A Peer of the Realm
"Once, many years ago I spoiled an otherwise-good Friday sermon at the Salafi Al-Tawhid mosque in London about unethical economic practices by implying that Jews were over-represented in the global banking system. I am ashamed of that racist allusion, and unreservedly apologise for it. (Regrettably, I had imbibed ubiquitous antisemitism during two decades as a radical activist in fundamentalist Islamist circles: I had read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a child, naively assuming it to be authentic, since thousands of copies of this fabricated text were distributed by Saudi-funded organisations in the UK in the 1980s.)
Only one member of the 1,000-strong congregation had the decency to admonish me about that flaw in my sermon, via my father: I duly took the advice, and participated in interfaith dialogue in earnest from 2002 onwards, an endeavour that assisted my own journey away from Islamist extremism. A decade later, I am patron of two separate charities devoted to peace-building between Israelis and Palestinians."
Usama Hasan, The Guardian
One mustn't say what one believes, in the interests of party solidarity. One might think that the estimable, and problem-prone mouth of Lord Nazir Ahmed might by this time be accustomed to the dignity of his position in the British House of Lords and have the good grace to keep contentious and controversially libellous statements from reaching the public, but no.
It would appear from a character testimonial freely given from a one-time Muslim anti-Semite turned Muslim-Jew conciliator that he was himself once, as a youngster, having been overheard to make a racist remark he attributed largely to his exposure as a child to anti-Semitic tracts familiarly handed out within the Muslim community, was admonished by Lord Ahmed within a mosque, on his anti-Semitic statement.
In the decades that followed, leading the duly contrite young man to mend his ways and become an effectively dedicated advocate for inter-religious relations in Great Britain, something clearly adversarial to continued adherence to pluralism and acceptance must have occurred to convert Lord Ahmed from tolerance toward belligerent anti-Semitism.
If one is to accept the narrative of the man's once-balanced view of humanity.
Presumably, when the now 55-year-old Nazir Ahmed, born in Pakistan, and a wealthy property developer in Britain, was nominated to a life-peerage by then-Prime Minister Tony Blair, his tendency was toward the civil and moral decency of racial and religious tolerance. Between 1998 and the present, the man's view on the Jewish presence within society clearly became miserably unhinged.
He is alleged to have claimed, in an Urdu-language television interview in Pakistan, that: “My case became more critical because I went to Gaza to support Palestinians. My Jewish friends who own newspapers and TV channels opposed this.” His explanation for the prison sentence meted out to him for dangerous driving and his undignified incarceration as a result, in 2009.
He had been sending text messages just before his car was involved in a fatal crash. Better to claim the malevolent and underhanded interference of Jews being responsible for justice catching up to a criminal charge than to one's own level of responsibility as the only major issue involved. His intolerable 12-week prison sentence was entirely the fault of Jewish-owned media as far as he is concerned.
The situation is regrettable, the country's Labour Party has disowned any connection whatever to the distasteful conduct of Lord Ahmed, and perish the thought that anyone else in the Labour Party might hold such despicably anti-Semitic views.
Membership ... suspended!
Labels: Anti-Semitism, Britain, Judaism, Justice, News Media, Social-Cultural Deviations
posted by Pieface @ Saturday, March 16, 2013
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