Rolled-up Trousers

Ware responds

John Ware has issued a response to some of the criticisms levelled against him after last month's Panorama film about Interpal.

His response took in points made by AIM magazine, Pickled Politics, the MCB and myself. The whole thing can be read at AIM, but I've pasted the pertinent points below.

6) Sunny Hundal wrote in Pickled Politics: "We didn't bring anything new to the table."

We did - at least according to Kenneth Dibble, Executive Director of the Charity Commission's legal services: what he himself defined as possible "collateral activities" - e.g. those promoting or glorifying terrorist activity - amongst the Islamic charities in the West Bank and Gaza to which Interpal distributes funds. For example, the video of children at the Al Khalil Al Rahman Young Girls' Society being encouraged by adults to sing songs celebrating their deaths and the deaths of Israelis through suicide bombings. This was the same material Sunny himself later describes as "quite disturbing".

Mr Dibble accepted that this "collateral" conduct was not something the Charity Commission had previously taken a view about. But he also said it was "...an issue that you are raising now and if I may say so is quite a pertinent issue."

7) Sunny quoted approvingly from MAB's Osama Saeed who wrote: "Ware's goading of young boys in an orphanage as to how many of them wanted to be fighters was sick beyond words."

Actually, my question to those boys was: "Who would you like to be. Who is your big hero? It's hard to see how that constitutes "goading."

Disappointing from Snow

Jon Snow, considered one of the more thinking broadcasters, has said that Muslims are not integrating in a Sunday Times article.

His evidence is that we are practising our religion more:

We were attempting to delve behind the results of the most comprehensive survey to date of Muslim opinion in Britain. Conducted by NOP for Channel 4’s Dispatches, one of its most startling results suggested that Muslim integration into British society has effectively come to a halt.

Immigrants have usually tended to become more secular and less religious than their parents by the second generation. But the survey shows Muslims have gone in precisely the opposite direction.

War coverage

Melanie Reid has hit out at Fergal Keane's reporting for the BBC in Lebanon yesterday, in an extraordinarily heartless article in the Herald:

There was one particularly ghastly example of Keane as emoter-in-chief last week, when he followed the plight of a Lebanese family wrenched apart while fleeing their country by sea. In the turmoil of embarking, the family were separated: the mother got on a ship for Cyprus; her children did not. We were subject to offensive, lingering camera work of the two crying little boys, as close as I have seen the BBC go to the pornography of grief. Moreover, the report failed to make clear that the boys were all the time in the company of their father. It reminded me, strikingly, of one of those manipulative, tear-jerking clips shown on Red Nose Day: the ones designed to make people reach for their credit cards.

Even the most ardent supporters of Israel manage to pause, no matter how insincerely, to acknowledge the suffering in Lebanon. Reid herself described tales of woe in the most vivid manner, but airily dismissed it all as an inconvenience and blot on her television screen.

Without the coverage of Keane and others, the news agenda would surely have moved on elsewhere by now. Because of it, at least there is some international talk of a ceasefire.

I also happen to think what we've seen from Beirut, Tyre and Qana, is exactly what has happened in Kabul, Kandahar, Baghdad, Fallujah and countless other towns and villages in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last few years. It's just that now reporters aren't embedded with US and UK troops - they're off the leash and telling people what the horror of war is. Hopefully it will go some way to stopping it.

Panorama or point of view? *updated*

Must be great being a journalist. John Ware yesterday showed how it can be carried off with minimum work. Just sit back and soak in the briefings from Mossad.

It was rumoured previously that Ware was influenced by Israel’s secret service, but he wore it on his sleeve with pride on yesterday’s Panorama. With reference what “intelligence sources say”, he had, for example, information on secret meetings held by Palestinians 14 years ago, access to transcripts of prisoners held by Israel, and material seized by the Israeli army in the West Bank.

He seemed in awe of his informants. A Palestinian head teacher denied that her school had ever been raided by the Israeli army, but he maintained it had, and that a computer seized from there had pictures of violence on it. For Ware, she was lying, and the Israelis could do no wrong.

Bright gets himself in a muddle

Martin Bright revels in the love from rightwing neocons in today's Observer.

He says complains once again about FCO engagement with Islamists, and how the MCB represent said Islamists. He makes this comparison:

In the 1930s, we adopted a similar strategy with the Mufti of Jerusalem to 'deliver' Muslim opinion. The Mufti went on to support the Nazis.

Yes, it took a while for him to get there, but working with the MCB is going to lead to being in bed with the Nazis.

But here's something strange. He mentions the FOSIS and YMO were funded by the FCO to organise a tour of speakers:

Bright hits back

Martin Bright has responded to some of the criticism (see also Yusuf Smith) that's been levelled his way since the airing of his documentary on Muslim representation.

Bright's main contention is that the "silent majority" of Muslims is being ignored. This group of people is the "apolitical" sufi community, typified by people like Haras Rafiq, who last week launched the Sufi Muslim Council. Rafiq supported Labour Friends of Israel MP Lorna Fitzsimons in her failed attempt to hold onto her Rochdale constituency last year in the face of much Muslim hostility. Apolitcal indeed.

