“We have to look beyond the headlines and not believe everything we are told.” – Yasmin Qureshi, Labour MP for Bolton South East

TL;DR? Yasmin Qureshi MP is legitimising extremists and the Labour Party doesn’t seem to care.

Yasmin Qureshi is a successful, non-white Muslim woman from in a large town with a small minority of illiterate, belligerent far-right nationalists. There’s not much to complain about in regards to her voting record in parliament since 2010, either, voting mostly along party lines and in favour of civil liberties.

Unfortunately for Qureshi and British democracy, she has supplied a legitimate platform for and given access to the House of Commons to people with extreme views that would not be tolerated if the speakers were, for instance, Geert Wilders or members of the typical anti-Muslim far right. Arguably even more damning are her own words supporting the theoretical arguments of a group that was previously rejected by Parliament for its associations with Islamist hate preachers.

Qureshi, along with these groups associated with Haitham al-Haddad, denies the logical conclusions of spreading intolerant, hateful ideologies and repeats the simplistic and all-too-common victim narratives used by terrorist recruiters to attract people to and justify violent Islamist causes.

Logically, we can infer one of three options about the MP:

Qureshi didn’t bother to check the histories and beliefs of the people she invited Qureshi was successfully lobbied by an extremist-affiliated lobbying group Qureshi actually agrees with, condones or sees as legitimate the views of the people she invited.

This article in no way aims to prove that Yasmin Qureshi is an Islamist herself, nor that Labour is the only party with this issue. Former Conservative Baroness Warsi has been involved with the same groups, as well as others in the “all party” establishment. The purpose of this article is primarily to bring Qureshi’s attention to the organisations she has supported and hopefully make her reconsider her allegiances in a public fashion.

I am fully willing to extend the following article to her in good faith; if she has been honestly taken-in by lobbyist manipulators with darker beliefs than they admitted to her personally, the following associations should not be held against her. If she responds to the article, I will copy in her reply.



I will also email her a link to the article and write a letter suggesting she challenge these organisations. It is my sincere belief that these groups do not faithfully represent the wider interests of Muslim and non-Muslim Bolton and UK residents, and I hope she will publicly decry them. Open rejection by high profile Muslim MPs would be in all of our best interest, and could really harm support and influence.

If I can find this information, so can Qureshi or her staff. The ideal outcome would be MPs of all parties rejecting these organisations, spending a little more effort being careful, and faithfully representing the interests of all their constituents and stop giving Islamists access to Parliamentary support.

As Andrew Gilligan mentioned in the Telegraph back in January, 12 hours prior to the Paris attacks by Islamic State, Yasmin Qureshi hosted a meeting with Baroness Warsi and others from the political establishment with representatives of Muslim Engagement and Development (MEND); a group that exists ostensibly to get Muslims to interact with politics and combat Islamophobia. The meeting also included members of the Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE); 5pillars, a muslim news organisation; affiliates of the now-discredited CAGE organisation, and the Claystone think tank.

The meeting launched a Claystone report “Rethinking Radicalization and Extremism,” which contends that Islamist violence has little to do with ideology or belief and everything to do with Western foreign policy, the suppression of civil liberties in the interests of combating extremism, and anti-Muslim bigotry and racism.

The entire meeting can be viewed here:

In 2011, Qureshi also attended a ‘Palestine Solidarity Campaign’ meeting in Parliament with banned preacher Raed Salah Abu Shakra, the leader of the northern branch of the Muslim Brotherhood offshoot, Islamic Movement in Israel.

Contents

The Long Shadow of Haitham al-Haddad

The bulk of the groups present at the launch overlap in terms of influence, ideology and appreciation for each other. It’s rare you’ll glance through one of their twitter timelines, facebook groups or websites and not find it full of the others mentioned in a pattern of support and agreement.

