Ep 235. - Subverting the Narrative: Exposing Zionist Influence with Dr Asim Qureishi
So much of the anti-Palestine prejudice that dominates political and media framing comes from a well-calibrated campaign waged by opaque pro-zionist lobby groups. Dr Asim Qureishi is a human rights lawyer and research director for Cage International. Together with his team, he has diligently uncovered how these organisations operate and how they manage to influence the corridors of power.
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Transcript - This is an AI generated transcript and may not reflect the actual conversation
Introduction
0:00
we are fighting a narrative war so much of the anti-Palestine prejudice that dominates political
0:05
and media framing comes from a well-calibrated campaign waged by opaque pro-Zionist lobby groups
0:13
i think the narrative shifted because this is the first time that you know the world has been forced to witness a livestream genocide palestinian dignity has spoken for itself it
0:22
doesn't require an advocate is that tradeoff worth it at the future of our in this country
0:28
what this tradeoff that you're speaking about does is create a religious secularism that
0:34
ultimately harms us you know our casework went up 500% since October the 7th just because of the
0:41
level of repression that is taking place um and of course it is all racially encoded it is mostly
0:47
uh black and brown people who are suffering the harsher end of all of this dr asim Kureshi is a human rights lawyer and research director for Cage International together with his team he
0:57
has diligently uncovered how these organizations operate and how they manage to influence corridors
1:03
of power my government is selling weapons to the Zionist state the the quadcopter that emits
1:08
the sounds of women and children screaming so that it lurs adults out into the open only to
1:15
then execute them in the streets right that's what that's what's leaving the UK cuz we live in a state that is directly connected to the machinery of violence against Palestinians have
1:26
we not understood that the punishment of Allahhana tala may come at us before it comes on anyone else
Zionist groups
1:37
dr aimhalamlaykum and welcome to the thinking Muslim
1:44
well it's wonderful to have you with us Asim and uh we've got a a really interesting conversation today and I've been meaning to invite you and uh onto the podcast for some time and
1:55
um of course your organization Cage International has been at the forefront of dealing with some
2:00
of these some of the sort of really acute cases of civil liberty infringements here
2:06
in the UK and beyond actually because you know you work around the world
2:11
And uh I was commenting over a coffee uh earlier today with you that um I follow you
2:17
on social media follow Cage on social media and um it's only recently that I've sort of realized
2:24
the breadth of your work and that's really a you know an indictment of myself in a way because I
2:30
follow you know Muslim groups and activities in UK but just the amount the breadth of your work
2:36
uh is is is pretty astounding alhamdulillah and um that sort of the service you provide
2:42
the Muslim community so I want to explore some of that today but uh uh you know the focus I suppose
2:49
of today's conversation is a report you recently published about a couple of organizations two
2:56
Zionist groups in the UK uh UK LFI UK lawyers for Israel and the campaign for anti-semitism and you
3:04
argue that these two groups in particular they distort public discourse on Palestine
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um so let's talk about these groups these Zionist groups who are they um what do they do how do they
3:19
subvert the narrative uh on Palestine here in the UK zaken um yeah these organizations they're quite
3:30
interesting because what you have really in the UK is this constellation of Zionist organizations
3:39
that operate in different ways so you've got the community services trust you got the
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um the board of deputies that represents largely the Jewish community or at least ostensibly claims
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to represent um the Jewish community then you have the campaign against anti-semitism UK lawyers for
3:57
Israel so you've got like a whole group of organizations that you know from the outset
4:07
really try to claim that they are representing the interests of Jewish people living in the UK that's
4:15
their predominant focus at least that's what they claim for themselves but really when you start
4:20
digging through their activities their connections what they're really about ultimately what emerges
4:28
is this view that these organizations serve one purpose which is to provide cover for Zionism and
4:35
for the Zionist state itself and they do this in a in a kind of a whole series of different ways
4:41
the chief of which really is to weaponize the accusation of of anti-semitism against almost
4:49
anybody and everybody so this is something that regularly comes up again and again and again that
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you know an organization an individual a charity a mosque are acting in anti-semitic ways yeah and
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what they do is that they use different regulatory frameworks in order to try and diminish the space
5:10
of freedom of expression so that's really how these these groups operate and you know we chose
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to focus on UK laws for Israel and the campaign against anti-semitism the reason we did that
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is well UK laws for Israel it's in the name UK lawyers for Israel as opposed to UK laws against
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anti-semitism m and for the campaign against anti-semitism what we wanted to show is that
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it may say that it's it's ostensibly working against anti-semitism but really if you if you
5:37
start to look at the different types of complaints that they put forward many of them really focus on
5:43
defending the Zionist state itself and it's this conflation between Zionism and the Zionist state
5:50
with anti-semitism which I think produces a lot of violence against um those who are trying to
5:57
critique what uh Zionism actually is itself tell me about the breadth of these organizations like
How impactful are these groups?
