Tuesday, February 11, 2014 

Here's to you, Mr Robinson. (And the Quilliam Foundation.)

It's been an eventful few weeks for Maajid Nawaz and the Quilliam Foundation, or as I've taken to calling them, the Quill.i.am Foundation. Apart from writing a guest post for this blog on his revolutionary tweeting of the Jesus and Mo cartoon, an act that sparked more of a spat over how broadcasters and newspapers also censored the horrendously unfunny web comic than it did over how Nawaz had received death threats for saying he didn't find it offensive, he's also been deeply concerned at the treatment ex-EDL leader Tommy Robinson has been subjected to in prison.

Not for Nawaz a simple denunciation of the alleged deliberate leaving of Robinson, aka Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, in a room with three men who took a disliking to his face at HMP Woodhill. No, such an incident required an open letter to the Lord Chancellor and the justice secretary (PDF) expressing his disquiet, as well as how he was worried it could reinforce Robinson's "perceived grievances" against the state and undo all his good work in persuading Robinson to quit the EDL in the first place.  You see, "decapitating" the far-right street protest organisation had clearly been in the public interest, and Nawaz dreads to think what might happen if Robinson wound up dead.

Just how in the public interest Nawaz believed his good deed in extracting Robinson from the EDL to be, despite Robinson not retracting any of his previous statements, was revealed in a freedom of information request to the Department of Communities and Local Government. Despite Nawaz claiming that Quill.i.am had not received state funding since 2010, something undermined by another FOI request which showed that, although much reduced, they had still received a substantial grant for the following year, on the very day as Robinson was presented to the press as having left his inciting days behind him Nawaz was begging the DCLG for funding to help facilitate Robinson's defection. He obviously couldn't continue to live off donations to the EDL, so why shouldn't the state recognise such an important contribution to community cohesion and cough up?

Strangely, despite the polite request, the DCLG demurred (pay wall). Without wanting to surmise too much about why the DCLG decided not to donate to the keep Tommy Robinson/Stephen Yaxley-Lennon in the manner to which he was accustomed fund, it's difficult not to suspect that like some of us, they might just have felt the entire Damascene conversion was not all that it appeared.  With Robinson now detained at Brenda's pleasure, something that both he and Nawaz must have known was likely, and with the EDL already falling apart, having failed to capitalise on the murder of Lee Rigby, it was the perfect time for Robinson to claim he was leaving because he couldn't control the "extremists" any longer.  As Nawaz reveals in his letter, it's also clear how desperate Quilliam was, without a budget to fund their most high profile act of deradicalisation.  Deprived of state funding it's unclear how the thinktank is staying afloat, although that's far from unique as many other thinktanks also refuse to disclose who their benefactors are.

Due to a lamentable oversight, the letters to the department were however published with Nawaz's personal mobile phone number not redacted.  Such a breach of privacy would be unacceptable even if Nawaz hadn't been receiving threats, regardless of the credibility or lack of them.  All the same, Nawaz seemed to put the blame as much on Jason Schuman, who had also placed an FOI request, as Richard Bartholomew notes.  Threatening legal action or responding to criticism with insults is something Quilliam has a record for: Craig Murray faced down just such a threat, while Vikram Dodd was attacked after he revealed Quilliam had secretly profiled Muslim organisations for the government.

As Sunny Hundal argued back then, government funding of certain groups and not others only increases suspicions, and Nawaz's begging for money for having "turned" Robinson does everything to reinforce those prejudices.  For an organisation that started off so promisingly, Quilliam's reputation now lies in the gutter.  To have a chance of recovering it will almost certainly need new leadership, and with Nawaz the prospective Liberal Democrat candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn, there's a ready explanation available should he feel it's time to move on.

Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Share |

2/11/2014 11:31:00 pm | |

Tuesday, January 28, 2014 

Why I'm speaking up for myself against everyone who has criticised me.

