I have to dash away but I just want to point out Nick Cohen’s piece on the Maajid Nawaz-LibDems-Jesus and Mo turmoil for your enlightenment.
Just a bit, on LibDem activist Muhammad Shafiq:
Shafiq denies that he is spreading fear and if you had not done the research you might believe him. Certainly, you could think him a man who can snuffle out offence where no one else can find it. You could think that the 20,000 or so who have signed his petition are so desperate for reasons to censor that they will manufacture them. But this is a free country and they are entitled to their hysterias.
But to put it as politely as I can, Shafiq is not your standard Liberal Democrat. He is in charge of the Ramadhan Foundation, which has hosted speakers whose attitudes towards gay people and Jews are anything but liberal. To make sure that Nawaz felt the full force of his critique, Shafiq slipped an aside into his open letter to Nick Clegg. He talked of Nawaz’s “expected, suspected, wanted reaction from the minority of unhinged in those communities”. Nawaz was deliberately soliciting attacks from the “unhinged”, apparently. He expected them. He wanted them. And if the unhinged should assault or kill him – he had no one to blame but himself. Shafiq told me that he did not mean that Nawaz was inciting his own murder, but I struggle [to] see how else his followers can interpret his words.
On Twitter, Shafiq went further and gave a masterclass in double speak. “Ghustaki Rasool Quilliam,” he tweeted. Most of his audience had no idea what he meant. A few knew all too well. “Ghustaki Rasool” is “defamer of the prophet” in Urdu: a charge that incites Islamists to murder. Fanatics took to Twitter to prove the point. “Have spoken to someone in Pakistan,” one of Shafiq’s followers replied. “They will have a surprise for him on his next visit!” Another Twitter user contacted Nawaz to say: “Gustak e rasool is punishable by death anywhere in the world. Btw I’m in the UK not Pakistan.” A third cried that “dogs like Maajid Nawaaz will be punished!”
Until tomorrow.
Nick Cohen has a wonderful gift for turns of phrase, and I cannot recall reading a single piece of his (and I have read many) without feeling afterwards that it was very worthwhile, and that Cohen had illuminated an otherwise dark corner – of whatever.
” I beg you to keep the innocuous nature of the cartoon at the front of your mind as we descend into a modern Bedlam.
“The BBC decided that extreme Wahhabi and Salafi Muslims, who would ban all images of Muhammad, represented all Muslims….”
Straight to the heart of the matter. The BBC in its wisdom deciding that those most likely to chuck bombs and Molotov cocktails through its front door had best be recognised as the truest representatives of Islam and of all Muslims.
How many more such timid steps along this road must be taken before the BBC pupates into The Ministry of Propaganda?
Ghustaki Rasool
Isn’t he the villain from Batman Begins?
But to put it as politely as I can, Shafiq is not your standard Liberal Democrat.
In fairness, Maajid Nawaz doesn’t appear to be a ‘standard Liberal Democrat’ either. He seems to have a backbone.
Given that a reporter has laid this out, it sounds like a fairly standard incitement case… surely a Crown Prosecutor should be doing something here? If only for the sake of maintaining the line that riots and incitements to public disorder are punishable offences in the UK?
No? Is it considered ok for the system to believe muslims are barbarians, then? Ok… a bigger question: why do muslims sit still and let the barbarians among them represent them? Surely there are muslim CPs who can push for prosecution in order to dispel this kind of bullshit attitude?
I particularly like one comment made about Nick Cohen’s article:
@5 Yet again, legitimate protest by some muslims (the MAB) gets super-glued to criminal threats by other muslims (I assume), making a massive, ugly and entirely false monolith called the muslim stereotype. Oh well.
This is very sad – but unfortunately I will not be able to devote any more of my valuable time to islamophobe Ophelia Benson and the little troupe of bigot followers Ophelia lovingly nurtures here.
Have fun with your little hate club. Good bye.
exi5tentialist @6
If you think Ophelia et al are Islamophobes then you’ve never seen real Islamophobes. Regardless, if you’re leaving then goodbye, don’t forget to forget to write.
exi5tentialist (#6):
In a thread in which neither the post nor the previous comments mention the MAB. Obsessive much?
And I for one will miss your single-minded determination to ignore nuance and context in order to indulge in empty smears. Bon voyage!
@5 Yet again, legitimate protest by some muslims (the MAB) gets super-glued to criminal threats by other muslims (I assume), making a massive, ugly and entirely false monolith called the muslim stereotype.
Nice use of the phrase ‘I assume ‘ there – because obviously there’s a chance the death threats aren’t being issued by Muslims, they may be issued by teh gays or Jews or the Lava Men from the Earth’s core.
This is very sad – but unfortunately I will not be able to devote any more of my valuable time to islamophobe Ophelia Benson and the little troupe of bigot followers Ophelia lovingly nurtures here.
Have fun with your little hate club. Good bye.
I hope you have fun catching up with your masturbation. There’s a whole internet out there you could have more profitably expended your wrist action on.
If you think Ophelia et al are Islamophobes then you’ve never seen real Islamophobes. Regardless, if you’re leaving then goodbye, don’t forget to forget to write.
He’ll be back in a day or so under a different pseudonym. Pretty sure I recognise his particular brand of idiocy from posts a while back.
So one has the right not to be offended, but not the right to not be offended.
I was hoping that Mr. Cohen would write on this ‘controversy’. Good piece.
@exi5tentialist
And nothing of value was lost.
Seriously, if ever there was an illustration of how entirely worthless “Islamophobia” as a concept is, your post is it.
This entire series of posts on this issue by Ophelia Benson has been in defence of a Muslim.
Dumbass.
exi5tentialist @#6:
Tooraloo, as the Irish say. Or as US President Harry Truman was fond of saying, if you can’t stand the heat, best stay out of the kitchen.