The Month of Mercy – Ramadan is days away and the hearts of every Muslim swells with excitement and hope. On the first night of this month the devils and jinn are shackled in Hell and the doors of Hell are closed and the doors of Heaven are opened and thus it will remain until the end of this month. During this month the reward for all good deeds and acts of worship are extravagantly increased, prayers are answered and hearts are expanded.
The essense of Ramadan is captured in the hadith narrated on the authority of Salman al-Farisi (RA) saying, "The Messenger of God (PBUH) spoke to us on the last day of Sha'ban saying:
'O people, a great and blessed month has emerged upon you. In it there is a night that is superior to a thousand months. A month in which God has made its fast obligatory and its night vigil voluntary. Who strives to come close [to God] in it through doing a type of good [deed], it is as though he performed an obligatory act outside [of Ramadan]. And whoever performs an obligatory act in it, it is as though he performed seventy obligatory acts outside of [Ramadan]. It is the month of patience and the reward for patience is Paradise. It is a month of kindness to others and in it the provision of the believer is increased. Who breaks the fast of a believer in it, he is forgiven for his sins and he is freed from the Hellfire, and to him is a similar reward without diminishing the reward [of the fasting person] in any way. God grants this reward to one who breaks the fast of another person by a bit of milk or a sip of water. And who feeds a fasting person to his fill will be granted drink from my pure spring after which one will never thirst until he enters Paradise. It is a month whose beginning is mercy (rahma), whose middle is forgiveness (maghfira), and whose end is salvation from the Hellfire (‘itq min al-nar).'"
Yet despite this month of mercy and hope drawing close with its message to Muslims to cleanse their hearts, control their egos and focus their imaan with the prescription of fasting, charity and prayer, there has been an awful lot of posturing, posing and pretence by some of our brothers and sisters.
The first contestant to offer themselves up for the award of "Britain's Most Shameless Muslim" is non-other than The Quilliam Foundation run by Ed Hussain and Majid Nawaz – two individuals whose immense thirst for publicity and self-promotion is only matched by their complete lack of sincerity and moral fibre. Their latest act of mischief-making centres on a document sent to a number of government departments including the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism, which is a directorate of the Home Office. Despite Quilliam requesting that it should be kept secret, someone, somewhere in the government or civil service leaked it online.
The document offers up what can only be described as a "drift-net fishing" definition of an Islamist - designed to scoop up anything and everything in its haul. They then attempt to categories Islamists into one of four types:
- Entry-level political Islamists (who engage with politics but whose nefarious hidden agenda is to weaken secular democracy from within)
- Revolutionary Islamists (Hizbul Tahrir is in this group.)
- Militant Islamists or Salafi Jihadists (e.g. Al-Qaeda)
- Groups that move between these strands
"The ideology of non-violent Islamists is broadly the same as that of violent Islamists; they disagree only on tactics."
...Quilliam marks out every traditional Muslim group in the UK as basically the same as those who would bomb, maim and kill.
After this is a raft of measures to almost every government department on how they can help to eradicate this perceived threat. Highlights for me included:
- The assertion that they didn't want to disempower any Muslims coupled with the insistence that no government department from the Home Office to the Department of Justice to Scotland Yard to the Education Department should meet with any "Islamist" groups – even in secret – as they may be manipulated or inadvertently influenced by them.
- Advice to the government's Research Information and Communications Unit that they should stop using the term "Al-Qaeda inspired violence" in government press releases and speeches and instead replace it with "Islamist inspired violence".
- Endorsing previous government decisions to ban international Muslim speakers and advising that future bans should include those who believe in "inflammatory" ideas such as the immorality of homosexuality from entering the UK.
- Recommending that The Home Office screen all its employees for any evidence that they support or have any sympathy for "Islamism".
- The police should only have contact with Islamist organisations when gathering intelligence and should not cooperate with them other than this; and should under no circumstances direct members of the public to any of these organisations for advice or support.
- Identifying universities as "hotbeds" of Islamism and advising that prayer rooms and Islamic societies be monitored and disallowing any speakers with "Islamist" ideas such as the immorality of homosexuality to speak on campus.
- The Department of Education was advised to give teachers more training so that they can spot any non-violent Islamist ideology and those students who express "Islamist" ideas and publically challenge them without the fear of being labelled Islamophobes. There are also proposals for monitoring Muslim schools (even part-time after-school mosque-based teaching), Muslim teachers and Muslim governors for "Islamist" influences and teaching Muslim students specifically about "liberal and secular" interpretations of Islam.
- Quilliam delves into the world of Muslim prisoners recommending that they should be monitored for non-violent Islamist leanings and their probation terms should be linked to this. Needless to say, the authors also suggest that prison visitors and imams should be screened for Islamist ideology.
To fully understand the slander involved in this report, one only needs to read through the list of "Islamist" organisations and mosques and then read through the list of recommendations. One then realises that in the world that Quilliam wishes to live in any civil servant who regularly prays at a mosque with "Ahl ul Hadith" in its title will be weeded out of the Home Office; any school governor or teacher who also is a member of MCB would be monitored for "grooming" children; any international speaker who agrees with the Islamic injunction against sodomy would be barred from entering the UK; and the government including the police will have no contact with any of the organisations, mosques or individuals fingered on this Quilliam snitch list.