6:04
how impactful are they on on civil society on life political and social life in in Britain
6:10
well you know one of the things that we do in the report is is look at the kinds of connections that they have to um mainstream politicians you have UK um so we've got the uh friend UK friends of Israel
6:25
um the conservative party has a version and so does the Labour party so at the highest stations
6:31
and offices of government whether it's in power or in opposition you have very concerted effort
6:39
in order to provide support for Israel itself okay so this is um in the form of diplomatic cover in
6:46
the form of political cover economic cover and of course through the the sales of munitions and
6:53
various forms of weaponry to Israel so there is there it's multifaceted and when you look at kind
6:58
of MPs like Bob Blackman and so on so forth you kind of get an understanding that they're not just
7:06
um involved at the level that you would be any government would be with another state there is a
7:11
deeper ideological commitment to ensuring that the Zionist state maintains its presence in the Middle
7:18
East in the form that it is in right now right and what's interesting of course is that no one not
7:25
even Hamas not any of the you know kind of groups that are operating in the occupied territory are
7:31
actually saying anything about Jews at all what they're saying is that you know ultimately what we need is a is a long-term truce at the very minimum but really working towards one democratic state
7:41
for all people and it's actually that ultimate project that these groups and the political cover
7:49
that they have are trying to stop from coming into fruition and you know we can talk about
7:55
it a little bit later maybe but you know we see some of that in the shifting tides right now that
8:01
are taking place at a media level at a political level in relation to Zionism right now they're
8:07
scrambling to protect Zionism from itself m they can see how deranged Zionists have become and you
8:14
see this in kind of like this this almost like a 180 but it's not what what what we see it as is
8:21
an attempt to rescue Zionism from its own deranged self in your report you suggest that these groups
Connections between groups
8:28
are connected to some very unsaavory individuals uh in Israel uh ministers like Smottridge who I've
8:36
just heard uh has been um sanctioned by the um the British state right um uh what is it uh ex explain
8:45
that like explain those links those connections between these organizations and and some of those individuals in in Israel so what you have regularly taking place say for example from an
8:55
organization like Ukillo for Israel uh are these invitations to uh settler settler groups to come
9:03
and speak on their platform so the UK Lawyers for Israel Charitable Trust which is separate to the
9:09
the advocacy element of their organization Yeah will regularly invite um individuals organizations
9:17
groups that are connected to Smutri yeah that you know he is the founder of or a patron of or so on
9:23
so forth in order to advocate here in the UK for increased settlements for the mass expulsion of
9:32
uh Palestinian people out of their territories you know and and this is why we call the um the report
9:38
UK's apartheid apologists because that's what these organizations do they they work specifically
9:45
in order to maintain the Zionist state in its current racially segregated apartheid form
9:51
right now and that's that's significant because the international court of justice last year it
9:57
issued an advisory opinion which explicitly states that Israel that the Zionist state is a racially
10:04
segregated apartheid regime okay which carries implications now under international law right
10:11
you cannot under international law have relations with an apartheid state it's completely illegal in
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In fact that state should be made into a pariah state completely and that's why we have chosen
10:24
these organizations in particular because what we're saying about them is that the way that they operate is almost as political and legal cover for the Zionist state here in the UK and the charity
10:37
commission in particular should not be permitting organizations to effectively advocate on behalf of
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apartheid which is exactly what Zionism is as an ideology and as a political practice every year
Donate to Baitulmaal
10:52
Muharam returns a sacred month a new beginning a time to remember to reflect and to give
10:59
we remember the trials of the prophets the courage of Musa Ali Salam the unwavering hope
11:04
in God's mercy but trials are not just stories of the past today millions face hunger war and loss
11:13
mothers pray for food fathers search for safety children grow up too fast just trying to survive
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but where there is hardship there can be hope and where there is hope there can be you [Music]
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this muharam give more than charity give relief give healing give dignity give
11:42
hope give today turn your compassion into hope what if um um uh in in that previous question
Pushback on Israel?