You've probably never heard of me, as no doubt you have better things to do with your life than follow the online adventures of the Liberal Democrat prospective parliamentary candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn, but a couple of weeks ago I tweeted something which has the potential to be truly revolutionary.

I tweeted a picture of the online Jesus and Mo cartoon, the one that both Viz and Private Eye would reject as being a bit pathetic and transparent.  For those not in the know, this has caused controversy in the past, mainly among those who are always looking to be offended.  If nothing else, I know a controversy I can exploit when I see one.  After all, I was the person who felt Tommy Robinson or whatever his real name is (he hasn't actually told me it, but it's not important) was just desperate to get away from the far-right organisation he created.  That Robinson has now been sent to prison again and tweeted after the sentence that it was a "stitch-up" in no way means I was wrong to try and get him to slightly rebrand his unique critique of Islam.

I tweeted it not because I was seeking to speak for anyone other than myself, but because I know the only way to keep my think-tank Quilliam going is to make ever greater attention-seeking gestures.  I'd noticed you see that there's a certain section of the left-wing Twitterati/commentariat that is outraged by everything and anything some Muslims do politically.  A month ago the issue of the week was the voluntary segregation that fundamentalists at universities were insisting upon, and which the official guidance had acquiesced in.  Somehow Downing Street intervened, and soon everyone was backtracking.  It didn't matter that this essentially means fundamentalist women won't be able to attend speeches by their favourite extremist, and I speak having previously ploughed that furrow, or will just mean that such meetings will have to happen off campus, clearly an important wrong has been righted.

Why then shouldn't I join in?  There was never any chance of Nick Clegg or the Liberal Democrats deselecting me down to my tweet; look how they've dealt with Lord Rennard and Mike Hancock for goodness sake, so there was next to no risk.  Death threats?  I was in prison in Egypt for goodness sake.

You see though, this isn't about me.  Honest, it isn't.  No, I was speaking up for my religion.  Not all of us Muslims are mouth-breathers without a sense of humour, or who are offended by someone drawing a line and writing "Muhammad" next to it.  Some of us are also extremely ambitious and know how to get people like Nick Cohen writing columns.  I did it to create a space for people to speak out without being immediately accused of blasphemy, for Salmaan Taseer, Muhammad Asghar, Malala and Salman Rushdie.

Fundamentally, I believe in the same things as you do, just like most ordinary Muslims.  I'm not ordinary obviously, but you get the point.  I believe in the ability of those on social networks and in the modern media to blow extremely minor spats out of all proportion, presenting them as though they are about the very fundamentals of freedom of speech; I believe in making the most of such outbreaks of bullshit; and most importantly, I believe in myself.

Labels: , , , , , , ,

Share |

1/28/2014 09:39:00 pm | |

Tuesday, October 08, 2013 

Meet the new boss.

Put yourself for a moment in the shoes of Tommy Robinson, or Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, or whatever the now former leader of the English Defence League's real name is.  From once being a small time member of the BNP, he succeeded in creating an organisation which became the most powerful far-right street movement since the National Front.  You can't properly enjoy such a position of influence though when you're constantly assailed by your opponents as being a racist dedicated to undermining community cohesion, to the point where your friends are (allegedly) refused service just for being with you, or indeed when you apparently get ejected from a Milton Keynes casino on the grounds that you're a thug and therefore not welcome at the roulette wheel.  Why anyone would want to be in a Milton Keynes casino in the first place is a good question, but let's leave that to one side.

When the Quilliam Foundation then offers to reinvent you as an completely legitimate political commentator, why on earth wouldn't you take them up on it?  After all, you already made an abortive attempt to get involved in a political party, so why not square the circle and form a new campaigning organisation almost exactly the same as the EDL, merely without the embarrassing street protests that made you so notorious and loathed?  What's more, Quilliam for their part will ignore all the evidence that makes clear you're still a thug who's read a few far-right blogs and books and so knows that Islam simply must have a reformation, and instead present you as someone who merely needs "encouraging" in your "critique of Islamism".  Who wouldn't sign up when a (formerly, see update below) government-funded think-tank simply decides to forget that you deliberately conflated Islamic extremism and Islam in general on innumerable occasions?

