CentreRight

I don't know if Annie Lennox performs concerts anymore or whether she now just spends her time working as a glad-fool for terrorist organisations.  But since leading Saturday's pro-Hamas trawl through London I've become interested in her work.

I'm now eager to turn up to Ms Lennox's next concert in order that I can throw my shoes at her.  If any Conservative Home readers would like to join me I hope that I can see you there.  I'm a right-arm over man.  With a bit of a spin.

A story that is disturbing for a chain of reasons has just come out from our state-funded broadcaster.  On the BBC's website today, headlined 'Muslim concern at stop and search' the site leads with the news that:

'Muslims in Scotland have expressed unease about the use of "stop and search" procedures at Glasgow Airport.'

In any season this is a story likely to spread irritation among the British public.

But on reading through it emerges that the 'Muslims' expressing 'unease' at being searched at Glasgow airport are actually the Scottish Islamic Foundation (SIF).  Readers might remember that this group was exposed last month, prior to its launch, as a Muslim Brotherhood-linked organisation whose members are, as lecturer in Divinity at Glasgow University Amanullah de Sondy put it, likely to:

'further [reinforce] isolationist approaches to education and hamper attempts at building bridges between Muslims and non-Muslims.'

Since its launch and its exposure as a Brotherhood-linked organisation, the SIF (whose Chief Executive is also a Scottish National Party activist) has received £215,000 from Alex Salmond's SNP administration.

The iniquity of this is that the founders of the SIF can truthfully claim to represent almost nobody.  But Salmond has been (to put it at its kindest) duped, public money has come rolling in, and next thing the BBC is willing to portray such an unrepresentative group as representative of 'Muslims' in Scotland.

Of course the Glasgow airport that the SIF is complaining about being searched at is the same airport which suffered an attempted terrorist attack last summer.  If airports were in any case good places to stop and search people, Glasgow airport might be considered a specially good place to do so.

But this is really not the point.  The point is this is how things fall apart.  Public money goes to sectarian political groups who then claim to speak for thousands of co-religionists they have never met and before long the BBC is willing to credit them not just with authority but comprehensive representational abilities.

I have just sent the following to the organisers of Islam Expo.

Dear -

Further to my previous emails I have learned that one of the key figures in Islam Expo is in the process of suing the highly admirable blog Harry's Place.

I am fully aware of the bias involved - and many of the unpleasant figures behind - Islam Expo.  I have followed the event on both previous years and have always been fully aware of the highly prejudicial and biased nature of the forum.

However, I believe passionately in freedom of speech.  This means that I have often taken to platforms and had to talk opposite people whose views I find morally distasteful and worse.  I knew that this was going to be the case at Islam Expo.  Among the pannelists in the uneven panel you intended to put me on were Seamus Milne, and Anas Altikriti.  Milne has previously come close to libelling me in print.  He - like Altikriti - has views which I abhor.  But I am willing to speak with such people, and make my case in almost any venue which cares to have me.

However, the event of Mohammed Sawalha's legal action against Harry's Place makes it impossible for me to be on your platform.  A concerted attempt to prevent writers from highlighting the agendas or affiliations behind your event ridicules the very idea of an open debate.

I will not come on a platform hosted by people carrying out legal action against a deeply admirable and informed proponent of free speech.  I hope your debate benefits from its newly re-found uniformity.

Sincerely,

Douglas Murray

Tomorrow Alex Salmond, Scotland's First Minister, will be launching a new group called the Scottish Islamic Foundation.  Like so much that he has done throughout his career, Salmond will be encouraging rather than diminishing separatism and division within our society.

For as a Centre for Social Cohesion briefing sent out last night reveals, the new organisation is riddled with connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organisation with an increasingly high-profile presence in the UK.

The Brotherhood's motto is:

"Allah is our objective.  The Prophet is our leader.  The Qur'an is our law.  Jihad is our way.  Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."

The chief-executive of the Scottish Islamic Foundation is Osama Saeed who has previously worked for Salmond, and whose record of Islamic sectarianism is recounted in our press release.

I suppose Mr Salmond recognises a fellow-sectarian when he sees one.

What is perhaps most worrying is that in February of this year, the Scottish government appointed Saeed - as the representative of the about-to-launch Scottish Islamic Foundation - onto its 13-member working group looking into whether or not to renew the Trident nuclear weapons system.

Who would ever have thought that decisions over the future of Britain's nuclear capability would fall into hands the hands of men like these?

The government's pushing through of the 42-days legislation is intended to keep us safe from the worst of the Islamist ideologues who threaten our way of life.  So the fact that one of the worst offenders, Abu Qatada, has just been released is certainly embarassing for the government.

What is strange is that Abu Qatada should not have to be freed.  Not should he have to be held without charge.  Abu Qatada has said things equal to the statements which landed Abu Hamza and Abdullah Faisal in prison.  In an effort to help the government and police, the Centre for Social Cohesion last night released excerpts from transcripts of translated recordings we discovered on one of the UK's leading Islamist sites.  The full report can be read here, but people might be interested in the particular utterances of Mr Qatada which can be read here.

