Following the furore that engulfed the Archbishop of Canterbury on Friday 8th Feb, the media was awash with bulletins, analysis, commentary, interviews and debates about Dr Rowan Williams remarks about Shariah law.

One such interview was broadcast on BBC that day at 9:30 between Asghar Bukhari of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK (MPACUK) and Douglas Murray, Director of the Centre for Social Cohesion. Despite the name of his organisation it soon became apparent that Douglas Murray was less concerned about social cohesion and instead used his airtime for scaremongering about Shariah law as well as an occasional slur against Bukhari.

One of Mr Murray’s comments, which he repeated more than once was that Shariah law gave Women half the rights of Men. This point failed to clarify to the watching viewers that this related to inheritance and that whilst the Woman’s share is indeed half of a Man’s share, the Woman gets to keep 100% of her entitlement whereas the Man is required by the same religious law to provide for others from his share. Therefore reducing what he can keep for himself and placing a duty on him to give to others whilst sparing Women from this burden.

One thing puzzled me though, whilst Mr Murray seemed very articulate and a quick scan of his biography revealed that this was a man who had attended some of the finest educational establishments in the country, I was finding it a little hard to comprehend as to why he would quote this element of Shariah out of context? Clearly he’s not an ignorant man, why then would he do such a thing? He didn’t appear to have an ulterior motive…or did he?

My curiosity led me to the website of the Centre for Social Cohesion I was shocked to see that this wasn't a website about social cohesion at all but one that appeared to be heavily focused on Islam.

An initial observation of the website highlighted an overwhelming focus on news reports linked to Islam and Muslims in the UK i.e. there were reports on honour based violence, “The West Islam and Islamism” and “Hate on the State: How British libraries encourage Islamic extremism”. There were news reports with headlines such as "The Grand Mufti of Canterbury" & "Qaradawi denied entry into the UK", there was a visual of Britannia in a fully clad Burkha (veil), and a recording of a recent debate between Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Ed Hussain on "The West and the future of Islam". The latter was particularly interesting as it featured a debate on Islam with 2 people who hold practically zero credibility with the wider British Muslim Community. It was almost akin to holding a debate about the protection of children's rights with Gary Glitter as the main speaker.

There was one part of the website that caught my attention the most though, it was a tab on the top left of the front page which was very prominent in large font and read "UK Islam A-Z".

Intrigued, I clicked this tab to reveal a treasure trove of links to Muslim groups based in the UK. The list was extremely diverse and featured groups from across the ideological spectrum, here are just a few names;

•     
  Association of Muslim Lawyers    
  British Muslims for Secular Democracy    
  Hizb Ut Tahrir Britain
  Interpal
  The Islamic Foundation    
  Islamic Society of Britain    
  Muslim Council of Britain    
  Muslim Public Affairs Committee - United Kingdom

The list was positioned as a "an easy-to-use resource for journalists, policy-makers and ordinary citizens - both Muslim and non-Muslim - who want to gain a better understanding of Islamic movements in Britain."

Given the debate on BBC was with Asghar Bukhari of MPACUK I wanted to find out more about what the Centre for Social Cohesion thought about them. I myself knew of MPACUK reasonably well through my own research and contact with members of the group.

I clicked onto the MPACUK link and found an extremely detailed 'dossier' which provided an outline of the group, key members (including those who are no longer actually part of MPACUK & 1 person who was never part of the Group) and a brief summary about each of them. I was impressed that they even had the academic background of prominent MPACer Asghar Bukhari! It also stated that Mudassar Ahmed “manages projects” for MPACUK and that he's “responsible for most of the IT output.” In actual fact Mudassar Ahmed hasn’t been part of MPACUK for at least 2 years. Tassadiq Rehman was also listed as a ‘founding member’. Anyone who had watched the Channel 4 documentary ‘Operation Muslim Vote’ would have quickly realised that Rehman was in fact a local activist from Blackburn who had helped MPACUK.

Under the heading "Islam & Violence" it clarified that MPACUK was opposed to violence but stated that "it continues to build alliances with Pro-Palestinian Groups". I found this last statement particularly interesting as placing it under the heading of Islam & Violence implied to readers that Pro-Palestinian groups are connected to violence and that MPACUK are allied with them. I'm sure that the good folks at Pro-Palestinian groups like the Palestine Solidarity Campaign won't be too pleased with the Centre’s subliminal message to its readers.

Another section titled “Support for Palestinian Groups” stated that “MPACUK is a vocal supporter of armed Palestinian group.” Grammatical errors aside this serious allegation failed to provide any name for this group that MPACUK allegedly supports nor was any citation provided to back up this allegation.

Scouring down the dossier I fund the favourite bugbear of all who criticise MPACUK, the allegation of anti-semitism. Unsurprisingly there was a section dedicated to this topic.

