims and to pursuade the government that it alone can end Islamic terrorism.
Recent examples of this include the launch of Campusalam, a government-backed project to tackle extremism on university campuses. Campusalam's inaugural event was a debate featuring Tariq Ramadan (arguably Europe's most prominent defender of the Muslims Brotherhood), Anas Altikriti (the former spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain), Barbara Zollner (an academic who believes the Muslim Brotherhood are now moderate), Osama Saeed (the Muslim Association of Britain's Scottish spokesman).
The two other panelists included Sheikh Bahmanpour, who teaches at the Hawza Ilmiyya, a Shia school in East London which reportedly teaches that unbelievers are "filth" and Hanif Qadir, a youth worker who tried to join the Taliban in 2002.
The title of the discussion was 'what is the place of Islamic political thinking in the UK today?'. Given that the background of the panelists, it seems unlikely that the debate (aimed at a student audience) featured a large range of Muslim viewpoints or that it adequately represented the diversity of British Muslim opinion.
Separately, the Muslim Brotherhood (this time under the guise of Anas Altikriti's British Muslim Initiative) is also holding a two-day conference on 12-13 July entitled 'Understanding Political Islam" with the aim of further promoting its version of political Islam.
This event also features a similarly narrow cross-section of thought, ranging from pro-Brotherhood academics such as John O. Voll, Robert Leiken and John Esposito to prominent apologists of the Brotherhood such as Alistair Crooke and Robert Lambert.
Naturally the event also includes numerous past and present activists from the Muslim Brotherhood such as Kemal Helbawy, Tariq Ramadan, Rached Ghannouchi, Anas al-Tikriti, Osama Saeed, Soumaya Ghannoushi and, of course, Azzam al-Tamimi.
This right-wing gathering is co-sponsored by Demos, the left-wing thinktank.
" just as group [Muslim Brotherhood] embarks on a fresh attempt to present itself as a representative of the British Muslims and to pursuade the government that it alone can end Islamic terrorism.
Recent examples of this include the launch of Campusalam..."
Thank you for your interest in Campusalam Mr Brandon but I am afraid you have completely misunderstood and the insinuation that Campusalam is an initiative connected to the Muslim Brotherhood is absolutely false. Campusalam is in no way involved with the Muslim Brotherhood or to the organisations you name.
Campusalam held a Students' Jury - not a debate, importantly; a wide range of people were invited not to give a lecture but to be questioned by a panel of students (not all of them Muslim) before an audience. (Interestingly, several of the panel said they found this far more daunting than giving an ordinary lecture.) The distinction is important because the aim is not to provide a platform for any opinion but to put the range of opinions that are out there to the test of honest but critical investigation; and to encourage students to do this as the rational, principled way of dealing with conflicting opinions in contentious issues. In no way does Campusalam push a certain view or agenda. Our view is that all views should be put to the test of challenge by critical questioning.
Naturally organisers of events are in control of whom they invite, but cannot control who accepts. A wide range of very diverse shades of opinion were invited, including Michael Gove, Martin Bright, and Nick Cohen. All those who accepted the invitation were included without an attempt to stack the deck in any direction or control for a certain point of view. If people with a particular perspective were unable to accept (as those three were), we invited more from a similar position until the time ran out.
As for Campusalam itself - your hyperlink indicates (if you read the source you cite) that you know already that Campusalam is a project that is intended to be the first in a suite of web-based resources for students on campus; the next projects we hope will be for Jewish students, Christian students, Hindu students. It is primarily a website, so anyone can log on to www.campusalam.org and see it for themselves. At two stages the content of the site has been evaluated by a wide range of people, Muslim and non-Muslim; and a diverse range of Muslim students, scholars etc. -- but not the Muslim Brotherhood. Nor have they contributed any content.
The site contains neutral and objective information on different topics on Islam - in an FAQ style, focusing on questions that Muslim & non-Muslim university staff or students might have. It contains 'how-to' information that is not religion-specific (let alone Muslim-specific) on how to organise and manage events effectively & safely, and on how to engage with people in contentious situations so that everything remains calm and rational. Finally it contains 60 different scenarios with guidance on how to handle them.
It may interest your readers to know what extremists actually think about Campusalam. It appears that Hizb ut Tahrir disapprove of us as much as some of these postings seem to, and interestingly they too attack us for the speakers who attended to put their case.
"Not a suprise that they are giving platform to someone who wants us to look at the Quran critically. Astagfirullah do they not fear the wrath of Allah."
They also appear to be deeply suspicious of our inter-faith origins and our peacemaking objectives (we are 'kufar'); and they seem to be encouraging their members to target our events and disrupt them. I won't include the URL because I don't want to drive traffic towards their site but it is easy to find.
Surely if the Shadow Home Secretary shares a platform with Anis Al-Tikriti and Tariq Ramadam, then organisations working to prevent extremism can do too!!
Maybe he didnt realise he would be shadow home secretary when he signed up this in 2006:
http://www.bminitiative.net/bmi/en/details_home.aspx?ID=103&table=sub
National Rally: 20th of November to defend freedom of religion, conscience and thought.
Confirmed Speakers:
Ken Livingstone- Mayor of London
Lord Nazir Ahmed- Labour Peer
Jon Cruddas MP - Labour
Dominic Grieve MP – Shadow Conservative, Conservative
Alex Salmond MP- the Leader of the Scottish National
Andrew Stunell MP- the Liberal Democrat Spokesman on Community and Local Government and former Baptist preacher
Jeremy Corbyn- Labour MP
Tony Benn- former Labour MP and Cabinet Minister
Jean Lambert- Green Party MEP
Dr Abdul Bari- the Secretary General of MCB
Shami Chakrabarti- Director of Liberty
Sayeeda Warsi- Conservative Party vice Chair
Bruce Kent- Catholic peace campaigner and Vice-President of Pax Christi
Sir Iqbal Sacranie– Former Secretary General of MCB
Anas Altikriti- the spokesman of the British Muslim Initiative
Salma Yaqoob- Vice Chair of Respect Coalition
Cristina Odone- was editor of the Catholic Herald and deputy editor of the New Statesman
Billy Hayes- Communications workers union General Secretary
Paul Mackney- Joint General Secretary University and Colleges Union
Professor Tariq Ramadan- President of the European think tank: European Muslim Network (EMN) in Brussels.