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Growing Your Own
UK bloggers may have hit on a home-grown scandal as significant as last year's weblog-led revelation that CBS had been duped by forged documents relating to George W. Bush's military record.
This time, the in-house journal of Britain's liberal establishment has come under intense scrutiny as bloggers - and not a few mainstream media journalists - demand to know why The Guardian continues to employ an extremist Islamist.
On July 13, less than a week after four Islamofascist suicide bombers had killed 55 people in London, The Guardian allowed trainee journalist Dilpazier Aslam to comment on the murderers' backgrounds.
In his piece, Aslam described himself as a typical Yorkshire lad, much like three of the killers. His generation, he said, are unlike their parents and grandparents in that they are not afraid to "rock the boat" to protest against injustice. "We're much sassier with our opinions, not caring if the boat rocks or not," he added.
He continued that the British should not affect to be shocked by the mass murder in London, as "Shocked would also be to suggest that the bombings happened through no responsibility of our own."
So far, so much like one of the many apologia for Islamist terror that have emerged from the pages of the Guardian and the Independent in the days following the London bombings. At least the Guardian drew Aslam's response from the ranks of the privileged-but-angry Muslim men who carried out the murders, rather than allow one of its usual hand-wringers to do the job.
And yet. Blogger Scott Burgess, of the Daily Ablution, spotted the story and began a standard weblog critique of Aslam's column. Burgess dug deeper, however.
It emerged that Aslam's views are "sassier" than perhaps his impeccably liberal employers thought. Turns out the Guardian's cub reporter belongs (or belonged) to the fiercely Islamist sect Hizb Ut Tahrir. This organisation is banned in practically every nation it operates in, including Germany, Russia, Holland and a number of Arab nations. A BBC investigation of Hizb Ut Tahrir revealed it to have been caught up in prosecutions around Europe and the Arab world for inciting racial hatred and violence against Jews.
The BBC found numerous British Muslim leaders willing to express concern about the rise of the shadowy sect. One warned, chillingly,
"I believe that if Hizb Ut Tahrir are not stopped at this stage, and we continue to let them politicise and pollute the youngsters minds and other gullible people minds, then what will happen in effect is that these terrorism acts and these suicide bombings that we hear going on around in foreign countries, we will actually start seeing these incidents happening outside our doorsteps."
Hizb Ut Tahrir hit the headlines in April when a mob organised by the sect attacked George Galloway while he was campaigning in East London. Describing the anti-war leader as a "false prophet" they threatened that he would be executed for "apostasy" - while Hizb Ut Tahrir probably shares many of Galloway's views on the invasion of Iraq, it is opposed to democracy. By urging Muslims to vote, Galloway was encouraging them to behave in an "un-Islamic" fashion.
"They said they were setting up the gallows for me," Galloway told reporters, "Thank God my daughter was not with me. She was in the car outside. Otherwise there would have been nobody to call the police. The police saved my life."
Scott Burgess found that as recently as June last year, the Guardian's Aslam was working for Hizb Ut Tahrir's magazine. The magazine, Burgess discovered, welcomes the prospect of a "clash of civilizations" between radical Islam and the West. The structures and institutions of western states will be dismantled and replaced by an international khilafah (caliphate) based on sharia law.
This is strong stuff even by the standards of radical Islamist preaching. Burgess found that Aslam was directly involved in writing several articles on the sect's website. The articles are careful to say that the caliphate will be established peacefully, but it is unlikely that a what left-leaning blog Harry's Place describes as a "theocratic totalitarian state" could be introduced and enforced without bloodshed. Predictably, Israel is exempt from any promises of "peaceful" destruction: "...fight fire with fire, the state of Israel versus the Khilafah State," Aslam wrote in one column.
Burgess wrote to the Guardian's opinion editor asking if he was aware that one of his writers belonged to a sect even the Guardian described as "Britain's most radical Islamic group."
He has had no reply, but the Guardian's fellow traveller and rival, the Independent on Sunday, managed to extract a grudging statement: "Dilpazier Aslam is a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an organisation which is legal in this country. We are keeping the matter under review."
So, apart from his opinion column, has the Guardian's home-grown Islamist radical been able to twist the newspaper's coverage to fit his extremist opinions?
Well, yes. David T at Harry's Place has picked up on what one of sharp-eyed inhabitants of Burgess' comments pages noticed: "Dilpazier Aslam, the Guardian journalist with links to the fascist Islamist group, Hizb'ut Tahrir, was the reporter who produced a sanitised, liberal friendly account of the Shabina Begum "jilbab" case."
2004's "jilbab case" saw a Muslim teenager granted the right to wear the full body and face covering jilbab in defiance of school rules which viewed the strict dress as likely to alienate fellow pupils. Shabina Begum's school allowed Muslim girls to wear scarfs, tunics and trousers - a British court complied with Begum's demand that she be allowed to force the dress code to extremes.
Guess who ran the case for the sixteen year old Begum? Yes, Hizb Ut Tahrir. And guess who got the first exclusive interview with the schoolgirl, who used her victory to attack the west's "predjudice and bigotry" against Islamic women?
"It is now clear that the role of Dilpazier Aslam was Hizb'ut Tahir's propagandist. The Guardian was its mouthpiece," David concludes,
"It is time that the Guardian took a hard look at itself."
UPDATE: Well if it's good enough for the Guardian, it's good enough for the LA Times, which published a slightly edited version of Aslam's column on July 16.
Also, we'd like to add that Scott Burgess is an American working in Britain. EURSOC supposes this qualifies him as a "UK blogger" but we ought to point it out nonetheless.
