'Officials within the Foreign Office are known to be unhappy about the growing 'Islamisation' of the department and many feel uncomfortable with moves across Whitehall to open up a dialogue with radical Islamists. However, ministers believe it makes sense to engage with the more moderate fringes of political Islam…
‘The 7 July bombings were a direct challenge to the policy of engagement and have led some critics to suggest it should be abandoned. One former minister said last night: 'The strategic error is to think you can fight hot fire with cooler fire. These people still want to see sharia law extended and find it difficult to handle secularism or gay rights. You need more, genuine political engagement rather than searching for the acceptable face of Islam.'
The second document is a memorandum from Mockbul Ali, the FO's Islamic issues adviser, which recommends allowing the radical cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi into Britain. This deploys the classic argument of appeasement – that unless Britain lets Qaradawi in, notwithstanding his support for human bomb terrorism in Israel and Iraq, Muslims will claim that Britain has an anti-Islam agenda and more will be recruited to violence:
'We certainly do not agree with Qaradawi's views on Israel and Iraq, but we have to recognise that they are not unusual or even exceptional among Muslims. In fact it is correct to say that these are views shared by a majority of Muslims in the Middle East and the UK. Refusing entry on these grounds would also open a Pandora's box in relation to entry clearance for others in the Muslim world.
'Excluding Qaradawi would give grist to AQ propaganda of a western vendetta against Muslims and would undermine Qaradawi's counter-terrorism messages. Qaradawi would be the first port of call when encouraging statements against terrorism and the killing of Muslim civilians in Iraq, as requested recently by Iraq Policy Unit. He has repeatedly and authoritatively condemned terrorist attacks -- after 9/11, Bali, Madrid, Beslan, the Bigley kidnapping and recently after the bombings in Qatar, as well as on other occasions. When Qaradawi was accused last year of justifying kidnappings and kidnappings of civilians in Iraq, particularly US civilians, he has firmly stated "I did not issue such a fatwa". In fact Qaradawi was widely reported as "vehemently opposed to kidnapping and killing innocent civilians" and "urged the release of four Italian and French individuals recently abducted in Iraq" (see Annex 1). We could not engage with Qaradawi on counter-terrorism or Iraq should there be a decision to exclude him from the UK'.
So let’s get this right. This FO adviser is saying we cannot offend Qaradawi because we need him to condemn terrorist attacks — which he does nevertheless only selectively, disapproving of al Qaeda operations while telling Muslims it is their duty, no less, to kill Israelis and coalition troops in Iraq. Despite this we are already, it seems, 'engaging' with this inciter of jihadi terror on counter terrorism. And we cannot do anything that might further inflame the false view by Muslims that the UK has a vendetta against them because most of them subscribe to extremist jihadi views of the kind that Qaradawi espouses. The logic of that thinking is that since Muslims take the view that a) any assertion of western values that conflict with Islam or b) any attempt by western society to defend itself against Islamic attack is instead an attack on Islam, it follows that the British government will never do either a) or b) for fear of recruiting yet more to the jihad. And if that really is the case, then it’s all over for British culture.
The leaks provoked a fine polemic in the Observer by Nick Cohen who, after drawing attention to London Mayor Ken Livingstone’s continued support for the ‘murderous queer basher’ Qaradawi and pouring scorn on the FO for sucking up to the Muslim Brotherhood, then alighted on a particularly unsavoury passage in Mockbul Ali’s memorandum:
'The Foreign Secretary may remember the negative media storm when Livingstone last brought the priest to Britain, the civil servants tell Jack Straw. He should ignore it. The accusations came from tainted Jewish sources, "the Board of [Jewish] Deputies" and the Israeli monitoring site Memri, which is "regularly criticised for selective translation of Arabic reports". This simply isn't true. Qaradawi's extremist views haven't been spread by scheming Jews but are well documented on his very own website.'
In fact, Ali went further and said:
'The founding President of MEMRI is retired Colonel Yigal Carmon, who served for 22 years in Israel's military intelligence service. MEMRI is regularly criticised for selective translation of Arabic reports.'
The latter claim is not true. 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. And the former remark echoes Livingstone’s own smear that MEMRI was a Mossad plot, a claim for which Carmon is now suing him for libel.
With these references to MEMRI and the Board of Deputies, Ali has made a tactical error. The rest of his memorandum may be guilty of appeasement but it studiedly distances itself from the extremist views under consideration. But when Ali gets to the Jews, his guard slips and he endorses the conspiracy theory which is the signature of the Islamic extremist.
Britain, it need hardly be said, is allegedly in the forefront of the fight against Islamic extremism. Now we can see that its own Foreign Office is acting as a kind of appeasement fifth column in the very heart of government.
Britain's Foreign Office fifth column
by Melanie Phillips
The Observer yesterday published an immensely important and disturbing story. It has obtained two leaked documents which explicitly reveal what has long been apparent to those with eyes to see — the government’s craven and lethal policy of appeasement towards radical Islamism in Britain. The first document was a letter from William Ehrman, the top intelligence official at the Foreign Office. He proposed that spies should infiltrate extremist Islamist websites posing as radicals with the aim of dissuading extremists from taking up arms. This would be done, apparently, by feeding them anti-western propaganda which would nevertheless stop short of violence:
'But behind the scenes he proposed developing 'messages aimed at more radicalised constituencies who are potential recruits to terrorism'. These radicals would not listen to the traditional calls 'for the Middle East to become a zone of peace and prosperity', said the intelligence officer. 'They might, however, listen to religious arguments about the nature of jihad, that, while anti-Western, eschew terrorism.'