An interesting point of commonality is that most of these groups have at some point, interact or otherwise have a significant position in the network of Haitham al-Haddad; a Palestine-born, London-based Salafist preacher who has recently been “no-platformed” for his terrible fascist views. He is a major contributor to Islam21c.com, whose articles are mirrored on CAGE and 5pillars.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the “underwear bomber” wrote in his autobiography that he had contact with al-Haddad on an intensive religious course on how rulings are derived from sacred texts. Said Kouchi, one of the Charlie Hebdo massacre gunmen claimed to live with Abdulmutallab for a short time; they prayed together at Yemen’s al-Tabari School and studied Arabic together at the Sanaa Arabic Grammar Institute.

Whatever they believed, it would certainly be plausible for their beliefs to be comparable and complementary with each other and Haddad; almost certainly involving the extreme conservatism typical of Haddad and, as this article will show, many of those present at the meeting. So what views did Qureshi dislike people being reported for? If she did some research on the organisations present, i.e. those invited by her, views akin to those of Haddad and those who associate with him in the audience.

Haddad’s views include (and in specific quoted detail here):

Apostates should be killed in an Islamic state.

Unbelievers should understand the consequences for rejecting Allah in an Islamic state.

Unbelievers and their political systems (e.g. democracy) are filthy and should be supplanted with Sharia.

Slavery is desirable and non-Muslim prisoners of war can be taken as slaves.

Female non-Muslim slaves can be sexually engaged with, but if they become pregnant, they can’t be sold on.

Jews and Christians should pay discriminatory “jizya” taxes.

Jews are the descendents of apes and pigs.

Suicide bombing is part of defensive jihad and those Muslims who condemn suicide bombing are committing “serious treason”.

The ultimate aim of all Muslims is to have Islam and the sharia govern the whole world.

Muslims must establish the grim punishments associated with sharia (hudood).

Adulterers should be stoned. Muslims that criticise stoning will go to Hell.

FGM is desirable and “an honour”.

The earlier a girl is married in Britain, the better.

Homosexuality should be criminalised, gays should be killed.

Bin Laden was a “martyr”.

It’s difficult to see why these views wouldn’t coincide with those of your average al-Qaeda, ISIS or other violent Islamist group’s views or why it would be so difficult to move from a “non-violent” group to a “violent” one as per Qureshi and her allies’ statements and the report launched at the meeting. Yet this man’s ideological associates, Islamists with comparable views (as shown below) have risen to the top of many Muslim concern organisations, and are now invited to speak in government by cross-party MPs.

Sufyan Ismail

Sufyan Ismail on the 300 year old Israeli lobby.

Sufyan Ismail is a wealthy businessman who lives in Bolton. He is the chief executive of MEND, as he was for its previous form, iEngage. When iEngage’s Islamist sympathies were exposed in 2011, Kris Hopkins, Tory MP for Keighley, and the Labour peer Lord Janner, quit the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Islamophobia after failing to persuade their colleagues to sack iEngage as the group’s secretariat. In 2010, The organisation lobbied the British government to revoke a ban on Zakir Naik, a hardline foreign preacher who has said that “every Muslim should be a terrorist”.

Reported on the 4th of April, 2015, in Bolton’s Zakariyya Central Mosque, Ismail was recorded saying:

“David Cameron recently said that British Jews fighting for the IDF will not be prosecuted, but British Muslims going to Syria fighting against Assad… will definitely face interrogation. Now do you think that if we landed those 20 seats or 30 seats, he [Cameron] would have the audacity to say that to the Muslim community? Not a chance!”

“It’s not a crime to use violent or threatening words or behaviour [against Muslims]. It’s perfectly OK under UK law to hate Islam and Muslims, it’s not a problem…if you’re Muslim, [the law says] you can take liberties big time, that’s why women are getting their hijabs ripped off.”

