What is the "Muslim community"? Are the Muslims who work within Quilliam or support their work not part of the "Muslim community"?
Let's not waste time playing silly semantic games like this. It should be pretty clear that someone who purports to be a reformer within a given community would hold such standing that he could affect real change; Maajid Nawaz has no such standing within the Muslim community. That some other self-identified Muslims might agree with him doesn't mean anything; Donald Trump has blacks and homosexuals who support him, but no one would seriously attempt to argue that he has credibility within either community.
First, Maajid and Quilliam consider desire to turn society into a theocracy and generally oppose liberal democratic values to be "extremist". That is the context.
The problem is not their disdain for groups that want to take over the UK and turn it into a theocracy, it's their unsubstantiated allegations that literally dozens of Muslim organizations have some hidden agenda of doing so.
Second, organizations that either specifically advocate this goal or defend those that support this goal were considered for the list. Third, this is a list of organizations, not individuals, and thus can not be compared to the McCarthy tactic of naming _individuals_ and then blacklisting them.
Axulus, I am pretty disappointed to see you engaging in this kind of crappy argumentation. I'd expect it from Jayjay, but from you, I expect better.
There is no such requirement for something to constitute to McCarthyism. It is defined
as thus:
1. the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, especially of pro-Communist activity, in many instances unsupported by proof or based on slight, doubtful, or irrelevant evidence.
2. the practice of making unfair allegations or using unfair investigative techniques, especially in order to restrict dissent or political criticism.
There is no requirement that the target be an individual; any allegations of subversive or treasonous behavior without sufficient evidence will do. And either one should be unacceptable to you, assuming that you value things like due process.
Fourth, Quilliam recommends countering against the ideology of theocracy with civil discourse and has opposed attempts to ban any such groups. When they say the government needs to "target" them, they mean target them for push back on the theocratic point.
No, this is a misleading or at best incomplete analysis. The Quilliam report clearly discourages discourse, engagement or outreach with these groups on the grounds that it could empower extremists.
Fifth, Maajid has repeatedly argued against the bullshit idea of a "stealth takeover" (see here:
http://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presente...d-dismantles-caller-islamic-takeover-britain/)
As I said, Nawaz's public persona strikes a markedly different tone than this leaked government memo, which points to the conclusion that he is not totally forthcoming.
Maybe instead of reflexively defending him, you should consider the possibility that his motives are more complicated than they appear to you on the surface.
Just looking up a few examples on that list, they all seem to be well placed. What BS yellow journalism from the Guardian to not investigate whether those Muslim organizations on the list really support or sympathize with theocracy or whether their inclusion was actually baseless.
Your tone suggests that you are not at all approaching this issue rationally; it is the job of someone being paid to advise the government to justify including these groups in what more or less amounts to a fifth column, not the job of a newspaper to attempt to validate each and every example.
I looked up a few of them and they do all appear to either to be in the business of defending and/or promoting theocracy, or are run by such individuals.
Then produce the evidence, comprehensively, since Quilliam didn't do so.
As just one example, The founder and chairman of the Muslim Safety Forum has said the following, an organization which the Guardian allowed to give a response to their inclusion on the list _but did not do their own investigation to determine whether their inclusion was warranted_:
Links to al-Qaeda[edit]
Ali has stated that he has attended talks with Abu Qatada of al-Qaeda.[5] In a 2008 IFE blog, Ali called al-Qaeda's Anwar Al-Awlaki "one of my favourite scholars and speakers".[6] Ali has denied that the 2008 Mumbai attacks were terrorism.[7]
Comments on British soldiers[edit]
In 2009, Ali was suspended as a civil servant in the Treasury after he praised Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, Osama bin Laden's key mentor, and wrote approvingly on his blog of Azzam's son saying that as a Muslim he is religiously obliged to kill British soldiers in Iraq.[4] In the blog he also criticised the British Foreign Secretary David Miliband after the minister had condemned the Palestinian Muslim militant organisation Hamas for encouraging attacks on Israeli civilians.[8] The exposé was by The Mail on Sunday, whom Ali unsuccessfully sued in 2010.[4][9][10] Later that year, the Labour Party were accused by the opposition Conservatives of appearing with Ali to gain Muslim votes, after two Labour ministers, Harriet Harman and Ed Miliband, spoke at a campaign event with Ali. He used his speech to praise the Muslim militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.[10]
It amazes me that you don't see the logical fallacy you're engaging in here. The whole reason you started this thread is that the SPLC unfairly maligned someone you apparently hold in high regard - they placed him on a list of "anti-Muslim extremists," which you find utterly outrageous.
