Category Archives: Yusuf al-Qaradawi

FCO agrees with Ken, Ken agrees with FCO shock

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“On September 4th, I posted on how an Islamic adviser to the Foreign and Colonial Office in a confidential memo had virtually quoted verbatim Ken Livingstone’s specious attempt to defend Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi by attacking the MEMRI translations of his speeches as suspect on the grounds that this organization was founded by a former Israeli intelligence officer. Now here’s a thing. Ken Livingstone has a letter in today’s Guardian which recycles this so that he presents the Foreign and Colonial Office as a reliable source which supports his view of MEMRI.”

The cheek of it!

Adloyada blog, 10 September 2005

Truth about Muslim scholar revealed in Foreign Office leak

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Truth about Muslim scholar revealed in Foreign Office leak

By Ken Livingstone

Morning Star, 10 September 2005

Last weekend the Observer reported the leak of a document from a Foreign and Commonwealth Office adviser who had advised ministers not to ban the Muslim scholar Sheikh Yusuf al Qaradawi from Britain.

The leaked document contradicted the widespread advice of the majority of the British tabloids, which have waged a campaign against Qaradawi as an extremist.

Qaradawi was most recently wrongly reported to have called for the stoning to death of an Arab prince who was alleged to have been seen in a gay nightclub in London – although it has now emerged that the comments were in fact made by a Saudi named Muhammed Saleh Al-Munajjid.

The leaked document shows that the approach taken by the progressive left – of refusing to accept the “Clash of Civilisations” cold war being waged against Islam – is not only morally the right one, but also the best way to defeat al-Qaeda.

The document sets out that whilst the Foreign Office “certainly do not agree with Qaradawi’s views on Israel and Iraq … we have to recognise that they are not unusual or even exceptional among Muslims.”

It says that Qaradawi “was one of the first international Muslim scholars to issue a clear statement of condemnation” of the July London bombings, and states that “to act against Qaradawi would alienate significant and influential members of the global Muslim community.”

It describes him as “the leading mainstream and influential Islamic authority in the Middle East and increasingly in Europe.”

Most significantly, it argues that “excluding Qaradawi [from Britain] would give grist to al-Qaida propaganda of a western vendetta against Muslims and would undermine Qaradawi’s counter-terrorism messages.”

It adds that “we could not engage with Qaradawi on counter-terrorism or Iraq should there be a decision to exclude him from the UK.”

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Mad Mel and Robert Spencer denounce FO memo on Qaradawi

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Melanie Phillips (“Britain’s Foreign Office fifth column”) has a rant at the Foreign Office memorandum recommending that Yusuf al-Qaradawi should not be banned from Britain, as Mel and her mates have been demanding.

As always when reading Phillips’s tirades, you have the sense of stepping into a parallel universe – one in which Britain’s “own Foreign Office is acting as a kind of appeasement fifth column in the very heart of government”; one in which “there has never been a single authoritative challenge to the veracity or integrity of MEMRI’s authoritative translations, which have opened the eyes of the west to what the Arab and Muslim world is really saying”.

As for Mockbul Ali, the author of the FO’s document, with its accurate characterisation of MEMRI’s role, Mel comments: “when Ali gets to the Jews, his guard slips and he endorses the conspiracy theory which is the signature of the Islamic extremist.”

But Mel does have a good word for one person. Yes, it’s our old friend Nick Cohen, whose “fine polemic in the Observer” receives her enthusiastic endorsement.

Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 5 September 2005

Meanwhile over at Jihad Watch, Robert Spencer too rallies to the defence of Yigal Carmon and his associates: “What did MEMRI do? It printed what Qaradawi said. And once again doing so has been characterized by jihadist Muslims and their allies as ‘hatred’.” As for the memo’s point that Qaradawi’s view on Palestine and Iraq are not unusual amongst mainstream Muslims, Spencer retorts: “That’s true: they’re not unusual. Neither was Nazism among Germans.”

In the comments section to this post we have the usual paranoid ravings about how the FO’s policy on Qaradawi “will grant the jihadists every single thing that they wish for, without having to fire a shot, and reduce us all to dhimmi servitude” … plus declarations of support for Peter Tatchell and the Worker Communist Party of Iran.

Dhimmi Watch, 5 September 2005

You can’t believe in everything (certainly not if it’s written by Andrew Anthony)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Yusuf al-Qaradawi says that “it is OK to kill Jewish foetuses”, that homosexuals should be put to death and that suicide bombing in Palestine and Iraq is a duty for Muslims, and he is directly comparable to British Nazi leader Nick Griffin.

Guardian, 31 August 2005

Yes, it’s another informed article by Andrew Anthony, the main who enthusiastically applauded John Ware’s bigoted Panorama attack on the MCB.

Creating Islamist phantoms

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Modern Islamism is a complex political movement with a history that goes back more than 50 years…. It is only a tiny minority in the Islamist movement who have developed … a politics that advocates terrorism against the west…. We must be aware of this distinction so as to avoid a witch-hunt against the whole Islamist movement.”

