A question of money

A big Shalom to Judge Richard Goldstone, author of the report on Gaza war crimes, for his impartial report and courage to tell us the truth as it is. He is not a politician, war crimes are just that. According to him (and international law) war crimes must always be investigated and perpetrators prosecuted, not just when it’s politically convenient – as in Sudan.

His latest intervention is so simple it is brilliant. Finally someone prominent, and not a Muslim, has said what we all knew, all the time. Judge Goldstone’s blunt rebuttal of the Israeli stance that the report will ‘harm the peace process’ is admirable:

“It’s a shallow, utterly false allegation… What peace process are they talking about? There isn’t one. The Israeli foreign minister doesn’t want one”.

Now compare this to Mahmoud Abbas, the saviour of Palestinians. He still believes that somehow Israel will give him a Palestinian state – if only he compromised a bit more. He is very optimistic of this and hence is helping the Israeli occupation force with security in the West Bank. He is a very cheerful fellow, when he looks out of his window he sees flying pigs – which always brings a smile to his face.

In the UK, Muslims have their saviour in the guise of Ed Husain. In the face of the real terrorist threat from extremist Muslims, he said that it was morally right for the state to spy on Muslims. Not just Muslims suspected of terrorist sympathies, but as many Muslims as possible.

The Prevent programme is, as we suspected all along, a mass intelligence gathering operation. In the guise of diverting people away from extremism the government paid Muslim organisations and local councils to effectively profile and spy on innocent law abiding people.

Instead of condemning this, Ed on behalf of the Quilliam Foundation has said that this was an acceptable thing to do, and the morally right thing to do. Everyone else is naturally horrified that such an authoritarian and police state strategy could be employed in a modern democracy. Even the government denies this allegation, because such an admission and resulting scandal would be unthinkable.

But maybe Eddy in his wisdom knows something that the rest of the country doesn’t? Or could it be the £700,000 Prevent money his organisation received from the government that is doing the talking? It is of course all a question of money, money talks. Just as Mahmoud Abbas trusts his paymasters (US and EU), our Eddy trusts the government, even if they do something wrong and illegal.

As in many western marriages, there’s three people in this marriage: Ed, the government and Maajid Nawaz, Quilliam Director. Maajid realised that even by their own standards Eddy sounded a proper stooge and his stance is unsustainable, so he decided to play the good cop and issued a press release to ‘clarify their position’.

Naturally, they have now had to state:

1) That in fact they do not support ‘mass spying’ or a ‘police state’. They also apparently condemn any efforts to spy on innocent Muslim using the Prevent programme. This is called a U turn Eddy.

2) They advise anyone working with Prevent to report Islamic extremists to the authorities. That’s very nice of them.

3) That it’s morally right to report suspicious behaviour to the authorities to investigate. Thanks for the pearls of wisdom, maybe they can also advise us to eat if we’re hungry or move out of the way if a car comes to run us over?

But the final point really takes the biscuit. If we have any evidence that Prevent is conducting a mass spying operation, we should take it to them. And the crème de la crème, they will investigate and seek to hold the government to account!

I may be stupid, but I thought if people had evidence of mass spying (etc), they would contact a human rights group like Liberty. They would seek to clarify the law on this and maybe campaign for an inquiry into this.

Why would ‘ordinary people’ contact a ‘counter-terrorism think tank’ to report suspicions about a programme under which they received £700,000 – a huge sum of money by any standards? How can they investigate concerns about disguised mass spying, when their Director said that such activities can be morally justified? And how do they think, and who are they, to hold the government to account? How can they hold their paymasters to account?

In conclusion there is a fundamental principle here, in order to remain neutral and credible – an organisation cannot take money from the body that it is supposed to hold accountable. As is said of the BBC Trust, an organisation cannot be the cheerleader and regulator at the same time.

That is why with I think it was a disastrous policy of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) to receive government grants. MCB was primarily founded to advocate on behalf of Muslims.

To be fair, MCB only received grants for specific projects and not core funding. However, the actual receipt of government money undermined its credibility and left it open to criticism.

Yes, Muslims are the poorest in society, but some of them are also the richest in society. Muslim organisations, especially advocacy bodies like MCB (and others) must be funded by Muslims and not rely on grants. Individuals Muslims are also at fault here. They are quick to complain about being government-funded, yet reluctant to donate money to projects like the MCB. We cannot have it both ways.

When Muslims can self-finance such bodies, only then we can isolate the stooges who receive government grants to tell us obvious lies and promote government policies. Financial independence is empowerment.