This kind of rhetoric is a shade of populist identity politics, arguably a mirror image of the exact type of argument the EDL uses, only instead of an English identity, it affirms a Muslim one. The rhetoric serves to instil fear, a sense of injustice and a solution: a Muslim identity group that can go on to lobby Members of Parliament:

“Right now, we are negotiating with the Labour leadership, we are negotiating with the Tory leadership and inshallah will start with the Lib Dem leadership as well, where we have a list of manifesto pledges. The Muslim vote is worth ten ordinary votes because… we are heavily concentrated in a few areas. Anybody who can give any one party 10, 20, 30 seats, like we can, they have to listen to you.”

Gilligan responded to Ismail: “The attack was widely condemned by politicians of all parties, including the London mayor, Boris Johnson, who described it as “cowardly” and “pathetic,” the Northern Ireland secretary and local MP, Theresa Villiers, who called it “despicable” and “an attack on all of us” and the shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, who said it was a hate crime.”

Azad Ali

Azad Ali from the C4 Dispatches-featured IFE, and Unite Against Fascism (UAF). Ali has previously “called for British troops to be killed, described al-Qaeda as a “myth,” and written of his “love” for Anwar al-Awlaki, the cleric cited as a direct influence by one of the Paris murderers.”

Ali has also mocked establishment-supporting Muslims as “self-serving vultures, feeding on the dead flesh of the Palestinians”. Did he mean this for MPs like Qureshi, who once compared Israel’s actions in Gaza to the holocaust, before being forced to apologise? It’s entirely possible. The Israel–Gaza conflict is a key touchstone for Islamist radicalisation as it (and antisemitism) is so pervasive in Muslim opinion worldwide. Ali is correct when he says Muslims use it to gain populist approval; indeed, even Saddam Hussein used it to court appeal among Muslims, as does George Galloway MP, frequently.

Azad Ali, by his own statements could easily be described as an extremist by any sensible definition. While he is welcome to have his views, elevating him to any kind of respectable position, recognising him in government and promoting his profile would, I suspect, be considered irresponsible by Ed Miliband and the rest of the Labour Party leadership.

Muhammad Abdul Bari

Another attendee was Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, former head of the IFE, the Muslim Council of Britain, member of the London Olympics Committee and trustee of Muslim Aid. Dr Bari, a man who, when questioned about whether adulterers should be stoned to death, he replied, “It depends what sort of stoning and what circumstances. When our prophet talked about stoning for adultery he said there should be four witnesses – in realistic terms that’s impossible. It’s a metaphor for disapproval.” It would be reasonable to assume he did not mean relaxation of drugs law to provide adulterers with recreational cannabis.

Dr Bari, on freedom of speech and Salman Rushdie, said, “He caused a huge amount of distress and discordance with his book, it should have been pulped.” Not, “he should not live in fear,” not, “any death penalty or fatwa against him is a crime against Islam” or “nobody should live under fear of intimidation”, he simply blamed the victim and advocated his works of fiction be destroyed. This man also peddles the common suggesting radicalisation was almost entirely down to foreign policy and any attempts by Western governments to deal with the problem. Of course, the fact that a work of fiction is not a foreign policy and the terrorism aimed at Rushdie was no less potentially lethal, does not even occur to him.

Dr Bari too, then, could also be classified as an extremist by his own words and affiliations, providing the propaganda and severity of belief that is kith and kin to that of violent extremism. While he may disavow any such actions in our country himself, these opinions and ideas inform and normalise Islamist ideology.

Why would a step to militant Islamism, i.e. the jihadi terrorist, not inevitably occur with many young vulnerable men if you are filling their heads with the same propaganda? Why, if you promise a utopian caliphate, would you not expect someone to actually try and join one?

Dilly Hussain

A third attendee was Dilwar “Dilly” Hussain, a HuffPost blogger, claimed imminent Independent writer and deputy editor for 5pillars. 5pillars is a “muslim news site” with a penchant for disseminating Islamist propaganda, complaining about the West and Israel and so on. His articles are frequently shared by CAGE, and are mirrored on their site.

