In his posting on Reza Aslan's "No god but God" Azumazi gave a link to a
critic of Patrick Sookhdeo who is new to me; the link is here:
http://occri.org.uk/
The organization is the Oxford Cross-Cultural Research Institute, which
seems to be one Shaykh Riyad Nadwi PhD [sic]. (How does one acquire the
title "Shaykh" and how does one attain the status of a Muslim cleric? - is
this person one?)
He takes as his starting point a statement of Sookhdeo's:
' "The Muslim community now inhabits principally the urban centres of
England as well as some parts of Scotland and Wales. It forms a spine
running down the centre of England from Bradford to London, with ribs
extending east and west. It is said that within 10 to 15 years most
British
cities in these areas will have Muslim-majority populations, and will be
under local Islamic political control, with the Muslim community living
under Sharia." (The Spectator, 30 July 2005).'
This is an unexceptional statement of fact, but within a few paragraphs
Nadwi has turned it into this:
' If we are willing to propagate Rev. Sookhdeo's conspiracy theories about
Muslims taking over Britain in ten years time might we not, at least,
consider ...'
Without any argument or evidence Nadwi insinuates (it is far from obvious)
that Sookhdeo wishes to generate hostility between Muslims and
non-Muslims;
he further states that in his remarks about the Muslim populations in UK
urban centres Sookhdeo is guilty of deception:
'It is obvious, apart from the deception aimed at those who are unfamiliar
with the demographic realities of the Muslim population in Britain, that
Rev. Sookhdeo is attempting to exploit the recent tragedies in London to
foment religious and racial tension. This comes as no surprise since we
know
that the Reverend has made a career for himself over the last decade by
peddling 'Israeli-conceived' fallacies and tactics against Islam and
Muslims.'
The final astoni****ng assertion here - unsup****ted by evidence - is that
Sookhdeo is an agent of the Israelis and has made a career for himself in
this capacity.
Nadwi asserts that this alleged fact is evident because, although Sookhdeo
"claims" to have the persecution of Christians as his concern, he doesn't
mention Israeli anti-Christian policies. But no one reads of Christians in
Israel being massacred, having their churches and houses burnt down,
having
their priests executed, and being unable to register themselves as
Christians.
Nadwi takes it as evidence that Sookhdeo is an Israeli agent that he made
the statement
"What disturbs me at the moment is the very deeply rooted anti-Semitism
latent in Britain and the West. I simply hadn't realised how deep within
the
English psyche is this fear of the power and influence of the Jews"
(Melanie
Phillips, The Spectator, 22 March 2002).
It is even found sinister that Sookhdeo's charities, Barnabas Fund, Reg.
Charity No. 1092935 which received £4.2 million in 2002-2003 and The
Barnabas Fund, Reg. Charity No. 271602 which received £2.9 million in
2002,
have substantial funds. Nadwi alleges that the charities
' are used as advocacy vehicles to lobby politicians for what might be the
agenda of a foreign government and yet no one in the Charity Commission
appears to have taken notice. There is no way of knowing what is the true
source of funding of these organisations.'
The lobbying that Nadwi refers to was done to defeat the Religious Hatred
Bill, which would in effect have made criticism of Islam and the
publicising
of Muslim persecution of Christians impossible in the UK. Nadwi fails to
establish that there was any misuse of funds by Sookhdeo. On the other
hand
there is wide-spread concern that Islamic charities are funding terrorist
activity. The source of the Barnabas Fund's resources is the personal
contributions of individual Christians in the UK, the US, and the British
Commonwealth.
Nadwi is so steeped in anti-Semitism that he can allow himself, with some
ambiguity, to hold Judaism responsible for Zionist terrorism:
'Zionist justification for such [Irgun] terrorism was derived in a post
18th
century reformation of Judaism, a Judaism that had departed from the
passive
and traditional interpretations of waiting for the Messiah before
reclaiming
the Holy Land?'
He doesn't seem to know that Zionism was largely a secular, socialistic
and
atheistic movement. The Zionist movement was disapproved of by religious
Jews until Israel came under the threat of another Holocaust from the
Arabs.
Sookhdeo expresses a hope for a Muslim Reformation; Nadwi in an
extraordinary contortion manages to argue against this on the grounds that
the Christian Reformation produced an ant-Semitic Martin Luther and in
turn
Hitler:
'Perhaps the Reverend, who is so keen for Islam to have its own 'Martin
Luther', has not yet read Martin Luther's 'dirty little book' on the Jews,
which provided justification to Hitler for his Final Solution. Luther's
reformation was responsible for promoting anti-Semitism to a level never
before seen in Europe.'
Nadwi's final request is that, since Muslim clerics have condemned the
London bombings, in turn criticism of Islam ('Islamophobic attacks')
should
stop.
Nadwi is clearly an able man, but we find that his intellectual powers
have
been formed in a school of rhetorical performance and sophistry: he's
interested in taqiyya in the interests of Islam, not truth.
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