Tag: Maajid Nawaz

  • Meeting

    National Review:

    Maajid Nawaz, the British Muslim reformer who recently recovered a large monetary settlement from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), is scheduled to meet with SPLC president Richard Cohen next week to demand an explanation for its decision to label him an “anti-Muslim extremist,” National Review learned Friday in an exclusive interview with Nawaz.

    That is, to ask for an explanation. It sounds less pugnacious than that paragraph suggests.

    Now, Nawaz wants answers. He reached out to Cohen following the settlement and Cohen replied Thursday night agreeing to the meeting.

    “I’m going to fly out to New York in the coming week or so for the specific purpose of meeting with [Cohen] in private for however long it takes — a day, two days. And I have two objectives: I want to understand what the fuck happened. I really want to understand how on earth this could have happened,” Nawaz says. “I have my suspicions about whether the SPLC has been influenced by CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations, and other Islamist-leaning organizations. In other words, was this a hit job? Did the SPLC go out and say, ‘Hey, Muslim community, we want to know who’s anti-Muslim,’ and instead of those organizations giving them genuine anti-Muslim individuals, they decided to use that as an opportunity to basically go after their opponents politically?”

    That sounds very plausible. People here are naïve about CAIR: they think it’s a liberal anti-discrimination group and don’t realize how Islamist-leaning it is. CAIR of course is careful not to enlighten them.

    Cohen and the SPLC were too quick to view the Muslim community as a “homogenous” group likely to understand all criticism as an affront, Nawaz says. During their meeting, the radio host and activist hopes to educate Cohen as to the explosive contest between fundamentalism and liberalism that is occurring within the Islamic community, citing political divisions within mainstream American society as a reference point.

    I hope Cohen listens, I really do. The SPLC understands that there are reactionary theocratic Christian groups, certainly, so why can’t they understand that there are equivalent Islamic groups?

    “I want to say to him, ‘You guys are getting it seriously wrong, which means you don’t understand the Muslim community. You need help and I’m prepared to help you understand the Muslim community but that will require a huge cognitive shift. It will require that you recognize that the debate that you have within the wider society about liberalism verses conservatism is a debate we’re having within our Muslim community, between liberalism and fundamentalism.’”

    I hope Cohen listens.

  • The SPLC apologizes at last

    Remember this from October 27 2016?

    Another one of those mornings that starts with a horror in my news stream – the Southern Poverty Law Center branding Maajid Nawaz an “anti-Muslim extremist” in a new report/field guide. They also include Ayaan Hirsi Ali under that hateful umbrella, but it’s the inclusion of Maajid that dumbfounds me the most, seeing as how he is in fact a Muslim and is most explicitly and centrally anti-extremist.

    In short, this pisses me off, big time. It pisses me off because it’s grossly inaccurate, and unfair to Maajid. It pisses me off because as he points out it puts a target on him. It pisses me off because the SPLC has done heroic, brave work in the past. It pisses me off because I have many liberal Muslim friends who also campaign against Islamist extremism. It pisses me off because the left really needs to get it straight: Islamism is not a left-wing ally, it’s a deeply right-wing, reactionary, anti-human rights, theocratic movement, and people who campaign against Islamism are not anti-Muslim and not extremist. Islamism is not our friend, and its enemies are not (all) our enemies. There are of course plenty of right-wing (and some theocratic) enemies of Islamism, but I do think if the SPLC tries it can manage to tell the difference between liberal anti-Islamists and reactionary anti-Islamists. Maajid is one of the former, not the latter.

    And this from October 30th? And this from November 1st?

    Now, this:

    https://twitter.com/MaajidNawaz/status/1008724249794826246

    Good.

  • Quietly removed

    The SPLC removed the list that included Maajid Nawaz as an “Anti-Muslim Extremist” (their words). The National Review has details…and so far no equivalent on the left that I can find seems to, which as Maajid frequently points out is pathetic.

    The Southern Poverty Law Center has removed the “Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists” from their website after attorneys for Maajid Nawaz, a practicing Muslim and prominent Islamic reformer, threatened legal action over his inclusion on the list.

    The report, which had been active on the SPLC’s website since it was published in December 2016, was intended to serve as a resource for journalists to identify promoters of hateful propaganda; but it included a number of liberal reformers such as Nawaz, a former Islamic extremist who has since dedicated his life to combating the hateful ideology.

    And who doesn’t promote “hateful propaganda.”

    Nawaz, who founded the anti-extremist think tank Quilliam, said during a Wednesday night appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience, a popular podcast hosted by comedian Joe Rogan, that the report was removed from the SPLC website under legal threat sometime in the last two days.

    “We have retained Clare Locke, they are writing to the Southern Poverty Law Center as we speak. I think they’ve got wind of it — the Southern Poverty Law Center — and as of yesterday, or the day before, they’ve removed the entire list that’s been up there for two years,” Nawaz said on the podcast.

    But that’s all they’ve done, and Maajid is still pursuing the lawsuit.

    Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born liberal feminist who fled her home country amid civil war and now works at the Hoover Institution, was also branded an “anti-Muslim extremist” by the SPLC.

    Like Nawaz, Ali routinely criticizes inhumane practices that are common in majority-Muslim countries, including female genital mutilation, which she herself was subjected to before fleeing Somalia. The report branded her discussion of such topics “toxic.”

    The inclusion of Nawaz and Ali on the “anti-Muslim extremist field guide” was the subject of criticism by conservative commentators and prompted a petition on Change.org, which drew thousands of signatures.

    But not exclusively conservative commentators, dammit. I’m not conservative.

    The SPLC did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

    No, it always didn’t. It stonewalled. It’s a disgusting thing to see.

  • PinkNews Broadcaster of the Year Award

    A press release from the Quilliam Foundation:

    Last night, Maajid Nawaz won the 2017 PinkNews Broadcaster of the Year Award for his LBC radio show. The award was shared with Lorraine Kelly of ITV.

    Other nominees in the category included: Coronation Street (ITV), Doctor Who (BBC), Loose Women (ITV), Lorraine (ITV), Orange is the New Black (Netflix), Sense8 (Netflix), Transparent (Amazon Prime), and Victoria Derbyshire (BBC).

    The annual PinkNews Awards has become one of the UK’s most significant LGBT+ events, recognising the contributions of politicians, campaigners, charities, businesses, public sector employers, broadcasters and journalists towards achieving LGBT+ equality both in the UK and overseas.

    Southern Poverty Law Center PLEASE NOTE.

    Also at the event was London Mayor Sadiq Khan who said, “London is open to all people regardless of race, gender and sexuality and open to love,” and called for a zero-tolerance attitude towards hate crime in London. He also announced that he would be the first mayor ever to lead the annual Pride parade.

    Other attendees including Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, Education Secretary Justine Greening, and Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow.

