Government suspends links with Muslim Council of Britain over Gaza

[Ibtisam]

The government has suspended ties with Britain's largest Muslim group and demanded that one of its leaders should be removed from office for allegedly supporting violence against Israel.

 

The news comes on the eve of the launch of a major government strategy aimed at fostering closer ties with Muslims to help counter the threat of Islamist terrorism.

 

The launch tomorrow of Contest 2, the government's revised counter-terrorism strategy, comes after ministers decided to stop engaging with the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB).

 

The council's deputy secretary-general, Daud Abdullah, signed a declaration last month that the government and critics of the MCB have interpreted as calling for violence against Israel and condoning attacks on British troops.

 

The declaration followed a meeting in Istanbul of clerics and other Muslim leaders from around the world to discuss strategy after Israel's attacks on Gaza.

 

Hazel Blears, secretary of state for communities and local government, wrote to the MCB saying Abdullah should be asked to "resign his post" for signing a statement that supported Hamas and celebrated its "victory" against "this malicious Jewish Zionist war over Gaza".

 

Muslims who are sceptical of government anti-terror plans say they cannot think of any other occasion where a cabinet minister has tried to dictate to a religious group about the composition of its leadership.

 

Abdullah, speaking for the first time about the row, told the Guardian he would not be standing down.

 

He said of his views: "If British troops were to engage in a breach of international law, it is up to the people of the territory to decide what to do. But as I understand it, under international law, it is their right to resist."

 

He defended signing the statement, saying: "It made no specific mention of attacks on British troops. The statement does say if foreign troops enter Gaza's territorial waters, it is the duty of Muslims to resist, as it would be seen as assisting the siege."

 

Later, in an email, Abdullah said: "I did not and do not condone calls for attacks on British troops.

 

"The British government has not deployed troops to the territorial waters of Gaza and I do not believe it or our parliament would endorse any breach of international law.

 

"Any discussions about what should or would happen is hypothetical and I cannot speculate."

 

Blears demanded that the MCB remove Abdullah from office and demanded to know what its leaders planned to do by today.

 

In her letter, dated 13 March , Blears wrote: "In light of the MCB's unequivocal stance on violence, it would seem that Dr Abdullah's position as the deputy secretary-general would be incompatible with his recent actions."

 

Blears's letter notes that the MCB would be investigating the matter, but says she was breaking links with the group, which was once seen as vital by the government to building better relations with British Muslims: "Whilst your investigation is ongoing and the matter remains unresolved I feel that it is only appropriate for us to suspend our engagement with the Muslim Council of Britain pending its outcome."

 

In a statement, the communities and local government department said: "We ... are very concerned that the statement from the event calls for direct support for acts of violence in the Middle East and beyond.

 

"We are concerned that the MCB have so far not recognised the gravity of this situation. If it is proven that the individual concerned had been a signatory, we would expect them to ask him to resign and for the MCB to confirm their opposition to acts of violent extremism."

 

An MCB spokesman today condemned the government for trying to interfere in its internal affairs and said the cabinet minister's demand would be ignored: "The MCB is a democratic organisation, with its own affiliates, and they decide who its representatives are, and not Ms Blears."

 

The Istanbul declaration said: "The obligation of the Islamic Nation [is] to regard the sending of foreign warships into Muslim waters, claiming to control the borders and prevent the smuggling of arms to Gaza, as a declaration of war, a new occupation, sinful aggression, and a clear violation of the sovereignty of the Nation. This must be rejected and fought by all means and ways."

 

During the Gaza conflict, Gordon Brown suggested sending forces to help stop weapons smuggling into Gaza.

 

Source: http://www.guardian. co.uk/politics/2009/ mar/23/muslim-counci l-britain-gaza

[Ibtisam]

The government may be the only loser in this untimely dispute

 

On the very day that the government announced a long-awaited strategy on countering terrorism, the communities secretary, Hazel Blears, froze relations with the country's biggest Muslim organisation: immediately there were questions about whether the timing of the two events was co-ordinated or simply an unfortunate coincidence.

 

The counter-terrorism document, Contest, urges engagement and dialogue with the Muslim community to prevent alienation and disaffection taking root, while at the same time Blears seems to have decided to bring to a head a long-running grievance with the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), an umbrella body for hundreds of mosques and community organisations across the country.

 

Blears insists that her disagreement with the MCB reflects the key principle within Contest of challenging extremist views. But inevitably the two will be confused by many Muslims as yet another example of how government actions are often at odds with a much more pragmatic rhetoric of collaboration.

 

The MCB has already been suspended from a number of government advisory bodies, such as the Muslim Imams National Advisory Board, and an interfaith consultative body after it emerged that Daud Abdullah, its deputy general secretary, had signed a declaration in Istanbul which the government interpreted as condoning attacks on British troops.

