Report into Funders of Terrorism in UK May Be Suppressed by Tories

This is disturbing, but it really wouldn’t surprise me if the Home Office really did refuse to publish a report into the foreign sources of terrorism here in the UK.

Mike over at Vox Political has put up a piece from the Guardian, which explains how the Home Office’s extremism analysis unit was instructed by David Cameron to investigate the financing of extremist groups in the UK from abroad one and a half years ago, and to report their findings back to the PM and Theresa May.

The Home Office has now stated that the report has not been completed, and may never be published, as its contents are ‘extremely sensitive’.

The Lib Dem spokesman for foreign affairs, Tom Brake, has written to May asking her to confirm that the report will not be shelved, and commenting on the link between Islamic extremism in Britain and the Saudis’ funding for mosques. Mr Brake writes

“It is no secret that Saudi Arabia in particular provides funding to hundreds of mosques in the UK, espousing a very hardline Wahhabist interpretation of Islam. It is often in these institutions that British extremism takes root.”

The Guardian itself states

The contents of the report may prove politically as well as legally sensitive. Saudi Arabia, which has been a funding source for fundamentalist Islamist preachers and mosques, was visited by May earlier this year.

Mike states in his piece that by ‘very sensitive’ the report

seems to mean they concern the UK’s own relationship with Saudi Arabia under the Conservative governments of David Cameron and Theresa May.

Mike makes the point that we should not be selling arms to the Saudis, as we don’t know what they’re doing with them. He also cites Tweets from Tom London, who states that we need to stop selling arms to Saudi Arabia and the funding of mosques by them.

Tom London also attacks May’s Tweet that the Tories will increase the powers of the police and security services, and inflict longer sentences for terrorism-related offences.

Mr London rightly asks how this is going to deter jihadis, who commit their atrocities with the intention of committing suicide.

While Rachael, another Tweeter, put up a photo of May receiving a medal from one of the Saudi princes, ironically commenting that ‘we are too tolerant of extremism in Britain.’

http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/06/04/report-that-could-link-uk-to-terror-funders-may-never-be-published/

It’s been known for a very, very long time that ISIS and its predecessor, al-Qaeda, was receiving funding from very high levels in the Saudi government. This includes the current regent, Salman bin Salman, and the head of Saudi intelligence. I can remember reading a paper in one book on contemporary sources of Islamist terrorism how the Saudis financed al-Qaeda insurgents attacks and incursions into Syria and Iraq.

Twenty-four pages of the official report into 9/11, compiled by the American government, were suppressed until the families of the victims forced Obama to publish it. Again, despite security around the report, it was widely understood that these pages had been suppressed because they pointed to the Saudis as the nation behind the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

Despite the massive evidence to the contrary, the Republicans are continuing to ignore the roots of global terrorism in Saudi Arabia, and are instead blaming Iran as the major source of terrorism around the world.

You don’t need to guess very hard why this is: oil, and anti-Russian geopolitics dating from the days of the Cold War. Since the 1920s America has backed the Saudis militarily in return for the right to exploit the country’s vast oil reserves.

The Americans are also careful not to alienate the Saudis because of the massive damage the Saudi’s oil embargo inflicted on the West during the oil crisis of the 1970s. That convinced the Saudis that they had the economic power to manipulate global affairs. All they have to do is lower the price of oil, and it wipes the domestic American oil industry off the map.

The West has also cultivated the Saudis, along with Israel, as a valuable ally in the Middle East in the long, imperialist campaign to eradicate secular Arab nationalism. Secular nationalist regimes, such as Nasser’s in Egypt, were considered by the Americans to be either Communist, or linked to Communism. This is one of the reasons why the Americans are so determined to overthrow Assad in Syria. The Ba’ath regime there is secular, and an ally of the Russians. Syria is a nation of diverse sects and faiths, with a population that includes Shi’a and Sunni Muslims, and also Christians. The dominant sect politically are the Alawis, who are Shi’a. As such, the regime also has important links with Iran.

While the Ba’athist government has massacred and oppressed its Sunni opponents, and has been a police state, it is much more tolerant than Saudi Arabia. Christians enjoyed greater freedom and were able to serve in the administration, because one of the founders of the party in the 1920s had been a Christian.

