Melanie "The Shriek Box" Phillips Is On A "Peronal Jihad"
UPDATED AT BOTTOM OF POST: Melanie Phillips responds to Ed Hussain ...
Just ask Ed Hussain. After all, he's clearly a "Moderate Muslim".
From the best of all UK newspapers, the Guardian (and yes, that is American sarcasm):
Yeah, we love that moderate Muslim organization, the Muslim Council of Britain ...Melanie Philips's zealotry and ignorance frighten me. How did we produce a public commentator filled with such anger, venom and hatred?
I first met Melanie two years ago at the Richard and Judy show. Unaware that she was a last-minute, unexpected guest, and aware of the prejudiced views that she has expressed about Muslims in the past, I was unwilling to appear beside her as a complementary contributor; I made my excuses to Richard and left the studio.
However, I believe in the human ability to change and, in that hope of helping Melanie see the the flaws in her analysis, I met with her several times in private and appealed to her to stop blaming Islam and Muslim scripture for (the decidedly un-Islamic phenomenon of) terrorism. Why would she and her acolyte Douglas Murray not cease attacks on Muslim scripture that were based on bin Laden's understanding of Islam? And why would they not support Islam's inherent pluralism and recognise that Islam per se is not the problem, but iconoclastic interpretations of it.
With Melanie and Douglas, I probably failed. Just as humans can travel to enlightenment, they can also journey into darkness and ignorance.
Melanie has gone from being a tree-hugger during her Guardian days to ranter about climate change "totalitarians". And worse, seeing conspiracies and dangerous links where there are none. What else explains her suggestion in last October's Spectator magazine that President Barack Obama "adopts the agenda of the Islamists" and is "firmly in the Islamists' camp"?
Such ludicrous, illogical lines of thought led her to address to me last December the following remarks, after I dared suggest that Palestinians had been victims of much injustice:
"To repeat for the nth time: Israel was never the Palestinians' 'homeland'. It was never taken from them 'by force'. On the contrary, they tried to take the Jews' homeland from them by force – and are still trying. It was the Jews alone for whom historically 'Palestine' was ever their national homeland."
David Ben Gurion and most Israelis would disagree. History itself cannot be wished away, Melanie.
In Melanie's world, anybody – non-Muslim (Barack Obama) or Muslim (me) – who opposes her views on Israel is either an Islamist or "in the Islamists' camp". I reject Islamism on grounds of principle, experience, faith and political philosophy – and I refuse to pass the "Israel First" test. That is a perfectly coherent, normative political stance.
An Israel First mindset is about supporting Israel regardless of whether its behaviour is right or wrong, whether it is victim or oppressor; it also involves holding political activists hostage with accusations of antisemitism and/or Islamism in seeking to gain unconditional support for Israel.
The Israel First test, which she seeks to impose on British Muslims (as well as an American president), reeks of racism. Why is Israel more important than any other country in the world? With leading British Muslims increasingly supporting a secular state, democracy, women's rights, gay rights and liberal pluralism, and opposing Islamist extremism – then still be attacked as "extremists" or "Islamist" because they don't support Likud's plans for Israel is bullying and uncompromising in the extreme. How dare she?
I support Israel's right to exist, but not its brow-beating tactics in dealing with its neighbours. Britain and America are committed to a two-state solution – so are, one hopes, most British Muslims. Why can't Melanie accept and rejoice that rather than poke fun at Muslim individuals and organisations that are on a journey to moderation?
Melanie's most recent outburst is not against al-Muhajiroun extremists, but individuals and groupings trying to oppose them.
Phillips and others have repeatedly asked why the MCB and its affiliates do not oppose extremism. Well, this weekend, a leading affiliate, the Islamic Society of Britain, and a prominent leader of the MCB, Inayat Bunglawala ...
And, we love Inayat Bunglawala ...
I can't see why Melanie "the Shriek Box" Phillips refuses to believe such a nice group of Moderate Muslims (TM) as the MCB and their Bunglawala.
UPDATE:
From the Spectator:
On Friday, I wrote about the confused message being put out by the various groups which were taking to London’s streets yesterday, including one led by Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain, to oppose the ‘sharia now’ demonstration by al Muhajiroun. My post provoked an unexpected reaction – an extraordinary ad feminam attack upon me, on the Guardian’s Comment is free blog, by the ‘reformist’ Muslim Ed Husain which accuses me of displayingzealotry and ignorance
and being filled with
anger, venom and hatred
not to mention also being
demented.
Such fame! It could turn a girl’s head.
The first question is why Ed Husain was so exercised by what I wrote. After all, this was not his fight; I had made no mention of him or his ‘anti-Islamist’ Quilliam organisation. Much more astonishing was that he was leaping to the defence of none other than Inayat Bunglawala and the MCB. The MCB is an Islamist body which wants to theocratise Britain according to the precepts of Islam.
Last March, the government suspended links with it after its deputy Secretary-General, Daud Abdullah, signed a declaration that was seen as calling for violence against Israel and condoning attacks on British troops in Iraq. Earlier this year, it boycotted Britain’s annual Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration ceremony. Its Secretary-General, Dr Abdul Bari, has said Britain should adopt Islamic practices such as arranged marriages and that Britons should follow the teachings of Islam. Moderate it is not.
As I reported below, Bunglawala told me himself that he wants Britain to become an Islamic state. Yet Ed Husain, whose Quilliam organisation receives a great deal of money from the government in order to oppose Islamic extremism, actually extols Bunglawala for having moved to embrace liberal attitudes.
Go read the whole thing.
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