His site posted this article, presenting apologetics for Hizb ut-Tahrir. Hizb ut-Tahrir, for those who don’t know, is an organisation that buys into the totalitarian jihadist utopian outlook: establish a caliphate (as ISIS claim to have done), run it according to sharia principles (as ISIS claim to do), and eventually take over the world. Hizb ut-Tahrir’s mission statement is replete with claims such as “If not for the influence of the deceptive Western culture and the oppression of its agents that will soon vanish, then the return to the domain of Islam in its ideology and system would be quicker than the blink of an eye,” as found here. In July 2013, Imam Ismat Al-Hammouri from the Jerusalem-based Hizb ut-Tahrir called for the destruction of America, France, Britain, and Rome, during a gathering at the Al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan.

Dilly happily hosts this group’s nonsensical whataboutery false equivalencies; questions like “Why are Muslims being asked to condemn ISIS when Western foreign policy is just as bad?!” and then complains on HuffPost that Muslims are unfairly tarred with the extremist brush. In the same article he also says, “Muslims find themselves under pressure again due to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham’s (ISIS) declaration of a Caliphate. The concept and obligation to work for a unified and borderless Islamic polity, which rules by Shariah law is a mainstream belief in normative Islam whether you’re Sunni or Shia.”

Dilly should take a good, long look in the mirror when contemplating why Muslims might be tarred with extremism brushes. If your only complaint about ISIS is the way it’s doing things but agree with its foundations (the caliphate) and principles (hideous fundamentalist sharia and hudood), you are not really arguing against it; you are promoting an atmosphere where joining it seems logical and even morally just. Dilly even wrote a pro/con article on joining Jihad in Syria on 9/11 in 2013.

Dilly’s words: “The irony is that whilst majority of Muslim groups, institutions and leaders worldwide have rejected ISIS’ Caliphate, it’s only western governments, media outlets and analysts that keep referring to it as the “Islamic State”, in theory legitimising its credibility. But this was expected as I argued on the show, that the West, namely the U.S. has worked tirelessly to prevent such a state from emerging and Muslims’ desire for it is downplayed by continuously comparing it to the primitive claim of ISIS.” Dilly, like many other “non-violent Islamists” that Qureshi wants to protect, just disagree with this precise iteration of a caliphate, not most of its core moral claims, which will only lead to the exact same error over and over again.

With Dilly’s site’s wilful platform for Hizb ut-Tahrir, who want to, in their own words, “Purify the world of Jewish filth”, execute homosexuals, subject non-muslims to discriminatory taxes and second-class life, it’s difficult to see just how it would actually differ from ISIS. ISIS themselves do not necessarily disagree with the goals of the organisation, but simply laugh it off as a trifling irrelevance that is all talk while they live it.

Dilly has also been noticed by TellMAMA, the Muslim anti-bigotry organisation for his tweets against Jews and Ahmadiyya Muslims, while John Sergeant also preserved Dilly’s venom towards women who disagree with him. Again, by any rational description, Hussain may be considered an extremist, and you would be sensible to wonder why an MP might invite such a man to the seat of British politics.

Raed Salah Abu Shakra

Salah was convicted in Israel for funding Hamas, assaulting a police officer and leading a violent demonstration. He was banned from entry into the country by Theresa May due to his status as a hate preacher, though this was overturned by an immigration court. His reported speeches include deep-seated antisemitic beliefs, complete with the blood libel myth:

“We [Muslims] have never allowed ourselves to knead [the dough for] the bread that breaks the fast in the holy month of Ramadan with children’s blood. Whoever wants a more thorough explanation, let him ask what used to happen to some children in Europe, whose blood was mixed in with the dough of the [Jewish] holy bread.”

