UK Foreign Office supports Livingstone line

Mr Mockbul Ali is Islamic Issues Adviser to the Islamic World Issues Group of the UK Foreign & Colonial Office. As you might expect, he has had a hand in issuing worthy statements like this one in July 2005 for an interfaith conference promoting co-operation between Muslims, Christians and Jews, which burbles on about promoting harmony and trust. He also attended the major Council of Europe OSCE Conference on Anti-Semitism in June 2005 as part of the UK delegation which included Jewish establishment worthies like Lord Janner, led by Mike O'Brian the Solicitor General.

So should we raise an eyebrow at seeing the confidential paper he authored for his masters at the FCO on the subject of whether the famous Sheikh Qaradawi should be admitted to the UK? Well, perhaps we should, given that the analysis he presents (along with a recommendation that Qaradawi should be admitted) is virtually identical to that notoriously presented by Ken Livingstone. Mockbul Ali's paper, like Ken, dismisses the dossier which was submitted by the Board of Deputies in these words:

A significant number of the accusations against Qaradawi seem to have been as a result of a dossier compiled by the Board of Deputies, based on information from Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). The founding president of MEMRI is retired Colonel Yigal Carmon, who served for 22 years in Israel's military intelligence unit.   MEMRI is regularly criticised for selective translation of Arabic reports.

Bafflingly, Mockbul Ali doesn't give us his evidence for these "regular criticisms" and who they come from. Nor does he refer to the huge number of critiques which have demonstrated that the most clear translations of the Sheikh's still current death-to-gays, anti-semitic and pro wife-beating statements have come from the Sheikh's own web site. But he does drop this uncritical statement about how he thinks the UK Muslim community might react if the Sheikh were banned:

This could also fuel media reports of conspiracy theories-- especially in the Muslim media-- about the involvement of Jewish lobby groups and their influence on British Government policy.

In other words, he seems to suggest that unless Qaradawi is given permission, the consequences will be media reports especially in the Muslim media that Jewish lobby groups influence British Government policy. Does Mr Ali suggest what could be done to counter this? No, he appears to think that this is good reason why Qaradawi should be admitted. He also suggests that banning Qaradawi will have a major negative impact on UK government relations across the UK Muslim community. He cites something called the Metropolitan Special Branch Muslim contact unit endorsing the positive role that Qaradawi plays in the fight against Al Qaeda. I wonder who the personnel of that unit are, and how they were appointed?

Meanwhile, Nick Cohen at the Observer has a stinging critique of what this policy adds up to.Here's a sample:

As the FO argues, radical Islam, as practised by the likes of the Muslim Brotherhood, is not the same as al-Qaeda. Sometimes, it supports insurrection; sometimes, it tries to take over existing institutions by following classic entryist tactics. True, if it were to come to power in any country from Bangladesh to Morocco, it would impose a religious dictatorship. On the other hand, al-Qaradawi condemned the 11 September atrocities, and when FO officials suggest that Britain should exploit the difference of opinion and try to detach him and the millions who listen to him from al-Qaeda, they seem to be talking sense. This, as the Foreign Office says, is the classic 'realist' strategy of isolating your enemies by peeling off the fellow travellers.

Unfortunately, history shows that Walter Mitty can't match the wishful thinking of a 'foreign policy realist'. The leaked papers show FO mandarins in a land of make-believe. Running through this thinking is an aching need to believe that Qaradawi is a liberal, a peculiar liberal, no doubt, but still a man with whom Britain can do business. The Foreign Secretary may remember the negative media storm when Livingstone last brought the priest to Britain, the civil servants tell Jack Straw. He should ignore it. The accusations came from tainted Jewish sources, 'the Board of [Jewish] Deputies' and the Israeli monitoring site Memri, which is 'regularly criticised for selective translation of Arabic reports'.

This simply isn't true. Qaradawi's extremist views haven't been spread by scheming Jews but are well documented on his very own website.

The FO doesn't want to know because it is desperate to have authoritative Muslim voices condemn the slaughter in Iraq. That would indeed be nice. So too would be the odd denunciation from the Western left. But it's never going to happen, and all the FO has done is abandon Arab liberals in a fruitless quest for the approval of their enemies on the religious right.

And just to show how far this thinking has gone, the Observer today runs a story on how MI6 has dreamt up some covert propaganda campaign to infiltrate Islamic extremist groups in order to persuade them from violence. Yes, really.

Don't you feel a lot more confident about our UK national security now that you know all this?

Comments

[Huldah]

What an astute post, and a great new blog Adloyada. Thanks.

I read Mr Ali's paper to his mandarins with great interest, and noted the unattributed slur on MEMRI. Perhaps one of the critics he meant was our own "Gorgeous" George Galloway. He repeatedly interrupted another panellist on a recent Any Questions when she referred to a MEMRI source, shouting "But It's ISRAELI!" In the end Jonathan Dimbleby had to stop him, by saying that "it is conceivable and we're not going to resolve it here that it is both on an Israeli website and it's an accurate translation." The transcript is available on the BBC website.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/anyquestions_transcripts_20050715.shtml

[Judy]

Thank you, Huldah. Actually, the critic he most likely drew on was Ken Livingstone, whose response here
http://www.london.gov.uk/news/docs/qaradawi_dossier.rtf

includes this:

This is taken from one of the main sources for the dossier, the very well-funded Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), which was set up by a former senior officer in Israel’s military intelligence service and which specialises in finding quotes from Arab media for circulation in the West. The translation and selection of quotes tend to portray Islam in a very negative light.

It may seem difficult to take such material seriously, but in some respects the approach of MEMRI, echoed in the dossier, is reminiscent of the various anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. This can be seen very easily if one simply substitutes the words ‘Jewish’ and ‘Judaism’ for ‘Muslim’ and ‘Islam’ throughout the dossier.

This expensively produced response was paid for by us Londoners....