 

The MCB has rejected Blears's calls for Abdullah to resign, insisting that he has been elected by the membership of the organisation and it would compromise its independence from government.

 

This is the most public spat in a relationship which has grown increasingly strained in the last few years, and has led to fraught debates within Whitehall about who in the Muslim community the government should talk to. Ironically, the MCB was a body set up in the late 1990s with the active encouragement of both the then home secretary, Jack Straw, and the Conservative party.

 

The MCB was initially considered a success across Whitehall and it managed to recruit a wide range of mosques and Muslim organisations from a variety of theological schools across the country.

 

But since 2005 the government has switched tack and pursued a policy of promoting alternative Muslim organisations and distancing itself from the MCB. A powerful lobby of thinktanks and some commentators have urged the government to disassociate itself from any Muslim grouping with links either present or past to Islamism.

 

Given that many of the most politically active in the Muslim community have a background in or links to different schools of Islamist politics around the globe, it has proved a very divisive issue within the Muslim community.

 

Many prominent figures in the MCB make no apology for their association with Islamism, which they interpret as entirely non-violent and in accordance with democracy and British values such as freedom of speech and human rights.

 

The government's policy of promoting new Muslim organisations has had a very mixed track record in recent years and generated considerable suspicion and hostility within the community. Ruth Kelly, Blears's predecessor, was instrumental in the founding of the Sufi Muslim Council, but it has failed to build credibility within the community.

 

Government patronage of the British Muslim Forum appears to have prompted an internal crisis and it has now retreated from public engagement and has a very low public profile, appointing as leader an Urdu-speaking cleric. The government has invested nearly £1m in the London-based thinktank the Quillam Foundation, but it is widely recognised that it has few connections to grassroots Muslim communities outside London.

 

The government insists that if Abdullah does not resign, it will have no more dealings with the MCB, and that there are plenty of other Muslim organisations it can engage with. For the MCB, this disagreement with government, while unpleasant, has the unexpected consequence of boosting its standing in the Muslim community.

 

Since the MCB has never had much funding from government - a few grants for specific projects but no core funding and nothing since 2004 - and since many member organisations will continue to liaise with local authorities on preventing terrorism strategies, Blears's decision is unlikely to have any effect on its work day to day. Some regard this latest outburst from Blears as populist grandstanding in the wake of the recent incident in Luton when a soldiers' parade was heckled by a group of Muslim demonstrators.

 

But the MCB is confident that in the long term the government will need to re-engage with it. Given the need to reach the kinds of organisations that the MCB represents, the government will in the end have no option, argued one member of the MCB.

 

What is at stake is the vexed issue of how the government reaches the kind of very conservative, introverted and defensive organisations - the mosques in the backstreets of impoverished neighbourhoods in Lancashire, the West Midlands and West Yorkshire - that are the real frontline in the struggle to challenge violent extremism.

 

The MCB has many detractors but many of them would also agree that it has attempted to link such organisations into the British mainstream. Inevitably, now that Abdullah has become a cause celebre, great attention will be given to the exact wording of the declaration that he signed at the Istanbul global anti-aggression campaign.

 

He insists that it does not condone attacks on British troops, but yesterday Blears's office stood by its interpretation.

 

Source: http://www.guardian. co.uk/politics/2009/ mar/25/labour-counte r-terrorism-strategy

[Ibtisam]

Hazel Blears' standoff with Muslim Council overshadows new anti-terror launch

 

A standoff between the communities secretary, Hazel Blears, and the Muslim Council of Britain was said last night to "cut to the heart" of the government's revised counter-terror strategy to challenge those who defend terrorism and violent extremism.

 

Blears has suspended official links with the MCB over allegations that its deputy general secretary endorsed a Hamas call for attacks on foreign troops, including possibly British troops, if they try to intercept arms smuggled into Gaza.

 

Blears last night pressed the MCB for further clarification after it distanced itself from a declaration calling for a new jihad over Gaza made by the Hamas-backed "global anti-aggression campaign" in Istanbul last month. The cabinet minister is still pressing the MCB's deputy general secretary, Dr Daud Abdullah, who attended and signed the Istanbul declaration, to clarify his own position.

 

The dispute, involving a senior government minister and one of the most significant Muslim "umbrella" organisations, coincided with the launch of the Contest 2 counter-terror strategy and illustrated the determination of ministers to challenge radical views that fall short of support for violence but reject and undermine "our shared values".

 

Ministers have pulled back from spelling out a checklist of views that might constitute extremism. Instead, the Home Office strategy document published yesterday opts for a more low-key commitment to challenge those who "reject parliamentary democracy, dismiss the rule of law and promote intolerance and discrimination on the basis of race, faith, ethnicity, gender or sexuality".