They include the following:

"Our countries have been infiltrated by kaffirs [non-Muslims].  It is farid [duty] for us to turn our swords on to them and kill them."

I hope that readers of Centre Right will be interested in reading about what some less savoury people are doing with the internet in Britain today.  The report Virtual Caliphate: Islamic extremists and their websites by my colleague James Brandon has been published today by the Centre for Social Cohesion.  The report details how extremists are distributing material behind password-encrypted sites and radicalising themselves into a medieval mindset using twenty-first century technology.

The report can be read via our front page here.

Although Mayor Livingstone is no more, a piece in the latest edition of the superb Democratiya reminds us of of the type of people he liked to hang-out with.  But the review of the new English translation of Yusuf al-Qaradawi's 'Fatawa on Palestine' by the brilliant Mark Gardner and Dave Rich of the Community Security Trust is more important for one quote in particular which deserves plenty of airing.

In the debate over Islam, Islamism and the war on terror, one particular mistaken trope seems still not to have lost its traction.  That is the idea that everything would be alright, all the jihadis would go away and all the nutcases pack up their bombs if a two-state solution could just be found in the Middle East.  For those who continue to believe this line, I much recommend the following paragraph from Mr Qaradawi.

This story from the current East London Advertiser really ought to be more widely read.  An example of politics at its most degrading.

Former Lib Dem council leader Eric Flounders comes out with the apposite quote:

"They [Labour] got rid of a perfectly good policy at the time because it was politically convenient to shout 'racism'.

"If it was a bad policy then, why's it good now?"

I was in the audience for the Intelligence Squared / Sky News Mayoral debate on Monday night and am delighted to see that Martin Parsons has mentioned here the crucial issue that the press seem to be missing.  On Monday Boris once again stated that he didn't want the second-votes of people voting for the BNP.  It is of course odious that a conservative could even be thought to appeal to such thugs and fascists so that such a refutation should be required.  But the Livingstone corollary has barely been looked at, or the respective follow-on questions asked of him.

When confronted with the fact that his campaign for re-election was being supported by Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood supporters, Livingstone's response was that you can't choose your supporters.  As the Boris Johnson - BNP issue has shown, of course you can.  Or at the very least, you can suggest who should not support you.

Perhaps before the voters go to the polls Mr Livingstone might consider announcing that he does not want the first or second preference votes of people who support terrorism.  At the same time, perhaps he might rescind his comments of endorsement for that degraded former comrade of his who has propagandised for Baathist dictator after Baathist dictator.

Martin Parsons has beaten me to the post by mentioning Brian Paddick and his comments on the morning of 7/7 regarding Islam and terrorism.  But I'm pleased because it has given the Lib Dem Mayoral candidate himself (and I have checked this with his office and know it is him) the opportunity to respond directly to Parson's on this blog [scroll down on this link to the first comment].

I suppose that I ought to state in advance that other than his 2005 comments and the fact that I think he isn't the person to topple Livingstone from office, I have nothing against Brian Paddick.  But his comments that morning - and his even more astonishing comments here - really can't go unanswered.

On that morning three years ago Mr Paddick stated with strange certainty, as the bodies were still strewn in the subways, that 'Islam and terrorism do not go together.'

Now, on CentreRight, the man who is the third-party's candidate for London Mayor has compounded the problem.  Not only by denying that he said what he said at the time (which he has now done), but by adding that:

'The term 'Islamic terrorism' is a contradiction in terms as there is nothing In Islam to justify the murder of innocent people.'

Well Geert Wilders' film 'Fitna' is finally out, as of last night, and so far there is no need to retire to the bunker.  At the time of writing there's been a bit of rioting in Karachi but Holland itself is still standing if - thanks to its government - slightly cowed.

The film itself - the edited YouTube version of which is above, click here for the full 15min version - is well worth seeing.  It isn't for the faint-hearted: footage includes some of the most barbaric acts committed by the jihadists.  But there's no burning of the Koran or ripping up of the Koran, or any of the other allegedly 'shocking' things which the Dutch government and others revealingly predicted would be in the film.  The film simply shows what the Koran says and then shows footage of certain Muslims carrying out those words to the letter.  To this extent, anything which people find shocking in the film should be put at the doors of Mohammed and certain of his followers, not Wilders.

Finally the press are doing their job and actually looking at what Barack Obama is about.  He's had a nauseatingly easy-ride of it so far, as celebrity endorsements and empty non-sequitur-filled speeches ('yes we can'?) showed an apparent lack of belief in anything but himself.

Now finally with the pastor issue we're getting somewhere.

Further to Tim's post below, can I strongly recommend that people listen to what Obama's mentor thinks about Israel and its connection to 9/11.  That's right - Mr Wright can reel-off this kind of terrorist-absolving, anti-Israeli, self-pitying, racism-stirring clap-trap to hundreds of congregants on numerous occasions and Barack Obama never knew anything of it?  Well, that leaves only two routes out for Barack Hussein.  Either he can admit that he knew this about his close friend.  Or he can keep maintaining that he never heard Wright say this stuff.  Which would imply to me that he didn't go to (or even near) his church all that much.  Which leaves Obama's whole 'born-again' routine looking more than ever like a campaign trick.  Who'd ever have thought that he'd turn out to be either horrid or hollow?

