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September 10, 2006

UK: Muslim "Leader" Blames Police And Media, But Not Islam, For Islamophobia

In an interview in today's Sunday Telegraph, the new feurher at the Muslim Council of Britain, Muhammad Abdul Bari, tries to blame everyone else for the contempt and distrust currently held towards Islam in Britain.

Bari was elected to become secretary general of the MCB in early June. A Bangladeshi-born educationalist, author of a few books, Bari is also chairman of the East London Mosque. He supports extremism, as he recently welcomed the Islamist Delwar Hossain Sayeedi to the East London Mosque. He not only supports arranged marriages, but suggests that British families should adopt the custom which they abandoned more than a century ago.

Bari, like other fanatics in the Muslim Council, always likes to present himself as a "moderate", but this image is transparent and shallow. The Muslim Council exists to promote Islam, in all its shades. In June we announced that due to pressure from the MCB, the government abandoned its plans to outlaw forced marriages, thereby condoning an abuse which affects at least 250 UK Muslim girls every year.

80% of the UK public believes that the MCB has failed in tacking extremism. The MCB has tried to sabotage the Terrorism Act 2006, and has blamed government foreign policy for extremism. It also has been registered as a charity, "The Muslim Council of Britain Charitable Foundation" (number 1084651) since 23 January 2001, but has not completed its financial returns since it became registered.

Bari in today's interview blames the police and the media. He has done this before. In July, he claimed police were alienating young Muslims with random searches and anti-terror raids, particularly citing the Forest Gate incident. He said then: "If these mistakes happen again and again, it creates a confidence gap between the community and the police. We want our police force to be more professional. They have to win over all the communities, including Muslims"

Speaking of the upcoming anniversary of 7/7, he then said: "There will definitely be a feeling of unease in the community. Many of them will once again feel that Muslims will be on the receiving end in the media."

Today, he repeats the claim, saying: ""But some police officers and sections of the media are demonising Muslims, treating them as if they're all terrorists - and that encourages other people to do the same."

"If that demonisation continues, then Britain will have to deal with two million Muslim terrorists - 700,000 of them in London. If you attack a whole community, it becomes despondent and aggressive."

Perhaps, since 9/11 and 7/7 and recent revelations of terror plots against innocent civilians, the Western community also feels that "as a whole community" it has been attacked by Islam, and is becoming "despondent and aggressive".

Bari is a typical MCB spokesperson. He does not look at the other side of the fence, for he is only concerned with promoting Islam in Britain. Many groups get "attacked" by the media and the police, but only Islam seems to think that it is justified to "attack back" with violence. And Muslims regard events which affect anyone in the world-wide umma as personally affecting them, and therefore live in a constant state of feeling "under attack".

As we pointed out in our article on Muslims' fictitious victimhood, when the Muslim countries of the umma allow freedom of religion and equal rights to non-Muslims, which they have in the West, then the Muslims may feel they have reason to condemn the West. Muslims in Western countries are allowed to vote, to change their religion (a privilege denied them in Muslim Malaysia and Afghanistan) and are allowed to proselytize for their faith (a privilege denied non-Muslims in Saudi Arabia and Malaysia).

Bari's East London Mosque was built with Saudi donations. Would any Christian, Hindu or Buddhist group be allowed to build a temple to their faith in Saudi Arabia, funded by foreign donations?

52-year old Bari argues: "We want to isolate the bad people and put them in the dock. But we all have to work together to do that - police, politicians, the media and the Muslim community."

He blatantly lies, or shows his total ignorance, when he says: "When the IRA was blowing people up, the entire Catholic population of Britain was not demonised, so why is it happening to the Muslim community?"

In 1980 to 1983, I lived in a house full of Irish Catholics in north London. The police Special Branch visited the house, and interviewed every single person, extensively, at the time of the IRA attacks. The police have not used such methods on Muslims. And the Irish Catholics, though inconvenienced, accepted that such questioning was a valid part of the fight against terrorism, and they did not complain.

Bari says: "When we speak we are ignored by the media, but when Abu Hamza or Omar Bakri Mohammed say something they are all over the papers."

But they have not spoken out and condemned Islamic extremism without also making back-handed comments criticising the media and the police. There is always a caveat that the MCB has used. The previous secretary general of the MCB, spent much of his time attacking the BBC rather than attacking Islamic extremism. Sacranie made stupid statements glorifying Sheikh Yassin, the founder of terrorist group Hamas, as a "freedom-fighter" in the aftermath of the 7/7 suicide attacks.

Bari refuses to accept that mosques encouraged the rise of home-grown terrorists, despite the ample evidence that the Finsbury Park Mosque, under Abu Hamza and his successor Abu Abdullah, actively encouraged terrorism. Nor does he acknowledge that Saudi-sponsored Abdullah al-Faisal, who like Hamza was jailed for soliciting murder, preached at mosques the length and breadth of Britain.

The 7/7 bombers Mohammed Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer had attended the Al-Madina Masjid mosque in Beeston, where the imam, Hamid Ali, would later claim that they were al-Faisal's "children". They also attended Hamza's sermons at the Finsbury Park mosque, as did Richard Reid, the "shoe-bomber" and also Zacarias Moussaoui, the 9/11 conspirator, and also French al-Qaeda supporter David Courtailler, who had converted to Islam at the radical Alquds mosque in Brighton.

Bari does admit that "Some young Muslims are out of control. They are barred from the mosques and ignore their parents." He said that new arrivals had problems integrating. He said that these groups "needed help". "Integration is a two-way process and the dominant, majority culture has to do more."

No it does not. If the dominant culture did any more appeasement to Islam, it would not be the dominant culture anymore. Multiculturalism has already weakened Britain's sense of a national identity, and Bari wishes to see it weakened further. If people go to Rome, or Britain, or anywhere else, they have a duty to act as the Romans do. It is not the duty of Rome to change to make itself acceptable to the barbarians.

UPDATE: Little Green Footballs has an article from the Daily Mail by columnist Richard Littlejohn, which reacts to Bari's statements as bluntly and masterfully as any politician should, were our UK politicians not such jellyfish. He sees through Bari's comments and clearly identifies the threats implied within his rhetoric.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at September 10, 2006 7:19 AM

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