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July 15, 2006

UK: Why Is The Government Protecting This Islamist?

Some extremely serious questions should be addressed to the British government as to why it has given a visa to the man pictured at left, Delwar Hossain Sayeedi, who is due to talk this weekend at the East London Mosque. The questions are mostly being asked by Martin Bright of the New Statesman, but his attempts to bring the truth to the public have been met with government attempts at censorship. Why?

Let us start with describing the basics of what is happening, as reported by the Washington Times, the Times and the Daily Mail. I will discuss finer points, and Martin Bright's documentary which the government tried to censor later.

Delwar Hossein Sayeedi is not trusted even in Bangladesh, where he comes from, as his views are considered extremist. He is a cleric and senior member of the Jamaat-e-Islami, one of the four parties in the coalition government. He is said, according to the Bangladesh Daily Star to have "four Saudi funders". He also, on December 12, 2003, in the Bangladeshi parliament, called for the arrest and trial of a renowned Bangladeshi author, Dr Humayun Azad, and declared him to be an apostate.

Dr Azad had written a controversial book called Pak Sar Zamin Sad Baad, which is thought to be an allegory of Sayeedi's party, the Jamaat-e-Islami. The title of the book is that of Pakistan's national anthem - "Blessed be the Sacred Land", and writes of Bangladesh being turned into a Talibanized version of Pakistan. Indeed, most of the leaders of Jamaat-i-Islami fought for the Pakistani side in Bangladesh's war for independence from that country, and are said to have committed war crimes, including massacres of Bengali Hindus.

Delwar Hossein Sayeedi's attacks upon Dr Azad did not end there. On January 25, he demanded the introduction of a blasphemy act to prevent publication of books like Pak Sar Zamin Sad Baad.

Sayeedi's public highlighting of the book and its attack upon fundamentalism led, as we reported on June 4, to Abdur Rahman, the head of the Islamist terror group Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh, to be shown a copy in January 2004 by Shaon, a JMB footsoldier.

Shaon said: "After reading the book, Rahman said Humayun Azad has no right to be alive as he makes indecent remarks about Allah and the prophet." On February 27, on the instructions of Rahman, Shaon and three others, armed with butchers' knives, ambushed Dr Azad outside the Bangla Academy in Dhaka, where the author had been attending a book fair.

Azad was seriously injured, and though he recovered, he died six months later in Munich. After the knife attack, his wife Latifa Kohinur had blamed Sayeedi for his parliamentary attacks, saying: "Fundamentalists (zealots) have done this.... Who else could do this? You know an MP even verbally abused him in the parliament. Why didn't you take security measures to protect him after such an outrage in parliament?"

We have already noted that the leadership of the JMB (five of whom have recently been sentenced to death for bombing campaigns) are intimately linked to the Jamaat-e-Islami party, which wishes, like JMB, to establish a sharia state in Bangladesh.

Delwar Hossein Sayeedi's Islamist credentials are strong. He even called for journalists to have a blood test to see "if they are Muslims or not". He said this at a public meeting on March 23, 2003, states Reporters sans Frontieres. At the same meeting he criticised journalists who "confuse Muslims and Islamists".

In March this year he sent a legal notice, demanding apology from the journalist and human rights activist Shahriar Kabir and his publishers, for issuing a book called "Militant Fundamentalism in Bangladesh". The publisher refused and responded: "We believe that one day the trial of Sayeedi and his associates will take place here on the soil of Bangladesh for their war crimes."

Sayeedi has virulently attacked the West. He has said that Britain and the US "deserve all that is coming to them" for overthrowing the Taliban in Afghanistan.

He has said that US soldiers in Iraq should convert to Islam or die, saying: ""And if it is not Allah's will that they become good Muslims, then let all the American soldiers be buried in the soil of Iraq and never let them return to their homes."

He has compared Hindus to excrement: "Why should we feel sad when the Hindu brothers choose to leave our country? Do we mourn when we have indigestion and material leaves our bodies?"

These comments can be found in a pdf document, written by Michael Bright for Policy Exchange, entitled: "When Progressives Treat With Reactionaries." The document, which contains copies of emails discussed in this article, can be uploaded here. More information can be found on the website Drishtipat, and also on Martin's New Statesman weblog.

