adapted from London Evening Standard, January 26, 2012

While the capital is home to an estimated 40 per cent of the UK's Muslim population, there are still many mysteries surrounding the faith that I follow. For I was born and raised a London Muslim.

I attended mosques and madrassas in Tooting and Balham, adding to the knowledge of Islam taught me by my family. From a young age we learned the importance of the five pillars of Islam; faith, prayer, charity, fasting - and Hajj, a pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, a journey every Muslim must try to make in their lifetime. So I was delighted to visit the British Museum's Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam.

by Ahmed Qerni

I have been meaning to write about this spat between two historians for a while but the holiday season took priority.  First of all, let me make my position clear: scholars like Niall Ferguson are distinctly responsible for giving intellectual cover to all kinds of unsavoury ideologies that are creating problems for the rest of the world today.  While their words may be walking a fine line, the images they conjure up in the minds of others lead to a two-tier world that is simply not acceptable to civilization as we know it.

In his book, 'Civilization: The Six Ways the West Beat the Rest' (I won't link to it), Ferguson describes the six 'killer apps' of the West that not only provided it deserved dominance, but seeks to justify an approach that may serve little more than a continued dominance at all costs.

This is the United States of America -- where Christians are being asked by Rick Perry supporters to not vote for Romney and Huntsman:

"The view that Mormons are not Christians is the widely and strongly held view among Protestant pastors. That does not mean they do not respect Mormons as persons, share their values on family and have much in common. Yet, they simply view Mormonism as a distinct religion outside of basic teachings of Christianity. Many of these pastors may know Mormons who consider themselves Christians, but Protestant pastors overwhelmingly do not consider them such," said Stetzer. "I know this is an unpleasant question to many, and one that some will use as a hammer on evangelicals."

Mormons differ from most Protestants in how they view the Trinity. They also have scripture in addition to the Bible, such as the Book of Mormon, and believe in prophets such as Joseph Smith, Jr., who founded the Latter Day Saint movement.  (Stetzer, Lifeway Research Study 2010)

Thanks to the good work by our team, the All-Parliamentary Ahmadiyya Group in the United Kingdom has lost the support of most members of the House of Commons who participated in the first meeting, the mainstream media, all the Muslim intellectuals that attended the previous meeting, and have been forced to switch gears to 'international' extremism.

The first meeting, which we reported on: 

was called by the Honourable Siobhain McDonagh, the precursor to this PG (in 2010) was meant to discuss the Lahore attacks, but was used to bounce half-baked local media stories off the walls of Parliament and then into full-fledged stories in the mainstream media.

The Globe and Mail writes:

The moral outrage is as thick as Devon cream. But this story is about much more than corrupt police and a media culture run amok. It’s about power, hypocrisy and revenge. It’s about opportunism and political calculation. And most of all, it’s about payback. In Britain, Rupert Murdoch is widely reviled as an evil genius who’s been clobbering the competition and terrorizing the political class for decades. And now, he’s getting his comeuppance.

In addition to all this, News Corp, its newspapers and TV stations (including Sun and Fox) and Rupert Murdoch himself, were the biggest tarnishers of Muslim identity in the world.  While the Islamophobia in the Western media will not be significantly reduced by these events, it is heartening to see that lies and hypocrisy are based on negative forces that eventually, and automatically, dismantle their purveyors.

Background

Last year, terrorists attacked Qadiani Ahmadiyya places of worship in Lahore just as they have attacked other shrines and places of worship in the last few years in Pakistan.  This pattern is part of the general destabilisation that is a natural consequence of the so-called War on Terror being waged on the Western front of the country.  These terrorist acts are against all norms of humanity and the perpetrators should be given the strongest possible punishment.  Days after the sad event, the Qadiani Centre ordered its country organisations to get the most political mileage out of the attack, especially in Western countries.  The actual words in the instructions were "after Lahore attack, everything is changed".