11:54
I I mentioned today the government has imposed sanctions on these two individuals two ministers
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uh of the Israeli government uh last week or two weeks ago David Lammy the foreign secretary uh
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did make some very firm statements about Netanyahu and how he felt he had crossed the line especially
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in relation to the the recent sort of siege of of Gaza um what if I what if the the sort of response
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to what you've said is that um you know if these organizations are so powerful how can it be that
12:28
at the highest levels uh there is this push back albeit very slight push back there is a push back
12:36
against Israel and how would you respond to to I would question the extent to which this is a push
12:41
back as you know as I mentioned already um what I believe is taking place is a normalization ution
12:47
of Zionism this is the state um and you know for me I don't really care about how powerful or not
12:56
powerful the Zionist lobby is right that that for me that's by the bite the question is what role
13:01
is the UK government playing in relation to an ideology and a system that is internal crisis that
13:10
we can see its end we can see that this something like this cannot and should not exist in the world
13:16
yeah right but how is it how is the the state how is the the establishment convening in order
13:23
to protect Zionism from itself and the way that it does this is by effectively saying "Hey look this
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fringe couple of people Gir Smutric these guys Netanyahu they've got arrest warrants out for
13:37
them we're putting them under sanctions you know we're doing the right thing." Except the right
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thing isn't to do that the right thing is to turn the Zionist state into a pariah state it is to
13:48
say that no apartheid cannot exist in this world and so we shouldn't take these these sanctions as
13:56
wins what we should do is take them as at the very most a stepping stone to the ultimate goal which
14:03
is to push for one democratic state in the region but the problem is is that uh unfortunately some
14:11
Palestine campaigning that happens here in the UK sees this as the inevitable goal because they
14:17
think that Israel is a completely normal state which of course it's not yeah explain that last bit to me please some Palestine campaigning what are you referring to then i'm I'm I'm referring to
14:28
you know many mainstream um kind of Palestinian movements and organizations who you know openly
14:35
advocate for two-state solution that openly advocate for normalization with the Palestinian Authority Palestinian Authority which has detained itself tens of thousands of Palestinians that
14:47
regularly tortures Palestinians that regularly is involved in a system of normalizing relationship
14:54
with an apartheid state yeah um normally you know we wouldn't be as bold as to criticize you
15:01
know Palestine Palestinians from the decisions that they make but the Palestinian Authority is
15:06
a very very separate entity right so you you know I hope you'll find that we'll never criticize the
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PFLP or you know any other kind of group right that's Palestinians to decide upon but the PA
15:18
has to be understood within a system the structure of of Zionist violence itself that's why they're
15:25
separated yes absolutely absolutely and I and I and I think this is this is part of the problem
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that we have right now um that when we think about the way in which Palestinian um political
15:39
autonomy has developed it is through this system and this structure and look don't get me wrong
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i think people like Husam Zamlut are excellent advocates in many ways for the Palestinian cause
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but he's stuck inside an administration which you know I think is very very well recognized
15:57
now by this stage as being completely complicit in maintaining the lack of Palestinian aspiration
16:06
for a just future and that's the point right what does justice look like in the world if we think
16:12
about you know Andy Clano has got an amazing book called neoliberal apartheid and what he does is that he looks at the post 1994 movement in South Africa and asks the question how did South Africa
16:24
post apartheid become the most unequal society on earth according to the UN the disparity between
16:30
the rich and the poor is greater in South Africa than anywhere else and that's postapartite okay
16:36
that's postle legal segregation in the country and the reason for that is neoliberalism and what
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he does is that he charts that journey of South African desire for political autonomy with what
16:50
the Palestinians went through post Oslo right and he shows the similarities between the two and his ultimate call is this that if you don't want Palestine to turn into Bantans that reflect
17:02
exactly what the what the problems were with the South Africa then you have to learn those lessons and not go down that same route and the problem with the PA is that unfortunately the PA are
17:12
part of the system and structure of violence they are not a solution to it back to these
