This is a guest post by habibi
Mohamed Ali Harrath is the chief executive of Islam Channel, an Islamist broadcaster based in London. The channel’s “vision” calls for it to “present the Islamic viewpoint and values through its programming” and act as an “interface between Muslims & non-Muslims to remove the misconceptions people have about Islam”.
Oh dear. For Ali Harrath is an anti-Semite. See him in this video at 3:46 minutes:
Look at the Zionists in the United States. There’s not that great number [sic]. The United States is nearly 300 million [sic]. But they have six million Jews living there. Every single one votes and every single one makes sure he influences many votes. And that’s how they command. That’s how it works.
Yes, Jews “command” America, of course they do. I guess there was a doubleplusgood cunning plan in 2000, when, according to exit polls, 79% of American Jewish voters chose Gore, and another in 2004, when 74% chose Kerry.
Note that Ali Harrath mentions this “command” of America as an example British Muslims should follow. This “copy the Jews” theme is popular in some Islamist circles. There may be more to say in future posts about Mr Ali’s vision of how this should be implemented in the UK.
For now, here he is again on IslamOnline, a web operation founded by Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a prominent hate preacher who has been banned from the UK:
The enemies of Islam are easily identified a report published in the British parliament over a decade ago used the term of Islamophobia to describe the rising hostilities towards Muslims and their beliefs, I blame Zionists to be the enemies of Islam and Muslims because they always opt for supporting wars, as for the British society I can say any one who seeks to damage community relations, or encourages violence or pushes an agenda of confrontation, we aim at building a society where cultures compete for the best of the whole and respect each other, the enemies of Islam are the enemies of the British society and vise versa
Got that? The enemies of Islam are not al Qaeda, the slaughterers of Muslim innocents and others of many faiths or none, by the tens of thousands, but “Zionists”, who are also enemies of British society. Indeed, “Zionists” are enemies of Jews too. From another IslamOnline page:
Palestine was for Palestinians for thousands of years and the zionist movement drove palestinians out from their homes in palestine and drove the jews out of their [sic] from all over the world
What can this possibly mean? That the great misfortunes of the Mizrachim in the last century should be attributed to Zionists in Israel, making persecution of Jews in other countries understandable? Or, worse, that those misfortunes were all some sort of Zionist plot? Either way, he’s a racist.
Mr Ali Harrath’s other problem is that he has been convicted of terrorism offences in Tunisia, his home country. This is no “misconception”. If you read French, have a look here. Tried in absentia in 2005 – he lives in London – he was found guilty of membership of a terrorist group outside Tunisia, calling for others to join that group, military training with the aim of committing terrorist crimes, providing facilities to terrorists, and using pseudonyms to cover for members of terrorist groups. He faces 56 years in prison should he decide to go home, or be sent there.
You see, Ali Harrath was a leader of the Tunisian Islamic Front (TIF), a radical Islamist group linked to An Nahda, a Tunisian Islamist party led by Rashed al-Ghannoushi. Ali Harrath is named as such here, here, and here.
In the 1980s and the 1990s An Nahda and TIF were brutally crushed by the Tunisian government, with some help from worried French authorities, who rolled up TIF’s French support network. But jihad was in full swing elsewhere, so some of TIF’s members left Tunisia to fight in Algeria, Afghanistan and Bosnia. Western Europe was for refuge, politics and international logistics.
And what logistics they were. According to this British court document and other public sources, a new European-based group was formed by An Nahda / TIF veterans. Was the “Tunisian Combatant Group” the result of an acrimonious split with TIF, a simple rebranding, or chaff? This issue may be discussed here later. In any case, Tarek Maaroufi of the Tunisian Combatant Group subsequently joined the top ranks of global jihad with his proven support for the murder of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the leader of Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance and an enemy of the Taleban / al Qaeda. Massoud, assassinated on 9 September 2001, was quite a prize. With him dead, al Qaeda surely thought, the atrocities that followed two days later in America could be the first of a string of big “victories” abroad while its security situation at home in Afghanistan was better than ever. Tunisian jihadis had joined the top ranks with that murder.
The widow of one of Massoud’s assassins is the news at the moment, by the way.
Now, you won’t find Ali Harrath in that British court document. There is no public evidence that he is part of any successor group to TIF. That assertion is not being made here. Instead, it appears that his mission these days is Islamist influence-building in the UK, and he has been quite successful. Islam Channel’s “Global Peace & Unity” event was attended by senior politicians from all three big mainstream parties. All of them apart from Dominic Grieve offered nothing but fluffy words, helping to legitimise speakers who are racists, terrorism supporters, religious haters, and troofers.
Well that’s bad enough. But perhaps Ali Harrrath is up to something more? One can wonder, after reading about Tunisian al Qaeda suspect Zouhaier ben Mohamed Nagaaoui. Spanish investigators discovered Nagaaoui through his links with Serhane Abdelmajid Fakhet, believed to be the mastermind of the Madrid atrocities. According to Spanish newspaper El Mundo, in February 2004 they proceeded to warn Judge Garzón about Nagaaoui and his own connections, including Ali Harrath:
“…it was possible to ascertain that Zouhaier is a confidant of Salah Karkar (leader in Europe of An Nahda), carrying out contacts between him and elements of the special military apparatus of the Tunisian An Nahda movement and maintaining links with Mohamed Ali Harrath (chief of the TIF in London), Wahid Gomri in Holland and the Tunisian Abdellatif Tif Tlili in Germany.”
Of course, wondering is the most one can do, given the information available to the public. And wondering is of course of no legal substance. As far as I know, Gomri is free in the UK and Tlili, found guilty in absentia alongside Ali Harrath, is free in Germany. Nor are Tunisian convictions especially trustworthy.
Still, at the very least, one can be certain that Ali Harrath is an anti-Semite, that he was and may still be a senior leader in TIF, and that TIF members have engaged in jihad with Algerian terrorists and al Qaeda. At a minimum, ministers should demand that all mainstream politicians never support his propaganda projects again.
My bet is: that won’t happen. At the top, it seems that HMG doesn’t get it, not in public anyway, and Mr Ali Harrath is on a roll.