Sayeedi is also part of the movement in Bangladesh which persecutes the Muslim sect called the Ahmadiyyas, who live by a policy of non-violence, and have a substantial number of followers in Britain, the sort of anti-violence Muslims who should feel welcome in Britain, rather than be intimidated by the government's welcoming of Sayeedi. In January last year, he said of the Khatme Nabuwat, the main anti-Ahmadiyyah group: "Khatme Nabuwwot is carrying the flag of the Muslim millat. No one should say anything against them," a statement reported in Bhorer Kagojnewspaper, January 13, 2005. He also said at the same time: "Ahmadiyas don't have any right to introduce themselves as Muslims. They are a minority community here, just like the Hindus and Christians."

For more hate-speech quotes from Delwar Hossain Sayeedi, see the report from Women Living Under Muslim Laws.

The Times yesterday said that last year, the Home Office and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office had considered excluding Sayeedi from Britain. But that has not happened.

The "Islamic issues adviser" from the Foreign Office, Mockbul Ali, has actively defended Sayeedi's "right" to come to Britain. He accuses those who criticise Sayeedi as being politically biased, and says that by excluding this man from Britain, mainstream Muslims may no longer support the government's anti-terrorism agenda.

In emails from September last year, Mockbul Ali wrote: "Websites of groups with a clear agenda/bias is not the way to prove exclusion [if a case does indeed exist].....He is someone who has a very big following in the mainstream British Bangladeshi Muslim community and is viewed as a mainstream Muslim figure. Any steps taken on his exclusion from the UK must take that into account, especially at a time when we require increasing support on the Prevent/Counter Terrorism agenda from British Muslims."

Channel 4 television last night broadcast a program on its "30 minutes" political slot called "Who Speaks For Muslims", which was written by Martin Bright, who has had access to the government emails. The Foreign Office Permanent Secretary Sir Michael Jay contacted Channel 4, demanding that they censor the name of Mockbul Ali. Their reasons were that Ali would be "at risk". Channel 4 refused, saying that the government had not "substantiated its claim".

The Daily Mail writes that last week, the former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, MP for Blackburn and Burnley, said in the House of Commons that he "deplored" Delwar Hossain Sayeedi's comments.

Labour MP Louise Ellman has said that she will be tabling queestions to the Foreign Office about Sayeedi. She says: "I'm horrified that he is being allowed to come. His stance is incompatible with the Prime Minister's statement and I am amazed that at this time we are allowing somebody whose comments are so inflammatory to be here. I am surprised that the East London Mosque is associating itself with him. They should answer for their decision."

Delwar Hossain Sayeedi will be preaching at the East London Mosque. This edifice was created with a 1 million pound ($1,838,607) donation from Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia. Its chairman is Bangladeshi-born Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, who is now the leader of the leader of the Muslim Council for Britain. The MCB receives annual payments from the government.

Tory MP Michael Gove states: "It is particularly worrying that he will be preaching at a mosque whose president, Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, is also the chief executive of the Muslim Council of Britain. If the MCB is to speak for mainstream Islam it must cut its ties with extremism."

And after his visiting a "housing fair" held at the London Muslim Centre in the East London Mosque, Sayeedi will tomorrow be going on to a rally attended by Britain's treacherous MP, George Galloway, who spoke in May that it would be "morally justified" for Tony Blair to be assassinated.

As reported by researcher Delwar Hussain (no relation) on Open Democracy: "The Islamists, by contrast, are sophisticated and up-to-date in their focus and appeal. The East London Mosque (and its affiliate, the London Muslim Centre [LMC]) shares the ideology of the Jamaat-e-Islami. The mosque is no fringe organisation; it was at the centre of the campaign that helped elect the local Respect party candidate and vocal critic of Britain's New Labour government, George Galloway, in the 2005 general election."

And after his trip to the East London Mosque, Sayeedi will be going to Luton on Monday.

Really, this is too much. Mockbul Ali should be sacked, and there should be a thorough investigation into what is going on here. Britain's government "representatives" are not moderates. The government has wooed and financed the Muslim Council for Britain, and allowed them to dictate policy, including having its own plans to outlaw forced marriages shelved, despite the pain and distress it causes to 300 young Muslim girls every year. Last year the MCB was exposed as an organisation that supported extremists. It has not changed. If Britain's government was sincere about tackling extremists, it should not allow itself to be dictated to by Muslims who themselves appear to belong to the extremist "fringe". Or is that extremism part of the "mainstream"?

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at July 15, 2006 8:16 AM

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