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Guardian Journalist Sacked

09:32 / 25.07.05

A Guardian journalist has been sacked after a row blew up over his membership of Hizb-ut Tahrir and his writing of a column about the London bombings.

If I'm asked about 7/7, I - a Yorkshire lad, born and bred - will respond first by giving an out-clause to being labelled a terrorist lover. I think what happened in London was a sad day and not the way to express your political anger.
Then there's the "but". If, as police announced yesterday, four men (at least three from Yorkshire) blew themselves up in the name of Islam, then please let us do ourselves a favour and not act shocked.

Shocked would be to imply that we were unaware of the imminent danger, when in fact Sir John Stevens, the then Metropolitan police commissioner, warned us last year that an attack was inevitable.
Shocked would be to suggest we didn't appreciate that when Falluja was flattened, the people under it were dead but not forgotten - long after we had moved on to reading more interesting headlines about the Olympics. It is not the done thing to make such comparisons, but Muslims on the street do. Some 2,749 people were killed in the 9/11 attacks. To discover the cost of "liberating" Iraqis you need to multiply that figure by eight, and still you will fall short of the estimated minimum of 22,787 civilian Iraqi casualties to date. But it's not cool to say this, now that London's skyline has also has plumed grey.

Shocked would also be to suggest that the bombings happened through no responsibility of our own. OK, the streets of London were filled with anti-war marchers, so why punish the average Londoner? But the argument that this was an essentially US-led war does not pass muster. In the Muslim world, the pond that divides Britain and America is a shallow one. And the same cry - why punish us? - is often heard from Iraqi mothers as the "collateral damage" increases daily.

Shocked would be to say that we don't understand how, in the green hills of Yorkshire, a group of men given all the liberties they could have wished for could do this.

The Muslim community is no monolithic whole. Yet there are some common features. Second- and third-generation Muslims are without the don't-rock-the-boat attitude that restricted our forefathers. We're much sassier with our opinions, not caring if the boat rocks or not.

Which is why the young get angry with that breed of Muslim "community leader" who remains silent while anger is seething on the streets.

Earlier this year I attended a mosque in Leeds for Friday prayers. It was in the month of Ramadan, when Islamic fervour is at its most impassioned, yet in the sermon, to a crowd of hundreds - many of whom were from Iraq - Falluja was not referred to once; not even in the cupped-hands prayers after the sermon was over.

I prayed my Eid prayer in a mosque in Sheffield and, though most there were sickened and angry about events in Iraq, the imam chose not to mention Falluja either. We "youngsters" - some now in our 40s - had seen it before. This was deliberate silence, in case the boat rocked.

Perhaps now is the time to be honest with each other and to stop labelling the enemy with simplistic terms such as "young", "underprivileged", "undereducated" and perhaps even "fringe". The don't-rock-the-boat attitude of elders doesn't mean the agitation wanes; it means it builds till it can be contained no more.

The above is the column in question by Dilpazier Aslam.

He was a Guardian trainee journalist, now, after the row over his membership of Hizb-ut Tahrir, a fairly radical (in my opinion) political party, his contract has been terminated.

More here in a background briefing.

Thoughts?

Regrettable Juvenilia

10:19 / 25.07.05

After the article was published a number of people drew attention to a document Hizb ut-Tahrir posted in March 2002, on its British website, Khalifah.com, of which the Guardian was previously unaware.

It quotes a passage from the Koran ["kill them wherever you find them..."] followed by material arguing: "the Jews are a people of slander...a treacherous people... they fabricate lies and twist words from their right places."

The effect of this juxtaposition appeared to be the incitement of violence against Jews. The piece remained on the website until recently and is still available on other Islamist websites.

...

On Monday July 18 Aslam was advised that the Guardian considered that Hizb ut-Tahrir had promoted violence and anti-semitic material on its website and that membership of the organisation was not compatible with being a Guardian trainee.

