Deputy-director of the 'Centre for Social Cohesion' now runs research at Quilliam

[dr_musab]

Deputy-director of the 'Centre for Social Cohesion' now Senior researcher at Quilliam Foundation

James Brandon, was previously the deputy-director of the notoriously anti-Islamic "Centre for Social Cohesion". Now works for the equally notorious right-wing anti-Shariah secularist sell-outs of the Quilliam Foundation:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/james-brandon

Look what they said about MPAC:

Think tank: Muslim group spokesman praised terror: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satelli...cle%2FShowFull

Anthony Glees and Centre For Social Cohesion at it again:" http://mpacuk.org/content/view/4850/102/

See the centre for social cohesion's press release against MPAC: http://www.socialcohesion.co.uk/files/1230051171_1.pdf
and :
http://www.socialcohesion.co.uk/blog/2007/05/enough-and-mpac.html

See Other criticism of the centre for social cohesion:

Social Cohesion: Except Muslims: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf.../religion.race

See this article against the Centre by The Institue of Race Relations:

How are thinktanks shaping the political agenda on Muslims in Britain? : http://www.irr.org.uk/2008/september/ak000003.html

"The focus on campuses was repeated in a 2008 report by the Centre for Social Cohesion (CSC). Islam on Campus by John Thorne and Hannah Stuart claimed that involvement in university Islamic Societies tends to encourage extremism.[18] In response, Wes Streeting, president of the National Union of Students, argued that the survey on which the report was based asked Muslim students 'vague and misleading questions, and their answers were then misinterpreted'.[19] The CSC is a project of the right-wing thinktank Civitas, which before 7/7 published a number of reports describing immigration as damaging to British life. Since the CSC was established in 2007, it has focused on what it regards as the threat to cohesion represented by British Muslim communities. Its neoconservative director Douglas Murray has stated that 'conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board' and has called for a bar on immigration from Muslim countries.[20] The CSC's reports reflect this agenda."

Douglas Murray is the director of the centre for social cohesion, and in his speech 'What are we to do about Islam?', speech to the Racist Pim Fortuyn Memorial Conference on Europe and Islam, The Hague, February 2006, he said conditions for all muslims should be made harder.

n 2005 he published a defence of neoconservatism, Neoconservatism: Why We Need It. He was dubbed as "the right's answer to Michael Moore"

SO WHY THE QUILLIAM FOUNDATION EMPLOY DOUGLAS MURRAY'S DEPUTY DIRECTOR FROM THE CENTRE FOR SOCIAL COHESION?

AND WHY DO THEY MOAN THAT THEY KEEP GETTING ACCUSED OF BEING BACKED BY NEO-CONS AND ZIONISTS?

[Ali Abdullah]

Use of the words 'social cohesion' is a big joke! The CSC is the exact opposite! Will he bring the CSC way of doing things to QF?

[Saracen]

wow they just sink deeper and deeper into the crap

The question of credibility doesnt occur to them

It is quite clearly an anti-muslims set up to demonise muslims and make them rich

[Ali Abdullah]

Makes you wonder who actually does work for QF and what they do. I can't find Brandon's name on the QF site. All it says is "The Quilliam Foundation is co-directed by Maajid Nawaz and Ed Husain."

http://www.quilliamfoundation.org/people.html

On post 2 of this thread

http://forum.mpacuk.org/showthread.php?t=40057

I highlighted a job advert for 'Pakistan Project Officer, Quilliam Foundation.'

The person arranging it is one Andrew Dobbie. (andrew.dobbie@quilliamfoundation.org)

What does he do at QF?

In post 1 I reproduced this paragraph from Ed's Cif piece:

"For months, our detractors have accused us of receiving tens of millions of taxpayers' money. In reality, we have received £514,000 for this and last year from the Home Office; and £139,000 from the Foreign Office for the work we do in countering extremism in Muslim-majority countries. Much of this is used to support 18 full-time staff across three continents to tackle radicalisation."

What do they do? Across 3 continents too!

There is a lot more to the Quilliam Foundation than meets the eye!

[Kobayashi Maru]

I was ambivalent to Quilliam, but am now very suspicious. And here are my reasons why:

1. Government funding, which i personally don't agree with, especially when you are in the anti terror field
2. Why did they own up to it? Something must have forced them too
3. The mixed messages coming from QF about Israel, ed saying something bad about Israel, an Maajid and others saying bad stuff about Palestinians
4. A zionist (islamophobe) is head of their research

I'm sure there are many other things too, but thats may reason.

All of this is just breading a climate of suspicion.

