Majid Nawaz, Cartoon Capitalism and the Challenge of Hampstead and Kilburn

Over the past few days, the weird politics of Maajid Nawaz, current Lib Dem Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn have thrust themselves onto us in the UK, again. This time he tweeted a cartoon of the Prophets Jesus and Muhammad, depicting an irreverent camaraderie between them. I don't think non religious white people really understand that we don't do Monty Python, but its a useful button to press to show liberal virtue, if only superficially.

Channel 4 Coverage
Channel 4 News had a feature on this car crash on 28/1. The politics of these cartoons apparently comes from some fresher's fair kerfuffle at the LSE, where tomorrows (b)leaders are groomed, a stupid daytime TV chat show and an atheist propagandist comic strip called Jesus and Mo with roughly 11 000 current subscribers.

The news feature did not foreground why Maajid is perceived as, and is, such a wanker nor did they even mention that Maajid is up against the niece of the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, recipient of £275 million in British 'development' assistance this year, responsible for massacre of unarmed protesters on the 5th and 6th May 2013, and rigging an election on the 5th January 2014.

Petitions
Back to the business of cartoon capitalism and a Muslim led petition to have Maajid deselected has gained 21 000 signatures, and a counter response from the LSE secular society's Chris Moos 7 000. The discourses framed against each other are of Behaviour Unfitting of a Parliamentary Candidate (he swore at his objectors) versus Freedom of Speech.

It's not exactly the politics of dreams, but people have the right to object, and that political party should  know what the consequences of elevating certain folks are. Bear in mind that Nick Clegg sought an audience with UK Muslims when he was first elected LibDem leader, but only a handful of people turned up to his CityCircle talk. We must ask ourselves who is being reactionary and who is being responsible here?

Taking a longer term view to the Muslim response(s), there are some new developments to it, as well as some dumbosity.  But first of all I would like to post a decent cartoon about freedom from the incarceration of the human media circus.

Looking at the text of the call to the Lib Dems to deselect Maajid, I suppose it it a bit more sophisticated than what would have gone out in the 90s. But to be honest, I am tiring of this kinda stuff. Community disgust with Maajid is a deeper matter, to do with his narcissistic and corrupting work in the counter-extremism industry that endangers the innocent, and practically contributes to suffocating Muslim being, whilst making a tidy income.

In this environment really nasty moods and speech acts are created. Allegations of death threats provide another few gigawatts to the wrecking ball politics of Maajid Nawaz and play right into the court of liberal Islamophobia which too many mIslamists seem happy to do as they get weak as the prospect of exposure. Some idiots allegedly gave those cards to Usama Hasan a few years ago, who ended up cashing them in unfortunately. There's nothing like a foolish friend to undermine a position.

Does the Almighty need defending?
One of Maajid's defences is that 'his God doesn't need protection', which is an interesting rhetorical device.  It will be difficult for a secular person, particularly a eurocentric and humancentric one, to understand the Rights of God, and why we understand that the Almighty requires that we work to protect the right for the Prophets to be known better. I remember sitting in a comparative scriptural reading group with a pious Jewish professor, and wondering how different their meaning making of the same Prophets was to ours.

Respect
In a certainly more hope-making intervention, George Galloway announced that his Respect party was to field a candidate to take the fight right to the rancid Maajid Nawaz and the New Labour apologist for the Awami League.

An interesting opportunity.

Quilliam Responds to ‘Attempted Coup’ card played by Government of Bangladesh 19 January 2012 because that is todays date

Quilliam Responds to ‘Attempted Coup’ card played by Government of Bangladesh
 19 January 2012

We would like to expresses our excitement to hear the Awami League government is alleging that it has foiled a military coup in Bangladesh. This is not a ruse to deflect attention from them banging up Islamists left, right and centre. It means we can jump up and down and pretend that we know what is going on. The coup is said to have occurred on 22 December 2011, but has only been announced today by the Bangladeshi authorities. We do not find anything dubious in the previous sentence. BDNews 24, a Bangladeshi website is quoted as saying that on 22nd December 2011, Major Li-Miffed, an alleged Hizb ut-Tahrir leaflet holder, farted in the general direction of the gloriously liberated Bangladesh government. In company I tell you.