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organizations you earlier on talked about uh the the idea of anti-semitism and how it's weaponized
IHRA definition of anti-semitism
17:23
against anyone who criticizes the actions of the Zionist state the actions of Israel uh or question
17:30
Zionism or question some of the tactics of the Netanyahu government or even the opposition or
17:36
general society and how they uh they operate and view Palestinians and the lives of Palestinians
17:43
right um and you mentioned the IH definition of anti-semitism now I've heard many times that
17:50
this is this is a very problematic definition of anti-semitism can you spell out what is it about
17:56
IH that makes it so troubling when it comes to uh when it comes to anti-semitism so I think you know
18:05
you know ultimately if one was to be very generous you could say that the actual definition part of
18:12
itself is trying to achieve a certain thing which is to deal with um hatred that is directed towards
18:18
Jewish people even where there is a perception of Jewishness right and as as Muslims I think we can
18:24
uh understand how for example the perception of Muslimness um can manifest as Islamophobia say for
18:31
example if a seek person gets is attacked because your white nationalists think that the turban is an Islamic symbol we would say actually that that was a manifestation of Islamophobia like I always
18:42
talk about when John Charles de Manzes was shot 12 times in the back of his head they believe they the police believed he was a Muslim right that's an instance of Islamophobia even though
18:52
he's a Brazilian man who you know wasn't wasn't a Muslim so let's put that aside you know we all we
18:59
can all agree that uh anti-Jewish animist exists in the world right that requires dealing with that
19:06
it is a form of racism that is significant the problem with the IHA definition is that
19:12
it came with it came alongside it case studies and those case studies are used in order to help
19:20
uh contextualize the definition and within those case studies is the claim that critique of Israel
19:28
is a form of anti-semitism right and that that is what has been weaponized now by you know those who
19:37
advocate for the IH definition and one of the the authors of the IH definition he himself in
19:43
the US said actually this has gone too far we shouldn't be using it in this way we shouldn't be using this definition in the way that it is right now specifically because of that point now
19:54
what we found is that regulatory bodies especially those who have adopted the IH definition and even
19:59
at government level those who are are looking to implement it what they've done is that they've
20:05
wholly adopted that idea that attacking what is claimed to be a Jewish homeland okay the
20:12
Zionist state is akin to being anti-semitic which of course is a problem because you know no one is
20:19
saying that Jewish people shouldn't be allowed to exist in the world at all you know the the problem of anti-semitism isn't a Muslim problem it is not a you know an Eastern Christian problem
20:28
the problem of anti-semitism is a European problem one that is rooted very much in the
20:34
um uh the blood purity that stems from the reconquesta since before then even you know
20:42
it's it's a very much a a problem that was created to have a European imagination of what purity is
20:48
and so when we see how this is used now against those who critique Israel we see this purposeful
20:57
conflation and that's why we talk about it being a weaponization okay and that happens through all
21:03
public bodies whether you're the NHS or in school or in a university in whatever forum you're in
21:10
you'll find that a critique of Israel will be then weaponized against you especially by these lobby groups in order to try and have you removed from your position but we can change that right
21:21
give me some examples of how it's weaponized how it's used say on university campuses or beyond
Weaponisation of anti-semitism
21:26
yeah absolutely so for example you know we've seen that um calls for you know from the river
21:33
to the sea as an example right which is a call for justice across the entire occupied territory
21:40
is labeled as anti-semitic because they say "Oh this means that they want Jew Jews to be killed
21:46
and removed it's a blood liel so on and so forth." you know it's like this idea that you know somehow
21:53
um uh it's calling for the mass expulsion of all Jews from the territory which of course as I said
21:59
before no organization no resistance movement has called for within the territory itself so
22:04
what are they what are they trying to claim here they're just trying to use it as a means of minimizing the free speech of those who are on campus and that's just one example of many but you
22:15
see for example in hospitals regularly ukulele for Israel and campaign against anti-semitism will report somebody just for wearing a Palestine lapel and will actually say post October the 7th
22:27
that the wearing of the lapel or the pin or the badge was in a way support for Hamas right and
22:34
and and they say and therefore support for the ethnic cleansing of the Jewish people which is a ridic completely ridiculous notion showing your political solidarity for Palestinian freedom okay
22:46
and having that conflated with anti-semitism these are two completely separate things to
22:51
one another but we see how they are weaponized within the regulatory frameworks the British
22:57
health secretary west we're treating uh he sent out an advisory maybe a month ago uh saying to
How impactful?
