Islamic Forum Europe (IFE) has infiltrated The Labour Party
There is a fair bit of online activity in response to a Sunday Telegraph article by Andrew Gilligan, claiming the Labour party has been “infiltrated” by Islamic extremists, in the form of Islamic Forum Europe (IFE).
This from the Spitoon
The Telegraph has published news of a six-month investigation which it undertook with Channel 4’s Dispatches on the Islamic Forum Europe (IFE). The IFE is a Jamaat-e-Islami entryist organisation which now commands a sizeable vote bloc and is physically located in the East London Mosque (ELM) with which it is closely linked. The chairman of ELM is Mohammed Abdul Bari, who is a former president of the IFE and is the current Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain.
Obviously anti-Islamic websites are featuring this news heavily and repeating the Telegraph article verbatim.
Cranmer has a very insightful article on this one as usual:-
Andrew Gilligan is usually sound, so there is no immediate reason to dismiss his report in The Sunday Telegraph that the Labour Party have been ‘infiltrated by a fundamentalist Muslim group that wants to create an “Islamic social and political order” in Britain’.
He quotes the Environment Minister Jim Fitzpatrick, that the Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE) have become ‘a secret party within Labour and other political parties’. He says the group ‘believes in jihad and sharia law, and wants to turn Britain and Europe into an Islamic state’. In order to do this, it ‘has placed sympathisers in elected office and claims, correctly, to be able to achieve “mass mobilisation”’.
He appears to be oblivious to the fact that all Muslims ‘believe’ in jihad and sharia law: it is the duty of all Muslims to struggle for their faith and live a life in submission to the laws of Allah; it is what makes a Muslim a Muslim. But he appears to be incapable of distinguishing between the plethora of schools of thought on these theo-political concepts: one Muslim’s jihad and sharia are not another Muslim’s jihad and sharia: theological interpretation has been devolved and judicial authority protestantised.
This is not the first time Mr Fitzpatrick has incited ill-feeling towards his Muslim constituents: it was he who back in August ‘stormed out’ of a wedding reception when he refused to be separated from his wife.
And here he is now decrying a Muslim group for ‘acting almost as an entryist organisation, placing people within the political parties, recruiting members to those political parties, trying to get individuals selected and elected so they can exercise political influence and power, whether it’s at local government level or national level’.
‘Twas ever thus.
In a liberal representative democracy, it is the right of any legally-constituted group to order itself, get its members to join political parties, and then get them selected and elected ‘so they can exercise political influence and power’.
Good grief, even The Countryside Alliance are at it. And only a few weeks ago, an anonymous Conservative was decrying the same strategy of the Evangelical Christians.
UPDATE: Harry’s Place have now covered this one:-
If you have stumbled onto this blog and are not a Christian, get yourself a hot drink, pull up a comfy chair and then tuck into the following article written by one of the best in the business:- All Of Grace by Charles SpurgeonThe Sunday Telegraph has published four articles about the Islamic Forum of Europe’s baleful influence on politics in East London.
The IFE is closely linked to Jamaat-e-Islami, a South Asian Islamist group. For a look into its thinking, see this speech last week by its leader Syed Munawar Hasan:
March 1st, 2010 at 12:42 am
” … one Muslim’s jihad and sharia are not another Muslim’s jihad and sharia: theological interpretation has been devolved and judicial authority protestantised.”
When is jihad not jihad when it is “devolved and judicial authority protestantised” what does that mean???
This is jihad by stealth, jihad is a multidimensional strategy but still jihad.
March 2nd, 2010 at 12:25 am
I am so happy to see the above comments, it clearly shows the truthfulness of the situation really really happy, it portrays true opinions of honest people. Thank you
March 2nd, 2010 at 9:09 am
Several posts have disappeared, which makes Nadira’s last post nonsensical. I do not recall anything wildly controversial in the missing posts so perhaps there’s a technical hitch.
There’s a wide gap between the British Muslims I know and radical Islamism. Many British Muslims like living in the UK specifically because, although they have religious freedom, the UK is *not* a theocracy.
British Muslims, far from rallying under the banner of the idiotic Islam4UK, are concerned by fundamentalism creeping into their communities. The IFE’s overt purpose has been subverted. Given its true aims it is no friend to the Labour Party or democracy at all.
March 2nd, 2010 at 9:12 am
Hi Sophie, no posts deleted or censored recently (except for spam).
March 2nd, 2010 at 9:14 am
There is another post on the Islamic Forum that you posted on yesterday Sophie:-
http://blog.echurchwebsites.org.uk/2010/03/01/exclusive-the-ife-islamic-forum-europe-have-become-influential-in-east-london/
March 2nd, 2010 at 11:15 am
Gilligan was actually fairly close to the mark. The issue is not so much the entryism, as the agenda of the IFE (not much different from Hizb ut Tahrir). Have a look at what some of the ex-Islamist folks (Ed Hussain, for one) are commenting on the story. The IFE are nasty, pernicious, racist (yes, Muslims can be racist too!) bunch of thugs (personal experience) — what encouraged me most about the Dispatches programme was the number of *Muslims* who were prepared to stand up against this kind of political thuggery.
March 2nd, 2010 at 2:53 pm
M. Ibn Tahhara, the problem with your comment is that it is false and misleading. HT and IFE are miles apart and to pretend otherwise is to encourage those who treat all Muslims and even all Islamists as one monolithic bloc. HT do not believe Muslims in this country should vote. IFE are for peaceful democratic engagement. You might not like what they say when they peacefully and democratically engage but it is their right to do so.
And as for all the Muslims prepared to denounce the IFE, I think you’ll find most of them have an axe to grind with the Council for one petty reason or another.
March 2nd, 2010 at 4:00 pm
Have you considered a simple line-by-line comparison with HT’s constitution and IFE’s published materials? You’ll find, I think, that the ends are very much the same — it’s just that the means are different.
Your final paragraph was wonderful! Critics of the IFE purely have an axe to grind. I assume, mutatis mutandis, that since you’re a critic of the critics, we can therefore assume that you have an axe to grind, too. Or could it be possible that the critics have a point? I must admit a bias — having been forcibly and firmly removed from an IFE meeting, I’m a little suspect of their methods.