Where Hope Not Hate offers cautious optimism, I give you absolute cynicism.  Because that's exactly what this hilarious move by both Robinson and Quilliam is, the height of cynicism.  If Robinson had truly long been worried about the extremism lower down the ranks in the EDL, he wouldn't have joined the balaclava wearing idiots who thought it a good idea to confront the police on the night of the murder of Lee Rigby, nor would he less than a week ago have humiliated himself by attempting to intimidate one of the authors of EDL News, instead going to the abode of a completely different Gary Moon.

The reality is that the EDL had reached a dead end, as was evident with the failure of the Tower Hamlets march.  Just a matter of months after Lee Rigby's murder, a crime they had long predicted and which they tried their darnedest to exploit, they couldn't even manage to equal the numbers that had marched through the borough a couple of years ago. This was despite attempting to portray the area as being under sharia law, and challenging the ban on marching through Whitechapel itself.

On a personal level, as alluded to above, Robinson had become too notorious to lead a normal life when he wasn't with his beer-swilling mates encouraging and fomenting hate. After all, what is this country coming to when the leader of a far-right organisation whose members have been convicted of countless offences can't pick his children up without getting nervous glances? Abandoning a moribund movement with the help of a counter-extremism think-tank while not renouncing a single thing you've previously said makes absolutely perfect sense.

As for that other moribund organisation, Quilliam, it makes sense for them too. Having started out promisingly, it quickly showed itself to be intolerant of criticism and more than happy to denounce Muslim organisations it decided were Islamist in nature, regardless of what others saw as a positive contribution to their local communities. Being a counter-radicalisation think-tank is also rather difficult when your raison d'etre has plunged down the political agenda; Quilliam has been pretty much reduced to commenting on Islamist movements abroad, which while a public good considering the lack of specialist knowledge elsewhere, doesn't realise justify continued public funding, if indeed they are still receiving it.

"Persuading" Robinson and Kevin Carroll to abandon their movement suits both sides. It means Robinson can join up with his even more extreme pals in America, as now seems likely, his baggage with the neo-Nazis among the EDL a thing of the past, while Maajid Nawaz can claim he's pulled off something that will benefit the country as a whole. In fact, he's handed legitimacy to a convicted criminal still facing further charges, and who hasn't altered his virulent views as much as looked to rebrand them. The problem they now face is that this discredits them equally, and Quilliam has a lot further to fall than Robinson does.

Slight update: Maajid Nawaz says that Quilliam hasn't received public funding since 2010, as Spinwatch suggested above.  We don't know who does fund Nawaz and friends however, as despite the promises made on their website, you won't be able to find any annual reports there.

Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Share |

10/08/2013 09:43:00 pm | |

Friday, August 06, 2010 

The Quilliam Foundation and accusations of McCarthyism part two.

Maajid Nawaz from the Quilliam Foundation has responded to yesterday's Guardian article on their "secret" report in what seems to be the characteristic style of the organisation: by making a wholly unsubstantiated attack on the journalist responsible, Vikram Dodd, denouncing him as a "regressive" for writing a "one-sided propaganda piece in favour of Islamist bigots".

In fact, as Dodd points out in the comments on Pickled Politics, his piece would not have been so one-sided (although it still isn't in my view, being a fair appraisal of the document even if it doesn't focus on the recommendations made on counter-terrorism policy) if QF had bothered to defend themselves when he twice phoned them up, instead deciding not to comment. As for why the Guardian decided not to post Nawaz's response, it's patently obvious: they weren't going to publish unfair abuse of Dodd, as is more than their right.