This is stark staring mad. Delivering anti-western messages will not damp down violence. It will promote, incite, justify and increase it. Not surprisingly, there are those in the FO and elsewhere who are deeply alarmed by this official lunacy:
'Officials within the Foreign Office are known to be unhappy about the growing 'Islamisation' of the department and many feel uncomfortable with moves across Whitehall to open up a dialogue with radical Islamists. However, ministers believe it makes sense to engage with the more moderate fringes of political Islam…
‘The 7 July bombings were a direct challenge to the policy of engagement and have led some critics to suggest it should be abandoned. One former minister said last night: 'The strategic error is to think you can fight hot fire with cooler fire. These people still want to see sharia law extended and find it difficult to handle secularism or gay rights. You need more, genuine political engagement rather than searching for the acceptable face of Islam.'
The second document is a memorandum from Mockbul Ali, the FO's Islamic issues adviser, which recommends allowing the radical cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi into Britain. This deploys the classic argument of appeasement – that unless Britain lets Qaradawi in, notwithstanding his support for human bomb terrorism in Israel and Iraq, Muslims will claim that Britain has an anti-Islam agenda and more will be recruited to violence:
'We certainly do not agree with Qaradawi's views on Israel and Iraq, but we have to recognise that they are not unusual or even exceptional among Muslims. In fact it is correct to say that these are views shared by a majority of Muslims in the Middle East and the UK. Refusing entry on these grounds would also open a Pandora's box in relation to entry clearance for others in the Muslim world.
'Excluding Qaradawi would give grist to AQ propaganda of a western vendetta against Muslims and would undermine Qaradawi's counter-terrorism messages. Qaradawi would be the first port of call when encouraging statements against terrorism and the killing of Muslim civilians in Iraq, as requested recently by Iraq Policy Unit. He has repeatedly and authoritatively condemned terrorist attacks -- after 9/11, Bali, Madrid, Beslan, the Bigley kidnapping and recently after the bombings in Qatar, as well as on other occasions. When Qaradawi was accused last year of justifying kidnappings and kidnappings of civilians in Iraq, particularly US civilians, he has firmly stated "I did not issue such a fatwa". In fact Qaradawi was widely reported as "vehemently opposed to kidnapping and killing innocent civilians" and "urged the release of four Italian and French individuals recently abducted in Iraq" (see Annex 1). We could not engage with Qaradawi on counter-terrorism or Iraq should there be a decision to exclude him from the UK'.
So let’s get this right. This FO adviser is saying we cannot offend Qaradawi because we need him to condemn terrorist attacks — which he does nevertheless only selectively, disapproving of al Qaeda operations while telling Muslims it is their duty, no less, to kill Israelis and coalition troops in Iraq. Despite this we are already, it seems, 'engaging' with this inciter of jihadi terror on counter terrorism. And we cannot do anything that might further inflame the false view by Muslims that the UK has a vendetta against them because most of them subscribe to extremist jihadi views of the kind that Qaradawi espouses. The logic of that thinking is that since Muslims take the view that a) any assertion of western values that conflict with Islam or b) any attempt by western society to defend itself against Islamic attack is instead an attack on Islam, it follows that the British government will never do either a) or b) for fear of recruiting yet more to the jihad. And if that really is the case, then it’s all over for British culture.
The leaks provoked a fine polemic in the Observer by Nick Cohen who, after drawing attention to London Mayor Ken Livingstone’s continued support for the ‘murderous queer basher’ Qaradawi and pouring scorn on the FO for sucking up to the Muslim Brotherhood, then alighted on a particularly unsavoury passage in Mockbul Ali’s memorandum:
'The Foreign Secretary may remember the negative media storm when Livingstone last brought the priest to Britain, the civil servants tell Jack Straw. He should ignore it. The accusations came from tainted Jewish sources, "the Board of [Jewish] Deputies" and the Israeli monitoring site Memri, which is "regularly criticised for selective translation of Arabic reports". This simply isn't true. Qaradawi's extremist views haven't been spread by scheming Jews but are well documented on his very own website.'
In fact, Ali went further and said:
'The founding President of MEMRI is retired Colonel Yigal Carmon, who served for 22 years in Israel's military intelligence service. MEMRI is regularly criticised for selective translation of Arabic reports.'
The latter claim is not true. 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. And the former remark echoes Livingstone’s own smear that MEMRI was a Mossad plot, a claim for which Carmon is now suing him for libel.
With these references to MEMRI and the Board of Deputies, Ali has made a tactical error. The rest of his memorandum may be guilty of appeasement but it studiedly distances itself from the extremist views under consideration. But when Ali gets to the Jews, his guard slips and he endorses the conspiracy theory which is the signature of the Islamic extremist.
Britain, it need hardly be said, is allegedly in the forefront of the fight against Islamic extremism. Now we can see that its own Foreign Office is acting as a kind of appeasement fifth column in the very heart of government.
Posted by Ted Belman at September 5, 2005 03:18 PM