Pakistani media is reporting that Lord Nazir Ahmed, a member of the U.K. House of Lords, has announced a 10 million pound bounty for the capture of U.S. President Obama and former President George Bush in what he says is solidarity with Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, a Pakistani leader of an Islamic extremest movement subject to a $10 million U.S. bounty in connection with the 2008 Mumbai attacks. According to an Express Tribune report:
In an expression of solidarity with Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) Chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, British parliamentarian of Kashmiri origin Lord Nazir Ahmed has announced a reward for the captor of US President Barack Obama and his predecessor George W Bush. He made the announcement at a reception arranged in his honour by the business community of Haripur on Friday. Former foreign minister Goher Ayub Khan, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl’s (JUI-F) central leader Hafiz Hussain Ahmed and provincial Minister for Education Qazi Muhammad Asad were also present on the occasion. Lord Nazir said that the bounty placed on Saeed was an insult to all Muslims and by doing so President Obama has challenged the dignity of the Muslim Ummah. “If the US can announce a reward of $10 million for the captor of Hafiz Saeed, I can announce a bounty of 10 million pounds on President Obama and his predecessor George Bush,” Lord Nazir said, adding that he would arrange the bounty at any cost even if he was left with the option of selling all his personal assets, including his house. Criticising the bureaucracy in Pakistan for its alleged corruption, he said a number of British investors had been mulling investment in Pakistan but the deep-seated culture of corruption had turned them off.
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. According to the report:
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.