GG linked to Islamic 'extremist' group by Channel 4

[faceless]

Cap just didn't Fitz at the wedding
George Galloway
Mar 1, 2010

Oh no, not another camera up the jumper film by Dispatches, the tiresome and fevered Channel 4 documentary strand.

At the risk of adding to its viewership by giving it publicity, I'm featured - or rather ,smeared - in it tonight. The programme is a pop by Dispatches at Muslims - like the previous tales they have put out about the supposed enemy within plotting to turn Britain into some rainy and windswept Islamic republic. Stop chuckling. According to Jim Fitzpatrick, a New Labour minister and, coincidentally, my opponent for the seat in Poplar and Limehouse in the forthcoming election, the Islamic Forum of Europe has infiltrated his party and become a secret party within the party.

A sort of Militant Tendency with the Koran and keffiyehs who believe in jihad and sharia law. Fitzpatrick has a substantial bee in his bonnet about this and a track record, to boot. Last year, he had a much-publicised row with the East London mosque when he walked out of a wedding there after he and his wife took objection to being segregated by sex. As if he didn't know that was custom. Now it seems he wants to alienate the few remaining Muslims who might vote for him in a constituency where they are 40 per cent of the electorate.

A speech I gave in the mosque after my last election victory was secretly taped and has been obtained by Dispatches almost five years on. The IFE were, in fact, one of several groups who helped in my successful antiwar campaign and I credited them for their help - as I did to all of the other groups, from Greens, Liberals, Tories to Trotskyists, who helped my defeat of a pro -war MP.

I don't know who is or isn't a member of the IFE, and I have only the haziest knowledge of what they stand for, but the organisation has never approached me for help or attempted to influence me. Again, my lawyers are watching.

[luke]

craig murray has this;

Muslims Found In Mosque Shock

Channel 4 Dispatches used to be a haven of serious documentary, but has degenerated into a stream of Islamophobia. It touched rock bottom today with a truly pathetic effort by Andrew Gilligan which found - shock horror - Muslims in the East London mosque!

These Muslims actually wanted society to be ordered in an Islamic way on Islamic principles. To try to achieve this they were - shock horror - undertaking political activity and joining political parties!

Gilligan's piece turned on the Daily Express trick of attempting to inculcate fear that suddenly you and I will wake up under sharia law. The fact is of course that no matter how much devout Muslims may want to campaign to ban alcohol and push-up bras in the UK, they have not a hope in hell of succeeding.

But surely they have a right to their beliefs and ideology and a right to espouse it? Surely we should be delighted that these Muslims are seeking to advance their views through participation in the democratic process and not through violence? In fact, is this not the sort of activity we should be encouraging?

Apparently not. Apparently you only should be allowed to participate in politics if the ideology you are offering to the electorate is broadly the same as Andrew Gilligan's. We were apparently supposed especially to be shocked by Gilligan's revelation that Muslim activists campaigned for George Galloway because of his opposition to the Iraq war and support for the Palestinians. Wow! Whatever next?

Gilligan went on to introduce a number of neo-conservative nutters from wild eyed groups such as the Centre for Social Cohesion, to condemn all this "extremist" activity, without giving any context to explain where his "Independent" commentators were dredged up from.

Gilligan's only useful point was about the waste of taxpayers' money being pumped in to various Muslim groupings. Sadly he confined his criticism on this point only to financial support for those Muslim groups who did not wholeheartedly support the Bush/Blair foreign policy, when in fact twenty times more public money has been wasted on tiny but grasping Muslim groups who proselytise Blairism.

All in all, the most risible piece of half-baked Islamophobia I can recall. Gilligan - a man for whom I have had respect - should be ashamed of himself.

from http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/03/muslims_found_i.html

[faceless]

Britain's Islamic Republic

[Colston]

Ha ha a group of people trying to gain political influence through legitimate means shocker! If people want to combat this kind of influence they need to form an alternative and put across their desires and points of view.

On another point some religious people and religious concepts are bonkers and some are evil wankers!

[Brown Sauce]

I used to think quite highly of Gilligan, since he was the investigator that outed the sexing up of that very dodgy dossier.

This is crap. Pure propaganda of the sort that Blair Bush et al would be proud of. Get two or three idiots in the first few frames, then tie the rest in. Tabloid BS.

He's either a fool, or once got lucky, or has been got at.