    On winning the award, Nawaz said:

    “When I saw that 0% of British Muslims surveyed believed that being gay was ever morally acceptable, when I saw that 52% of British Muslims wanted homosexuality to be criminalised, when I saw that the only 10 countries in the world that punished being gay with death were all Muslim-majority, I was ashamed, infuriated, outraged, and angry all at the same time. But I knew Muslims who were gay, and so I realised that these results were also due to fear of speaking out.

    It requires leadership. The sort of leadership that the British Muslim Mayor of London provided here tonight. The sort of leadership that Imam Muhammad provided here tonight by offering prayers for everyone here. And that’s the sort of leadership I, and my producer Sandra, wanted to offer through my LBC show. My show aims to be a home for you all. Thank you for this great honour in being able to speak out on your behalf.”

    Nawaz dedicated his win to all the people around the world who are persecuted in the name of religion for being LGBT+.

    You can catch Maajid Nawaz on his LBC radio show live every Saturday and Sunday from 12:00 – 15:00.

    LISTEN UP, Southern Poverty Law Center.

  • There was no ‘Terror List’

    Maajid linked to this on Facebook, in response to the SPLC’S bullshit about a “terror list:”

    Setting the record straight:

    In light of a number of recent accusations that have been levelled at Quilliam and our track record, we felt it was necessary to set the record straight with regards to our work. The below is a breakdown of common accusations that are directed at us with clear responses beneath.

    Accusation – Quilliam produced a McCarthyite secret ‘Terror List’ that smeared ordinary Muslim groups and individuals as extremist and gave it to the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism (OCST).

    Response – This accusation repeated here by the Guardian is simply false. There was no ‘Terror List’. We produced a briefing document entitled ‘Preventing Terrorism: where next for Britain?’, that we sent to all government departments and not just the OSCT. This document set out reforms we felt were necessary to the Government’s counter-terrorism strategy. The Government’s strategy was eventually reformed almost exactly as we had advised. The document was sent in private so as to not play out the debate about reforming the Government’s counter-extremism strategy in the press. However, the copy we sent to the OSCT was eventually leaked by a civil servant.

    The main body of the document reviewed Government departments involved in the counter-extremism agenda and made policy suggestions. The document also had an appendix entitled ‘The British Muslim Scene’, which detailed the affiliations and backgrounds of a number of prominent British Muslim organisations, including their external influences. In no way was it a ‘Terror List’, nor was any of the categorisation incorrect. Furthermore, Quilliam has never advocated a ban on these organisations (Quilliam has even defended the right to remain legal in the UK for more extreme groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir, see here where Quilliam’s Chairman is quoted by the Prime Minister in Parliament as supportive evidence for why Hizb ut-Tahrir should not be banned), rather we advocated a policy of challenging these groups. We call this our doctrine of legal tolerance coupled with “civic intolerance”, as first argued in our testimony before the US here. Hence the list was the exact opposite of a McCarthyite list, arguing that these groups should remain legal but challenged in civic debate. The full and rather sensible report that generated this false accusation is available to view here.

    There’s more, but that one spoke directly to the SPLC accusation.

  • Bad move SPLC

    Another one of those mornings that starts with a horror in my news stream – the Southern Poverty Law Center branding Maajid Nawaz an “anti-Muslim extremist” in a new report/field guide. They also include Ayaan Hirsi Ali under that hateful umbrella, but it’s the inclusion of Maajid that dumbfounds me the most, seeing as how he is in fact a Muslim and is most explicitly and centrally anti-extremist.

    In short, this pisses me off, big time. It pisses me off because it’s grossly inaccurate, and unfair to Maajid. It pisses me off because as he points out it puts a target on him. It pisses me off because the SPLC has done heroic, brave work in the past. It pisses me off because I have many liberal Muslim friends who also campaign against Islamist extremism. It pisses me off because the left really needs to get it straight: Islamism is not a left-wing ally, it’s a deeply right-wing, reactionary, anti-human rights, theocratic movement, and people who campaign against Islamism are not anti-Muslim and not extremist. Islamism is not our friend, and its enemies are not (all) our enemies. There are of course plenty of right-wing (and some theocratic) enemies of Islamism, but I do think if the SPLC tries it can manage to tell the difference between liberal anti-Islamists and reactionary anti-Islamists. Maajid is one of the former, not the latter.

    To the press release:

    In response to the high levels of anti-Muslim extremists regularly provided a platform in the media and in the public eye, the Southern Poverty Law Center has partnered with Media Matters for America, ReThink Media and the Center for New Community to provide a resource on anti-Muslim public figures for reporters and media professionals.

    Maajid is not anti-Muslim. It’s outrageous that the SPLC included him under that description.

    The newly released Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists contains profiles of 15 prominent anti-Muslim extremists, many of whom are associated with organizations identified by the SPLC as hate groups.

    And many of whom are not, and are not anti-Muslim either, so how about not lumping them all in together?

    “We wrote this manual because Muslims in America continue to be vilified by a network of anti-Muslim extremists spreading baseless and damaging lies and we think the media can play a role in helping to stop it,” said Heidi Beirich, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center.

    But that doesn’t describe Maajid. It’s disgusting that you include him under that description.

    A shocking number of anti-Muslim, self-described “experts” are seen regularly in the media, where they spread falsehoods that too often go uncontested. Their rhetoric has toxic consequences, from promoting xenophobia, to poisoning democratic debate, to inspiring hate violence.

    Doesn’t apply to Maajid.

    “We hope journalists will use this guide to learn more about these extremists and the damage they cause to society and either deny them a public platform altogether or be better prepared to publicly challenge their hateful rhetoric and misinformation,” Beirich said. “The public really should know who these extremists are and the damaging impact they have with a platform to spread hate and bigotry.”

    Doesn’t apply to Maajid.

    Now the report itself:

    Executive Summary

    Ever since the Al Qaeda massacre of Sept. 11, 2001, American Muslims have been under attack. They have been vilified as murderers, accused of conspiring to take over the United States and impose Shariah religious law, described as enemies of women, and subjected to hundreds of violent hate crime attacks. A major party presidential nominee has even suggested that America ban Muslim immigrants.

    Fueling this hatred has been the propaganda, the vast majority of it completely baseless, produced and popularized by a network of anti-Muslim extremists and their enablers. These men and women have shamelessly exploited terrorist attacks and the Syrian refugee crisis, among other things, to demonize the entire Islamic faith.

    But not Maajid. Maajid is definitely not in the business of demonizing “the entire Islamic faith.” I don’t like it that they include Ayaan Hirsi Ali in this list either, but at least it is the case that she’s no longer a Muslim. But Maajid is a Muslim, and he’s one of a number of campaigning liberal Muslim activists, and he does not belong in this report.

    Sadly, a shocking number of these extremists are seen regularly on television news programs and quoted in the pages of our leading newspapers. There, they routinely espouse a wide range of utter falsehoods, all designed to make Muslims appear as bloodthirsty terrorists or people intent on undermining American constitutional freedoms. More often than not, these claims go uncontested.

