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al Muhajiroun, George Galloway and other 'Folks' Who Help Me Sleep Well at Night
Last uploaded : Monday 30th Sep 2002 at 22:56
Contributed by : Carol Gould

 

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London?s streets have been filled with demonstrators this year, from pro-Palestinian marchers listening to the hijacker Leila Khaled and burning American flags to the May Israel Solidarity Rally to the Countryside Alliance parade.

We attended an event, the al Muhajiroun rally that was, technically, banned but that we would not have missed for its insight into the most extreme Muslim elements in London. The event seemed to go peacefully and we did not find the crowd of Muslim men and women threatening or hostile. There was a small group of BNP (British National Party) supporters and a counter-demo by the Communists of Iran, but we felt safe in the middle of Trafalgar Square.

However, after the speeches by various Muslim leaders and the notorious Sheilkh Omar Bakri Mohammed (known by his detractors as Sheikh Rattle and Roll), we mingled with the crowd and picked up literature from the many stalls. One leaflet, produced by the ?Action Group Against American Aggression? tells us that America is simply the most heinous creation on earth. The most memorable quote is : ?.. it is a matter of duty to avoid that damned Zionist cancerous entity with every possible means. They are akin to common filth and dirt, and are forsaken to be akin with Devils and Demons.? (Perhaps we should re-name our site ?Devilsand DemonsComment?)

This leaflet offers a long list of ?Zionist? and American companies who should be boycotted, not just because of American support for Israel but because, according to the unnamed author, America is starving Muslims worldwide of a livelihood. If people in the West have been guzzling petrol and oil for their cars since WWII, and one of the richest men in the world is the Sultan of Oman, how can this be? It is time, the leaflet explains, to its readers , to?rise up and support their Muslim brothers and sisters in Afghanistan, Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and the Philippines, who have been decimated, injured and bleeding as easy prey for the hyenas and vultures, which operate under the guise of ?the coalition against terrorism.??

Another leaflet entitled ?Anti-Semitism,? produced by the rally?s organisers, al Muhajiroun, tells us that lots of people lost their lives in World War II including Jews. They relate ?the true story,? which goes like this: ? 1939: the Jews are among the groups of people, targeted by Hitler for amassing the wealth of Germany and leaving Germans poor... 1946: The Jews form two terrorist organisations in Palestine, one called the Stern gang and the other Irgun. They terrorise the local people to drive them out of the land so they can occupy it.? In 1948 ?local people take up arms to defend themselves from this internationally accepted theft of their homeland.? The irony of this leaflet is that in its effort to show the world that the Jews are killers and have victimised and massacred Muslims, they can produce only two examples of such ?genocides:? ? in 1953, 53 dead in a Jordanian village, and in 1955 43 killed in Gaza by an Israeli raid.

They then go on to explain the ?Tool of anti-Semitism:? ?The six million Jews was necessary to secure a $1.5 billion for reparation costs demanded by Israel from Germany on March 31st 1951. It has been used since ...to access wealth in Swiss banks that allegedly belonged to Jews that were killed in Germany..?

It ends with the exhortation to Muslims worldwide to rise up against occupiers, but with special emphasis on Israel: ?..Israel is a war zone and the occupiers are the enemies and Muslims will call for their annihilation until they remove themselves from the land or return the land back to the Muslims who will guarantee to grant them protection and security. ?

That?s an interesting premise: annihilation and protection in one breath!

But the clincher is this one: ?In a land where there is alleged freedom of belief, it is difficult to comprehend how it can be considered an offence to deny that six million Jews died in World War II.?

So, on a pleasant Sunday afternoon in London in Trafalgar Square, we have Holocaust deniers, people inciting the annihilation of Jews in Israel and the delegitimising of the USA all in one little pile of leaflets, which, I may say, were disappearing like hotcakes.