 

The home secretary, Jacqui Smith, said yesterday the government had no intention of outlawing these views or criminalising those who held them: "Freedom of thought and speech are rights which are fundamental to our society. But we will not hear these views in silence. We should all stand up for our shared values and not concede the floor to those who dismiss then." At the Home Office launch of the revised strategy, Smith made it clear this extended to challenging those who voiced homophobic views in public.

 

The document also spells out that the new policy will be reflected in the groups that are supported and the projects that are sponsored as part of the £70m programme to prevent violent extremism.

 

But this failed to satisfy the Conservatives, with the shadow home secretary, Chris Grayling, claiming that ministers were still funding groups that "propagate extremism".

 

The revised counter-terror strategy contains fresh warnings about the likelihood of a "dirty bomb" attack in Britain, saying that changing technology and increased smuggling of chemical, radiological and biological materials make the prospect more realistic. It also discloses that counter-measures are being taken in Britain in anticipation of the possible importation of the use of roadside bombs and other improvised explosive devices from Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

The continued fragmentation of the al-Qaida organisation may lead to smaller, more autonomous networks but it predicts these new "self-starting" organisations will have access to new technology and may become capable of conducting more lethal operations.

 

Senior Whitehall officials acknowledged serious concern about the impact in Britain of the deteriorating situation in the Pakistan/Afghanistan borderlands, where al-Qaida groups have been involved in the direction and training of some terror cells in Britain. But the threat may diminish as "terrorism is subject to greater challenge in and by communities in this country, notably but not only by British Muslims, making it harder for terrorists to operate here and to recruit people to their cause".

 

The document also reflects more sophisticated thinking within MI5 about the process of radicalisation, making clear that the security services do not think there is a single cause or pathway to extremism. It acknowledges that political and economic grievances, including perceptions of British foreign policy in the Islamic world, have played a role, and that Iraq, Afghanistan and perceived inaction over Palestine have also contributed to anger and controversy.

 

But it notes that such grievances do not always or often lead to radicalisation, and that social and psychological factors are also important to the individual, often rooted in conflicts of identity. The strategy plays down the influence of radical preachers and instead talks of supportive peer groups and charismatic individuals as being crucial to the process of radicalisation. The strategy says that while many contemporary terrorist organisations purport to have religious objectives, many terrorists have little or no religious understanding or knowledge.

 

The implication of this analysis is that in addition to tough law enforcement operations, the counter-terrorism programme also engages with "vulnerable" individuals who are at risk of being recruited or have already been recruited by violent extremists.

 

Contest 2

• Those who defend terrorism and violent extremism to be challenged but not banned or prosecuted.

 

• New threat from "dirty bomb" as technology changes due to increased smuggling of chemical and biological materials.

 

• Al-Qaida fragmenting but "self-starting" successor groups may pose more lethal threat.

 

• Counter-terror budget to rise to £3.5bn a year by 2011.

 

Controversial statement: 'Obligations' to the people of Gaza

The Istanbul statement claims God has granted victory to Gazans over their "Zionist Jewish occupiers". But it also complains of an "international and local conspiracy" against Gaza, implicating Palestine leaders in the West Bank and accusing the Egyptian government of treason (though without mentioning it by name). The statement then sets out eight "obligations" for the Muslim community - "its religious scholars, its rulers and its peoples":

 

• To aid the people of Gaza in rebuilding "what the Zionist aggression destroyed"; to compensate the injured and support widows and orphans.

 

• In the delivery of aid and reconstruction, to deal only with Hamas.

 

• Not to recognise the Palestinian Authority as representative of the Palestinian people.

 

• To withhold aid from the undeserving or untrustworthy and to punish those who cause "mayhem, negligence and waste" of funds.

 

• To find a fair formula for reconciliation "between the sons of the Palestinian people" (ie Fatah and Hamas), so as to establish a legitimate authority that will "carry on with jihad and resistance against the occupier until the liberation of all Palestine".

 

• To open all crossings in and out of Palestine, giving the Palestinians access to "money, clothing, food, medicine, weapons and other essentials".

 

• To regard all those who contribute substantially to the "crimes and brutality" of Israel in the same way as Israel itself.

 

• To reject and "fight by all means" the sending of foreign warships into Muslim waters on the basis of "claiming to control the borders and prevent the smuggling of arms to Gaza".

 

Source: www.guardian.co.uk

[N.O.R.F]

This was bound to happen.

[MAXIMUS POWERS]

This is good news! the MCB were sell-outs to muslims.

[Fabregas]

 

God Save the Queen, and Israel?

[N.O.R.F]

^Indeed. I smell Jewish lobby.

 

Have you seen Blair lately? The man looks well rested and even has a sun tan!

 

All that hard work as the ME 'Peace Envoy' and living in Tel Aviv ey?