    So the SPLC tries to rectify that by publishing an utter falsehood about Maajid? Maajid does not espouse a wide range of utter falsehoods, all designed to make Muslims appear as bloodthirsty terrorists or people intent on undermining American constitutional freedoms. (Notice, in particular, the provincialism – Maajid is a British Muslim, not an American one, so he wouldn’t be blathering about undermining American constitutional freedoms even if he were as the SPLC describes him, which he isn’t.) That’s a strikingly venomous falsehood to tell about someone apparently included on a list out of sheer ignorance or misinformation.

    A coalition of four research and civil rights groups — the Southern Poverty Law Center, Media Matters for America, the Center for New Community and ReThink Media — banded together to prepare this manual. Our hope is that journalists and others will use it as a guide to effectively counter these extremists and their damaging misinformation. These propagandists are far outside of the political mainstream, and their rhetoric has toxic consequences — from poisoning democratic debate to inspiring hate-based violence.

    Not true of Maajid. A reckless, dangerous, terrible lie to tell about him.

    The Columbia Journalism Review has said as much, pointing out that misinformation and falsehoods in media “may pollute democratic discourse, make it more difficult for citizens to cast informed votes, and limit their ability to participate meaningfully in public debate.”

    Ah no. No you don’t. The CJR said that about misinformation and falsehoods in media, not about this list of people. It’s very sneaky and dishonest to try to slip that one past us.

    What follows are profiles of 15 anti-Muslim extremists who are frequently cited in public discourse. These spokespeople were selected on the basis of their presence in national and local media and for the pernicious brand of extremism and hate they espouse against Muslim communities and the Islamic faith.

    Therefore it was a mistake to include Maajid (and, I would say, Ayaan). It was an appalling, reckless, dangerous mistake. Shame on the SPLC.

    What they say about Maajid:

    Maajid Nawaz is a British activist and part of the “ex-radical” circuit of former Islamists who use that experience to savage Islam. His story, which has been told repeatedly in the British and American press and in testimony to legislators as well, sounds compelling enough — Nawaz says he grew up being attacked by neo-Nazi skinheads in the United Kingdom, spent almost four years in an Egyptian prison after joining a supposedly nonviolent Islamist group, but had a change of heart while imprisoned and then returned to England to work against the radicalization of Muslims. But major elements of his story have been disputed by former friends, members of his family, fellow jihadists and journalists, and the evidence suggests that Nawaz is far more interested in self-promotion and money than in any particular ideological dispute.

    Even if that’s true, what does it have to do with this report? Even if it’s true, it doesn’t even demonstrate that he doesn’t care about the ideological dispute at all. It’s entirely possible – and we see it all the time – for people to be both: interested in their particular view of an ideological dispute, and even more interested in their own reputation and fortune. It’s possible for activists to be more interested in their dinner when they’re hungry, but that doesn’t make them indifferent to or dishonest about their political commitments.

    He told several different versions of his story, emphasizing that he was deradicalized while in Egypt — even though he in fact continued his Islamist agitation for months after returning. After starting the Quilliam Foundation, which he describes as an anti-extremism think tank, Nawaz sent a secret list to a top British security official that accused “peaceful Muslim groups, politicians, a television channel and a Scotland Yard unit of sharing the ideology of terrorists,” according to The Guardian.

    Here they betray either lack of understanding or cynical dishonesty about how this stuff works. “Peaceful” Muslim groups can still be radically reactionary, theocratic, anti-women’s rights, homophobic, anti-democratic, anti-secular, and thus generally ideologically supportive of the belief system of the violent groups and individuals. They can be and some are. The Muslim Council of Britain includes a lot of groups of that type under its umbrella, and it’s pretty theocratic itself. It’s not simply obvious that Maajid’s list was mistaken on the facts.

    His Quilliam Foundation received more than 1.25 million pounds from the British government, but the government eventually decided to stop funding it.

    So what?

    One of Nawaz’s biggest purported coups was getting anti-Muslim extremist Tommy Robinson to quit as head of the violence-prone English Defence League, trumpeting his departure at a press conference. But Robinson later said Quilliam had paid him some 8,000 British pounds to allow Nawaz to take credit for what he already planned to do. Shortly afterward, Robinson returned to anti-Muslim agitation with other groups.

    Again, so what? Not a particularly glorious incident, certainly, but very far from showing that Maajid is what this stinking report calls him.

    Then they quote him a few times:

    In the list sent to a top British security official in 2010, headlined “Preventing Terrorism: Where Next for Britain?” Quilliam wrote, “The ideology of non-violent Islamists is broadly the same as that of violent Islamists; they disagree only on tactics.” An official with Scotland Yard’s Muslim Contact Unit told The Guardian that “[t]he list demonises a whole range of groups that in my experience have made valuable contributions to counter-terrorism.”

    And?

    Maajid is not wrong to say that the  ideology of non-violent Islamists is broadly the same as that of violent Islamists. That’s rather the point. Islam is not Islamism, and Islamism is not a benign idea – it’s a malevolently theocratic idea: the dictatorship of god, which in practice means the dictatorship of clerics – see Iran and Saudi Arabia.

    In a Nov. 16, 2013, op-ed in the Daily Mail, Nawaz called for criminalizing the wearing of the veil, or niqab, in many public places, saying: “It is not only reasonable, but our duty to insist individuals remove the veil when they enter identity-sensitive environments such as banks, airports, courts and schools.”

    And?

    It’s debatable, but it’s hardly outrageous. The niqab covers the whole face apart from the eyes. It’s not obviously wrong to say it shouldn’t be allowed in certain sensitive situations.

    According to a Jan. 24, 2014, report in The Guardian, Nawaz tweeted out a cartoon of Jesus and Muhammad — despite the fact that many Muslims see it as blasphemous to draw Muhammad. He said that he wanted “to carve out a space to be heard without constantly fearing the blasphemy charge.”

    Now they’re close to the bone. The cartoonist is a friend of mine. It makes me hulk out with rage when ostensible liberals claim that cartoons are “blasphemous” and must be stopped. What business is it of the SPLC’s that Maajid tweeted a Jesus and Mo??? Why do they report that as if it were some sort of crime? Do they want Jesus and Mo shut down? Do they approve of blasphemy laws? What is wrong with them?

    Final item, which they include under “IN HIS OWN WORDS” even though it’s not:

    Nawaz, who had described himself as a “feminist,” was “filmed repeatedly trying to touch a naked lap dancer,” according to an April 10, 2015, report in the Daily Mail. The paper apparently got the security film from the owner of a strip club who was incensed by Nawaz’s claims to be a religious Muslim.

    Again: what on earth does that have to do with the SPLC? How does it demonstrate that he’s an anti-Muslim extremist, which is their claim?

    There. I’ve used up my allowance of rage for the week, and I need to breathe.

  • Doo wah doo wah

    And speaking of reform and “the community,” there’s a busy Twitter hashtag #DuaAgainstMaajidNawaz. Yesterday it was full of disgusting requests that Allah kill Maajid in degrading painful ways, but then the liberals took it over and now it’s full of jokes. I made a few myself.

