The Guardian's Comment is Free site is running a none-too-serious awards post, in which commenters are asked to nominate their winners.
I rarely link to the site because most of the pieces, let alone the comments, are oh-so-predictable - that is when they are not downright offensive. (I have made an exception when I have highlighted the regular anti-Semitic posts which the moderators appear not to take exception to.)
Oliver Kamm and David T have, however, pointed out the use of CiF in one particular respect: exposing the mindset of the Muslim Council of Britain's Inayat Bunglawala. Blogging is especially useful in this respect: the immediacy of it sometimes exposes thoughts which a writer might, on reflection, realise were best kept to him or herself.
Bunglawala nominates Oliver Kamm for his own award: Worst: That warmongering bastard Oliver Kamm (sorry - I added that category myself).As Oliver notes:"Inayat" is Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain, a sinecurist whose talents were neatly encapsulated by Christopher Hitchens in Vanity Fair a few months ago: "A preposterous and sinister individual named Inayat Bunglawala, assistant secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain and a man with a public record of support for Osama bin Laden, was made a convener of Blair's task force on extremism despite his stated belief that the BBC and the rest of the media are 'Zionist controlled.'" You can see where Bunglawala made this clear here. His exact words were:
The chairman of Carlton Communications is Michael Green of the Tribe of Judah. He has joined an elite club whose members include fellow Jews Michael Grade and Alan Yentob...[They are] close friends… so that's what they mean by a 'free media'.There are plenty more examples of how this man who puts up the facade of moderation has a very different agenda. As the Telegraph has reported:In January 1993, Mr Bunglawala wrote a letter to Private Eye, the satirical magazine, in which he called the blind Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman "courageous" - just a month before he bombed the World Trade Center in New York. After Rahman's arrest in July that year, Mr Bunglawala said that it was probably only because of his "calling on Muslims to fulfil their duty to Allah and to fight against oppression and oppressors everywhere".
Five months before 9/11, Mr Bunglawala also circulated writings of Osama bin Laden, who he regarded as a "freedom fighter", to hundreds of Muslims in Britain.
David T highlights another giveaway of the real Bunglawala: When he puts finger to keyboard, he gives himself away. It is telling that one of the bloggers who he nominates for an award is a particularly zany character who calls himself "GiyusandTrolls". You will be hard pressed to find postings by "giyusandtrolls9" (who also posts as "falseflagmedia" and sometimes posts as "RetroDeletionPolice") on CiF. That is because s/he is a racist conspiracy nut, who posts stuff on links between zionism and freemasonry, and similar topics of appeal to those on the Islamist far right.Remember that next time you hear him coming over all moderate, or the MCB claiming to represent mainstream moderate Muslim opinion.
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