While putting in an otherwise fine defence of the document when not resorting to ad-hominem attacks, Nawaz's explanation for why it was meant to be secret in the first place is both far from convincing or adequate:

After listening to some of our critics, Quilliam had kept this paper out of the public limelight to avoid sensationalism. It seems, however, that a disgruntled civil servant decided to leak the hard copy we sent to the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism (OSCT) online, where it has now been read over 10,000 times.

Err, so after listening to the organisation's critics, it was decided that it was best to make sure that they couldn't read it in the first place. Well, that's certainly one way of avoiding people disagreeing with you. If Quilliam had really wanted to avoid "sensationalism", then putting it into the public domain would have ensured that would have been the case; the only reason it became a story was exactly because of the secrecy and leak. It could further have avoided it by bothering to defend the document when first asked, rather than shooting the messenger afterwards. It's this abrasive nature which QF's founders seem to relish that leads to "disgruntled civil servants" leaking documents, especially when they're all but insulted in the preamble to the document.

For all of Nawaz's bluster about leftist regressives, one of the few points he doesn't address is the remarks of Robert Lambert, co-founder and former leader of Scotland Yard's Muslim Contact Unit:

"The list demonises a whole range of groups that in my experience have made valuable contributions to counter-terrorism."

There's no arguing with Quilliam's main point that government obviously shouldn't be funding organisations whose ultimate aim, even if peaceful, is the dismantlement of democracy and imposition of Sharia law, yet many of the groups listed have only tenuous real links with Islamism, and as Lambert suggests, actively help with counter-terrorism. Regarding them as irredeemable, even if as Quilliam argues, they shouldn't be banned, is unhelpful in the extreme.

The nature of Nawaz's response only underlines how QF, funded by the government, although it doesn't admit so in their annual report (PDF), despite directing readers of the FAQ on their site to it, needs to change if it is going to be taken seriously. As Sunny points out in the comments on Nawaz's piece, "funding certain groups and not others simply increases the back-stabbing and annoys the hell out of ordinary Muslims (who are suspicious of govt funded programmes as it is)". It will annoy them even more to learn that Nawaz is being effectively funded to launch such fusillades against a journalist simply reporting on a document which should never have been secret in the first place. If Quilliam is meant to lead debate on the nature of Islamism and extremism in British society, then the attempts it makes to shut down and limit those debates are at odds with its very mission and the "shared secular democratic values" which Nawaz wants Muslim-led organisations to espouse. Through their brooking of no dissent, their welcome advice on how to counter radicalisation risks being drowned out, which would be the greatest tragedy of all.

Labels: , , , , , , ,

Share |

8/06/2010 09:26:00 pm | |

Thursday, August 05, 2010 

The Quilliam Foundation and accusations of McCarthyism.

The Quilliam Foundation, the anti-Islamic extremism think-tank funded by the government, is a distinctly strange and shadowy organisation. It's almost impossible to know what to properly make of it, such have been the antics especially of one of its co-founders, Ed Husain, best known writing the memoir The Islamist, detailing his journey through radical Islam and his subsequent rejection of it. From first being seen by many on the right as the answer to the lackadaisical, even collaborationist left, willing to associate with and defend Islamists without understanding the ideology they were trying to propagate, Husain left them feeling cheated first by denouncing the Israeli assault on Gaza of December 2008/January 2009, even going so far as to warn the government that by not doing enough to end the conflict it was complicit in the radicalisaton of young Muslims which would almost certainly take place as a result, and then later by attacking Melanie Phillips for seeing conspiracies where there were none. A week after that crossing of swords the Foundation threatened litigation against Craig Murray for suggesting that the charity had not published its accounts for the year previously, when, it subsequently emerged, the accounts had indeed not been filed until six days after Murray's first post on the subject.