23:02
doctors that they shouldn't wear uh Palestinian pins because presumably because of this complian
23:10
between you know uh solidarity with those who are facing genocide and and anti-semitism so would
23:17
that be an instance an example of how effective I suppose these organizations are at at you know
23:23
transmitting that definition of anti-semitism to public bodies absolutely but you know this
23:29
is all political right because we know that for specifically that when it came to Ukraine for
23:35
instance public bodies were very very much open in their displays i remember coming back into the
23:41
UK from being abroad and seeing at Heathrow like these signs that said have you seen a war crime
23:47
taking place in Ukraine so on so forth right showing their solidarity providing pathways for
23:52
Ukrainians to be to be uh rehoused and resettled in the UK and so we see this again and again and
23:59
actually what we did at Cage was that we tried to bring a JR that unfortunately was thrown out by the judge judicial review within the courts which unfortunately wasn't accepted by the courts but it
24:09
was it was a very unique uh thing that we did yeah we effectively got parents from across the UK to
24:17
um fill out a questionnaire that asked them about the ways in which Ukraine Russia was taught in
24:23
schools as opposed to um Israel Palestine and the reason we did this is because we wanted to
24:29
show that the guidance that was being issued by the department of education that you had to provide both sides of the argument in relation to Israel Palestine was not the guidance that
24:38
was being issued uh in relation to Ukraine and Russia so why was there one standard for one conflict but another standard for another conflict especially when Israel Palestine it's actually
24:48
far more clear that you know there is one entity that has used terrorism has used dispossession has
24:57
used ethnic cleansing and genocide to remove an entire population and and the other one a
25:02
protracted conflict that has you know much more political implications so you know it's it's it's
25:08
a you know it's so utterly clear exactly what has been going on this whole time and I think what our
25:19
report does is just to help make manifest but I think most people naturally already know but it's
25:25
important that we call it for what it is and that we have an evidence base established for it but that we also call out these regulatory bodies for the roles that they play in perpetuating the idea
25:35
that you know Israel critique of Israel is somehow conflated with anti-semitism do you think the the
Narrative shifted?
25:43
narrative has somewhat shifted since October the 7th as uh the uh the actions of this aparite state
25:50
has become so evident to ordinary people i mean I just you know I'm I'm thinking back to a world
25:57
pre October the 7th where even even referencing Israel as an aparite state or saying publicly or
26:04
in a in a public setting say as a teacher or as a doctor that you know what's going on is genocide
26:11
uh would have led to some form of disciplinary sometimes uh in the workplace um that level of
26:20
um of accusation not it does exist of course and I'm sure you can give a hundred examples of where
26:26
that still plays out in in a very negative way but general society has come to appreciate just
26:34
how fascistic this Israeli state is i mean is that your perception um maybe it is worth
26:41
talking about some of the cases that you you know your organization has a heavy workload of of of
26:47
uh of examples of people who have been accused of anti-semitism and and worse uh but yeah just talk
26:55
me through the disc you know has that narrative shifted you think i think the narrative shifted
27:00
because this is the first time that you know the world has been forced to um witness a live stream
27:05
genocide and the genocide has spoken for itself and Palestinian dignity has spoken for itself it
27:12
doesn't require an advocate people are seeing for themselves directly when um you know we see young
27:19
people with their limbs torn from them when we see the bombs um raining down on residential areas it
27:29
doesn't require any process of re-education to convince most people who have a sense of their
27:35
own fra what they're seeing is wrong and you and you see this across the board you see this with celebrities you see this with your everyday person that they're saying "I can't believe what
27:44
I'm witnessing with my own eyes." But this comes back to the point about how much the establishment
27:51
is actually fully invested in Zionism itself that Zionism has gone fully deranged like fully
27:57
deranged completely and utterly deranged but yet they're still not able to back away from from um
28:08
their support for this settler colonial apartheid racist regime because of what it represents in the
28:17
Middle East because of what it does in the Middle East in terms of keeping um the instability in
28:22
that region let's not get confused here you know one of the biggest barriers largest barriers to
28:32
um true autonomy within the Muslim world is the existence of Israel which is why there is so much
28:39
investment you know as the last colonial outpost and and that's exactly what it is it is it is the
28:46
last vestage of colonization that truly exists in the world and until we remove that entity okay
28:54
and come to a just and lasting solution for it uh this it's not possible for us to conceive of what
29:01
um true justice and autonomy for that entire region might look like back back to that um
Ukraine vs Palestine
29:07
contradiction that hypocrisy over Ukrainian uh support and solidarity in schools and hospitals
29:15
and in politics and and other organizations and uh how hostile sometimes people who are who show
29:23
solidarity towards Palestine are treated um like what accounts for that that dysfunction that's
29:32
that's a much harder question to answer because you know some people say it's guilt it's European
29:38
guilt that really functions as the the main reason i mean we have to remind ourselves that the reason
29:45
why uh Jewish people required a homeland is because literally the British enacted a piece
29:54
of legislation that barred Jewish people from entering the UK territory during the Holocaust
30:00
like they systemically denied them entry into the country happy for them to be abused over
30:07
there or at least to be shipped off elsewhere but what you're not doing is you're not coming into the UK right this is part of that heritage of anti-semitism that exists in Europe you you
30:17
read Julia Boyd's work Travelers through the Third Reich and you're so well documented how fascistic
30:23
the entirety of the British establishment actually is it's not just the Brits but the French and the
30:28
Dutch and everyone in that region at that time so it wasn't like ideologically Hitler was a
30:33
pariah in fact mostly they were fascistic in their ideology if we just think about like the extent of
30:40
colonization so some people say it's a throwback to the guilt that they have from that time period
30:47
that that's the reason why they still very very supportive but I think I think it's much more to
30:52
do with the geopolitics of what Israel means to the west in the Middle East and I think you know
31:00
your your regular uh commentator on this show Sami Hamdi he I think he speaks very very eloquently to
31:07
to to that and I think it's worthwhile revisiting you know some of his explanations for for this do
31:13
you think there's a racism there as well i mean of course you know Ukrainians are white um the the crisis in in Russia Ukraine is in Europe right it's affecting Europeans um
Racism?
