Life On Gilligan’s Island (Part 24)

Like his stablemate, Dan Hannan, Gilligoon likes to take a shot at the BBC every now and again. In today’s blog he claims that the BBC has a “PR offensive on behalf of the ‘hardline’ East London Mosque”. Regular readers will know that when Gilly talks about “hardline Muslims” or the BBC “defending Islamic extremists”, he’s talking out of his arse. Here he quotes Steven Sackur’s interview with Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, who is the chairman of the mosque. Sackur, as media watchers will know, is not a very good interviewer. He has an agenda…just like Gilligoon. Sackur’s recent ideologically-skewed interview with Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is particularly apposite. It is worth mentioning that Sackur was once the BBC’s bureau chief in Jerusalem.

Gilly gives us a taster of his Xmas special

Tomorrow, in my last post before Christmas, just how much the East London Mosque has “streamlined” its vetting processes.

I look forward to it.

Last week, Gilly claimed that the charity Muslim Aid is “linked to fundamentalist Islam”. He offers nothing save for conjecture infused with his own bigotry. He claims that a Charity Commission report “whitewashed” Muslim Aid whom Gilly no doubt wanted to see implicated in some sort of terrorism campaign. He says,

In March this newspaper reported on allegations that the charity Muslim Aid, a close associate of the fundamentalist Islamic Forum of Europe, had channelled funds to eight organisations linked to the terrorist groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Yet, there is no evidence. Though to hear Gilly talk, you’d think that there is a warehouse full of transcripts, recordings and other files that support his contention that Muslim Aid is a conduit that channels money to organizations with names that are objectionable to his eye.

But this is a funny piece. He produces an enormous amount of data which he dumps on to the blog in the hope that this will convince his readers (and his critics) that he has done his homework. But it isn’t good enough. Looking down the list of data, one name stands out. That of Daniel Pipes. Pipes is described by Sourcewatch as the

director of the Middle East Forum, and a columnist for right-wing newspapers. His father is Richard Pipes.

In 2004 Pipes was temporarily appointed by George W. Bush to the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace, but as of January 17, 2005, Bush had “failed to take any action to renominate…”. The “nomination of Pipes, who has made a career out of identifying and denouncing what he sees as radical Muslim penetration of American institutions, was opposed by senators Edward Kennedy, Tom Harkin and Christopher Dodd, all Democrats; Arab and Muslim groups, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee; and Middle East analysts Judith Kipper of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and William Quandt of the University of Virginia.” [1]

Pipes advocates the profiling and internment of American Muslims,

For years, it has been my position that the threat of radical Islam implies an imperative to focus security measures on Muslims. If searching for rapists, one looks only at the male population. Similarly, if searching for Islamists (adherents of radical Islam), one looks at the Muslim population. And so, I was encouraged by a just-released Cornell University opinion survey that finds nearly half the U.S. population agreeing with this proposition. Specifically, 44 percent of Americans believe that government authorities should direct special attention toward Muslims living in the United States, either by registering their whereabouts, profiling them, monitoring their mosques or infiltrating their organizations. That’s the good news; the bad news is the near-universal disapproval of this realism. Leftist and Islamist organizations have so successfully influenced public opinion that polite society shies away from endorsing a focus on Muslims. In the United States, this intimidation results in large part from a revisionist interpretation of the evacuation, relocation and internment of ethnic Japanese during World War II.

He says on the War on Terror (sic),

Pipes has called for a war on Islamic extremism, declaring in one post-September 11, 2001 interview, “What we need to do is inspire fear, not affection.” Pipes also promotes the support of moderate Muslims against militant islamists. He criticizes organizations such as Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) for failing to distinguish between moderate Muslims and islamists when labelling him as ‘islamophobic’.

Away from his pet hate, Gilly turns to his other hate-figure, Ken Livingstone. This blog is a particularly snide piece in which he says, “Ken Livingstone funders deliver their Christmas present”. Gilly is talking about the Boxing Day tube strike by members of ASLEF.  He moans that ASLEF want their members to be paid triple time for working on a public holiday. Most workers expect to be paid extra for working over the holidays but Gilly doesn’t like it. Maybe he wants them to work for the normal hourly rate? He doesn’t say, but that doesn’t stop him from putting the boot in,

Indeed, in all the months of Tube strikes, Ken Livingstone has never once condemned any of the unions. Can this be in any way connected to the fact that Ken’s campaign for mayor is run out of an office in the Euston headquarters of one of the other striking unions, the TSSA?

That’s funny, I’ve never once heard you condemn greed bankers, Gilly. Does that mean you’re on their side? Just to remind us of where Gilly stands on the issue of workers’ rights,

Boris Johnson, business leaders and virtually everyone you can think of have condemned the strike, and all the other – equally ridiculous – disputes mounted by the RMT and TSSA over various non-issues in the last three months.

No one could ever accuse Gilligan of bias. Could they?