    But as so often, it’s interesting to note that passionate religion doesn’t seem to inspire people to be kinder, but rather the opposite.

    Simon ‏@wingedbullsimon 27 minutes ago
    May your earbuds always be tangled. #DuaAgainstMaajidNawaz

    Embedded image permalink

  • What is needed is some honesty

    Maajid Nawaz has a public Facebook post on Islam and denial. It’s related to this CNN video in which Sam Harris  and Dean Obeidallah talk to Don Lemon:

    Denial Helps No One

    This debate between Sam Harris and my fellow Muslim Dean Obeidallah sums up the problem we liberal, reforming Muslims face.

    Dear Dean, chopping off hands for theft (5:38) whipping ‘fornicators’ (24:2) and crucifixion as political punishment (5:33) as ISIS, Saudi Arabia and Iran do, are all passages found in the Qur’an.

    What Sam mentioned, killing gays, is ostensibly commanded in numerous Hadith (a secondary holy source for the overwhelming majority of Muslims) including “Kill the doer and the receiver” (Tirmidhi).

    In the age of the Internet, we cannot simply deny all of this on national television, and then wonder why people do not trust Muslims.

    No, what is needed is some honesty. Honesty that we Muslims today have a disproportionate problem with vacuous literalism. Honesty that the scripture itself can be – and is – used to justify medieval barbarism. And honesty that those scriptures must be looked at by our theologians for the purpose of fundamental, systematic reform.

    Ideas, holy texts and what’s written in them matter.

    He’s right. The same is true of reactionary Christianity, and there’s no point denying that either. Books declared “holy” matter, because many people believe they really are holy and must be obeyed.

  • It is mocking us for what we miss every single day

    Maajid Nawaz defends Charlie Hebdo at the Daily Beast.

    The outrage began when Arab and Turkish newspapers decided that Hebdomust be mocking little Aylan.

    But soon, non-Arab media also joined the fray and eventually certain race-equality activists, such as barrister Peter Herbert—chair of the U.K.’s Society of Black Lawyers and former vice chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority—were threatening legal action, stating that ‘Charlie Hebdo is a purely racist, xenophobic and ideologically bankrupt publication that represents the moral decay of France. The Society of Black Lawyers will consider reporting this as incitement to hate crime and persecution before the International Criminal Court.’

    Wow. I did not know that. That’s disgusting.

    But never in living memory has a magazine been as misunderstood as Charlie Hebdo. For the truth is, Charlie Hebdo is not a racist magazine. Rather, it is a campaigning anti-racist left-wing magazine. And its cartoons, which are so often misunderstood to be promoting racism, are in fact lampooning racism.

    That isn’t always obvious just by looking, in fact it often isn’t. But given all the circumstances – including the murders – people really ought to make the effort to do more than just look.

    And this brings us to satire. Satire is, by definition, offensive. It is meant to make us feel uncomfortable. It is meant to make us scratch or heads, think, do a double-take and then think again. It is supposed to take our prejudices, turn them upside down, reapply them, and make us think we’re seeing something we’re not, until we stop to question ourselves.

    Yes taste is always in the eye of the beholder. But that’s the whole point of goodsatire. It is not meant to be to our tastes. It is meant to challenge our tastes. Having our fundamental assumptions about life challenged is never a comfortable thing.

    That reminds me of something Tony Pinn said during that panel we were both on at CFI in June – “if social justice doesn’t make you uncomfortable, you’re not doing it right.”

    Not to our taste? OK. Make us cringe? Fair enough. Don’t like them? Fine. But whatever we do, let us not misrepresent these images. Juxtaposing images of a dead child next to offers of cheap food “meal deals” is not mocking little Aylan, it is mocking us. It is mocking us for what we miss every single day, hidden in plain sight, and we do not see it because this is how desensitized we have become to human suffering. No, those besieged, brave satirists at Hebdo are not mocking Aylan. They are mocking newspaper covers like this from the UK right-wing tabloid The Daily Mail in which an image of Aylan was—in a national newspaper— placed below an actual food deal. And how many of us noticed that on the day this Daily Mail cover went to print?

    We have met the callous bystanders, and they are us.

  • Maajid replies

    Maajid Nawaz has a public statement on that Daily Mail nonsense.

    A planned and sustained attack campaign against reform-minded Muslims. My reply to recent allegations.

    “It doesn’t matter if you are in the right. It doesn’t matter if lots of ‘ordinary people’ do the same. In times such as these, the public wants a hero. They do not want an ‘ordinary’ person”. These words were uttered to me by my ever wise wife Rachel, after footage of my stag night in London was vindictively leaked to the press.

    …

    I have already mentioned that this was a stag night before my marriage. However, even if it were after my marriage, Rachel had already known about it. As a liberal, what consenting adults do in private – whether in or out of wedlock – is not for me to judge. In current times, our moral uproar is best reserved for those who aspire to stone men or women to death, not those who consensually watch women, or men for that matter, dance. In fact, please be prepared to see me again around London sometime, you may even catch me dancing. As long as Rachel is happy, I will not suddenly stop going out. And if you see me, do come over and say hello.

    He points out that he’s a non-devout Muslim, so he’s not being a hypocrite. He doesn’t consider consensual erotic dancing at odds with his feminism. He says it was a planned put-up job.

    So what could possibly explain all this? Followers of my counter-extremism work will be aware that for years liberal Muslim voices like mine have been subjected to sustained personal attack. Organised incitement (hurryupharry.org/…/more-horrifying-death-threats-against-m…/), death threats (www.telegraph.co.uk/…/Lib-Dem-candidate-receives-death-thre…) and even physical assault (http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/…/world_n…/article176412.ece) are frequent occurrences. The article mentions my son from a previous marriage, the truth is I have been denied contact with him for three years now for very similar reasons. Challenging the Muslim status quo today is mercilessly punishing business.

    There is no doubt in my mind that this breach of my privacy was part of a pre-planned regressive-Muslim campaign (https://storify.com/Andrew_Nolan/maajid-nawaz-hatchet-job). My wife Rachel had in fact been receiving scary unsolicited emails very soon after my stag night last July from this strip club’s staff member. This staff member calls himself “Shah Free Gaza Jahan” on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/jahan79). He began planning this sting last year, immediately after my wedding, in collusion (https://www.facebook.com/jahan79) with a smear site called Mushy Peas. This site had already published (mushypeas.org/maajid-nawaz-wife/) photos of Rachel’s home, family profiles and private email address inviting people to harass her. To quote “Shah Free Gaza Jahan” from as far back as last October 2014 from the screen grab (https://plus.google.com…/11546…/albums/6137636038894699329…) of that smear site on his motives:

    “I have a very interesting story regarding this fraud. Who can I contact to get his out? I was reluctant to let this out as we should cover another Muslims sins. But he’s an atheist (sic) now. So we good”.