31:25
Palestinians are brown palestinians you know at least from their perspective Palestinians
31:32
possibly don't have that level of humanity that uh Ukrainians deserve i mean do you think that
31:39
that has a a part to play in that disparity of solidarity racism always operates that's why we
31:47
call racism structural it's always in the room and whatever decision-m policym that takes place
31:53
it's why it's so exceptionally hard to bring Palestinian refugees to this country even to
31:58
get them like medical treatment whereas pathways were opened up to Ukrainians almost immediately um
32:04
and and that's encoded in the whole of society i remember when the Ukraine conflict started there
32:10
was this in in Balum in South London there was a Salvation Army center there that I've driven
32:17
by thousands of times in my life always saw it as a direct building never seen anyone come in of it
32:27
into it or out of it ever pretty much maybe one or two people maximum it's been there for a long time though yeah when the Ukraine conflict started there was a line of white people going all the way
32:40
down Balam High Street all the way like I couldn't believe how far it was going on people with you
32:47
know different blankets and clothing and you know different forms of aid that they were dropping off
32:54
i'd never seen anything like this in my life the only time I've ever seen this kind of stuff is you know at charity runs that Muslims regularly do for for various conflicts around the world in various
33:03
issues and so that was I think for me visually the most stark indicator that oh wow okay there is
33:14
something going on in the world that the people of this country feel connected to but the question is
33:20
what is it about those people that they feel that connection and the only thing that I could come to is is that this notion of whiteness that is the the the cause for them to come out that they
33:29
saw themselves in these people that were being attacked by the Russians but there are there have
33:35
been manifold manifold conflicts in the last 20 30 years for all of the people that were standing in
33:42
that line to do the same action to show the same solidarity but they've never done so because with
33:48
when it comes to Muslim lives and genocides that take place the West always waits in they they're
33:54
complicit for the entire period and they wait until the end in order to then emerge and say "Oh
34:01
we need to do something about this now." But once the lives are all gone look at Bosnia yeah not only did they wait until the genocide had really reached its ner but they actually imposed the arms
34:12
embargo that structurally stopped Bosnjaks from defending themselves right they were complicit
34:17
entirely complicit in the mass murder of Bosnjaks and at the end they come along and say you know
34:24
we need this to stop now kosovo the same thing the NATO bombing only takes place after all the
34:31
lives have gone and so we see this again rwanda it was the same thing so they wait until all the
34:38
lives the massacres the atrocities take place and then they enter and you know Ukraine was different
34:45
almost really from the very beginning they made it very clear that this is this is something that we
34:51
can relate to it is racially encoded i was struck by a few months ago uh prime minister's questions
Structural racism
34:57
the leader of the opposition who's black Kem Bedonov questioned Kalam of the prime minister
35:03
over allowing uh a Palestinian family into the country who had used the Ukraine scheme
35:10
as a loophole uh to to uh to come to the country and um Karma's response was this is a you know
35:19
an unintended consequence of that scheme we're going to close it we're going to shut it down
35:24
um do you think for government you know David Lambie who's black you know we we've got the
35:30
highest proportion of ethnic minorities in in parliament in government uh this time
35:37
round do you think that they will suffer from this structural racism that you refer to i mean I think
35:45
we have to ask ourselves um what do we mean by by by suffer i think that people people of color who
35:57
engage in racist policym I think they spiritually suffer i think they were they that they suffer in
36:04
in in in manifold ways that does great violence to themselves yeah but we also know that there is
36:11
an entire history of this that there is an entire history of people of color being instrumentalized
36:17
in order to validate racist policym you know and it's really interesting I I think we spoke about
36:24
this before but the Quran makes this very very clear like the story of Allahh says about that
36:31
he betrayed his own people um so this is this is a story that goes back to the Jews themselves back
36:38
to Bani is this goes back to them and who uses his position when Mus Alisam comes before's court
36:46
and he says you know free the children of Israel it's not just and Ham who say kill the children
36:53
and enslave the women but is mentioned by Allah as one of those who says that but he's a Jew himself he's a slave and he uses his position of authority being raised up into the of itself to to say that
37:06
but here's the thing in Allahh changes the order of the names that he gives when he talks about
37:11
the punishment usually says inah he mentions name first as though when he's speaking about
37:19
the punishment and that's why we have to think a little bit more carefully about this politics of representation you know we spoke about this in the the last podcast that we did together because
37:28
I think that you know we we do get into this um this pattern this holding pattern of of saying oh