This main thrust seemed to be answered for me by Inayat Bunglawala in the documentary itself, and which Bright didn't seem to have an answer to. If these people really claim to be the majority of the Muslim community, then why don't they join the MCB, and vote who they want as the leadership in the elections the MCB hold every two years?

Bright over-egged the pudding throughout his documentary. One of his main hooks was that Tony Blair once said on terror that:

Israel claims victory in media war

[Assaf] Shariv [Israeli PM Ehud Olmert's media adviser] said that Israelis have been interviewed by the foreign press four times as much as spokespeople for the Palestinians and Lebanese. As proof of Israel's success, he also cited a poll of Sky News viewers that found that 80 percent believe that Israel's attacks on Lebanon were justified.

"We have never had it so good," Gideon Meir [Israeli Foreign Ministry's deputy-director general for media and public affairs] said. "The hasbara effort is a well-oiled machine."

MCB respond to Bright

Ever alert, the MCB media committee have had an advanced viewing on Martin Bright's documentary which the rest of us will be able to see on Friday.

Here are their findings:

'The Arabists at the Foreign Office'

The Channel 4 30 Minutes documentary, which is going to criticise the government's approach to Islamism this Friday, has been getting quite a bit of a trailing.

Nick Cohen's given his mate Martin Bright - who's behind the documentary - a plug, while the Mail on Sunday claims that the government has tried to censor the film which says there is a division in approach between the FCO and Number 10:

The Channel 4 documentary uses leaked documents to highlight a growing division between Downing Street and the Foreign Office - it says the FO is keen to form links with radical groups, while Downing Street wants a more cautious approach. 

But FO Permanent Secretary Sir Michael Jay is so incensed by the film - due to be shown in the 30 Minutes slot on Friday night - that he has demanded cuts.

One of the confidential papers highlights concerns about FO adviser Mockbul Ali, described as an advocate of links to groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat-e-Islami.

The FO denies it is trying to censor the programme but merely objecting to the naming of individuals such as Mr Ali as it could threaten their safety.

Times poll of Muslims

UPDATE 07/07/06: See Bob Churchill and Anas Altikriti for more analysis (hat tip). The latter points out that 13% thinking the London bombers are martyrs doesn't mean they approve of the attack. It does seem to me that the Times poll was trying to get a sensationalist figure like this, after previous polls found 99% of Muslims condemned the July bombings.

The Times and ITV News commissioned a poll of British Muslims which has led to today's headline of "Muslim Britain split over 'martyrs' of 7/7".

In reality, not much of a "spilt" - 13% of Muslims think that the July bombers were martyrs. Naturally I think anyone who says this to be an idiot - and will be on my soapbox to say so as per the PM.

But here's the odd thing. I've commented before that I wonder what the population at large think of these actions. Most recently, the Pew Global Attitudes poll of Muslims asked whether they agreed that "Can violence against civilian targets in order to defend Islam be justified?". 15 % said "sometimes" and 9% "rarely".

This was used to say that Muslims agreed with Al-Qaeda style attacks. However, replace the word "Islam" with "Britain" and ask the general population, and I think you'd get a similar figure.

Now, back to the Times/ITV poll today. Go to the Populus website to see the raw data of questions they're publishing (some may have been left out if they didn't fit in with the story). You'll notice all the questions were asked of both Muslims and the general population, except the key ones which they've used to smack the Muslim community with. Why wasn't the general population asked?

Hirsi Ali, the BBC and lost Dutch liberalism

The BBC publish an article about lost liberalism in Holland. Ah, I think, something highlighting the treatment of immigrant communities in the country... no, just something lamenting the treatment of the liar Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

The author of the article, Lisa Jardine, just doesn't seem to have kept up with recent events:

Hirsi Ali arrived in Holland as an asylum-seeker in 1992, fleeing a forced marriage.

No she didn't.

In the face of a growing clamour from both the Muslim and the secular communities to silence her, she has decided to re-settle in Washington.

No she jumped ship because of the storm over her lies.

Jardine does however know about the web Hirsi Ali tied herself up in:

In spite of her imminent departure, she has now been told by the Immigration Minister, Rita Verdonk that she is to be stripped of her Dutch citizenship because - out of fear - she did not use her true name on her original application form.

And the rest of it please - there were a few more lies than that.

Jardine also repeats the tired fiction of Muslim involvement in the killing of Pim Fortuyn.

Absolutely bizarre from the BBC.

Brian Whitaker meanwhile stays calm long enough to write about Hirsi Ali and bedfellow Irshad Manji. He makes the point that the neocons and rightwingers love them because they tell them what they want to hear. Trouble with the bridge that needs to be made between Islam and the West is that as with any rapprochement, you need to hear things that may not all sit well with you. Whitaker links to this essay by Laila Lalami in the Nation.