    After explaining that atheists seem to be fair game for him (for the record I am a Muslim), Shah Jahan was promptly redirected by a known caliphate supporting Islamist Dilly Hussain (hurryupharry.org/…/bullying-women-is-not-one-of-the-5-pill…/) to make contact via his infamous regressive 5Pillarz blog. This is all there in that screen grab for all to see. And thus last October, the plot was hatched.

    This is how a politically conservative newspaper unwittingly cooperated with religiously regressive Muslims, to discredit my politically and religiously liberal voice.

    Nice job, Daily Mail. You’re fans of Dilly Hussain, are you?

    I hope he wins a seat next month.

  • Sayeeda Warsi disappoints Mehdi Hasan

    Mehdi Hasan interviews Sayeeda Warsi for the Huffington Post.

    Given her work on Islamic finance issues, does she see herself as a Muslim minister, an advocate on behalf of Muslims within the government? “I am a British minister in the British cabinet who happens to be of the Muslim faith. I am not elected, as I keep being reminded by many right-wing blogs. I therefore don’t represent a constituency and I certainly don’t represent the British Muslim community.”

    But she goes to chat with the pope as a Muslim – not someone who “happens to be of the Muslim faith” – and agree with him in opposing and hating secularism. Her religion is not a peripheral part of her job. She’s made it central herself.

    Irrespective of her religion, she adds, “I hope I am a politician who understands the needs and concerns of British Muslim communities.. I grew up when, actually, no one cared about somebody’s religion; race was the issue that defined you.” But now, she says, “religion is the new race”.

    And that is the problem. Race doesn’t come with putative orders from god on how subordinate women have to be. Religion does.

    Within nine months of entering government, in January 2011, Warsi delivered a headline-grabbing speech in which she controversially claimed that Islamophobia had “passed the dinner-table test” and become socially acceptable in the UK.

    She tells me now that she would have preferred that speech “to have been made by one of my colleagues”. Well, why wasn’t it? “I came into government when there was no acknowledgment that Islamophobia existed, no acknowledgment that we should do anything about it, no statistical evidence that it was out there.”

    And now? “Now, we have Acpo [Association of Chief Police Officers] who are disaggregating religious hate crimes so we have a much clearer picture.. we co-funded a project called TellMama, which monitors anti-Muslim attacks.. we’re ensuring that this issue is brought into the training of officials.”

    Wait: anti-Muslim attacks are one thing and “Islamophobia” is another. Both Warsi and Hasan are, of course, treating them as the same thing.

    Then Hasan gets her to join him in bashing Maajid Nawaz.

    I mention Maajid Nawaz, the former member radical Islamist group, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, who now runs the controversial counter-extremism thinktank, the Quilliam Foundation, and is said to have helped draft the prime minister’s speeches on extremism.

    Should people such as Nawaz – who have been criticized by fellow Muslims for lacking grassroots support – have such influence on government policy? “It would be a worrying sign if government policies on extremism were informed by ex-extremists rather than those who’d never been extremists,” she responds. “Let’s not reward those who who created the problem in the first place.”

    Score!

    I think what Mehdi Hasan really dislikes about Maajid is that Maajid is now a good deal more liberal than he is. That’s why he loves to try to push him to the margins by saying things like “who have been criticized by fellow Muslims for lacking grassroots support.”

    So is Nawaz – who is now a Lib Dem parliamentary candidate – the right man to be offering advice to the PM on extremism? “For me what matters is, if you are advising the government, you have to be connected to the community that you try and talk about, you gave to be respected by the community that you are talking of and I think you have to be credible within that community.” Given the Quilliam boss meets none of these criteria, is she saying Cameron should no longer listen to what he has to say? “I’m not going to comment on individuals,” is all the peer will say, proving she can be diplomatic when she wants to.

    Aw. Sad for Mehdi Hasan. He so wanted her to agree with him that “the Quilliam boss” is totes outside “the community” but she wouldn’t do it.

    What a transparent venomous fuck he is.

  • Their self-congratulatory image of brave “speakers of truth to power”

    Nick Cohen points out the very important difference between saying you are not showing a cartoon character named Mo out of respect, and saying you are not showing a cartoon character named Mo because you are afraid to.

    When the BBC interviewed the artist behind Jesus and Mo, its editors told him privately they could not show his drawing of Jesus saying “Hey” and Mo saying “How ya’ doin’?” because jihadis might murder the corporation’s correspondents in Pakistan.

    That’s a reason, but what a pity they didn’t say that during the interview. What a pity Jeremy Paxman did the very opposite, and insinuated that the cartoonist had done a bad wrong thing in drawing such a cartoon at all. What a lousy crappy rotten thing to do, Jeremy Paxman.

    Fear may not be a noble reason for censoring, but it can be an honest one if you admit its existence. If I worked at the BBC and my colleagues told me that showing a bland cartoon might endanger lives in Pakistan, I wouldn’t broadcast it. If I worked at Channel 4 or edited a national newspaper, I wouldn’t put my colleagues’ safety at risk either. But I would also tell the viewers or readers that I was censoring out of fear: not respect or cultural sensitivity but pure fear. I would make it clear to them that freedom and secularism were in danger in Britain. I would say that the people who provoked the fear deserved no more true respect than a gangster did.

    Instead of what the BBC and Channel 4 did, which was to make it seem as if the cartoonist and Maajid Nawaz are in the wrong, and the people threatening them are in the right. It’s dishonest and contemptible.

    Not one editor has dared admit that he or she is afraid. The editor of Newsnight did not mention threats to his colleagues’ lives when he talked to the Independent about the Nawaz case. Rather he implied that he was a responsible journalist, while his critics, rather than, say, potential terrorists, were macho maniacs. “A lot of the people disappointed with us for not using it really wanted a demonstration of liberal virility rather than more informative journalism,” he said.

    Cognitive dissonance anyone? It can’t be that the wonderful people at Newsnight hid the cartoon out of fear, therefore it must be that their critics wanted “a demonstration of liberal virility.”

    If you admit to being afraid, you are acknowledging the scale of suppression. And it is only when you acknowledge that suppression exists that you can begin a campaign to challenge it. As it is, editors and senior journalists in the British media are not prepared to destroy their self-congratulatory image of brave “speakers of truth to power” by saying they are scared. The results are pernicious whichever way you cut them.

    Quite: cognitive dissonance playing out as sheer vanity.

    The liberal mainstream has abandoned liberal Muslims.

    What is Maajid Nawaz meant to think? He says on a public platform that a bland cartoon is not offensive. He has rejected  Koranic literalism, endorsed tolerance, and done everything the mainstream wants an integrated Muslim to do. And look at how the mainstream treats him. It agrees with his persecutors by ruling that the image is so shocking no national newspaper or broadcaster can show it. Meanwhile editors’ failure to level with their audience and admit that they are censoring because of a fear of violence, has the added malign consequence of diminishing the real threat that Nawaz and others face.

    Expletive.