Yasmin Qureshi

In her own words, Qureshi continues to deny any links between non-violent islamism and jihadism, based entirely on the say-so of Claystone, the Haddad-affiliated think-tank. It is obvious from Haddad’s statements why he and those like him might want people to believe his beliefs are not dangerous or connected to terrorism.

Qureshi states: “There is an accepted wisdom across political divides, one that views extremist ideology as a cause of radicalisation. The previous and current government introduced strong and often arbitrary pieces of legislation to address the perceived root causes and tomorrow we will see further such legislation beginning its passage through Parliament. Yet all of this comes in the face of growing academic opinion that questions the very essence of the apparent root causes of terrorism. Since 2004 the journey of the concept of radicalisation has become central to the study and scrutiny of terrorism. The profound resulting consequences on our society should not be underestimated.”

She goes on to quote Claystone’s Kundani: “The newly proposed counter terrorism laws far from making Britain safer, are actually counterproductive. We must avoid nurturing a new generation of antagonised and disenfranchised citizens. Such an approach is likely to contribute to radicalisation not stop it”

Stop and examine that notion for a moment. The marginalisation argument could potentially have some merit; an isolated, miserable soul may be more desperate to join up to a messianic, purposeful cause that supplies them with a ready-made brotherhood. At the same time, it’s certainly not always required; many are not lonely, many just believe the same things and are driven by altruistic and religious fervour.

That said, by the time the security services are involved, it’s usually because, as with Emwazi, their actions are already or are about to become extremely dangerous, and it is better to try and turn them before they act on it.

Ultimately, however, what is more likely to contribute to a Briton becoming a militant, combining dehumanising religious purpose and political religion – and then acting upon those beliefs – if not the social, hierarchical, religious support for those views?

Preachers propagating Islamism, encouraging dedication to the faith as interpreted in such a literal fashion, with a caliphate they are Quranically required to defend; demanding that they submit their mind and soul to the God of this religio-political system above all else; what will that do? It will burden boys and girls with, what in their minds will be glorious purpose, but will result in violence and suffering exactly and predictably in line with what they believe. Women will be beaten, bombs will explode, slaves will be taken and hundreds of people, young and old, will lose their lives, many willingly.

Qureshi rightly rejects the Islam of Al Qaeda and ISIS, saying correctly that its victims are usually innocent Muslims. Whether she believes this to be true of the statements Azad Ali and others she supplied with prominence have made remains unclear. While the words from that side of her mouth are all well and good, giving platforms to the above men could not, in my view, be seen as sensible or progressive in any meaningful way. It’s only likely to result in protecting populist demagogues, extremists and encouraging lobbying scandals.

When the conservative party elevated a Sikh donor to the House of Lords, Qureshi said: “There are questions to answer here, not least for the Government who, on elevating this Tory donor to the Lords, justified it on the basis that he held a post which doesn’t seem to have existed for over a decade. People will rightly want to get to the bottom of this issue before another Tory donor is sworn in to the Lords.” Will she be so insightful and sceptical in future?

Questions for Yasmin Qureshi MP

My questions to Qureshi are as follows:

Did she know any of the invited individuals’ opinions ahead of time? Does she condemn any of the previous statements of those present? Does she understand why people with such anti-democratic and hateful views may not be best suited to invitations to the UK’s House of Commons? Does she condemn any of the extremist views of those associated with MEND, CAGE and so forth who were not present, for instance, the quoted views of Haitham al-Haddad? Was she approached by Sufyan Ismail at any point with what might be considered lobbying opportunities? Would she be willing to openly share details of any known contact or meetings with Sufyan Ismail and his representatives? Does she condemn Sufyan Ismail’s lobbying processes for any groups associated with Haitham al-Haddad and similar preachers? Does she condemn the previous Labour (and other parties’) politicians for rejecting iEngage/MEND? Does she still support MEND as headed by Sufyan Ismail and represented by Azad Ali? Does the Labour Party, or North West Labour in any way condone giving the purveyors of these opinions a platform to speak in the House of Commons?