Some Army fellow that we met at a terrorisation and intimidation conference has confirmed to Quilliam that they have very strong suspicions that the coup is the work of Hizb ut-Tahrir.  This is because secular power in Bangladesh can’t tell its arse from its elbows. Quilliam knows, because we used to be members, that Hizb ut-Tahrir printed a few leaflets and talked to some army people in Bangladesh. We don’t know anything about the constellation of Islamic valued movements and shakements in Bangladesh. This is a game of language and power. Who promotes the use of military coups to gain power? [ Oh that was you the British government in Jan 2007]

[insert incomprehensible anonymous quote to mimic empirical insight]

"(change would) normally be...by the Party seeking to access the military in order to take the authority...After this the military would be capable of establishing the authority of Islām [did you see what I did to that a ?. smugface]. Hence a coup d'etat would be the manifestation of a political change...”

The anonymous source goes on to say that that Hizb ut-Tahrir has been actively targeting Bangladesh since the mutiny of the Bangladesh Rifle unit in 2009, when over 70 military personnel and civilians were killed. See we don’t know anything about Bangladesh, it was called the Bangladesh Rifles and there has been no independent investigation of this. Impossible with a pro-India regime.

This attempted military coup follows the 2011 Pakistani military coup attempt that wasn’t really an attempt, more of a dinner party. This charade was pinned on Brigadier Ailing Khandahar and four other senior military officers, all of whom were announced by the Armed Forces spokesperson as having ties to Hizb ut-Tahrir because they were handed a leaflet after juma prayers and thought the political parties were rubbish..

The porous border between Bangladesh and India is one that is being monopolised by extremist groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, to recruit Islamist fighters to carry out attacks similar to those in Mumbai in 2008. I who am writing this, am a shameless bastard, because I know that Bangladeshis are routinely killed, beaten and bribed at the border. Maybe I should have passed this over to ‘Ed’ Hussain, but he’s in the US and is passing himself off as Assamese, if not white, cant remember.

Raam Pant Nob-Jawqi, our Native Informant Paki said

‘I have visited Bangladesh several times to chat my usual shit, self publicise and serve white power. I am therefore extremely proud to hear that the government is using my former group in its eyewash’.

This political charade follows the British Government’s reduction in Dhaka-based counter development tourism. We were planning to link up with those bad boys in CRAP and Gram Mean  to hijack local ideas like we did in Pakistan with that khudi propaganda.

We would like to finger some cash off the government, to spy on Muslims and annoy them please. East London here we come.

Norman Terawala, who is older than me said this highly general wishy-washy statement because you probably care about the oil and domination in the Middle East, and we all think we’re Arabs. Did I tell you the one about my ancestor...

‘This attempted coup is contrary to recent democratization trends witnessed in the Arab Uprisings, and Hizb ut-Tahrir appears to be ignoring the new realities in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia and other Arab Muslim majority countries. As such, Hizb ut-Tahrir and its narrative are no longer relevant to the masses of youth striving for a third way [ HT Tony and late Mu’ammar] between extremism and dictatorships [ Zzzzz, are we done yet?]’.

The Quilliam Language Police

For some reason these sock puppets for secular liberal hegemonic imperialism send me their saddo press releases. A few weeks ago they let off a plea for funds. Today I get some random notice of a report that simply causes laughter. Perhaps its a the dying throw of a fish suffocating in the air, maybe its conceptual cost cutting who knows?

Basically they are telling people not to use the following terms lest they cause extremism. Its like Orwellian newspeak and thoughtcrime.

• ‘The Islamic/Muslim World’
• ‘Muslim countries’
• ‘The Muslim Community’
• ‘Islamic Law’
• ‘Islamophobia’

Reading between the lines, this is saying,

• You have no place in the world.
• You have no nationhood.
• Not even lower scales of organisation and collectivity.
• Or body of live legal theory and practice.
• Or cause for complaint.

Its quite an ambitious ideological stun grenade.
 
Oh dear, I think I just got radicalised, quite holistically.
 
In the meantime we await the laughter inducing antics of Dr M and Mister Moo.