After the public exposure of Azad Ali as an advocate of the jihadist views of the deceased Al Qaeda theoretician Abdullah Azzam, the Muslim Safety Forum has made a huge strategic error.
It has rushed to the defence of its trustee:
Latest Witch Hunt on Muslim leader by the Mail on Sunday
The Muslim Safety Forum is dismayed with the provocative article written in the Sunday Mail on the 18th January 2009 regarding MSF Trustee Azad Ali.
The central objective of MSF has been to build relations between communities and the police service during very difficult circumstances and ensuring dialogue remains open. The MSF is a voluntary organisation built on good will and trust between communities, the wider public and the police.
Azad Ali embodied that civic commitment and led the bridge building efforts between the police service and the community following the terrorist atrocities of 7/7 and the failed bombings of June 2007.
Chair of the MSF Mujib Miah said “Instead of highlighting the positive community building work Azad Ali has accomplished throughout his career, The Sunday Mail has sought to misrepresent his work. We understand he is taking legal advice in that regard.
“I have been inundated with calls from members and the wider public expressing disappointment and alarm by the serious distortion of Azad Ali’s character. In these difficult times inflammatory headlines such as these are counter productive and damage community cohesion.”
There is no distortion of Azad Ali’s character. His public pronouncement on jihad, and other issues, are a matter of record. He put them into the public arena himself, on the blog of the Islamic Forum Europe, which is little more than a front for the extremist clerical fascist party, Jamaat-e-Islami.
Far from being a “bridge” with British Muslims, Jamaat-e-Islami is a hugely divisive organisation, which is regarded by most Bangladeshis as a rabble of fanatics and war criminals. Outside Bangladesh, its support is also lower than that enjoyed by the British National Party in the United Kingdom.
Yet despite Azad Ali’s extreme and divisive politics, his Muslim Safety Forum is given remarkable consultative access to the police.
The MSF is the key advisory body for the Police Service and has signed a working protocol with the Metropolitan Police, British Transport Police & ACPO to build better police / community relations. It has been advising the police on matters of safety and security from the Muslim perspective for over five years now. It meets on a monthly basis with senior representatives of ACPO and the MPS, the MPA, Home Office, CPS and the IPCC amongst others.
It is about time that the police cut the extremists out of its network of advisors.