Just back from Holland where the country is on high-alert awaiting the screening of Geert Wilders' short film 'Fitna'.  The papers have it on every page, the government has done everything it can to stop the film, and the nation is now waiting for the backlash - at home, in the Middle East or elsewhere.

I spent part of yesterday afternoon with Wilders and it is amazing the pressure which has been put on him.  You would have thought that it is the responsibility of any government to say that whether they agree with the sentiments of his anti-Koran film or not, any killings, burnings or riotings will be put solely at the doors of the killers, burners and rioters.  Excusing people from moral accountability is always disgusting, but doing so pre-emptively is an invitation to violence.

In the days since the Archbishop of Canterbury delighted us with his vision of a multi-legal Britain, I realise that I've failed to even mention a moving example of the parallel Britain that already exists.

Six days ago it was reported that a 54-year old named Randolph Edge was convicted of bigamy after a guest invited to Mr Edge's hasty second-marriage (to a younger lady by the cautionary name of Patience Carey) remembered that Mr Edge was still betrothed to his first wife (the more aged Edna Winkle).  Taken to court, sentenced to 100 hours community service and given a twelve-month supervision order, the Judge sentencing Edge said:

'You are very lucky.  The last person I sentenced for bigamy went straight to prison... You flouted a law designed to preserve respect for marriage.'

I'm sure I don't have to remind readers here of how unfortunate Mr Edge (and the Judge's previous bigamist) was.  Not being a Muslim, Mr Edge was prosecuted after running a mere two wives concurrently.  Had he been a Muslim in the same country he could easily have doubled his wife-bank to four with no risk of prosecution.  In addition, instead of having to hide his wives from each other, or from the state, he could have lived with them all and claimed £10,000 a year from the state in income support alone.

It used to be said that bigamy was the 'poor-man's divorce.'  Surely there is now a case for all poor people in the UK to claim their cultural right to multiple wives.  Or are some things not up for grabs in multi-legal - sorry, multicultural - Britain?

I've just been speaking with a Muslim friend who has always opposed sharia law.  'Where does it leave me', he asks, 'when the Archbishop of Canterbury is calling for sharia?'

The beautifully hostile press reaction to Rowan Williams' disgusting views is the only aspect of this story that could provide any hope.  But the story is running big across the Middle East, and people there are seeing Britain's surrender to sharia played out on a news-loop.  Do we think that Islamic extremists in the Middle East and beyond will be be more demoralised or more emboldened by this news?

The effort to provide men and women with equal rights before the law is one of the greatest achievements of the human species.  In sharia - even the 'early' parts of sharia where people don't have hands cut off or get flogged or beheaded - the testimony of a woman is worth half that of a man.  In calling for the institution of Islamic sharia, the Archbishop of Canterbury has just trampled on the worth, equality and dignity of women in Britain who were born Muslim.  This is not liberalism.  It is discrimination.  There is no more damage that Rowan Williams can do.  He must resign.

Douglas Carswell's query about a possible 'Pim Fortuyn moment' made my ears prick up.

Would that it were possible.  Sadly, we're still a way away from such a moment - and not because it isn't long over-due.  We're still a long way from the moment because our politicians continue to be in the period of spinning 'anti-Islamic activity' nonsenses.  The public know what the problem is.  The politicians may do.  But they won't spell it out, for fear of 'inflaming' the British public.

Pim was always derogatively described - not least by his political contemporaries - as a 'populist'.  The distrust that our politicians feel for the public is all contained in that use of 'populist' as a pejorative.

In Britain our politicians have an unstated suspicion that the British people won't be able to restrain themselves from lynching Muslims if the politicians finger Islamist extremists as the problem.  I've always thought the public are better than that, but until the politicans in charge think so, things won't improve.  Meanwhile, the bigger the politico-public divide gets, the less and less likely it is that at the end of it we'll get a politican as decent and moderate as Fortuyn.

Will last night’s Channel 4 documentary have helped to halt Livingstone’s Mayoral gravy-train? Corruption, incompetence and a manner towards his critics reminiscent of his most degraded political heroes, surely anyone thinking of voting for Livingstone must think again?

Sadly, history suggests that revealing the truth about the Mayor isn’t enough. Livingstone has abused his office and the citizens of London long enough for us to have learnt the following:

• That if Livingstone is held to account he is not being held to account like any other politician, but is instead the victim of a right-wing / Zionist witch-hunt.
• That if he is alleged to have mismanaged hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money by distributing it through professional incompetents like Lee Jasper, this is not mismanagement by the Mayor but certain racism on the part of his critics.
• That if he invites vicious reactionary clerics to London at tax-payers’ expense it is the critics of such an invitation rather than the bigot who has been invited who must be castigated and subjected to taxpayer-funded investigation.