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July 30, 2006

UK: The Islamists Who Influence Britain's Foreign Policy

Last year, on September 4, we first mentioned the name of Mockbul Ali, the young Islamic Affairs Adviser to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). The Observer had then mentioned that the 25 year old (at that time) civil servant had recommended that the radical Qatari-based cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi should be allowed into Britain. The information came from a leaked memo, which had been made only a week after the London suicide bombings of 7th July 2005. Mockbul Ali supported the Islamist Sheikh's visa application, even though Qaradawi has consistently supported suicide bombers in Palestine and armed resistance to coalition forces in Iraq.

The following day, Melanie Phillips wrote an article on her weblog entitled Britain's Foreign Office Fifth Column about the revelations in the Observer. Mockbul Ali had said: "We certainly do not agree with Qaradawi's views on Israel and Iraq, but we have to recognise that they are not unusual or even exceptional among Muslims. In fact it is correct to say that these are views shared by a majority of Muslims in the Middle East and the UK. Refusing entry on these grounds would also open a Pandora's box in relation to entry clearance for others in the Muslim world..

Melanie Phillips drew attention to the way that Mockbul Ali had deliberately shown an anti-semitic taint in his pronouncements. She said: ""The Foreign Secretary may remember the negative media storm when Livingstone last brought the priest to Britain, the civil servants tell Jack Straw. He should ignore it. The accusations came from tainted Jewish sources, "the Board of [Jewish] Deputies" and the Israeli monitoring site Memri, which is "regularly criticised for selective translation of Arabic reports". This simply isn't true. Qaradawi's extremist views haven't been spread by scheming Jews but are well documented on his very own website."

She quoted from Ali's memo: "The founding President of MEMRI is retired Colonel Yigal Carmon, who served for 22 years in Israel's military intelligence service. MEMRI is regularly criticised for selective translation of Arabic reports."

The entire text of the letter can be found below. What is strange is that Mockbul Ali is prepared to discredit the Jewish Board of Deputies, a long established pillar of British public life, as one among "Jewish lobby groups". Ali speaks of fears that the Muslim media may react to their involvement - whereas he quotes recommendations from the Muslim Council as if they are a bona fide authority.

The entire text of this letter is reproduced at the foot of this article, as its reasoning and obvious bias needs to be viewed in its entirety.

We reported on July 15 on the arrival in Britain of the Islamist politician Delwar Hossein Sayeedi. The journalist and editor of the New Statesman Martin Bright had written of the government links with extremist Muslims in a pamphlet for Policy Exchange, entitled: "When Progressives Meet Reactionaries". The pdf document can be uploaded HERE.

Once again the 26 year old civil servant Mockbul Ali decided to approve the visa for Sayeedi's entry into Britain, even though the Bangladesh member of the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami party has called Hindus excrement, and has spoken positively about coalition troops being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and has been part of the campaign of persecution of the Ahmadiyya Muslim sect. Sayeedi visited the East London Mosque, whose chairman is Dr Muhammad Bari, the new head of the Muslim Council for Britain, and like Sayeedi, a Bangladeshi.

Mockbul Ali called Delwar Hossain Sayeedi a "mainstream Muslim figure" in an exchange with another government adviser, Eric Taylor, which was reported in the Times.

Martin Bright made a documentary for Channel 4, entitled "Who Speaks For Muslims", broadcast on July 14, in which he discussed the overt influence on extremist Muslims who influence Britain's policies at home and abroad. Because the programme mentioned the name of Mockbul Ali, Channel Four received a bizarre request from the government to censor the documentary.

Mockbul Ali is obviously protected within government. On May 8, the Tory front bencher Michael Gove, whose book "Celsius 7/7" challenges the influence of Islamist radicals upon the government, attempted to ask questions in Parliament as to what qualified the appointment of the 26 year old to the position of "Islamic Affairs adviser" to the Foreign Office.

Hansard records the exchange: Michael Gove: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs in what capacity Mr. Mockbul Ali is employed to advise the Foreign Office; what level of security clearance he has; and what vetting procedures were undertaken before he was offered employment. [69286]

Dr. Howells: It is not Foreign and Commonwealth Office policy to comment publicly on the employment contracts for individual members of staff, nor on advice sought or not sought before offering a member of staff employment. Staff are recruited according to strict guidelines under free and fair, open competitions.