37:37
representation really matters the fact that we've got you know people being represented um Sadi Khan
37:43
received a a nighthood today right and people are going to praise this and they're going to say oh how wonderful a thing it is that he has been kned as a whatever it is of the British Empire but what
37:53
does it what does it get us in terms of justice on this earth how does it move us forward as an
37:59
ethical people forget about politically how does it move first forward politically we can
38:04
just say well here we go we got somebody who's brownfaced in a very high station of office who
38:09
has normalized a neoliberal economics uh that you know does massive amounts of structural
38:16
violence on the earth that you know contributes to the economy of a Zionist regime every single day um if that's the kind of political power that we're looking for and that kind of representation
38:26
that we're looking for then you know ultimately onto a loser so I don't think for me I never
38:32
paid attention to the skin color of any of these people i think if a person of color has involved
38:38
themselves at that level of government and is okay playing a role in normalizing a genocide and
38:45
contributing to it and financially contributing to it by through the sale of weapons and militarily
38:51
contributing to it in many different ways then you know you know ultimately it's a problem for them but our role as those who are watching and a live stream genocide taking place is to hold
39:02
them all to account equally you know it doesn't matter if he's black or brown you know he is part of a system and a structure of violence can you talk me through some of your casework uh
His cases
39:12
some instances of where um Muslims pro Palestinian activists uh have effectively been caught out by
39:22
um you know the IH definition of anti-semitism or you know just the the general um clampdown
39:32
of government and police authorities to make sure that uh this um narrative does not shift
39:41
let's start with a a success story first i think you know like we're so used to as a community
39:46
hearing about you know cases that go wrong or right that it's sometimes it's nice to have a you know a story to tell where it's the opposite end but uh we had a client Mariah Hussein uh who
39:58
um in November 2023 so this couple of months or a month into the uh the genocide taking place
40:05
was uh pictured at one of the I think the largest demonstration that took place uh for Haza uh with
40:12
a placard that had pictures of Sila Braverman and Rishi Sunnak as coconuts with a palm tree behind
40:20
and coconuts falling down it was a very like clever satirical image uh that you know was trying
40:27
to make the point that they that politically these people are instrumentalizing their position in
40:36
order to perpetuate racism even though they are people of color that's that's what the uh the
40:43
motif is trying to get across and it was really interesting when we first started working with Maria we were trying to encourage her to say that this is mad like we got her a lawyer straight away
40:53
Gareth Pierce so she had the best representation she could possibly get in the UK and we were just encouraging her and I would go to the meetings at Gareth's office with with Mariah her and her her
41:03
family and we were just constantly saying "Hey look this isn't going to go anywhere um don't
41:08
worry about it." She had a police interview which was a really crazy interview and I've actually seen the video footage of that interview like the police officer was completely deranged really like
41:17
utterly deranged like saying what do you know about Palestine like you know really like being very very very aggressive and abusive towards her and we thought okay fine like whatever she dealt
41:27
with the the police interview we thought how is anything going to come of this and then I think
41:33
it was almost 6 months later they charged her with a racially aggravated public order offense okay
41:40
even though nobody came forward to say that they had felt um racially abused by this so there was
41:46
no victim in this entire situation in fact what you saw was many people praising the poster like
41:52
a lot of people talking about it praising the the cleverness of the poster and so again we go into
41:58
this situation where we're like "Look okay you got charged but don't worry we're sure that they're going to drop the case because it would be mad for the British government to try to argue or the CPS
42:09
to argue that you have been racist and this is a racially aggravated public order offense." Yeah
42:17
and then the next thing we know we're actually at trial so we have organized for Mariah her
42:24
um professor Gus John Professor Gagi Batacharia and the journalist Peter Oorn as our defense
42:32
experts who are giving like very very incisive information to the judge about the nature of of
42:42
of racism in the UK about the role Peter Oorn's testimony about the role that soil men and Rishi
42:50
Sununak in particular had played in terms of perpetuating racism in the UK was particularly powerful he was actually at some stage very very animated he was really trying to get across to
43:00
the judge how significant this is and you know ultimately the end was what we what we hoped it
43:07
would be which is it was a success we won the case but the level of stress that Maria and her family
43:14
had to go through had to endure and she actually lost her job unfortunately as a teacher as a teacher yeah i mean she took you know she she had an agreed settlement with with her school but you
43:23
