The UK Daily Telegraph has published an article detailing the Global Muslim Brotherhood and extremist ties of two UK organization ostensibly organized to foster British Muslims involvement and voting in this year’s general election. According to the report:
At first glance, it looks admirable: two closely connected campaigns, called YouElect and Mend (Muslim Engagement and Development), to get British Muslims involved and voting in this year’s general election.
Mend says it is ‘creating and supporting an environment in which British Muslims can confidently and critically engage in politics’. One of YouElect’s leaders, Jamil Rashid, told the Islam Channel: ‘We’re all part of this society, so I think it’s extremely important that Muslims stand up and be counted.’ Who could disagree? That, no doubt, is why the Electoral Commission has made Mend an ‘official partner’ in registering Muslim voters for the coming campaign; why at least 10 Labour and Tory MPs joined the launch of Mend’s ‘Muslim manifesto’ in the Commons earlier this month; and why even Lynton Crosby, the Conservative campaign director, addressed a Mend fringe meeting at last year’s Tory conference.
Mend also holds events with police chiefs, gets funding from the EU and is a ‘key partner’ in the Hacked Off campaign for state-backed controls on the press. The truth, however, is that these distinguished bodies and people have been conned. Both Mend and YouElect are clever fronts to win political access and influence for Islamists holding extreme and anti-democratic views.
When not giving reassuring interviews, Mr Rashid is a director of the London-based Muslim Research and Development Foundation, the think tank of one of Britain’s most notorious hate preachers, Haitham al-Haddad, an extremist cleric and Sharia judge from east London. Haddad describes democracy as ‘filthy’, regards music as a ‘prohibited and fake message of love and peace’, states that Jews and Christians are the ‘enemies of Allah’ who will ‘all go to hellfire’ and advises Muslims not to ‘integrate?…?as simple as that’.”
Read the rest here.
The Telegraph report goes on to identify Ismail Patel as the director of YouElect. Mr Patel is the head of the UK-based Friends of Al-Aqsa, described in an Israeli intelligence report as a pro-Hamas British organization based in Leicester which advocates Israel’s elimination.
The Telegraph report also identifies Azad Ali as one of the Mend officials and described him as follows:
Azad Ali, the group’s head of community development and engagement, who has written of his “love” for Anwar al-Awlaki, the al-Qaeda recruiter; said that the Mumbai attacks were “not terrorism”; justified the killing of British troops and stated that “democracy, if it means at the expense of not implementing the Sharia, of course nobody agrees with that”.
The Telegraph also noted that Mr Ali’s “day job” is as a community affairs co-ordinator for the Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE), essentially the European wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami, the Southeast Asian Islamist political party close to the Global Muslim Brotherhood, and with its own history of extremism. In February 2010, the GMBDW reported that Mr. Ali was featured at a “Progressive London Conference” where two British cabinet ministers were also in attendance.
However, the Telegraph article fails to mention Shenaz Bunglawala, the Mend head of Research who is likely the sister of Inayat Bunglawala, the media secretary for the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) a UK umbrella group that has been dominated by the Jaamat-I-Islami and usually acts in concert with the Global Muslim Brotherhood. In December 2010 the GMBDW reported that the website of Engage, identified by The Telegraph as the precursor group for Mend, was registered to Inayat Bunglawala. A 2005 UK media report described Mr. Bunglawala’s history of extremist statements as follows:
Inayat Bunglawala, 36, the media secretary for the Muslim Council of Britain, is understood to have been selected as one of seven “conveners” for a Home Office task force with responsibilities for tackling extremism among young Muslims, despite a history of anti-Semitic statements. Mr Bunglawala’s past comments include the allegation that the British media was “Zionist-controlled”. Writing for a Muslim youth magazine in 1992, he said: “The chairman of Carlton Communications is Michael Green of the Tribe of Judah. He has joined an elite club whose members include fellow Jews Michael Grade [then the chief executive of Channel 4 and now BBC chairman]and Alan Yentob [BBC2 controller and friend of Salman Rushdie].” The three are reported to be “close friends… so that’s what they mean by a ‘free media’.” In January 1993, Mr Bunglawala wrote a letter to Private Eye, the satirical magazine, in which he called the blind Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman “courageous” – just a month before he bombed the World Trade Center in New York. After Rahman’s arrest in July that year, Mr Bunglawala said that it was probably only because of his “calling on Muslims to fulfil their duty to Allah and to fight against oppression and oppressors everywhere”. Five months before 9/11, Mr Bunglawala also circulated writings of Osama bin Laden, who he regarded as a “freedom fighter”, to hundreds of Muslims in Britain.