Author: Kamran Shafi
Publication: DAWN
Date: January 5 2010
URL: http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/columnists/doing-it-to-ourselves-510
There was the usual and quite absurd story
on the Internet the other day, one that amply demonstrates the in-your-face
attitudes of those who would use 'militant' Islam to further their own political
agendas in foreign countries.
However, before we go there let us face the
fact that these people, in the main economic refugees and asylum seekers from
other lands, use the host (western, of course) countries' democratic freedoms,
and the protection extended to them by their adopted countries' human and
civil rights laws, to do what they would dare not do in their own (or their
parents') native countries.
Before we go any further let us also say out
loud that these asylum seekers preach hate and malice for the kufaar (non
Muslims - amongst whom they live) i.e. Christians and Jews in words to the
effect: 'Live among the kufaar but do not make friends with them; live among
the kufaar but do not warm yourselves at their fires; live among the kufaar
but kill them when you can' and other such venomous tripe.
Yet they have no compunction at all living
in Council i.e. virtually free housing; drawing welfare, in many cases fraudulently;
and using the kufaar's National Health Service, heating and all.
Wootton Bassett is a small market town in
the county of Wiltshire in the UK, which is located next to the Royal Air
Force's transport air-base. RAF Lyneham is where aircraft bring the remains
of British servicemen and women killed in Afghanistan, and from where the
coffins are transported to their homes, driven in hearses through Wootton
Bassett's High Street.
It has become the custom that residents and
shopkeepers come out of their homes as the hearses go past, and stand silently
on the High Street alongside the mourning families as a mark of respect to
the dead.
Just the other day came the news that Islam4UK,
'a platform' for the notorious and self-dissolved in 1994 Al-Muhajiroun, and
led by an Anjem Choudary, is soon going to bus in 500 people to Wootton Bassett
to march along the High Street carrying token coffins to mourn the Muslims
who have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan by the UK.
I ask you! Choudary is of Pakistani descent
and was born in the UK and whilst a qualified solicitor was struck off the
rolls in 2002 and now lives on benefits. This is what Wikipedia has to say
about the man: "As the head of Al-Muhajiroun in the UK, on Oct 17, 2000,
Choudary issued a press release which threatened British Jews if they continued
to support Israel."
"The press release said, in part, that
it is an 'Islamic obligation upon Muslims everywhere to support the jihad
against those who fight Muslims anywhere in the world or who occupy Muslim
land'; 'the Quran is explicit in making Israeli aggressors and occupiers legitimate
targets for Muslims wherever they may be,' and that 'if you support Israel
financially, verbally or physically you will become part of the conflict.'"
The very first question that begs an answer
is why Choudary and his band of zealots don't head off for Palestine and join
the jihad?
Regarding the July 7, 2005 bombings in London
which killed 56 and injured over 700 innocent people, many Muslims among them,
he was asked on a BBC interview why he wouldn't condemn the killing of innocents.
His reply: "At the end of the day, when we say innocent people we mean
Muslims. As far as non-Muslims are concerned, they have not accepted Islam.
As far as we are concerned, that is a crime against God."
The second question that comes to mind is
why the brave Mr. Choudary does not make the great leap back to Pakistan and
not live off the handouts of criminals i.e. the British (mainly non-Muslim)
government? What is this penchant for spitting into the faces of those who
give you shelter, please? After all the poison we spew, we still have the
gall to protest when we are profiled? If Mr Choudary must march why does he
not march in his home-town of Ilford?
Incidentally, Omar Bakri Mohammad, a Syrian-born
asylum seeker, once of the Hizbut Tahrir, then founder of Al-Muhajiroun, and
who is now banished to Lebanon was Anjem Choudary's teacher and guide. Bakri
has claimed £250,000 in state benefits ever since seeking asylum in
the UK in 1986. So, go figure!
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, things are as
heretofore; nothing has changed in the one week that you did not read this
space due to Muharram. The presidency is adamant that anti-democratic forces
are out to do the system harm, yet it does nothing to allay the opposition's
fears that it is only buying time and does not intend to do anything about
rationalising the 17th Amendment.
Whilst the prime minister goes about saying
the wholly undemocratic bar on becoming prime minister more than twice will
soon be removed, my friend Farhatullah Babar answers that only parliament
can make constitutional changes.
Whilst he is right, what prevents the presidency
from putting its considerable weight behind the proposed changes to the amendment
to get rid of the offensive articles inserted into the constitution by the
Commando, and before him by the architect of most of our travails, Ziaul Haq?
How else should the government's writ be challenged for it to wake up and
hold out an olive branch to an increasingly upset opposition?
It does no good either, to have the hardliners
of both the PPP and the PML-N at each other's throats. As one has so often
cautioned both the large political parties, if one of them gets 'sorted out'
they both get sorted out.
Let me also say to those who are yearning
for a mid-term election: is this the time for such an exercise, when our country
is fighting for its very life? If it is the delay in doing away with the 17th
Amendment that so upsets you, what guarantees are there that you will win
a two-thirds majority and do it all by yourselves in the next parliament?
In the end, might one beg the indulgence of
my lord the chief justice to take suo motu notice of the newly unearthed Agosta
submarine and the Swedish AWACS scandals? And to order the immediate divulgence
of the agents names involved in both the deals, indeed of the names of agents
of all the defence deals entered into by the country over the past 30 years?
As they say in the vernacular, 'Then milk will become milk, and water will
become water'!
