The Muslim Association of Britain

Anthony Browne in the Times:

What sort of mind could believe that the Holocaust, the industrialised murder of six million civilians, was an act of God to punish Jews? And what sort of people would promote him? Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian scholar, wrote in his essay Our struggle with the Jews that Jews have been punished for their “unprecedented abominations”, but “then the Jews again returned to evildoing and consequently Allah sent against them others of His servants, until the modern period. Then Allah sent Hitler to rule over them.”

Qutb, born in 1906, dedicated his life to making the world a fundamentalist Islamic state, and is seen as the spiritual inspiration of al-Qaeda. He is also promoted by the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), our most active Islamic political group. The MAB has on its website a glowing account of Qutb’s life, concluding that he died smiling “showing his conviction of the beautiful life to come in paradise — a life he definitely and rightfully deserved”.

The MAB says that it is opposed to anti-Semitism, but this is as convincing as the British National Party’s saying it is opposed to racism. The MAB published an article calling Jews “vampires”, claiming that it was written by Benjamin Franklin; in fact it was a forgery. The MAB’s high-profile spokesman, Azzam Tamimi, a Palestinian academic, wrote: “If they want to be as human as anybody else, Jews must wake up before it is too late.”

On its website, MAB has equated Israel with Nazi Germany. The Internet Watch Foundation (a partnership between the Government and service providers) has referred the website — along with that of the BNP — to the Home Office for containing allegedly criminally racist material.

The MAB, of course, are the co-organisers of the Stop the War Coalition.

Like the BNP, the MAB presents a moderate face to hide its extremism. Just as the BNP says it represents mainstream Britain, MAB says it represents mainstream British Muslims. But there the similarity ends. Unlike the BNP, which is rightly tackled at every turn, the MAB is uncritically accepted by the liberal Left, including the BBC, The Guardian and The Independent.

When I debated on the BBC with MAB last week, I briefed the producer on MAB, but I was told not to bring it up. When I did the presenter silenced me.

The liberal Left need to ask themselves what they hope to achieve by giving such uncritical support to Islamic extremism.