[Illuminate]

Originally Posted by Kobayashi Maru

I was ambivalent to Quilliam, but am now very suspicious. And here are my reasons why:

1. Government funding, which i personally don't agree with, especially when you are in the anti terror field
2. Why did they own up to it? Something must have forced them too
3. The mixed messages coming from QF about Israel, ed saying something bad about Israel, an Maajid and others saying bad stuff about Palestinians
4. A zionist (islamophobe) is head of their research

I'm sure there are many other things too, but thats may reason.

All of this is just breading a climate of suspicion.

it is mullah blears - (or should that be grand mufti of the UK hazel blears) orchestrating QF...

[Ali Abdullah]

Originally Posted by Illuminate

it is mullah blears - (or should that be grand mufti of the UK hazel blears) orchestrating QF...

I would not be at all surprised. QF does appear to be run like a part of the Civil Service.

[Flari]

Salaams

Dr Musab, what did he say wrong in this piece? he is attacking Douglas Murray and not supporting him. Please read before commenting next time:

Reining in the preachers of hate
Commentators who rail against Islam risk producing terrorists of their own. The right must speak out against its own extremists

James Brandon guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 13 January 2009 10.30 GMT Article historyHazel Blears spoke about the need to tackle non-violent extremism in Britain's Muslim community in December. She was correct to do so. The government and British Muslim communities need to work together to tackle not only those who directly advocate violence but also those who spread the intolerant ideologies that make such terrorism possible. However, the right must also confront its own non-violent extremists. Just as many Islamists see non-Muslims as an immoral and brutish mob, so many leading figures on the right have routinely demonised Muslims collectively, portrayed the most reactionary interpretations of Islam as being typical and depicted Muslims as a faceless, monolithic bloc whose very existence threatens the foundations of western society.

The most prominent of the right's "non-violent extremists" is Mark Steyn, formerly a regular writer for the Telegraph and the Spectator. In his book America Alone, he compared Muslim immigration with an invasion, writing that "a fearless Muslim advance has penetrated far deeper into Europe than Abd al-Rahman" and dispensing entirely with an Islam/Islamism distinction to write that "the religion [of Islam] itself is a political project – and in fact an imperial project". For Steyn, the consequences of this are clear: a European Union that "will be well on its way to majority Muslim by 2035". In summer 2008, Steyn spoke at a conference on "libel tourism", organised by Douglas Murray (of whom more later), where he launched a fantastical diatribe against Muslims in which he compared himself with the heroes of the B-movie Tremors who are pursued by giant carnivorous worms. In the audience were journalists, professional lobbyists, politicians and other key opinion formers. Alarmingly, many were laughing at his "jokes".

Another of the right's prominent rabble-rousers is Melanie Phillips, a writer for the Daily Mail and the Spectator. Although Phillips generally manages to differentiate Muslims from Islamists, this is usually obscured by her increasingly crazed rhetoric. For example, in one article she wrote of "the steadily rising number of Muslims coming to settle in Britain who, refusing to assimilate, are steadily changing its demographic, cultural, and political identities". Elsewhere in the article, she warned of the "steady Islamisation of British public space", telling her readers that a "war of Islamic conquest is being waged against the west". Her paranoia knows few bounds. On one occasion, she predicted that Scotland's 40,000 Muslims (less than 1% of the population) could create a "Caledonian Caliphate" that would amount to an "Islamised country on England's border". More recently, she has begun labouring under the delusion that any Muslims who do not unequivocally support Israel are closet anti-western Islamists.

Other icons of the right have similarly attacked Muslims collectively, dangerously blurring the lines between Muslims, Islam and Islamism. Rod Liddle, for example, wrote that "Islam is largely to blame for the viciousness which is periodically unleashed upon us all in the form of bombings – that it is the credo, rather than the individual, which is principally to blame". On another occasion, he said that "Islam is masochistic, homophobic and a totalitarian regime. It is a fascistic, bigoted and medieval religion." If he is right, where does that leave those who believe that Islam can be a liberal, tolerant faith? Do they have any chance of succeeding? Or are they doomed to failure?

Finally, there is, of course, Douglas Murray, "Britain's only neoconservative", who has often failed to distinguish Islam from Islamism. In just one speech, for example, Murray referred to the "violence, intimidation and thuggery of Islam" and "the problem of Islam". Like Steyn, Murray has also represented Muslims as a collective threat, referring ominously to the "demographic time-bomb which will soon see a number of our largest cities fall to Muslim majorities". He concluded that "conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board" – a phrase that could easily be interpreted as a call for the collective punishment of Muslims.