The website stated that MPACUK’s basis for claims of anti-semitism were based on ” campaigns to unseat MPs who it believes support Israel or who are Jewish. Of course this was in reference to MPACUK’s campaign to de-seat ex Labour MP for Rochdale Lorna Fitzsimons, which was also featured in the Channel 4 documentary ‘Operation Muslim Vote’. Special attention was drawn to the erroneous claim in a campaign leaflet that Fitzsimmons was Jewish. In fact this part was highlighted in bold to ensure that readers wouldn’t miss it. The leaflet in question was actually produced by the Rochdale Muslim Association sponsored by MPACUK and an apology was issued to Fitzsimmons when the mistake was realised. However there was no mention of the Rochdale Muslim Association and the impression left in readers minds was that MPACUK had produced. Even someone like Richard Littlejohn in his ‘War on Britain’s Jews’ documentary had clarified this point.

Of course no critique of MPACUK would be complete without drawing reference to Asghar Bukhari and his infamous donation to David Irving. This was one of the slurs which Douglas Murray had resorted to during the BBC interview when he found himself being shouted down for misrepresenting the Shariah. The incident in question relates to before MPACUK was founded. Once again this fact was nicely highlighted in bold whilst MPACUK’s description of Bukhari’s action as a “grave mistake” was mentioned a few paragraphs later in regular font, presumable to make it harder to spot for skim readers.

Of all the claims made on this section perhaps the most astonishing was the allegation that members of MPACUK were involved in campaigns of intimidation against politicians e.g. “In the 2001 election campaign, several key members of MPACUK in Ilford, ran a sometimes violent campaign of intimidation against Mike Gapes, a Labour MP who they believed supported Israel.” no prizes for guessing that this point was also highlighted in bold font.

Having read the detailed dossier I took a trip to Wikipedia’s entry about MPACUK and found, as I suspected, that a lot of the ‘facts’ about MPACUK appeared to be lifted straight from Wikipedia. Someone clearly had a productive day cutting & pasting, let’s hope this point is recognised in their next appraisal.

I then referred back to the Centre for Social Cohesion section “UK Islam A-Z” and the message at the beginning of this section, which was mentioned earlier but I’ll repeat;

"an easy-to-use resource for journalists, policy-makers and ordinary citizens - both Muslim and non-Muslim - who want to gain a better understanding of Islamic movements in Britain."

Well if the research on MPACUK is anything to go by it appears that these journalists, policy makers and ordinary citizens would do well to just skip a step and go straight to Wikipedia or those with a thirst for true facts should do the research themselves.

So all in all my conclusion on reading this dossier was that it was positioned to highlight MPACUK’s flaws however it would be wrong not to acknowledge some of the positive messages about MPACUK that were mentioned in the dossier.

But one must ask the question as to whether the positives about MPACUK were included so as to dilute their negative bias which otherwise would have been a bit too blatant?

The fact is that even with the positive messages, the Centre for Social Cohesion has clearly made special efforts in its dossier to smear MPACUK albeit in a subliminal way by breaking up the allegations, both false and those that are factually correct, with some of MPACUK’s highlights like their commitment to Democracy, condemnation of extremist groups and campaign for Mosque reform.

Jumping back to their main website one also wonders why there is a special section giving information about Muslim Groups? Missing from the Centre for Social Cohesion website is an A-Z list of Christian groups, Hindu, groups, Sikh groups, Jewish groups, Buddhist groups, Zoroastrian groups….you get the picture.

On the front page of it’s website the Centre for Social Cohesion has 11 links to news stories or its publications (not counting links to generic stuff like the ‘about us’ section etc), 10 of these are in some way related to Muslims or Islam, that’s 91% of their ‘news’ content. The one unrelated item is about the BNP.

When you read the ‘aims’ section of the website and look at the section that states ‘why the Centre for Social Cohesion was founded?’ you only need to get to line 3 before you read about “the threat from Islamist Terrorists”.

With such a blatant and heavy emphasis on Islam it appears that the name of the group is merely a smokescreen to create the illusion amongst the general populace that this is a group working towards bringing communities together. Although spending just 30 minutes on their website will soon put that crazy thought to bed!

What you actually have in the Centre for Social Cohesion is a group that, at its heart, is Islamophobic. However this is a more subtle blend of Islamophobia than some far right extremist. Like slow poison, the group seeks to impress the general populace with its director’s thoroughbred and well polished image complemented by a professional website which masks the group’s contempt for Islam & Muslims in fancy PDF publications and an attempt at using professional English. The danger of course is that such a strategy is more likely to win over ignorant minds, the question is will people wake up and see the group for what it really is?

Source: thinkingoutoftheblog

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