  • A new generation of anti-colonial politicized youth

    More from Maajid Nawaz’s book Radical.

    From Chapter 9, “12,000 Muslims Screaming ‘Khilafah‘!” He’s talking about how HT was able to have so much success at Newham college, having won election to all the Student Union posts.

    We disguised our political demands behind religion and multiculturalism, and deliberately labeled any objection to our demands as racism. [p 69]

    That sums it up right there, doesn’t it. That explains why so much of the left still falls all over itself sucking up to Islamism: it’s because it thinks the only alternative is racism, or at the very least being accused of racism. Maajid goes on to spell that out too.

    Even worse, we did this to the very generation who had been socialist sympathizers in their youth, people sympathetic to charges of racism, who like [the student affairs manager] Dave Gomer were now in middle-career management posts. It is no wonder then that the authorities were unprepared to deal with politicized religion as ideological agitation; they felt racist if they tried to stop us. [p 69]

    And the cynical shits used that.

    The default liberal position was to embrace the movement as part of multicultural sensitivity: to tell people to stop practicing their faith was imperialism in nineties clothing, a colonial hangover bordering on racism. Instead, we were embraced as a new generation of anti-colonial politicized youth. [p 70]

    And still are, and still are. As Maajid of course is very well aware.

  • Why Chris and Abhishek wore the Jesus and Mo T shirts

    The coverage of the controversy over Maajid Nawaz and Jesus & Mo has done a consistently bad job of getting right the part about how and why Chris Moos and Abhishek Phadnis wore their J & M T shirts on The Big Questions and why they unzipped their jackets to reveal them toward the end of the programme.

    They did both because the BBC asked them to.

    Most of the coverage has implied or said that it was their idea and that they did it to provoke. Wrong.

    The latest is an article today in the Independent by Archie Bland.

    His account of the how and why is much more detailed than previous ones, but it’s hardly fair to Chris and Abhishek.

    in January the company behind The Big Questions got in touch about participating. The question to be debated was: “Should human rights always outweigh religious rights?” According to Chris Moos, the two students had not intended to wear the T-shirts, but the production company researcher gave them a nudge. “If you wanted to wear your T-shirts on the show, that is fine – however, we would ask that you wear a shirt over the top that could be unbuttoned,” he wrote. “If Nicky would like to see the shirts, he can ask you to unbutton your shirt to show it and we can do a close-up and therefore promote discussion.”

    “I was quite surprised,” says Moos. However, Mentorn insist that the idea of wearing the T-shirts was the students’ own; they go as far as to say that “any suggestion that the students were encouraged to wear the T-shirts is entirely unfounded”, which seems a bit odd, when you reread that email. Either way, towards the end of the show, their moment came.

    “You guys wore some T-shirts?” said Campbell.

    Moos nodded. “Would you like to see them?” he asked. Campbell certainly didn’t seem to know about his agreement with the researcher, and he hesitated. (Mentorn says that neither Campbell nor his editor were expecting the T-shirts; certainly it seems more like a cock-up than a conspiracy.) In the moment he took to say something, the two unzipped. Phadnis and Moos were not filmed in close-up, and the camera did not linger on them. But the cartoons were visible from an oblique angle.

    Abhishek emailed Archie Bland to correct this account, and I have his and Chris’s permission to post his email here. They both would like to see the record set straight.

     

    Chris also sent me the request in the email from the researcher to the two of them when arranging the programme:

    If you wanted to wear your t-shirts on the show that is fine – however, we would ask that you wear a shirt over the top that could be unbuttoned. The reason why we’re asking this is merely because patterns or details (like cartoons) are distracting for the viewer at home and can appear fuzzy on camera (hence why we also ask that you don’t wear checked or striped clothing). Basically, if Nicky would like to see the t-shirts, he can ask you to unbutton your shirt to show it and we can do a close up and therefore promote discussion (does that make sense?).

    And then afterwards the BBC can pretend we never did and look hard in the other direction and get Jeremy Paxman to prod Author repeatedly about why, why, WHY would you do such a thing. Does that make sense?

    No, it doesn’t.

    Dear Archie,

    We read your report this morning. We had expected a fair representation of the facts of the case. Your report, however, makes it look like we smuggled the t-shirts in on the sly and produced them as a publicity stunt to take advantage of the producers’ naïveté and gratuitously cause offence to viewers or audience members.

    You correctly point out that the producer actually suggested we wear the t-shirts, despite their assertions.

    However, we would like to point out, that on January 5th, just before the recording began, we informed the producers that we were wearing the t-shirts. We were asked to sit in the middle of the first row and Nicky Campbell personally greeted us and said he was very keen to know more about our story. Given this  attention, and our prominent placement in the first row, and the communication with the production company, it was perfectly reasonable to assume that he was aware about the t-shirts and about the interest in our story.

    As for the recording itself, please watch this video again – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ5X_lPXnvU –

    51:21 – Nicky Campbell: There’s something else here as well … you guys wore some t-shirts

    51:24 – (Phadnis and Moos make gestures, asking for permission to show the t-shirts)

    51:26 – Phadnis: Would you like to see them?

    51:27 – Nicky Campbell: Oh well! Yes (upon which we unzip our jackets to reveal the t-shirts)

    We didn’t unzip “in the moment he took to say something”, as you put it – we gestured to him twice to ask for permission, then we asked “would you like to see them?” and he replied “oh well! yes” – only then did we begin to unzip my jackets.

    We would be grateful if you could amend the piece to reflect the fact that Nicky Campbell explicitly gave us permission to show the t-shirts. At the moment the piece gives the impression to the unknowing reader that we uncovered the t-shirt against the will of Nicky Campbell and the BBC, that indeed we were using the programme to cause offence. As you know, in the current climate, this impression likely carries a risk to our personal safety.

    Please amend the article to accurately reflect the facts and avoid any possibility of us suffering harm as a consequence of the publication of the article.

    Thank you for your consideration.

    Regards,

    Chris Moos and Abhishek Phadnis

  • Challenging power is “offensive”

    A terrific article by Kenan Malik on Channel 4′s contemptible decision to throw Maajid Nawaz under the bus by siding with the “offended” brigade.

    ‘Thank you @Channel4News you just pushed us liberal Muslims further into a ditch’. So tweeted Maajid Nawaz, prospective Liberal Democratic parliamentary candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn, last night. He had every right to be incandescent. Channel 4 News had just held a debate about theJesus and Mo cartoons and about the campaign to deselect Nawaz for tweeting one of the cartoons, not finding them offensive. Channel 4 decided that they were offensive and could not be shown. It would have been bad enough had the channel decided simply not to show the cartoon. What it did was worse. It showed the cartoon – but blanked out Muhammad’s face (and only Muhammad’s face). In the context of a debate about whether Nawaz had been right to tweet the cartoon in the first place, or whether his critics were right to hound him for ‘offending’ Muslims, it was an extraordinary decision. The broadcaster had effectively taken sides in the debate – and taken the side of the reactionaries against the liberal.