What is the West to do? We read today in The Washington Post that the Bush Administration is becoming more and more isolated and disliked in Europe. We hear otherwise sensible commentators and politicians suggesting that Bush?s rhetoric about attacking Iraq is the equivalent of the leaflet described above: a call to the West to annihilate Muslims. Who is in the right?

Let us move now to events of this past weekend: in London, a rally was held by an amalgam of Muslim groups on Saturday 28 September, ostensibly a ?peace gathering? but in reality a gigantic hate-fest against George Bush and Tony Blair. Amongst those attending was a man I frankly consider Mr Wacko of the moment, Scott Ritter, who stuck his face up to the BBC camera and started shouting negative soundbytes about war on Iraq. (I respect his vast experience as a weapons inspector but did he have to address the Iraqi Parliament and shmooze their government for all the world to see? Is his behaviour not unhinged if not disloyal to his President?) Other attendees included Scotland?s Mr Wacko, George Galloway MP, known to his Parliamentary detractors as ?the member for Baghdad central.? (Mr Galloway, the fiercest critic of Israel in Britain today, even incurred the wrath of John Malcovich earlier this year, the actor suggesting on a trip to Britain that he would like to cause Mr Galloway and the Israel-loathing journalist Robert Fisk serious harm; there has been no news of writs as yet...)

On Saturday, fresh from his trip to Baghdad where he shared ?Quality Street? chocolates with Saddam, Mr Galloway addressed the London ?peace rally,? telling the Muslims in the crowd that they must ?rise up and stop? what he called the ?Crusaders? from invading Iraq and carrying on military activities in the Gulf. According to ?The Sunday Telegraph??s Colin Brown, he even went so far as to suggest that he would support any action that impeded American and British forces in the region. Though many MPs of all political persuasions were horrified by his remark, will he be censured? I doubt it. The Telegraph goes on to report that a British government minister has described Galloway?s speech as ?bin Laden-like? and called for his expulsion from the Labour Party. Will it happen? Not bloody likely.

As George Galloway and Scott Ritter rant ton the streets of London, we learn from ?The Daily Express? that one Mr Abdul Lakhouane, a Moroccan immigrant who draws ?300 a week in state benefit for himself and his family of six, is spending his free time as an unemployed person migrating from mosque to mosque agitating against the British. According to the ?Express,? Mr Lakhouane has decided that his many followers right here in the UK will ?attack Buckingham Palace and destroy it. We will destroy the symbols of power like they have destroyed Palestine and Iraq.? He goes on to say, ?We already have an army here....we can all fight for Islam. We must all back Osama bin Laden and make him the Khalifah (Muslim world leader.) The Express explains that something called the ?Social Redevelopment Fund? funded the building of a luxurious London home into which Mr Lakhouanes ad his family moved six months ago. He tells the reporter that ?There has to be bloodshed...when our war is over Western nations like Britain will be held under the umbrella of Islam.?

This man is living and thriving in Britain at taxpayers? expense. Jeffrey Archer, the novelist who lied about an extramarital affair, is in a horrible prison being spat at and kicked by fellow inmates. Has the West gone mad? I believe we have.

Meanwhile, in the United States Senate a growing movement against war on Iraq reached fever pitch last week. Senator Robert Byrd, a lifelong right-wing Southern Democrat and never a friend of Israel, was in such a paroxysm of rage that a BBC commentator said he thought the Senator might ?take off and go into orbit.? He warned President Bush that this would be the first time in history that the USA had made a pre-emptive strike, and Senators Tom Daschle and Ted Kennedy joined his chorus, Daschle demanding an apology from President Bush for what he had perceived as a partisan swipe at his detractors.

To what does this all add up? In this article I have related my experiences attending an Islamic fundamentalist rally in the democracy known as Great Britain, reading their poisonous literature, and learning about the legion of USA-bashers thriving in this little island nation.

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Read 'Rumsfeld on Israel' and 'The Rummy Show' by Carol Gould by going back to the Home Page.
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