U.K. Jewish media is reporting that Lord Nazir Ahmed has cancelled his plans to host far-right extremist groups at the House of Lords this week. According to a Jewish Chronicle report:
Lord Ahmed The controversial peer Lord Ahmed has cancelled plans to host members of an extreme right-wing group at the House of Lords this week. Lord Ahmed, currently suspended from the Labour Party for allegedly offering a ‘bounty’ for the assassination of US President Obama, was due to chair a meeting at the Lords on restoring diplomatic relations with Iran. He said he had not been informed about the background of the participants. According to anti-fascist campaigners Searchlight, the event organiser was Ministry of Peace founder Dr James Thring, an anti-Zionist activist who has been vocally supported by former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke. A regular guest on Press TV and a supporter of former Libyan leader Colonel Gadaffi, he has previously described Israel, on the website Jailing Opinions, as ‘an illegal, criminal, psychopathic, belligerent, apartheid entity.’ Others invited included Alexander Baron, a member of the extremist New Right, who runs a website aimed at ‘exposing Zionist… misinformation on the Holocaust’, which he believes has been ‘greatly exaggerated’, and Aharon Cohen, from the anti-Zionist, strictly Orthodox Neturei Karta, who attended a meeting of the New Right last week. Lord Ahmed insisted that the arranged meeting had been an error, and that he had only learned about the background of the participants after the JC contacted the Labour Party. ‘I was asked by James from the Ministry of Peace to talk about a possible attack on Iran and I had agreed to host the meeting, but was not involved with its organisation. When I found out that these people were involved and invited, I cancelled it. ‘I have no intention of supporting anyone who is a Holocaust denier, who is anti-Jewish or anti-religion. I have no time for them, I would not invite anyone who would cause harm to Jews. ‘I have a difference of opinion over Israel and Palestine, but I believe theologically I have more in common with the Jewish faith that I have with some of my Muslim friends.’ Jonathan Arkush, vice-president of the Board of Deputies, said: ‘Lord Ahmed was either naïve or ill-advised to contemplate a meeting with people on the far right and Holocaust deniers.’”
An April post reported that the U.K. Labour Party had suspended Lord Nazir Ahmed following other reports that he offered a £10 million bounty for the capture of President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush. According to another Pakistani media report, cited and translated by MEMRI, Lord Ahmed also recently claimed the U.S. is planning an attack on Iran to divert attention from the country’s financial situation and called on the Muslim world to “united against the attacking powers.”
The Jerusalem Post has reported on some of the Islamist connections and anti-Semitic activities of Lord Nazir Ahmed, who became the United Kingdom’s first Muslim life peer in 1998.:
Previously, Ahmed used his influence to introduce the lord high chancellor to Sheikh Suhaib Hasan to discuss introducing Islamic divorce laws into the UK, the think tank said. In a 2008 documentary, Hasan said, “Even though cutting off the hands and feet, or flogging the drunkard and fornicator, seem to be very abhorrent, once they are implemented, they become a deterrent for the whole society. This is why in Saudi Arabia, for example, where these measures are implemented, the crime rate is very, very, low.” According to the British current affairs magazine Spectator, Ahmed recently threatened to mobilize 10,000 Muslims to prevent the House of Lords from screening Fitna, a short film by Dutch politician Geert Wilders that claims that Islam sanctions terrorism. He also threatened to take the organizer of the event to court. He called the decision not to screen the film a victory for the Muslim community. In 2005, Ahmed hosted a book launch in the House of Lords for a writer who frequently uses anti-Semitic stereotypes in his work. Russian-born Israel Shamir claimed the blood libels against the Jews were in fact true and that all political parties were Zionist-infiltrated. Shamir is a citizen of Sweden, where his legal name is Adam Ermash. In an interview on Press TV, an Iranian satellite channel, during Operation Cast Lead, Ahmed said that Jewish student groups actively recruited for the IDF, and that British Jews who fight in the IDF should be arrested and, if necessary, charged with war crimes.
Lord Ahmed has a number of connections to the global Muslim Brotherhood. For example, he is listed as a member of the Advisory Board of the Association of Muslim Social Scientists UK (AMSSUK), the U.K. branch of the American organization by the same name which is headquartered at the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), a part of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood. The AMSS was founded in 1972 as an outgrowth of the Muslim Student Association by important members of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood including Jamal Barzinji, currently a leader of IIIT, and the late Ismail Faruqi, a pivotal figure in the “Islamization of Knowledge” project. AMSS has sponsored annual conferences and publishes a journal entitled American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (AJISS) in conjunction with IIIT which plays host to the AMSS. The AMSSUK Advisory Board includes other individuals tied to the global Brotherhood including:
- Mustafa Ceric (Grand Mufti of Bosnia)
- Charles Butterworth (University of Maryland)
- Khurshid Ahmed Pakistani (Jamaat-d-Islami)
- Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens)
In October 2011, a post reported that US Special Envoy to the Organisation of Islamic Conference Rashad Hussain, together with representatives of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood, were invited to speak at a U.K. event hosted by Lord Nazir Ahmed. An earlier post discussed Lord Ahmed’s participation in a British Muslim delegation that was expected to deliver a “letter of thanks” to the Turkish Embassy in London expressing gratitude over Turkish Prime MInister Erdogan’s remarks strongly criticizing Israeli actions in Gaza that were made at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The Jerusalem Post report indicates that Lord Ahmed was the leader of the delegation.