NEWLY HONOURED Sir Iqbal Sacranie, head of the Muslim Council of Britain, has refused to follow the likes of poet Benjamin Zephaniah and reject his gong.
In fact he seemed in a hurry to say yes. Speaking for the first time since he was offered a knighthood in the honours list, Sir Iqbal said he didn’t have to think it over for long.
“There wasn’t really much of a difficulty”, he said of his decision to accept.
http://www.blink.org.uk/pdescription.asp?key=7653&grp=44&cat=305
A few days ago we heard the sad news that Iqbal Sacranie, the head of the Muslim Council of Britain [MCB], was offered a knighthood by Tony Blair in the Queen’s birthday ‘honours’ list. It was an offer that he chose to accept. Mr Sacranie was given his knighthood, according to the Sunday Times [12th June 2005] newspaper because he: ‘has also taken risks within his community, alienating extremists with condemnations of terrorism and by working with the Government on initiatives affecting Muslims…’ .
There is no doubt that Mr Sacranie has worked with the British government. His organisation, the MCB, was widely understood to have endorsed the Labour Party in the recent elections – the government responsible for over 100 000 deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In March this year he met with the head of Britain’s armed forces, at a time when they were and continue to be an illegal and violent force that has occupied the Muslim world. Following this meeting he said: ‘We hope that we will see increased numbers of British Muslims taking up positions in our Armed Forces’.
Last Ramadhan he attended a reception with the US Ambassador to the UK at the American embassy in London, whilst US bombs rained down on the city of Falluja, slaughtering innocent inhabitants and reducing much of the city to ruins. Not surprisingly, when he later complained to his host, the Ambassador about the bombing, the voice of the guest, who fed from the spoon of George W Bush, was not taken seriously.
A letter from him to mosques in March 2004 was interpreted by many to be an encouragement to spy on Muslims, at a time of extreme sensitivity.
Sadly all of these could be seen to be examples of ‘working with the Government on initiatives affecting Muslims ‘.
El-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz Malcolm X once said when Martin Luther King won the Nobel Peace Prize: “He got the peace prize, we got the problem… If I’m following a general, and he’s leading me into a battle, and the enemy tends to give him rewards, or awards, I get suspicious of him. Especially if he gets a peace award before the war is over.”
Dear Muslim Brothers and Sisters! Be warned of one thing. People over the centuries have slipped into dangerous relationships with enemies of Islam, often thinking they were helping their communities. The history of the British Empire and post Empire shows us that they are past masters of such manipulation.
http://www.1924.org/opinion/index.php?id=1960_0_34_0_M
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Man how sad, how on earth can you accept a disgraced award like this, its almost like getting a pat on the back and round of applause from the killer of your family.**