Dilpazier Aslam leaves Guardian - 5 comments
According to the Guardian news blog:
"Mr Aslam was asked to resign his membership [of Hizb ut-Tahrir] but has chosen not to. The Guardian respects his right to make that decision but has regretfully concluded that it had no option but to terminate Mr Aslam's contract with the company."I bet if he'd been caught pilfering pens he'd have been shown the door more quickly than that. Well, I guess that's all the discussion we're going to get on the subject: no need to review what the guy wrote, to either condemn the implications he drew, or to defend his right to tell his own story despite a furious blog backlash. Just treat it as a slip-up in Human Resources.
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5 comments so far...
I've just read the article by Dilpazier that was printed in the Guardian. It opens with this.
"I think what happened in London was a sad day and not the way to express your political anger."
Yes he writes about genuine anger and supports Muslim opposition to British policy. This guy's views are less extreme than John Pilger, are we to hound him out of his job too. Dilpazier has just been sacked by the Guardian over this. There is far worse than this printed daily in the mainstream press supporting the views of the BNP. Now I would like to see that stopped!
This is a prime example of a panic, ill thought out reaction. The kind we are warning the government not to do with more authoritarian laws.
Though it's fine for people to change and adapt their views, weight of evidence suggests DA is associated with some pretty dodgy stroke outrageous and indefensible organisations:
http://dailyablution.blogs.com/the_daily_ablution/2005/07/sassy_suicide_b.html
If the Guardian employed him in ignorance of his background, and gave extremist organisations a mouthpiece, that would be dangerous and negligent. I probably wasn't explicit in my post (though I had it in mind to say): just sacking a journalist is hardly an adequate response. It chucks someone on the scrapheap while failing to acknowledge the seriousness of the issue. I don't really see this as a 'panic' - if DA was really active in the organisation mentioned he'd be lucky to be at liberty - it's about whether the Guardian is taking a morally sound line, giving equal weight to differing views, and taking care over who they employ. It's not as if the Daily Mail are baying for DA's blood - we'd be right to resist that.
This the organisation that DA has openly admitted he belongs to;
Hizb ut-Tahrir
It is a non-violent legal organisation that has no links to terrorism and no terrorist has ever been a member of.
Yes, it has extreme irrational views. It wants the unification of all Muslims into one state- the Caliphate under Sharia law. There are many such groups of all religions.
There are far worse organisations than this, arguably the BNP, Jehovah's Witnesses, countless scientology cults etc etc.
Also, banning such organisations and ostracising its members is likely to make them even more extreme.
Sharia Law unfortunately is the belief of all Muslims. We all know about it's stoning of homosexuals law etc.
If we are going to ban organisations like Hizb ut Tahrir, we might as well ban Islam and the Koran because there is just as extreme views there.
All Muslims will openly tell you that homosexuality is immoral and that the Koran condones their stoning. The more Westernised moderate Muslims i.e. the majority in this country, will shuffle embarrassingly and mutter that it is outdated or only applies in extreme circumstances (whatever that means) but they believe it non the less. I could go on...
But the point I'm making, is we on the Left shouldn't be taking our cue from right wing papers like the Times, Telegraph etc.
We are as ignorant of fundamentalist Islam as we were of the IRA and the Irish situation 20 years ago. It took the IRA twenty years to realise that blowing up innocent people was getting them nowhere. Only when the IRA started targeting the political establishment (e.g. the Brighton bomb) did the establishment start talks. Lets hope we havn't got that long to wait this time.
More than ever this is the time for us to keep an open mind and not join the misguided rightwing hysteria bandwagon.
Can't agree with that. It'd take a lot for me to start reading the Telegraph or tattoo Union Jacks on my arm, but it wouldn't be even 1% of the journey to accepting a religious world government and the elimination of Jews and Christians.
Really, the BNP are a pathetic bunch of misfits, loners, and psychos, under the semi-leadership of some other misfits, loners, and psychos, who just happen to wear suits. They can hardly be mentioned in the same breath as organisations that use suicide bombing and aim to destroy anything we'd even remotely recognise as society.
Don't know about "ignorant of the Irish situation 20 years ago." - that was a "learning process", was it? I'd like to know what points they've convinced us of in that time. Surely the relevant terrorist groups are gradually realising that the "political route" of violence has failed, and that they should go back to the tried and tested extortion and thuggery.
I wasn't comparing the BNP to suicide bombers, I was comparing them to Hizb ut Tahrir. They are not suicide bombers. Obviously if they were supporting that I would be asking for them to be put in jail.
What we have learned about Northern Ireland is the awful treatment of Catholics there, something that wasn't acknowledged (or cared about) when the IRA started their bombings.
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