Dr Howells is Kim Howells, the Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, who recently stepped out of line by launching a verbal attack upon Israel's current policies in the Lebanon, breaking from the government line. He has responsibility for the Middle East, Afghanistan, and South Asia.

Obviously not the sharpest knife in the drawer, Howells has held his post since May last year, after a disastrous role in the education department where he allowed a sex offender to work as a physical education teacher at a school.

The issue of how much influence Mockbul Ali carries within the Foreign Office is becoming a matter of public concern. At the start of this month, the Foreign Office paid for Qaradawi and his wife to travel to Turkey, where they stayed in a top class hotel while attending a conference in Istanbul. The Foreign Office also paid for 180 other Muslim delegates to take part in the conference on Islam. The cost to the UK taxpayer was 300,000 pounds ($550,863). Was it money well spent?

Martin Bright's document, When Progressives Treat with Reactionaries: the British State's Flirtation with Radical Islamism" should be read by anyone interested in how Britain's democracy has been farmed out to radicals, who now appear to dictate our democratically-elected government's policies. It was described recently by Nick Cohen in the Guardian as "a pamphlet stuffed with enough state secrets to induce coronary arrests in previously healthy MI5 officers."

"They describe the FO's attempts to woo the Arab Muslim Brotherhood, whose closest allies in Britain are the Muslim Association of Britain, and its south Asian counterpart, Jamaat-e-Islami, whose supporters are at the top of the Muslim Council of Britain. The mandarins reason that these groups are not part of al-Qaeda, which is true; that they are growing in power, which is regrettably true as well; and that they are composed of reasonable men with whom Britain can do business, which is palpable nonsense."

Cohen quotes Angus McKee from the Foreign Office Middle East and North Africa department, who wrote: "Given that Islamist groups are often less corrupt than the generality of the societies in which they operate, consideration might be given to channelling aid resources through them, so long as sufficient transparency is achievable."

The leaks from the Foreign Office which have been sent to Martin Bright have even been discussed in detail in Bangladesh, in a leading article in its Daily Star.

Today, the Sunday Times produces a remarkable piece of research into the political and religious background of Mockbul Ali, further confirming fears that the government is being influenced by someone who has no right to be employed.

The Times admits it does not know how Mockbul Ali came to have such an influential role in government, but it provides some details of interest, such as a former student colleague's comment that Ali was "a straightforward Islamist, loyal to something like the (Muslim) Brotherhood tradition."

Mockbul Ali grew up in Bradford in a family of Bangladeshi immigrants, He was formerly involved in the Union of Muslim Students (UMS). He was the political editor of the UMS newspaper. And while acting in this capacity, the newspaper carried an article praising Aayat al-Akhras, an 18-year-old Palestinian suicide bomber, who killed two Israeli civilians. She blew herself up in a Jerusalem supermarket. The article was entitled: "A bride in the dress of martyrdom." The piece went on to describe her "heroic operation... in the heart of the Zionist entity." It spoke of how she would "remain an example for every Palestinian woman and man looking for security".

The Times reports that shortly after 9/11, Mockbul Ali wrote in the newspaper: "If you are not white, you are most likely to be 'liberated' through bombings, massacres and chaos. Welcome to terrorism as a liberating force. Welcome to civilisation - western style."

And since he joined the Foreign Office, Ali has urged the Uk to send Sharif Hasan al-Banna, president of the UMS, to Islamic conferences in Indonesia and Nigeria, all paid for by the tax-payer.

Mockbul Ali is a senior member of the FO's Engaging with the Islamic World Group (EIWG) which promotes dialogue with he Muslim Brotherhood and other radical groups.

In a recent commentary in the Guardian, Martin Bright says: "Professor Chetan Bhatt of Goldsmiths College, University of London - an expert in religious extremism - argued that the government has a long history of engaging with representatives from the religious far-right in Britain, including the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat-i-Islami as well as the Hindu BJP."

It seems that with Mockbul Ali, the Islamist groups have found a government employee who speaks the same language.

Michael Gove, whose parliamentary questions about Mockbul Ali were left unanswered, said: "His influence in the Foreign Office gives rise to serious questions."

So many questions, and no answers in sight.