But the fact is that many - in fact, most of the other people on that list - Pamela Geller, Frank Gaffney, Steve Emerson et al - clearly and undeniably deserve to included. And unlike Quilliam, SPLC actually provided the evidence to support their inclusion.
So if we follow the lazy and self-serving logic you're employing here, if SPLC had compiled this list without that evidence, and someone who didn't know better googled one of the people on it and found that they are in fact an anti-Muslim extremist, that would suddenly exonerate their inclusion of everyone on it, including Nawaz.
You're simply not being reasonable, here, Axulus; either people deserve to be afforded due process, and the dignity of not being slandered without supporting evidence, or it's a fucking free for all where anyone can hurl out preposterous allegations without sanction. There are literally dozens of organizations on the list; the idea that because you searched and found evidence that one of them had a founder with extremist views (though what you quoted doesn't even bear out the specific allegation of ties to Jaamat-e-Islami) gets Nawaz off the hook is
precisely the kind of shitty logic that enables McCarthyism, and makes it so dangerous. At least some of the hundreds of people McCarthy accused actually were Soviet spies or at least sympathizers. But this in no way exonerates his complete disregard for standards of evidence or due process. It's no different when accusing Muslims of being subversive traitors.
Where is he wrong, ideologically?
It's hard to pin down because he's inconsistent in his rhetoric, behavior and associations.
This article does a pretty good outlining the concerns many people have about him. Personally, I don't really care much about him either way.
Not really - it speaks to his potential motivations for saying one thing in private and another in public.
But I do wonder why you are so keen to defend him, and pounce on every negative thing that's said about him.
There's that word again, "Muslim community". You smear those Muslims who support Maajid and Quilliam and their work by essentially excluding these individuals from the "Muslim community". That is something fundamentalists love doing, categorizing people as not real Muslims™ if they don't pass some sort of purity test.
It's not a purity test, but rather a perception by Muslims that he is not sincerely interested in engaging with them or bettering their communities, but rather in convincing non-Muslims he's trying to "fix" the problem of extremism.
What do you find unreasonable in his private comments?
Already addressed at length.
So far, it seems like it is you who has misrepresented it. The objection seems to be "some orgs on Quilliam's list shouldn't have been included as supporting or sympathetic to theocracy or having associations with other Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood." Ok, let's start talking specifics.
The specifics should have been outlined when Quilliam sent the document to the British government, not left for internet posters to sort through. Placing accusations of this magnitude, unsupported, in the appendices of a 70-page document meant to offer law enforcement guidance on how to deal with the entire Muslim community is a fucking joke.
As for this:
The "no supporting evidence" charge is BS. This was a private memo to certain government officials. The evidence itself doesn't need to be included in the private memo. It does, however, need to be producible if requested. Was the evidence requested? What was Quilliam's response? Your "no evidence" charge is baseless unless you can demonstrate that, when requested, Quilliam was unable to produce any.
A) I'm doubtful the government cares enough to request the evidence; if they're anywhere near as bad as U.S. law enforcement, which has a long track record of hiring extremist nutjobs to "advise" law enforcement on terrorism and Islamic extremism, then I highly doubt they did anything of the sort
B) If you had done the research before leaping to Nawaz's defense, you'd know that his response was wholly
deflective and lacking substance:
The main body of the document reviewed Government departments involved in the
counter-extremism agenda and made policy suggestions. The document also had an
appendix entitled ‘The British Muslim Scene’, which detailed the affiliations and
backgrounds of a number of prominent British Muslim organisations, including their
external influences. In no way was it a ‘Terror List’, nor was any of the categorisation
incorrect.
This is a disingenuous and half-hearted attempt at swatting away very serious questions about equally serious accusations against many different organizations. Trying to justify the list on the grounds that it was not a "terror list," or advocating banning any of the groups in question, misses the point - it ascribes to these groups subversive agendas of Islamism, with the implied goal of undermining the UK's secular framework and instituting a theocracy. These are not accusations to be taken lightly, and should have been thoroughly validated in the original document. But they weren't there, nor in this response; Quilliam simply claims that they were correct without providing any further evidence. In all likelihood, they either don't have any, or know it would fall apart under scrutiny and discredit them as "liberal Muslim reformers." I think they didn't expect the document to be publicized, nor for the government to ask for any supporting evidence, and thus figured they could get away with it, get paid and go on with their day-to-day work of looking busy while not really changing anything on the ground.
The fact that you are so vociferously defending someone who labels so many people as subversive elements, but doesn't feel it's necessary to provide any kind of substantiating evidence, and then evades and misdirects when criticized for doing so, should give you some pause, Axulus.