The Guardian has published many comment and opinion pieces advocating violence against innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, to name but two states. It has published comment and opinion pieces explicitly defending all kinds of atrocities committed by Western military forces. It publishes regular opinion pieces by members of the Conservative party and the upper echelons of New Labour, including the likes of Blair and Blunkett. It has published pieces by Richard Perle (Google him if you need to). Commentators such as Christopher Hitchens, William Shawcross and Niall Ferguson have been allowed to have all kinds of racist pish about Western superiority published. Apologists for the killing of over 22, 000 civilians in Iraq, or the continued oppression of the Palestinians by the state of Israel, don't get fired by the Guardian - they leave for more profitable, less peskily pinko pastures (Aaronovitch, Burchill - now both at the Times). All in the name of balance.

Good to know where they really stand, isn't it?

10:34 / 25.07.05

They've also been criticised by anti-facist campaigners for running quotes from the BNP, thereby, in the campaigners' views, legitimsing them (ie, the BNP.)

I think this article may have something to do with their repsons. It's on Guaridan Media so you'll have to sign up to see it in full.

Rightwing bloggers from the US, where the Guardian has a large online following, were behind the targeting last week of a trainee Guardian journalist who wrote a comment piece which they did not care for about the London bombings.
The story is a demonstration of the way the 'blogosphere' can be used to mount obsessively personalised attacks at high speed.

Within hours, Dilpazier Aslam was being accused on the internet of "violence" and belonging to a "terrorist organisation" - both completely untrue charges.

One blogger appealed for "some loyal Briton to saw off your head and ship it to me". Another accused Aslam of being guilty of "accessory before the fact to murder."

I wonder how many bloggers have a go when they run pieces from, as you say, prominent members of PNAC?

13:50 / 25.07.05

I think that a fairly key line in that Guardian media article is this:

'The episode was a striking illustration of the way that blogs and bloggers can heat up the temperature and seek to settle scores...'

20:37 / 25.07.05

I find it slightly amusing that Muslims in the Western world are angry over the war in Iraq for religious reasons while Iraqis living through the war are angry for nationalistic ones.

odd jest on horn

23:28 / 25.07.05

I find it slightly amusing that Muslims in the Western world are angry over the war in Iraq for religious reasons while Iraqis living through the war are angry for nationalistic ones.

%My thoughts exactly%

12:32 / 26.07.05

I believe I read on the Guardian webite that Hizb-ut Tahrir is a (non-violent) extremist anti-semitic organisation banned in Holland and Germany. Would anyone like to challenge or confirm that, especially with regards to the anti-semitism?

sdv (non-human)

13:09 / 26.07.05

Lurid/all

The official website is at:
http://www.hizb-ut-tahrir.org/english/english.html

" Its aim is to resume the Islamic way of life and to convey the Islamic da’wah to the world. This objective means bringing the Muslims back to living an Islamic way of life in Dar al-Islam and in an Islamic society such that all of life’s affairs in society are administered according to the Shari’ah rules, and the viewpoint in it is the halal and the haram under the shade of the Islamic State, which is the Khilafah State. That state is the one in which Muslims appoint a Khaleefah and give him the bay’ah to listen and obey on condition that he rules according to the Book of Allah (swt) and the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah (saw) and on condition that he conveys Islam as a message to the world through da’wah and jihad...."

Hardly encouraging - in essence they wish to impose an islamic theocratic state on the available world. As far as I can tell it's as enlightened and pleasent as the 14th C... nasty.

s

sdv (non-human)

13:18 / 26.07.05

Lurid/all

I forget to confirm that yes it is deeply anti-semitic, deeply and irrevocably sexist. Consider the following reactionary nonsense...

"Some people try to say that the (Islamic) attire of women is merely a tradition which is for her to either wear or take off, claiming that it has no connection to the Deen. It seems that such people proceed from the capitalist creed of separating religion though the evidence regarding the Islamic attire of women is not unknown to any Muslim who recites the Qur’an. There is no scope to reject it or even disagree with it..."

s

13:18 / 26.07.05

Yeah, have posted before about experiences with Hizb ut-Tahrir and can't say I like them much...