One of Murray's accusations was that QF was akin to a "branch of New Labour tasked with securing the Muslim vote and reducing British Muslim dissatisfaction with New Labour over the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan", hardly the most generous of opinions of a counter-extremism think-tank but certainly one that wasn't actionable. It also didn't chime particularly with Husain's criticism of the government over the Gaza conflict, but it's certainly interesting that it's now, with New Labour out of office and our new overlords the Con-Dems in charge that the Quilliam Foundation has drawn up a strategic briefing paper titled: Preventing Terrorism: where next for Britain. Even more intriguing is that it's not clear whether the paper, sent to Charles Farr, the director general of the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism, was actively solicited, or drawn up at QF's own initiative. Not, it should be made clear, would we have known anything about it had the document not been leaked. The document was not intended for public disclosure, or to even be circulated within the Home Office, with QF justifying this stance in the preamble to Farr:

Based on our past experiences in this field, we believe it is sometimes useful for the government to mull over and refine sensitive policies -- such as the government's counter-terrorism strategy -- without the twin distractions of media attention and potential civil service defensiveness.

Exactly why QF didn't want the document more widely circulated is immediately apparent - it's highly critical of government departments' current counter-radicalisation policies, while finally going on to list in an appendix a whole series of organisations and groupings it introduces as "The British 'Muslim Scene'. It's also this section which Scribd doesn't want me to have access to, so I can't really comment on it. Needless to say, this compiling of various different groups and labelling them on whether the government should associate with them or not, regardless of whether they promote violence or are merely politically Islamist, something which QF argues in the document itself makes little difference as the overall aim of such groups is usually the same, just their methods differ, has been denounced as McCarthyite. One of those saying as much is interestingly Inayat Bunglawala, the very person whom Ed Husain was defending last year against Mel P.

The strange thing is that the most controversial part of the document is in fact the justification for keeping it secret, the logic behind it being so obviously false that one of those not meant to see it almost certainly took the first possible opportunity to get it out into the open. It indeed might well be useful for the government to mull over and refine sensitive policies in private, but not without there being submissions from all of those going to be affected first. You simply can't formulate exactly the sort of policy which QF seem to want without there being a widespread debate which involves the media and the civil service, and their reasons for not wanting such oversight and debate of their own proposals are dubious at best. At worst, it suggests that despite being an organisation directly funded by the taxpayer, with apparently way above average salaries for both Husain and Maajjid Nawaz, it rejects the openness which such comfortable surroundings demand. If this is what we're paying you to do, why aren't we allowed to read and comment on, if not outright reject your recommendations? That QF has refused to comment on the leak or the document also speaks volumes. If this is what you really think should happen to counter-terrorism policy, why not come out and defend it and defend the secrecy in the first place?

There's certainly nothing within the document which is particularly revelatory or fantastically controversial. You can quibble with the claim in the introduction that "the extremist mood music ... which draws British citizens into radicalisation, remains loud and attractive", although a think-tank which is set-up to tackle exactly that is hardly going to admit that the threat has diminished. Also worthy of critique is the way the document's introduction over-intellectualises the motivations of Salafist jihadists. It claims for instance that the infamous comments made by two of those convicted of involvement in Operation Crevice, of "no one can even turn around and say 'Oh they were innocent - those slags dancing around'", referring to a possible plot to bomb the Ministry of Sound, is an example of a concept known as "forbidding evil", a divine obligation to enforce moral behaviour. Far more likely is that this was just casual prejudice with only a small ideological disgust for "Western decadence" behind it. It's difficult to shake off the feeling that Nawaz and Husain see all strains of Islamism through the prism in which they first encountered it and then experienced it - that of the scholarship they went through in order to progress up the leadership rungs of Hizb ut-Tahrir. The jihadist foot-soldiers far more often have very little to no scriptural reasoning, let alone knowledge of Islamic jurisprudence, to fall back on when challenged, if they ever are.