Iran has funded terrorism in Europe and further abroad. However, while it is a very repressive society, it is still more tolerant than many other nations. Counterpunch and The Young Turks have produced articles and reports showing that, despite the Iranian regime’s rhetoric calling for the destruction of Israel, Jews in Iran are actually well treated. I’ve also heard scholars researching religious syncretism in the Middle East state that the regime has also been keen to show how it does not oppress the Zoroastrians, the country’s indigenous monotheistic religion.

It is very different in Saudi Arabia. The only religion tolerated in that country is Wahhabi Islam. Non-Muslim religions, such as Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and so on are banned, as is Shi’a Islam. There are Shi’a Muslims in Saudi Arabia, but they live in villages without running water or electricity and with higher rates of poverty and unemployment. They are forbidden to build mosques and their religious literature is also banned. Chillingly, one of the major Saudi religious figures I can’t remember whether it was the Supreme Mufti or the Sharif of Mecca even went so far the other year as to denounce the Shi’a as enemies of the faith and ‘worthy of death’.

The Saudis have been backing very hardline, very intolerant interpretations of Islam across the world, from Muslim communities in Bosnia and the Balkans, to Chechnya and Pakistan and beyond.

And foreign funding of mosques and the influence of extremist foreign imams has been an issue since the 1990s and the demands for the execution of the novelist Salman Rushdie for blasphemy for his book, The Satanic Verses. I can remember reading in the Encyclopedia of Islam at College that foreign countries tended to finance mosques over here in blighty as a way of influencing their congregations. And the imam, who received Rushdie back into the faith when the novelist briefly tried to make his peace with the religion, also wrote in the Financial Times that there was a pressing need to train and supply more imams, who had been born and grew up over here. The lack of native British Muslim clergy meant that the immigration authorities were allowing into this country mullahs from places like Pakistan, who held extreme and intolerant views. This is why the British government has a programme to support and fund British Muslims studying for the clergy, and to promote a more liberal interpretation of the faith.

But the British government has also done its share of importing Muslims terrorists from around the world. Thatcher gave asylum to members of the Mujahideen, who had fought the Russians in Afghanistan, even though these were violent religious extremists. But they were acceptable, because they were anti-Communist. The family of Salman Abedi, who blew himself up killing 22 and injuring another 60 innocents in Manchester last Monday, were members of a Libyan Islamist terrorist group. They had been given sanctuary over here, and the warnings about them, including by members of the city’s Muslim community, were ignored, because the British government had used them in the NATO campaign to overthrow Colonel Gaddafy.

If we really want to stop terrorism, we should stop selling arms to the Saudis and block their funding of extremist mosques and groups. We should ourselves also stop supporting Islamist terror groups around the world. At the moment the American government is supplying arms and training to the rebels in Syria, despite the fact that they are all hardline terrorist groups, or connected to the hardliners, and the arms will inevitably find their way into the hands of ISIS and al-Qaeda militants.

Of all the politicians, it is Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour party, who have stated that they will stop arms sales to the Saudis.

May definitely will not. She and Cameron have both been to the Middle East to try and sell them more British weapons, just like Blair and then the Tory governments before him.

And Corbyn has set up a shadow minister for peace and disarmament, and promised to turn this into an official department if he gets into power.

Much of the radicalisation of the Muslim world has occurred because of the carnage inflicted on the Middle East through the western invasion of Iraq. That doesn’t excuse atrocities like that committed against the great people of Manchester and our capital. Just as it doesn’t excuse the other murders the Jihadists have committed without number against ordinary, peaceful Muslims across the Middle East – in Iraq, Syria and Turkey, and in places like Pakistan. But it is a contributing cause, which Corbyn has said he wants to stop.

As the great man has said, ‘Tough on terrorism, tough on the causes of terrorism’.

Don’t believe liars like May and Boris Johnson, who will take away more of our liberties in the campaign against terrorism, while doing nothing but give more money to the Saudis and other backers of these thugs and other like them.

Vote for Corbyn and the Labour party on June 8th.