Mockbul Ali is a figure whose government job allows him to be shrouded in secrecy, but we have repeatedly questioned on Western Resistance why the Muslim Council for Britain has wielded so much influence on government policies. It tried last year to introduce a blasphemy law which would have outlawed any criticism of Islam, and the government acquiesced to its demands. Fortunately, by the time the bill reached the House of Lords, it had become meaningless.

Recently the Muslim Council for Britain persuaded the government to abandon its long-touted plans to outlaw forced marriage, even though 300 Muslim girls a year are made to endure this abuse, and even though forced marriages are linked to a significant proportion of honour killings in the UK.

The Muslim Council for Britain has done nothing positive for this country, and has only promoted its own ends. It has consistently made public displays of its disapproval of Holocaust Memorial Day, yet its last secretary-general, Iqbal Sacranie, attended a memorial service for Sheikh Yassin, founder of the terrorist group Hamas which has killed hundreds of Israeli civilians in acts of terrorism.

Sacranie in 1996 even tried to have Osama bin Laden invited to an Islamic "rally" in London, claiming that the terrorist was an "Islamic scholar". When the issue of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses caused the Ayatollah Khomeini to pronounce a death fatwa against the British author, Sacranie supported it. Sacranie had been the head of the UK Action Committee on Islamic Affairs in February 1989. He had said of Rushdie: "Death, perhaps, is a bit too easy for him...his mind must be tormented for the rest of his life unless he asks for forgiveness to Almighty Allah."

The announcement of a new group of Muslims who claim to represent the mainstream ordinary Muslim in Britain, the Sufi Muslim Council has sent the MCB into reactionary mode. Inayat Bunglawala, MCB's press spokesman, could not contain himself, saying that the founder of the group, Haras Rafiq was an "unknown". "Who is he? Who does he represent? Lets wait and see just how many groups affiliate to his group but at the moment it's obscure and unknown."

The Sufi Muslim Council already has the support of 300 mosques and imams in the Midlands and north of Britain, and the MCB feels threatened. But its leading figures are not attempting to present themselves as more moderate.

In his New Statesman weblog, Martin Bright describes a recent meeting he had, while on a panel discussing his documentary at City Circle, an arena for discussion amongst Muslims. Sacranie was in attendance, and sparks apparently flew.

When Mr Bright asked Sacranie what meetings he had with victims of the 7th July 2005 bomb attacks, Sacranie had claimed that HE himself was a victim. Sacranie also supports Pakistan's Hudood Laws, which currently make no distinction between rape and adultery, leading to rape victims being put on trial as adulteresses.

Martin Bright's shocking expose of government flirtation with extremism, details how the Foreign Office is deliberately having closer dialogue with the Muslim Brotherhood (detailed in Chapter One), helped on by its Engaging with the Islamic World Group (EIWG).

In his Introduction, Bright writes: "Far from representing the more progressive or purely spiritual traditions within Islam, the leadership of the MCB takes its inspiration from political Islamism associated with reactionary opposition movements in the Middle East and South Asia. Sir Iqbal Sacranie, the recently retired head of the MCB and its press spokesman Inayat Bunglawala have both expressed their admiration for Maulana Maududi, the founder of Pakistan's Jamaat-eIslami party which is committed to the establishment of an Islamic state ruled by Sharia law."

The government policies of breaking bread with extremists have borne no fruit. Since the horrors of the 7/7 bombings, the government has tried to appease extremists more than it did before.

On September 4 I typed out the contents of of a memo which had been sent between senior figures at MI5, the homeland intelligence agency, in which plans were suggested to infiltrate Islamist websites. The idea had been to have agents pretend to be Islamists, in order to either gather sensitive information, or to entrap potential terrorists.

Sometimes playing with fire burns one, and in the case of Islamic extremism, it is a fire which is better stamped out, rather than encouraging it and allowing it to spread.

But with the MCB still dictating government policy, and the Foreign Office's EIWG unit deliberately wooing Islamists in an ongoing policy that has now lasted 3 years, and which annually costs the taxpayer 8.5 million pounds ($15.8 million), I fear that Britain's government is encouraging terrorism, not challenging it.

Below is a transcript from Mockbul Ali's letter from July 14, 2005 (seven days after the 7/7 attacks) in which he argues for the Islamist Sheikh Qaradawi to be granted a visa to enter Britain.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at July 30, 2006 1:30 AM

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