Mehdi Hasan: Please don’t listen to Anjem Choudary

Mehdi Hasan, if you remember, is  a raving Muselmaniac who, according to  the far left  Harry’s Place website, engages in vitriolic speech and makes  ”foam-flecked denunciation of atheists and “disbelievers”- .  Among other rants, Mehdi Hasan also  calls atheists and disbelievers “cattle” and “of no intelligence”. Please note that this Mehdi Hasan is a Koranimal who engages in sly jihad,  stealth jihad, to be brought upon us by infiltration, subversion and outbreeding.

Mehdi Hasan takes issue with Chaudary’s  loud mouthed,  aggressive style of jihad, which could wake up too many infidels from their self-induced multicultural slumber before the soldiers of Allah are ready to charge, with full weaponry, as commanded by Koran & sunnah.  Mehdi wants you to go back to sleep.

Really, there is nothing to worry about: He, Mehdi Hasan, is a moderate. Chaudary is  a “radical” who needs to be kept out of the “sensationalist and irresponsible media”- we really don’t want to wake up any sleeping dogs now, do we?

Mehdi Hasan/The Guardian (for Muslims)

First, he announced his plan to march through Wootton Bassett, in Wiltshire, carrying 500 coffins to symbolise the thousands of Muslims killed “by the oppressive US and UK regimes” in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, he is sending letters to the grieving families of fallen British soldiers, telling them he has “no sympathy whatsoever” for their plight, urging them instead to become Muslims to “save” themselves “from the hellfire”.

Is there anything Anjem “Andy” Choudary won’t do for the sake of a cheap headline? As Inayat Bunglawala wrote on Cif almost a year ago, Choudary and his gang deploy “a simple formula – hold up some offensive placards designed to get people’s backs up and call a local reporter to come along and capture some footage – that has reliably generated acres of media coverage for them in recent years”.

Our sensationalist and irresponsible media has, in fact, been deeply complicit in the rise and rise of this fanatic, devoting quite disproportionate and counter-productive coverage to his various rantings. Is Choudary an Islamic scholar whose views merit attention or consideration? No. Has he studied under leading Islamic scholars? Nope. Does he have any Islamic qualifications or credentials? None whatsoever. So what gives him the right to pontificate on Islam, British Muslims or “the hellfire”? Or proclaim himself a “sharia judge”? Will he even manage to round up enough misfits to carry the 500 coffins with him? I doubt it – Choudary and co couldn’t even persuade enough people to join a “march for sharia” that they had proudly planned to hold in central London in late October, and, at the very last minute, had tohumiliatingly withdraw from their own rally. Pathetic, eh?

The fact is that Choudary is as unrepresentative of British Muslim opinion, as he is of British anti-war opinion. Compare the Islam4UK leader with Prestwick protester Marcus Armstrong. The latter went to prison in protest over the British government’s alleged collusion in Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon in 2006; the former lives safe and sound in a £350,000 house in east London, a recipient of benefits from the same state he so reviles and repudiates.

And here’s a question for Choudary: of the 1,013 civilian deaths in Afghanistan between January and June 2009, recorded by the United Nations, 595 were attributed to “anti-government elements” and 310 to Nato and government forces. So will he and his odious chums have the guts to fly out to Afghanistan and march through the streets of Kabul and Kandahar, carrying coffins symbolising the innocent Afghans killed by the Taliban and al-Qaida? If he agrees to do so, I’ll pay for his airfare myself.

Choudary’s preposterous and self-serving antics aside, the endless stream of coffins arriving in Wootton Bassett raises awkward questions for supporters of the British military presence in Afghanistan. How many more British troops have to die in the killing fields of Helmand, on behalf of a corrupt regime in Kabul? How many more Afghan civilians will Nato forces kill, in their bloody and unending counter-insurgency war with the Taliban? And will we see more British soldiers in 2010 like Corporal Joe Glenton, who is facing up to 10 years in jail for refusing to serve in Afghanistan despite being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder?

The recent decision by the prosecutor of the international criminal court, Luis Moreno Ocampo, to conduct “preliminary examinations” into alleged war crimes committed by Nato forces – including, presumably, British forces — in Afghanistan suggests these questions won’t be going away anytime soon.

Tagged as: anjem chaudary, Mehdi Hasan