Is Osama Saeed...?(a) a sometime researcher for Alex Salmond, the 2005 SNP parliamentary candidate for Renfrewshire East and forthcoming SNP general election candidate for Glasgow Central;
(b) CEO of the SNP Executive funded Scottish-Islamic Foundation (SIF), described by the Centre for Social Cohesion as a “group that acts a vehicle for Muslim Brotherhood ideology”;
(c) the individual accused in the Times by Dean Godson, research director of Policy Exchange, of having described Hamas suicide attacks as “martyrdom operations”;
(d) the author of a Guardian article which called for the creation of a modern Caliphate, or Shari’a superpower, to be formed through a union of existing and future Islamic states;
(e) the fellow who, in 2006, urged Dundee’s Muslims to “resist” and to be “stronger in our defiance” of what he seemed to be implying was police “tyranny” and “oppression”;
(f) a “bad apple”, according to Ed Husain, who also described SIF as an “offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose members have endorsed suicide bombing”;
(g) the person who said that “Scotland can be the hub for the Muslim world” and that “when people talk about deradicalisation, the last thing you want to do is say you must be against terrorism”;
(h) an “unapologetic advocate” of “hardline Islamism”, who is deceiving us by hiding his real agenda, according to Tom Gallagher, Professor of Ethnic Conflict and Peace at Bradford University;
(i) all of the above.
Very interesting.
Mr Saeed seems to think it's possible to "triangulate" between supporting terrorism and opposing it.
I don't think he's fundamentally "bad" but at some point the Fat Minister is going to profoundly regret this association.
As for the troubles of the Muslim world: this has little to do with "Western foreign policy".
It is undoubtedly, and unfortunately, true that the Islamic countries have a terrible surplus of angry, underemployed (although sometimes quite wealthy) young men.
The fault for that lies with their own governments, not us.
Perhaps a new Caliphate will be able to overule the more intemperate imams on their views about suicide bombings?
Aye right.
(i) (i) (i) !! oh wait it was rhetoric...
sm753: I don't think for a minute that Saeed supports terrorism. But he certainly panders to the language and ideas of many who do, and much of the evidence points to that being down to a shared political agenda. Most jihad, after all, is non-violent.
Looks like I missed one particularly strident critic. Here's Melanie Phillips, writing about the Scottish-Islamic Foundation in the Spectator.
“Its chief executive Osama Saeed, who has worked as Salmond’s researcher and is the SNP’s parliamentary candidate for Glasgow Central, is an Islamist and leading light in the Brotherhood front the Muslim Association of Britain. Saeed follows the usual Brotherhood line of promoting certain limited moderate positions, such as calling for an end to forced marriages or opposing terrorism in Britain, thus enabling him to pass himself off as a moderate while he slips and slides over issues such as sharia. But he is of course an unequivocal supporter of the Brotherhood leader Yusuf Qaradawi who endorses terrorist mass murder in Israel and Iraq -- support which inescapably identifies the holder of such a view as an extremist and terrorist sympathiser.”
Rather interesting (and worrying) story about Mr Saeed in the current edition of Private Eye.
It would have been better had Mel Philips. Seeking her thoughts on Muslims and Islam is a bit like, well, seeking Osama Saeed's opinions on policy in Iraq.
I don't think for a minute that Saeed supports terrorism.
Well, he was remarkably silent on the matter of telling the "Glasgow Muslim Community" (TM) to resist pressure following the ram-raid attack, conducted in part, at least, by Muslims living and working in Scotland. Just as Salmond was keen to emphasis that it had been conducted by 'outside' forces.
Scotland is one big multicultural happy family and if we have to 'engage' with affiliates of the salafist Muslim Brotherhood to prevent the real nasties from getting in, so be it. Real nasties who'd mount attacks on *our* streets, and not limit them to Iraq or Israel or Afghanistan.
Parochial? No!
Most jihad, after all, is non-violent.
A case could be made for the inner spiritual dimension of Jihad, but most Jihad in Iraq or Algeria has been anything but non-violent.