Boris Johnson Slapped Down by May for Telling Truth about Saudi Militarism

Boris Johnson is a grotesque clown, intensely ambitious, untrustworthy, and mendacious. His buffoonish behaviour a clever performance to conceal a very cunning intelligence. But in this case, he’s telling the truth. To the acute of embarrassment of his political mistress, Theresa May.

The I also carried a report by Nigel Morris, Boris to apologise to Saudis for criticism yesterday (9 December 2016) that he had been ordered to apologise to the Saudis by May after he accused them of sponsoring wars for their own benefit in the Middle East. The report ran

Boris Johnson suffered a humiliating slap-down from Theresa May after accusing Saudi Arabia, a key British ally, of “playing proxy wars” in the Middle East.

Downing Street said the Foreign Secretary was expressing personal views. Mrs May’s spokeswoman said: “They are not the Government’s position on Saudi Arabia and its role in the region.”

She signalled that Mr Johnson would apologise in person to the desert kingdom’s rulers.

“He will be in Saudi Arabia on Sunday and will have the opportunity to set out the way the UK sees its relationship with Saudi.”

Mr Johnson found himself in hot water after comments emerged in which he charged Saudi Arabia and Iran with abusing Islam and acting as puppeteers in proxy wars in the region.

He said the two nations were unable to build bridges, across the Sunni-Shi’a divide in the Muslim world.

His comments, at a conference last week in Rome, flouted the Foreign Office’s practice of not publicly criticising the UK’s allies. Mr Johnson said: “There are politicians who are twisting and abusing religion and different strains of the same religion in order to further their own political objectives.

“That’s one of the biggest political problems in the whole region.

“And the tragedy for me – and that’s why you have these proxy wars being fought the whole time in that area – is that there is not strong enough leadership in the countries themselves.”

Mr Johnson’s comments emerged hours after Mrs May returned from a two-day visit tot he gulf where she praised the Saudi royal family. (p.4).

BoJo here is right. The Saudis are fighting proxy wars in the Middle East. They were responsible for 9/11, and solidly behind the Iraq invasion, because they too wanted to get their mitts on the Iraqi oil industry and its reserves, the largest in the region after their own country. A week or so ago the I also carried a report that an Islamist terrorist had told the Americans that a centre in Saudi Arabia, that had supposedly been set up deradicalise Islamist terrorists through a 12 step programme, was doing precisely the opposite. It was aiding and training them. The Saudis support Sunni terrorists in Iraq, who are brutalising and massacring the non-Sunni population – Shi’as, Yezidis and Christians, and Syria. Iran is also doing the same, sending its troops into Iraq to fight al-Qaeda and ISIS as they massacre the Shi’a. They’re also staunch supporters of Assad’s regime, whose core is the Alawi Shi’a sect.

But this is precisely what the western authorities really don’t want us to know. The official report on 9/11 was censored so that Congress and the American – and wider public – would not know about the Saudis’ role in 9/11. Just as they don’t want the western public realising that the Iraq invasion wasn’t about combatting Islamist terrorism – how could it, when Osama bin Laden also hated Saddam’s secular Ba’athist regime? – but was all about seizing Iraqi oil. And spreading Wahhabi Islam throughout the region through military violence.

Saudi Arabia, unfortunately, is the world’s biggest oil exporter, and their control over the oil supply has the power to destabilise and overthrow whole regimes. No one wants another energy crisis like the one in the 1970s. And that helped to advance Saudi militant Islamism, by showing them that they had the power to dominate world affairs through their control of the oil supply.

Frankly, the sooner the world moves away from oil and into renewables – solar power, tidal power, even Zero point energy, assuming that isn’t total pseudoscience, and the power of big oil is broken, the better.

Vox Political on Muted Tory Criticism of Saudi Arabia

Mike over at Vox Political posted up this piece yesterday, reporting David Cameron’s failure to express only muted criticism about Saudi Arabia’s disgusting human rights record, after the beheading of 47 people earlier this week: http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/01/06/minister-defends-uks-approach-to-saudi-human-rights-record/

When pressed on the reasons the Tories hadn’t made stronger criticisms, the Tory foreign minister, Tobias Ellwood, said: “Founded just under 100 years ago, Saudi Arabia is a relatively young country and we recognise change cannot happen overnight. The human rights situation in Saudi Arabia reflects widely held conservative social values and as such needs to move at a pace that is acceptable to its society.”