Adam Curtis (who wrote and produced BBC2 documentary The Power of Nightmares) writing in the Guardian, 30 August 2005

A bit confused, to be frank. Contrary to Curtis’s claim, not all Islamists are Qutbists, or indeed revolutionaries. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, for example, has condemned Sayyid Qutb’s later writings for promoting an extremist ideology “which justified the takfir (excommunication) of (whole) societies … and the announcement of a destructive jihad against the whole of mankind”. The “New Islamist” current in Egypt of which Qaradawi is part are democratic reformists. Rachid Al-Ghannouchi of the Tunisian Renaissance party is another prominent representative of democratic Islamism.

However, Curtis does at least recognise that there are different tendencies within the social and political movements that fall into the broad category of “Islamism”. (Which is more than can be said for most liberal commentators – or for that matter certain self-styled Marxists such as the Worker Communist Parties of Iran and Iraq.)

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Observer attacks Qaradawi … with the assistance of MEMRI

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Qaradawi at conferenceUnder the headline “suicide bombs are a duty, says Islamic scholar”, Anthony Barnett claims that Yusuf al-Qaradawi “has said it is a duty of Muslims in Iraq to become suicide bombers”.

Observer, 28 August 2005

The report is taken from the Middle East Media Research Institute, which is of course notorious for producing selective translations designed to discredit supporters of the Palestinian cause. If you watch the video on MEMRI TV #822 you’ll see that it’s been carefully edited to bring out the points that serve MEMRI’s political agenda.

However, even judging by MEMRI’s selected extracts, it is clear that Qaradawi was responding to an earlier speaker who had, he noted, “stressed the legitimacy of defense, saying it is a legitimate right in Palestine and Iraq. I think that saying it is a legitimate right is not enough, because a right is something that can be relinquished. This is a duty. All scholars say that defending an occupied homeland is an individual duty applying to every Muslim”. So Qaradawi was clearly referring to the general duty to resist an occupying power, not to suicide bombings as such.

Qaradawi also reiterated his frequently stated view that these bombings are not in fact suicide, because the bomber “does not want to commit suicide, but rather to cause great damage to the enemy, and this is the only method he can use to cause such damage. Since this method did not exist in the past, we cannot find rulings about it in the ancient jurisprudence”. But that is rather different from arguing that everyone resisting Israeli and US occupation forces has a duty to become a suicide bomber.

Anthony Barnett’s confusion is due to the fact that MEMRI’s version of Qaradawi’s speech consists of three separate sections spliced together. There is an obvious splice after the section that ends “I am amazed by what Dr. Muhammad Rafat ‘Othman said” and before the next one, beginning “This has nothing to do with suicide”. There is no indication of this in MEMRI’s transcript of Qaradawi’s speech, which does not use ellipses, thus obscuring the editing that has taken place.

The (presumably intentional) result of this is to suggest that when Q was referring to resistance he was equating this with suicide bombing. Hence the Observer‘s headline stating that Q claimed suicide bombing was a duty.

However, MEMRI is at least prepared to admit that Qaradawi’s speech was delivered at a conference of religious scholars called to oppose terrorism – which is more than the Observer is prepared to do. (For a report of the conference, see Islam Online, 23 August 2005.)

Brett Lock is dead chuffed that the liberal press has uncritically reproduced MEMRI’s propaganda: “Well, this is progress! Finally The Guardian [sic – wrong paper, Brett] is reporting that Dr Qaradawi is indeed a supporter of suicide bombers.” (See Lock & Load blog, 28 August 2005.) But this is par for the course for Brett and his chums in Outrage!, who adopt material provided by right-wing Isamophobic bigots without a moment’s hesitation. And why not? They have so much in common.

‘Progress’ attacks MAB and Qaradawi

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“That the Stop the War Coalition should have allowed the Muslim Association of Britain to be a partner organisation is disgraceful, given the MAB’s support for sharia law (with its disregard for women’s and gay rights), its belief that Muslims who renounce their faith should be put to death, and its calls for the state of Israel to be abolished.

“While we do not expect much better from the Stop the War Coalition, given its domination by the Socialist Workers party, others should know better. Ken Livingstone’s credibility as a spokesman for the rights of minorities and women, and his condemnation of terrorism in London, are severely undermined for so long as he continues to defend his decision last year to invite the radical Islamic cleric, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, to speak at a Greater London Authority event. On his website, al-Qaradawi advocates the killing of ‘perverted’ homosexuals, defends husbands who beats their wives and questions the innocence of rape victims. Al-Qaradawi is, furthermore, an out-and-out antisemite: defending not only the murder of Israeli civilians in suicide bombings but also looking forward to the day of judgement when ‘Muslims will fight the Jews and kill them’. Would the mayor be happy to host an American white supremacist who advocated the murder of African Americans?”

Editorial in Progress, September 2005

It’s rather ironic that this Islamophobic rant appears in the same issue of Progress that announces Sadiq Khan MP has just become one of its patrons (see here).

Ken Livingstone: ‘Nelson Mandela test’ to judge Clarke’s proposals

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Mayor of London Ken Livingstone said he would apply a “Nelson Mandela test” to new proposals announced by the Home Secretary on Wednesday as a response to last month’s bombings. Livingstone said he would judge the proposals on whether it would have ensnared supporters of Nelson Mandela when he was earlier in prison after leading an armed anti-government struggle. He added that if Britain banned Sheikh Yussef al-Qaradawi from entering the country, he would take the government to court.

MAB press release, 25 August 2005

See also Islam Online, 25 August 2005