At this point I must add that until recently I worked with Murray at his Centre for Social Cohesion, which I joined because, in mid-2007, few other thinktanks were willing to seriously address the problem of Islamism at all. My time there was a constant struggle to "de-radicalise" Murray and to ensure that the centre's output targeted only Islamists – and not Muslims as a whole. This October, however, I had finally had enough of this constant battle and resigned. To his credit, Murray has privately retracted many of his more noxious comments – but he apparently lacks the courage to do so publicly.

There is more than political correctness at stake here. Failure to distinguish adequately between Islam and Islamism, and between Islamists and ordinary Muslims, has important consequences. It plays into the hands of Islamists by accepting their own narrative that their politicised understanding of Islam represents the "true" Islam. It can also lead non-Muslims to assume that all Muslims harbour – perhaps secretly – the totalitarian aspirations of Islamism. Even more troubling are the implications of Steyn's argument that all Muslims – by mere virtue of their existing and giving birth to other Muslims – pose an existential threat to western civilisation. This risks encouraging other Britons to see all Muslims as the enemy – regardless of their individual qualities. In the past, such blanket demonisation of entire peoples has ended in genocide.

The need for the right to rein in its extremists is growing urgent. There are increasing signs that such hate-preachers are close to inadvertently producing terrorists of their own – just as Islamists have done for years. In recent months, alarming numbers of white British nationalists have been jailed for terrorism or put on trial for planning a bombing campaign against a mixed race couple. In December, a Grimsby man was found guilty of planning a violent campaign against a local Muslim man and his wife. In 2007, Robert Cottage was jailed for stashing explosives in preparation for the racial war that he believed was imminent. Is it unreasonable to believe that such people have been influenced by the relentless paranoia offered by Phillips, Steyn and others? Just as resolving the present Arab-Israeli crisis means recognising wrongs committed by both sides, we can only build a successful multi-faith society on a basis of true equality and equal citizenship. And that means that the right must tackle its own extremists – just as British Muslims are now standing up to the extremists in their communities.

[Saracen]

oh look the bats are coming out

[Ali Abdullah]

See this article!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle5549138.ece

Government gives £1m to anti-extremist think-tank Quilliam Foundation

"The Times understands that the foundation, which has 18 full-time staff, is paying about £110,000 a year to rent offices at one of Central London’s most prestigious addresses, which, for security reasons, have no name plate or sign outside. Inside, the offices are expensively furnished with state-of-the-art computers and plasma screen televisions.

Mr Husain and Mr Nawaz, the organisation’s directors, are believed to be receiving salaries of about £85,000 each a year. The foundation refused to discuss individual earnings."

[dr_musab]

Flari, Again you are showing your true colours? Yes he criticised Murray & others, for their gross generalisations. But what gross generalisations?

His essential criticisms of the right wingers applies just as much to himself and his Quilliam foundation. Let me quote in his own words, replacing the words Muslims with Islamists, and Islamists with Jihadists, and you will see the argument applies fittingly and correctly, to crude undistinguished demonisation of Islamists too:

"portrayed the most reactionary interpretations of Islamism as being typical and depicted Islamists as a faceless, monolithic bloc whose very existence threatens the foundations of western society."

"Other icons of the right have similarly attacked Islamists collectively, dangerously blurring the lines between Islamists, Islamism and Jihadism. Rod Liddle, for example, wrote that "Islamism is largely to blame for the viciousness which is periodically unleashed upon us all in the form of bombings – that it is the credo, rather than the individual, which is principally to blame"

They "failed to distinguish Islamism from Jihadism. In just one speech, for example, Murray referred to the "violence, intimidation and thuggery of Islamism" and "the problem of Islamism".

"Even more troubling are the implications of Steyn's argument that all Islamists – by mere virtue of their existing and giving birth to other Islamists – pose an existential threat to western civilisation. This risks encouraging other Britons to see all Islamists as the enemy – regardless of their individual qualities. In the past, such blanket demonisation of entire peoples has ended in genocide."

YOU SEE, THE QUILLIAM FOUNDATION MAKES THE SAME FALSE GENERALISATIONS AS THE RIGHT ABOUT A PARTICULAR SET OF PEOPLE.

Incidentally, semi-intelligent trendy attacks on Islamism, are just euphomisms for Muslims as a whole, it's just attacks by proxy.

To add to the above, going by the Quilliam Foundation's definition of Islamists, pretty much all Sunni Muslims are Islamists because unlike the Shia we believe in the validity and necessity of a Khilafah regardless of if Imam Ali's descendent are alive or available. We believe the Khalif should be elected, and the Shariah is applicable at all times, not only when Imam Mahdi or the 12th Imam comes.

What he has written actually reflects his narrow, crude, not nuanced, generalising right wing background.