This is risible nonsense. Nearly all of the countries in the Middle East, including modern Turkey, are young countries less than 100 or so years old. Turkey as it is now is the creation of Kemal Ataturk and The Young Turks, who strove to modernise the country following the break-up of the Ottoman Empire. Yet Turkey, until Erdogan took power, strove to be a secular democracy. The country also has severe problems. It’s been under military rule several times, and political prisoners, especially Kurdish separatists, have been imprisoned. And there is a concerted campaign to stamp out Kurdish culture. Nevertheless, the country’s relative religious tolerance was show on Sunday, when ITV screened a new series in which Adrian Chiles, the former presenter of the One Show, travels round the Mediterranean looking for what Jews, Christians and Muslims have in common and what unites, rather than divides them. Chiles is a Roman Catholic. He’s a convert to Christianity, whose turn to the Church of Rome surprised his atheist parents. On Sunday’s programme, he talked to his Croatian mother, who told him why she became an atheist, before travelling to Turkey. There he had perfectly amicable discussions about religion with two very modern young women, a fisherman, and a Jewish bloke with a shop in Istanbul’s bazaar. Among the man’s wares was a chess set, where the two sides, white and black, had been made instead into Crusaders and Turkish warriors. I’ve no doubt that in some parts of the Middle East, this would provoke a riot, if not anything worse. But in Istanbul, no-one seemed remotely concerned or even much interested.

Syria also is a new country. It, Iraq and many of the countries Middle Eastern nations were previously Ottoman provinces. They were formed into independent states by the European imperial powers, Britain and France. Syria, while not remotely a democracy, was a secular regime, which included Christians as well as Muslims amongst its founders. Lebanon suffered a terrible civil war in the 1970s and 80s, driven by religious rivalry between Christians and Muslims. But it has a kind of democratic constitution, in which various governmental posts are held by members of particular sects and faiths, in order to secure a fair balance of power that will cancel out or at least partially counteract ethnic or religious tensions. It was also one of the leading centres of the modern Arabic rival, and many of the founders of modern Arabic letters were Christians.
As for Iraq, this was also a secular country, though Islam was still the dominant religion under the law. It was able to maintain a relatively secular constitution even though it contains several of the holiest sites in Shi’a Islam. A country’s youth or age is no excuse for it having an appalling human rights’ record.

And in fact, in terms of practices now seen as barbaric, the West and Islam weren’t so very different even as late as the 19th century. I can remember reading a history of the Balkans by an American historian over a decade ago, which pointed out that the taking of heads by soldiers in Ottoman Turkey was almost exactly the same as the practice of taking the heads of criminals by lawmen and bounty hunters on the American frontier. Until the invention of photography, and its adoption by the forces of law and order, the only way to prove a violent criminal had been killed was to bring his head into the local sheriff’s office, and display it to the authorities. And so they did. Now the American dispossession and genocide of the Indians was a great evil, but this didn’t stop America striving to become more liberal, more just and humane towards its citizens.

Saudi Arabia, by contrast, is still extraordinarily conservative. It was founded in the 1920s when the founders of the current ruling Ibn Sa’ud dynasty took power with the help of the Muslim Brotherhood. After the revolution, the new king had his opponents beheaded and their heads displayed on his palace walls. And change has been extremely slow. Ismail Pasha, the Sultan of Egypt, was genuinely trying to stamp out slavery in his country in the 19th century. The Saudis only got round to banning it in 1965. Some of this conservatism might be due to Saudi Arabia’s possession of two of the very holiest cities in Islam, Mecca and Medina, the cities in which Mohammed lived and taught. But even this probably wouldn’t be an insurmountable obstacle to the growth of human rights in that country.

The real cause of the lack of human rights in Saudi Arabia is the extreme intolerance of Wahhabi Islam, and the Saudis dominance of the oil industry. They showed just how powerful they were economically with the oil crisis in the 1970s. And as they are still a major market for British goods, like guns and armaments, Cameron and co are very reluctant to risk offending them. And so the Conservatives don’t dare to voice anything but the mildest criticism, even when the Saudis are killing political prisoners and funding terrorism. Far from it. They’re even held up as our most valued allies.