    Preeeeeeecisely. Nawaz invites his fellow Muslims to act like adults and Channel 4 says No, no, no, act like bad-tempered babies!

    There is something truly bizarre (and yet in keeping with the zeitgeist of our age) that someone should become the focus of death threats and an international campaign of vilification for suggesting that an inoffensive cartoon was, well, inoffensive.

    It’s a bizarre zeitgeist. Somebody should name a band that.

    I want to annotate every word, but I’m out of time, so I’ll point out one more important observation:

    the giving of offence is not just inevitable, it is also important. Any kind of social change or social progress means offending some deeply held sensibilities. Or to put it another way: ‘You can’t say that!’ is all too often the response of those in power to having their power challenged. To accept that certain things cannot be said is to accept that certain forms of power cannot be challenged.

    ‘Swhat I keep saying. Lots of people are “offended” by demands that women be treated as equals. Lots of people are “offended” by the claim that LGBT people should not be persecuted. Lots of people are “offended” by suggestions that the goal of a decent society should not be the largest possible gap between the poor and the rich.

     

  • The real problem? He dresses too well

    That 5pillarz place has another post about the Sinz of Maajid Nawaz, this one outdoing all the others I’ve seen in wit and polish and elegant subtlety of thought.

    Maajid Nawaz believes in the right to offend. Well so do I, writes Roshan Muhammed Salih. And that’s why today I’m calling him a donkey (apologies in advance to all donkeys).

    Good start. Joke and meta-joke; always a winner.

    Following his tweeting of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad (saw) and Prophet Isa (as) and the massive reaction to it, Nawaz wrote a ludicrous article in the Guardian claiming that he was trying to save Islam from being hijacked by extremists. In the risible piece which should be recycled as toilet paper, he was obviously trying to portray himself as some kind of “free speech martyr.”

    But it is simply grotesque to compare Maajid Nawaz to any martyr who has ever lived, and far more accurate to liken him to an annoying horse-like creature which makes irritating noises.

    Toilet paper; geddit? Pee po belly bum drawers. Poopies. Dirties. Toilet paper. Snigger snigger giggle.

    Notice also the creepy deference to “martyrs” and remember some of the famous “martyrs” we’ve heard about over the past few years. It is grotesque to compare Nawaz to people who squander their own lives for the sake of killing a bunch of other random people, but not for the reasons Roshan Muhammad Salih meant to suggest.

    Let’s get a few things straight.

    Firstly, there is a broad cross-section of opinion within the Muslim community against Maajid Donkey Nawaz. In fact the only thing which brings us Muslims together like Mr Donkey is Israel.

    He gets up the noses of Sufis, Shias, Salafis, “Islamists” and “non-Islamists” alike. This is because we can all see him for what he is – a vain attention-seeker whose voice has been artificially amplified by government finances, the BBC and the right-wing media.

    Not true. This stupid mindless attack on Nawaz has been bringing liberal and secular Muslims together too. There are such Muslims, and no they do not see him the way Salih and his friends do.

    And in his crusade to combat “Islamic extremism” all he’s really achieved is to make non-Muslims hate Muslims even more and to solidify the government narrative that British foreign policy is not the main motivating factor behind domestic radicalization.

    Not true. Quite the contrary – it’s crude ragers like Salih who make non-Muslims wary of Islam. and reasonable people like Nawaz who make them rejoice that Islam can be compatible with secular democracy.

    The truth is that for Muslims the petition campaign against Maajid Nawaz (which has garnered around 22,000 signatures) is not just about the cartoons he tweeted. Although most Muslims will definitely find the cartoons offensive the anger directed against him cannot be explained with reference to them alone.

    Rather, we see it as an opportunity to demonstrate to the world how much all sections of the community revile this guy – and not just crazy, demented “Islamists” who want to behead all kufaar.

    For us this is visceral and this is personal. It’s payback for six years of seeing him given a platform he doesn’t deserve to attack a community which is itself under attack.

    Frankly, I don’t care if this campaign fails to achieve its stated goal – none of us should expect the Lib Dems to de-select him as a parliamentary candidate because they are part of the same establishment that has spewed him forth.

    Rather, this campaign is an opportunity for all sections of the Muslim community to come together and tell the British media and establishment that this guy is persona non grata as far as we are concerned.

    We are sick and tired of seeing him presented as a “Muslim commentator”, as the “voice of moderate Islam” or the voice of reason against hordes of fanatics. We are sick of seeing his sharp suits, perfect grooming and smarmy grin. We are fed up of seeing his know-it-all stare invading our personal space.

    Wow. That’s letting the mask slip, and no mistake.

  • Guest post by Chris Muir: Must We Burn Maajid Nawaz?

    Chris Muir reviews Maajid Nawaz’s memoir Radical.

    There’s no getting around it. The Liberal Democrat prospective parliamentary candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn, Maajid Nawaz, is a controversial guy. Described by Muslim crackpot Anjem Choudary as a ‘traitor to the faith’ and suggested to be a secret Islamist by Christian crackpot Glenn Beck, it’s clear he has ruffled more than a few feathers. In fact, it would take the entirety of this blog post to list the enemies he’s accrued – many of whom are a lot more dangerous than the aforementioned talking heads.

    In spite of this, Nawaz has fiercely loyal supporters. Recently, after another Liberal Democrat activist, Mohammed Shafiq, spearheaded a campaign to have Nawaz deselected as the Lib Dem Hampstead and Kilburn PPC, Nawaz’ supporters launched a petition in his favour which has accumulated more than 6000 signatures at the time of writing. What bonds Nawaz’s supporters, whether they’re atheists or theists, right wing or left wing, is their belief in and defence of liberalism.

    So just who is this man, capable of infuriating religious extremists and hooligans alike? Where did he come from? And why should you listen to him? Well, put simply, because he knows what he’s talking about.

    In Radical, Nawaz’s recently released autobiography, he recounts the extraordinary journey which took him from being just another teenaged, rap-loving, ‘b-boy’ in sleepy Southend to a highly dedicated recruiter for the notorious Islamic extremist organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir, to then subsequently found the world’s first counter-extremist think-tank, Quilliam.

    Radical is a fascinating autobiography, telling a truly exceptional life story. But it’s more than that. It’s a mission statement and a case study. Nawaz’s story gives us a unique insight into how a Brit, raised with Western values, can grow to deplore the country he calls home. How one can assume a supranational identity, bound not to country but to an alien ideology. Radical is Nawaz’s vow to once again separate that ideology from his religion. He wants to communicate that Islamism and Islam are not the same.

    Islam is a religion of peace, he argues, but is being used to bind Muslims to a deceptive yet highly convincing meta-narrative calling for a caliphate. By conflating legitimate grievances regarding the effect Western foreign policy has had on Muslims in other countries with half-truths and propaganda, these recruiters have successfully established a siren call to the alienated and the angry. It is an ideology that has resonated with the disaffected and been enflamed by further Western military interventions, allowing a hegemony to be established.