If the document is an attempt to stay relevant under a new government, then it's one which regardless of its intentions deserves cold, calm appraisal and study of its recommendations. While understandable that they wanted it to remain secret, they've only injured themselves by so tortuously and erroneously arguing for special treatment that both it and they neither need nor deserve, while opening themselves up to both justified and unjustified criticism. QF remains a distinctly strange, opaque organisation, and if it wants to survive that has to swiftly change, especially when its work remains so intriguing and potentially invaluable, even if not even being close to becoming beyond reproach.

Labels: , , , , , ,

Share |

8/05/2010 09:52:00 pm | |

Thursday, September 13, 2007 

We're all doomed part 94.

Even the Grauniad on occasion likes to try and scare its readers: what other reason for plastering "Al-Qaida has revived, spread and is capable of a spectacular" in a font bigger than the masthead across its front page?

The alarm bells ought to start ringing when the article notes, around 300 words in, that the International Institute for Strategic Studies's director of transnational threats and political risk is one Nigel Inkster, a former spook who was in the frame for becoming the head of MI6 three years ago before he left. Unsurprisingly then, he goes further than the report itself in stating without hesitation that "al-Qaida" is stronger than it was prior to 9/11 and capable of carrying out a similarly spectacular attack.

The proof behind this? Very little. Apparently, the mere fact that a planned attack was foiled last week in Germany involving vast amounts of hydrogen peroxide, and that last summer's "liquid bombs" plot was similarly stopped shows that al-Qaida still has the ambition to carry out spectaculars. We shouldn't let the facts get in the way of the IISS's certainty: that the group allegedly behind the German plot was the "Islamic Jihad Union", a group meant to have split from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, although Craig Murray relates that he was never able to find any proof that the IJU had even existed. It's quite true that IMU has found something of a safe haven in Waziristan, the same Pakistani tribal area where the Taliban have been regrouping and where it's most likely that the real al-Qaida itself is slowly regenerating, but this plot involved two home-grown Germans, rather than all involving foreigners. As for the liquid bombs plot, we're no nearer to discovering whether the attacks were even viable, let alone whether those arrested have established links to al-Qaida.

Where the report does it get it right is in suggesting that al-Qaida's ideology is taking root: this is sadly the case, and most certainly 9/11's real legacy. The threat it also likely to get worse before it does get better: that threat however does not necessarily come from al-Qaida itself, but through those highly influenced by the same takfirist ideology who take matters into their own hands. It also places too much emphasis on the fact that the al-Qaida brand is taking off across the world: that the GSPC has changed its name matters not one jot, except to Algerians themselves. The real danger remains that when the US does finally withdraw from Iraq, we're going to have a lot of redundant mujahideen much more globalised in their thinking than they were either at the end of Soviet invasion of Afghanistan or from Bosnia. Some are likely to join other struggles wherever they are then, but others are also going to turn their attention to the West. Such experienced fighters are always going to be far more dangerous than the idiots who try to blow up airports with patio gas canisters, petrol and matches.

What the report doesn't say is that we are ourselves are getting far better, both at tackling radicalisation and at spotting the dangers themselves. The defection by Maajid Nawaz, formerly of Hizb-ut-Tahrir to arguing against the politicisation of Islam as practiced by the group is incredibly welcome, especially as unlike Ed Husain he isn't calling for its banning and recognises that most of those within it are actually just typically young: angry and alienated rather than potential terrorists. Someone with his authority tackling the message of such groups, and doing so theologically rather than just rhetorically is the biggest threat which those who prosper on ignorance and one interpretation face, far beyond anything that the government's policies on cohesion can produce.

As Jason Burke also identifies, the report also mentions how climate change has the potential to have an effect similar to nuclear war, far beyond anything that any terrorist group can ever achieve. Putting too much stock in immediate rather than gradual doom may have been around for centuries, but it's still no less virulent today.

Labels: , , , , ,

Share |

9/13/2007 10:00:00 pm | |

About

  • This is septicisle
profile

Links

Last posts

Archives

Email me
Syndicate this site (XML)
Powered by Blogger
and Blogger Templates