ISB (Islamic Society of Britain) comes in for a special mention as "a group in flux" rather than receiving a full Islamist label. This is perhaps a pay off for inviting Ed Husain to their last "Living Islam Camp" as a panellist in a group discussion. A word of advice to our brethren at ISB - if you are angling for the full Quilliam endorsement you obviously need to pay more homage to Ed; a prominent picture on your website, a title befitting his esteemed personage – "honoured speaker" should do the trick – and a larger platform with which he can spread his deviant version of Islam to all your members. If however you still hold to the ideals with which you were formed then be prepared to be placed in the bin labelled "non-violent but still not to be trusted Islamist extremists".
One also is left appalled at the situation Quilliam have dumped their most prominent advisor, Usama Hasan, in. This document labels several mosques which have close links to Brother Usama's father, the highly respected and regarded scholar Sheikh Sohaib Hasan, as promoting "Salafist-Jihadist ideology which lies behind Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups". Whilst it is entirely plausible that Usama Hasan wasn't aware of this document (which then begs the question – what exactly is he advising Quilliam about), it now is up to him to voice his opposition to what can only be described as a serious slander against his father. Any silence will be seen as complicity and reminds one of the child in George Orwell's dystopic novel 1984 who informed against his own father and caused his arrest.
Either way after spending so much time with Ed and Majid one can now understand why Usama Hasan is so enamoured with the idea of human evolving from apes – in this deviant duo he appears to have found evidence of the missing link.
No article about shameless, self-promoting Muslims who are always first in the queue to slander their co-religionists would be complete without a quick eye-roll at Yasmin Alibhai Brown's latest offering, this time in her natural habitat - The Daily Mail. Here as Chair of the BMSD (British Muslims for Secular Democracy) she seeks to push along its current agenda of interfering with the relationship that Muslim parents have with their children's school and eroding the autonomy that Muslim parents have as the decision makers in their children's future. The article titled "The Talibisation of British Childhood by Hardline Muslim Parents" nicely demonstrates the truism that a sharp tongue is not always accompanied by a keen mind. The flavour of the article is summed up in the quote:
"Why are we fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan and indulging Taliban values here? Even if it offends liberal principles, the powerful must find a way of stopping Islamicists from promulgating their distorted creed."
Notice the use of the word "Islamicist". Even more ludicrous than Ed and Majid's "Islamist" but required to demonstrate BMSD's uniqueness in the overcrowded Islamic Experts market. The reality is that Quilliam and BMSD are basically peddling the same ideas but just like two prostitutes fiercely protecting their own corners of a red-light district, each tries to outdo the other to attract their clientele – in this case the British Government.
But just like these ladies of ill-repute, whilst what Quilliam and BMSD have to offer may superficially attract, closer inspection will reveal motives firmly based in monetary gain, a yawning chasm where their moral compass should be and actions and results that will only debase themselves and their clients.
However, even though they are tied first place to win the title Most Shameless British Muslims, when compared with a true international professional, their efforts seem amateurish. Just like Andy Murray meeting Roger Federer, when either BMSD or Quilliam is compared to the International Winner of Most Shameless Muslim then there is no comparison and last week we were treated to a consummate performance by current world number one – President of Pakistan Asif Ali Zardari.
As thousands of his countrymen drowned in the worst flooding for decades, as dams burst, as bridges washed away and as over ten percent of Pakistanis had their houses and livelihoods destroyed, we watched aghast as this appalling individual spent a week being lavishly entertained by the governments of France and Britain.
Over and over we heard Zardari insisting that whilst his heart was with the people of Pakistan there wasn’t anything he could do. In reality as one of Pakistan’s richest men, with an estimated net worth of close to US$2 billion, and mansions, penthouses, stately homes and chateaux littered around the world purchased with money stolen [through kickbacks and underhand dealing] from the Pakistani people whilst his co-conspirator and wife Benazir Bhutto was president; arresting this two-bit crook and stripping him of all his lands and wealth and redistributing it to the people of Pakistan would be a good start. The most farcical moment came when his son launched "The President's Fund" to collect money for flood victims. As a man who was labelled as Mister 10% reflecting his propensity for stealing public funds, (the joke wore thin when it was realised that 10% was a wild underestimate) the majority of Pakistanis would not feel safe leaving a wallet lying around with him in the same room let alone donating to his own personal fund for flood victims.
Just as Zardari, BMSD and Quilliam represent the worst the Muslims can become, those poor souls in Pakistan who have lived a life of struggle and hardship, ennobled by sincere piety and purity of faith and steadfastness in the midst of trials that would break the spirit of many of us in the West, must represent the best of today's Muslims. They don't waste time trying to mould Islam to fit their lifestyles, nor do they betray their Muslim brothers and sisters by lies, misinformation and theft.
Of those who have lost their lives in the Pakistan floods, we pray that Allah showers them with His mercy and forgiveness, admitting them to the highest planes of Jannah. Of those who are left, whom we watch with breaking hearts on the news carrying their children through thigh-high filthy water, or sleeping, covered with flies on muddy ground, we can only thank Allah for giving us this opportunity to purify our wealth and cure our greed by giving charity during the blessed month of Ramadan. Soon we will all join the legions of those lying quietly in their graves awaiting the Judgment of Allah, until then we can either waste our time gratifying our nafs, or trying to change the deen of our beloved Prophet (may Allah shower His blessings upon him) or attempting to criminalise anyone who seeks to follow it – or we can acknowledge with humility that as humans we should follow divine guidance and be grateful to have received it.
May Allah guide all of us who have gone astray, give help to those of us who are helpless and give courage to the ummah of Muhammad (sallallāhu 'alaihi wassallam) to follow the right path despite any road blocks that are constructed on it.
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