Robert Lambert, the co-director of the European Muslim Research Center, has continued his support of Global Muslim Brotherhood leaders such as Youssef Qaradawi alleging this time that they have been targeted by Rupert Murdoch’s journalists because they are “active supporters of the Palestinian cause.” According to the opinion piece in Al-Jazeera:
I believe it is especially enlightening to reflect on the damage done to the reputation of Palestinian supporters by News International journalists in a week when David Cameron has been seriously compromised by his close association with the disgraced former editor of the News of the World, Andy Coulson, yet has come under no pressure in parliament for keeping the prominent Palestinian peacemaker Shaykh Ra’id Salah in prison for no good cause. Moreover, it is no coincidence that the handful of British politicians who might once have voiced their concern over Shaykh Salah’s ill-conceived arrest have been silent in the face of the ongoing power of uncritical pro-Israel politics nurtured by Murdoch’s journalists over a long period.As Samira Quraishy observes in an article for Middle East Monitor, this silence has been most conspicuous in the case of leading Liberal Democrats including party leader Nick Clegg, Sarah Teather, Ed Davey and Simon Hughes. Take the case of Sarah Teather – before she became a junior minister to the Murdoch-friendly neo-con cabinet hawk Michael Gove, she was an outspoken supporter of the Palestinians. Not only is her present silence on Shaykh Salah’s plight a tribute to Murdoch’s unbroken grip on government security policy, it is also a slap in the face for the many voters who put a tick in the box next to her name at the last general election in the mistaken belief that she would show consistency of conduct in or out of government.
Read the rest here.
An earlier post featured another opinion piece for Al-Jazeera asserting that Israeli Muslim Brotherhood leader Raed Salah has been “unfairly targeted by British authorities” as a result of the “long standing role of influential pro-Israel, neo-conservative lobby groups in Westminster and Washington.”
Qaradawi, a virulent anti-Semite is often referred to here as the most important leader of the global Muslim Brotherhood, an acknowledgement of his role as the de facto spiritual leader of the movement. In 2004, Qaradawi turned down the offer to lead the Egyptian Brotherhood after the death of the Supreme Guide. Based in Qatar, Sheikh Qaradawi has reportedly amassed substantial wealth through his role as Shari’ah adviser to many important Islamic banks and funds. He is also considered to be the “spiritual guide” for Hamas and his fatwas in support of suicide bombings against Israeli citizens were instrumental in the development of the phenomenon. A recent post has discussed a video compilation of Qaradawi’s extremist statements.
It should be noted that a previous post revealed that the European Muslim Research Centre (EMRC) was launched with funds provided by the U.K. Muslim Brotherhood and that the organization’s advisory board includes members representing the Muslim Council of Britain, a part of the U.K. Muslim Brotherhood, a leading U.K. Muslim Brotherhood organization, and a founder of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Also on the EMRC board is John Esposito, who has at least a dozen past or present affiliations with global Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas organizations.