…I am shocked, shocked! No, not really.
Kudos to Scott Burgess for breaking the story that the Guardian has hired Dilpazier Aslam, a supporter of a global Islamic Caliphate, to write for them, regardless of his association with Khilafah.com and Hizb Ut Tahrir. Presumably whoever hired him at the Guardian knew all about his views as all it takes is typing “Dilpazier Aslam” into Google and then pressing Search to discover what he writes.
It is really no different than if the Telegraph has hired a white English neo-fascist supporter as a ‘trainee journalist’ and invited that person to report on a riot in which Jews were attacked, even though the internet was full of articles by that person calling for violence against people based purely upon their ethnicity (say, Jews, for example). But then of course we all know that when the Guardian hires someone who has called for exactly that, well, it is just that they are being ‘inclusive’.
The silence on this issue from the Guardian itself has the making of a rather good story in and of itself. You would have thought a newspaper which was as aware of new media and blogging would realise that they do not get to pick and choose which stories are newsworthy anymore, particularly when they are the story. Even that fount of MSM idiotarianism The Independent has run with this one.
And this story could just run and run. Pass it on.
Thanks Perry.
I actually missed the most significant aspect of the story, which a commenter picked up on. David T. at Harry’s Place is running with it.
You know, it must make staff meetings kind of interesting, what with Islamacists killing off some Guardian interns, while yet other Guardian interns are calling for the death of the remaining infidel interns. Meanwhile, the likes of Gary Younge are no doubt urging the threatened-feeling infidel interns to not beat the crap out of Aslam, for cheering on the bastards that murdered their young mate – after all, he had it coming, as do the racist imperialist infidel interns… and so on, down into the rabbit hole.
God, I’m glad I’m not a leftist. As if the western self-hatred isn’t enough; to live with all the tangled skeins of multi-culti tranzi logic inside one’s head, must be like living with a pile of spaghetti for brains. The leftist version of rational thought resembles nothing so much as an old Univac computer’s tangled wiring bundle, except with none of that machine’s minimal computing power. David Horowitz is right. The attraction of leftism is its rejection of objective standards, which makes it possible for an intellectual third or fourth rater, to pose as a public intellectual genius, to get laid with equally dim lefty chix, and to make a pretty good living publishing fifth rate philosophizing.
The Guardian will refuse to sack him and he will provide material for humble bloggers like ourselves for Months maybe years to come.
Meanwhile the Guardian’s credibility if it has any left is damaged even further.
what Al Maviva said… it must make your head hurt to think like the so-called “intellectuals.” Oh, wait… that would require that you actually have something IN your head, wouldn’t it?
Throw in one Cherie Booth QC, a terrorist sympathiser, who represented Shabina Begum and the circle of hell is complete.
Given that Aslam *hasn’t* called for violence against anyone based on their ethnicity, Perry’s piece and the commens seem somewhat overblown.
(the Jewish riot metaphor doesn’t work very well, either, given that a sizeable proportion of the London bomb victims were Muslim).
“Given that Aslam *hasn’t* called for violence against anyone based on their ethnicity”
Only against those living in Israel, as when he wrote:
“The establishment of Khilafah is our only solution, to fight fire with fire, the state of Israel versus the Khilafah State”
The organisation to which he belongs has certainly done so, having urged followers in Denmark to:
“kill [Jews] wherever you find them”
I don’t see what the problem is with this guy writing for the Graun. Would it be better for Hizb to be operating where we can’t see them? They exist: banning them isn’t going to make them go away. Should we be thoughtcrime-screening applicants for all media jobs? Nice society that would lead to.
The only serious error is the Graun editors sending him to cover the Shabina Begum case, where there was a major conflict of interest. Anyone who was watching at the time knew Hizb were involved in that. If his ed. knew Aslam was Hizb, then he should be hauled over the coals.
It certainly was a good find by Scott. (I read it on the Daily Ablution when it came out).
But it is certainly scary that many people are going to continue to read his columns in the Guardian, and not realise that they have been written by a member of the fundamentalist Hizb Ut Tahir.
Should we be thoughtcrime-screening applicants for all media jobs?
I can’t get over the absurdity and the extent to which people are bending over backwards in order to justify not firing someone just because they belong to an extremist organization. Like using language out of 1984 to make the vast center seem like the bad guys. Try that under Aslam’s precious shariah Caliphate.
I’ve been somewhat sceptial of the claims made for blogs in the past year or so, but I have to hand it to Scott Burgess – his Daily Ablution is one of the few web-based things I have to read each day and this is his greatest success yet: a vitally important story and one that took a one-man blog to break.
As for the story itself, I don’t which is the more sickening, the intellectual dishonesty at the Grauniad or the athletic posturing of those twisting themselves into knots tring to defend the hopeless rag.
In passing, I notice the BBC hasn’t dared comment yet.
If they found one of their employees was a BNP member he would be sacked almost instantly, I’ve no doubt, and I can’t see people like John b and Jarndyce objecting to that.
Its this is just pure racism, white extremists are treated one way, non-white extremists totally different.
Why is it racism only seems to apply in one direction?
