Anas Al-Tikriti, a leader of the U.K Muslim Brotherhood has reacted angrily to a suggestion made by a British Muslim commentator that a pro-Ken Livingstone group known as Muslims 4 Ken played a role in the recent defeat of pro-Brotherhood London incumbent mayor Ken Livingstone. Previous posts have discussed efforts by the group, sponsored by the British Muslim Initiative (BMI) led by Al-Tikriti, to tarnish Livingtone’s opponent. One Interesting part of Al-Tikriti’s comments attempts to refute the idea that Muslims 4 Ken was an interjection of religion into U.K. politics:
Most detractors of the various campaigns that work under the Muslim title accuse them of attempting to bring religion into politics, and that no single campaign can possibly claim representation of all Muslims. So it’s fascinating, and a little bemusing, when no such criticism is made of the Christian parties that campaigned for the various elections in England and Wales last week. Also, and in hope that this matter is laid to rest, not a single campaign or organisation that carries the word ‘Muslim’ in its title has ever claimed that it represented all Muslims. Never. The Muslims4Ken campaign was an effort by a number of Muslims, not all Muslims, to support Livingstone’s attempt to win a third term as mayor, and must be seen as an ad hoc civil society movement that aims to engage Muslims in politics rather than leave them marginalised by the political process. What’s wrong with that?There was an Irish for Ken campaign, another with the name Afro-Caribbeans for Ken, and a friend of mine from Hendon informed me that he was working with a group of young Jewish professionals to make sure that their community backed Boris Johnson. So why do numerous commentators, including Muslims like Siddiqui, have such a problem with Muslims4Ken?
However, it should be noted that Al-Tikriti’s named examples, Afro-Americans and Irish for Ken groups, are based on ethnicity not religion and suggest that Al-Tikriti views being Muslim on a par with being African or Irish. This is consistent with the long-standing effort by the global Muslim Brotherhood to foster an Islamic identity devoid of ethic characteristic and built around Saudi/Muslim Brotherhood ideology.
Also interesting were Al-Tikriti’s comments on Egyptian Grand Mufti Sheikh Ali Gomaa:
While Andrew Gilligan and the ES may have become rabidly obsessed with the meeting between Ken and Qaradawi in 2004, it was interesting to see why they chose to omit any mention of a Cambridge University conference at which the Grand Mufti of Egypt, Sheikh Ali Gomaa, spoke. The Tory leader David Cameron praised his words, and the Times described him as the “wise Mufti”. It may have escaped Cameron’s attention that Gomaa espouses identical views on suicide bombings in Palestine and homosexuality as Sheikh Qaradawi, while his views on wife-beating are even more hardline.
It would seem that attacking the Tory opposition trumps what would normally appear as more bad publicity for the U.K. Muslim Brotherhood which has sponsored Sheikh Goma in the past.