    Nawaz has a gift for communicating in prose. What really brings the book to life is his ability to paint a picture. Even knowing the dark path he’ll later take, it’s impossible not to sympathise with his young self when we read of the barbaric violence he witnesses at the hands of racist thugs, or the discriminatory way he is treated by the police just because he isn’t white. The young Nawaz is relatable, vulnerable, normal – which is why his decline into extremism is particularly striking. It’s striking because it’s clear that religion has little to do with why the young Maajid becomes entangled in jihad.

    Whilst reading Radical I couldn’t help but recall Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion. Dawkins identified in The God Delusion that it is faith itself which allows extremism to breed. He argues that the very concept of faith – the willingness to accept instruction or explanation, no matter how irrational, as long as told in the name of God – creates a pliable mind, easily manipulated by extremists to further their own ends. After all, one is surely more likely to kamikaze into a building if they think they’ll be rewarded in the afterlife. I think this is a reasonable conclusion to reach, but It wasn’t until I read Radical that I realised it’s a reductive and simple explanation. Radical has been for me, an ‘antitheist’, what Dawkins would call a ‘consciousness raiser’.

    I no longer think of the issue of extremism in black and white, in absolutes. The many shades of grey, and the many disparate components of the process of radicalisation are now visible to me. Radical feels like the breakthrough moment of a culture shift, and I wish Maajid and his movement all the success in the world.

  • The jargon of authenticity

    Stephen Evans of the National Secular Society writes an excellent open letter to Channel 4 about the Black Egg censorship of the image of Mo, sending it via the Huffington Post UK.

    We were surprised and extremely disappointed to see that Channel 4 News took the decision to cover up the image of Mohammed when showing the Jesus & Mo cartoon, and we are thus keen to elicit the rationale behind that particular editorial decision.

    During the report, it was noted that this decision was taken so as not to cause offence to some viewers; however we would like to point out that by your making this decision you have effectively taken a side in a debate where a Muslim man has suffered violent death threats after he explicitly said he did not find the cartoons offensive. You have taken the side of the reactionaries – the side of people who bully and violently threaten Muslims, such as Mr Nawaz, online.

    That’s exactly what they have done, and it’s disgusting. Why would anyone do that? I don’t buy the claim that it’s personal fear. I have to suspect it’s something more like a deeply entrenched assumption that the reactionaries are the more “authentic” Muslims and that therefore it’s more compassionate or progressive or postcolonialist or whatever to side with them instead of with not so “authentic” Muslims like Nawaz. It doesn’t take much thought to perceive how massively insulting that is to Muslims as a group – indeed, how “Islamophobic” it is.

    Oh look, Evans says the same thing. I annotated as I went, so I hadn’t read that paragraph yet.

    Given that your editorial decision seems to be have been weighted by a concern with offence, we might also note that you ended up with a report that was, in fact, very offensive to many; offensive to those who take seriously and cherish our basic freedom to speak and question, and offensive to many Muslims, whose voices you do not hear because you insist on placating the reactionary voices of people claiming to represent what it is to be an ‘authentic Muslim’.

    Exactly. Well of course it’s not an original thought with either of us; we’ve been seeing it for years and years. People have been accusing Salman Rushdie of being “inauthentic” for decades because he’s a cosmopolitan.

    Whilst we understand that you covered both sides of the issue through your report and subsequent interview, we were keen to highlight the dangerous precedent you have set by taking the editorial decision to censor the Jesus & Mo cartoon, and the deeply symbolic implications that decision has.

    Really. Stop doing that. Stop making terrible decisions like that.

  • We’ve taken the decision

    Now for some video that’s not Pete Seeger singing. Channel 4 did a piece on Maajid Nawaz and Jesus and Mo and Mo Shafiq this evening. And what did they do in the process? They covered up Mo.

    The journalist who gave a brief background explained, ”We’ve taken the decision to cover up the depiction of Mohammed so that we don’t cause offense to some viewers.”

    So they caused offense to some other viewers, who find it highly offensive to give in to the petulant demands of reactionary religious bigots.

    She talked to Chris Moos after that. Then Jon Snow said that Nick Clegg is meeting tomorrow with “dozens of Muslim groups” who are offended by Maajid’s tweet to discuss the matter.

    Dozens? Dozens of groups? That sounds exaggerated. But besides that the whole thing just sounds like a horrendous train wreck. He needs to tell them to stop being so bossy, deal with it, and go away. But he won’t.

    Update: Never mind.

    I should have watched the whole thing before I posted. (I hate watching videos. I get so impatient.) Somebody must have whispered in Jon Snow’s ear while Shafiq was ranting. He interrupted him to inform him that Clegg says tomorrow’s meeting was scheduled long ago and he has no intention of discussing this issue. Whew. That’s a relief. Shafiq looked very disconcerted for a second.

  • Maajid explains his reasons

    At Comment is Free.

    Muslims are not one homogenous tribe requiring representation through a Citizen Khan-like community leader. Neither are we still colonial subjects who must speak through our Brown Sahibs. We Muslims are free. Our prophet left no heir. We have never had a pope or a clergy. We are commanded to worship God alone, and for our sins we are answerable to no one but Him.

    The doors of Muslim ijtihad (religious reasoning) have always remained open, and modern Islamist attempts to impose theocratic orthodoxy on us will therefore be resisted. Unity in faith is theocracy; unity in politics is fascism.

    That’s Irshad Manji’s approach to Islam, too.

    On 12 January I participated in a BBC debate on human rights and religious rights. Two students were wearing T-shirtsdepicting a stick figure of Jesus saying “Hi” to a stick figure called Mo, who replied: “How you doin’?” Some Muslims, having just argued for their own right to veil, took issue with the students. I argued that just as Muslim women have the right to veil, atheists have the right to wear these T-shirts.

    I am acutely aware of the populist sentiment in Britain that derides Muslims who seek special treatment for their sensibilities, so I tweeted the bland image and stated that, as a Muslim, I did not feel threatened by it. My God is greater than that.

    Surely that was clear all along? Wasn’t it? Muslims who seek special treatment for their sensibilities don’t do their fellow Muslims any favors, so Maajid offered himself as an example of a Muslim who doesn’t seek special treatment for his sensibilities.

    But what was the response? Much of it was an uproar of demands for special treatment for sensibilities. One might almost think the point had been missed.

    My intention was not to speak for any Muslim but myself – rather, it was to defend my religion from those who have hijacked it just because they shout the loudest. My intention was to carve out a space to be heard without constantly fearing the blasphemy charge, on pain of death. I did it for Salmaan Taseer, the governor of Punjab who was assassinated by his bodyguard for calling for a review of Pakistan’s colonial-era blasphemy laws; for Malala Yusafzai, the schoolgirl shot in the head by the Taliban for wanting an education; and for Muhammad Asghar, a mentally ill British man sentenced to death for “blasphemy” last week in Pakistan.

    Which is a damn good reason.