As it happens, I stated when Scott first broke this scandal over the weekend that I wouldn’t want to see a BNP-affiliated journalist (well, actually I said KKK-affiliated, but same difference) sacked.
(well, that’s not quite accurate: I’d very much *like* to see a BNP or KKK affiliated person tarred, feathered and locked in a small cupboard, just as I’d *like* to compel John Ashcroft to watch sick and horrible gay porn until the end of time. However, I don’t think it would be right to do either).
Have you ever debated with a Guardianista and won the logical argument but lost the moral high ground. “Yes”, they seem to say, “you may have turned my arguments to dust but everyone now knows that I am a nice person and you are nasty”?
Well not anymore. Now every Guardian reading compassion fascist is putting money into the pocket of the Jihadists and the more people who know it the sooner they will be knocked off their sanctimoneous perch.
Can somebody who knows how these things work please explain why the rest of the media is not going into a feeding frenzy on this?
“As it happens, I stated when Scott first broke this scandal over the weekend that I wouldn’t want to see a BNP-affiliated journalist (well, actually I said KKK-affiliated, but same difference) sacked.”
John. My position is that it’s not about the guy getting sacked – it’s about what the Guardian’s public position on the matter is, and when they will declare it.
As far as I can work out, the following has happened:
Scott Burgess writes his piece. It gets taken up by Little Green Footballs. A UK Objectivist Association member reads LGF and sends an e-mail to Richard Littlejohn and the story appears today in the Sun, complete with a wonderful cartoon depicting the Grauniad newsroom.
David Farrer is quite right, Richard Littlejohn’s article in today’s “Sun” was very good (it does tend to be).
And before anyone snears at the old current bun – Mr Littlejohn reaches millions of people every week (can we say the same?).
Of course the “quality press” also has good stuff, for example Mark Stein’s article in today’s “Daily Telegraph” But they (just like the tabloids) also have crap – for example the “There is no conflict between a small state and social justice” editorial – also in today’s Daily Telegraph.
Either the writer of the editorial does not know what “social” (or “distributive”) justice means – or they decided to lie about a matter of the highest importance.
I think Scott Burgess has the right approach. I don’t necessarily think that the Guardian should sack a guy for being a murderous traitor. After all, considering that this paper once employed Richard Gott, a Soviet traitor. This paper has a long and disgusting history of hiring enemies of this nation. Why change tack now?
Paul
I wouldn’t trust too much store today’s Daily Telegraph editorial.
The first line stopped me dead:
“The Conservative leadership race is still wide open.”
Um…? Has David Davis died? or did the gerrymandering rule change get passed?
Were this a horserace, it would be Desert Orchid against four pots of glue.
I don’t see any “bending over backwards” to accommodate anything here, other than defending the right of someone to give a misguided and idiotic opinion in public. (Which after all covers most of the comments on Samizdata, and indeed all blogs.) What is funny is finding self-declared “libertarians” who argue the opposite, on the basis that it wouldn’t be allowed under a Caliph.
Regab:
Can somebody who knows how these things work please explain why the rest of the media is not going into a feeding frenzy on this?
Probably because most of the media is grown up enough to realise that “member of legal organization offers stupid opinion in national newspaper” really is tomorrow’s chip paper.
Scott’s take on this, meanwhile, seems perfectly reasonable.
It has to be pointed out that,compared to some of the nutters on the Guardian,this bloke isn’t all that extreme.
Where do they advertise te jobs for this lot the Media guardian?
Jarndyce writes:
“I don’t see any “bending over backwards” to accommodate anything here, other than defending the right of someone to give a misguided and idiotic opinion in public”
Then you must have a rare gift of athleticism, not to realise the knots into which you are tangled when you defend this little Islamist shit, who is about as far removed from any semblance of journalistic ethics when he ‘reported’ on the Begum story as was Lord Haw-Haw when he broadcasted from Berlin.
Shorter GCooper: “Freedom of speech? Not for people I don’t like, guv’na.”
john b writes:
“Shorter GCooper: “Freedom of speech? Not for people I don’t like, guv’na.””
Nope. Just for people whose avowed intent is to blow me to smithereens.
Is there something about that you object to?
That is because you really have very little understanding of ‘libertarian’ thought. Tolerance only makes sence if what you are tolerating is not inimical to broader tolerance. Should we ‘tolerate’ assaults? Rapes? Kidnapping? Of course not. Then why tolerate political movements which would impose religious obligations by force? Why is that more acceptable?
I have always though that if conspiracy to commit a crime is illegal, how can political movements advocating communism, fascism or an imposed Islamic Caliphate not be seen as conspiring to commit crime on a vast scale?
A commenter at Tim Blair summed it up pretty nicely with a headline we can expect from the Grauniad around the time of the next attack:
“British Muslims Fear Backlash from Tomorrow’s Bomb Attack”
Wish I’d thought of it first.
I don’t see any “bending over backwards” to accommodate anything here, other than defending the right of someone to give a misguided and idiotic opinion in public.
No one has the “right” to a job as a reporter at the Guardian. I think you should review what libertarianism is about.