know the reality is is that it was actually crazy that she had to go through this entire process and
43:30
this was just one of many many cases that we've dealt with over the years you had another where
43:36
um a group of students uh were distributing material about what's going on in Palestine right
43:41
now and they got caught out but they got caught up by the university who threatened to expel them
43:47
and it's you you you realize that actually these institutions they they are so risk adverse that
43:56
they would rather rather than just using their common sense and asking themselves well really what is the harm that has taken place here and what is at stake in terms of making sure that
44:05
there's an environment of free speech because of counterterrorism legislation because of prevent
44:11
they have been institutionalized into turning everything into an existential threat so if
44:18
a student is talking about the resistance all of a sudden they present an existential threat to society which is nonsense people you know students have to have the freedom to be able to
44:29
think through what is going on in the world and not be you know fed forcefed this diet of these
44:36
are the good guys these are the bad guys right because that just breeds resentment and they will find that information inevitably anyway but what you're doing is you're constructing an environment
44:46
where that freedom to be intellectually curious is completely diminished and I've heard this
44:52
from students so often so many like you know our casework went up 500% since October the 7th just
44:59
because of the level of repression that is taking place it is actually insane um what is going on
45:05
there right now and the majority of this case were students it's it's a mixture it's uh it's people
45:12
in the workplace it's you know those in the NHS it's students it's lawyers as well even a police
45:18
officer uh came to us looking for help because he was uh a Muslim police officer who's struggling
45:24
in fact my my colleague Mars and Beg just gave evidence in his in his case so you know it went to
45:30
trial it went to trial yeah absolutely and um it's it's a very very interesting set of circumstances
45:35
that we find ourselves in um and of course it is all racially encoded it is mostly black and
45:41
brown people who are suffering the harsher end of all of this um white colleagues are being
45:47
um picked on as well for what they're saying but it's nowhere near to the same extent the Charity Commission um because we we know that there are a number of tools that these organizations these
Charity commission
45:57
Zionist organizations use uh to subdue Palestinian activism Muslim activism in this country and for
46:06
a long time and I think we may have briefly talked about it previously but for a long time a charity commission has been a stick to beat Muslim organizations with in particular mosques
46:17
uh who are subscribed to the the charity status and and are are effectively uh governed by the
46:24
charity commission just just explain sort of the subversive or the sort of malignant approach I
46:31
suppose of the of the charity commission when it comes to Muslim organizations yeah yeah no thank you this is a great question um so the charity commission is a regulatory body right
46:41
it is responsible for ensuring that all charities in the UK are abiding by the charity commission's
46:47
guidelines uh in terms of the purposes of what what a charity is trying to achieve okay which is
46:54
generally like trying to do good works and abide by like the human rights act and so on so forth
47:00
okay um now what has happened is that because a lot of M Muslim institutions want charitable
47:09
status because they want to receive donations and with a donation what you get from the government
47:15
is 25% paid for by the government on your donation so if I give uh a pound 25p extra will come from
47:26
directly from the government in claiming gift aid providing you are a UK taxpayer when you're give when you give your donation so it's not a small amount you know you're if if if an organization
47:36
has raised a million pounds over the course of the year they're getting an extra quarter of a million pounds from the from the government on top of what they raised so you can imagine how invested people
47:48
are in forming as charities so that they can take that that government support because that's not
47:55
the only model by the way you know you can also be a company limited by guarantee that works as a charity without having the charity commission regulation but you don't get the 25% then and
48:05
you have to pay VAT and right right you have to pay VAT and you have to do all of that okay so
48:12
so most organizations decide to do this right Now they're under the charity commission's regulatory framework but the regulatory framework also has other policies that are embedded into it such as
48:22
the prevent framework for instance and frameworks in relationship to anti-semitism which includes
48:29
through the back door the IHA definition so now a lot of charities have a problem a lot of mosques
48:36
have a problem they're constituted as charities so in the in a post October the 7th environment
48:43
says something along the lines of it's our duty to support the resistance in Palestine you know some
48:52
entity has watched that has issued a complaint to the charity commission the charity commission
48:57
gets in touch with the mosque the mosque then suspends the Imam pending an investigation and
49:04
quite often completely expose the Imam now what does this do this has a chilling effect not only
49:12
on the mosque itself but also on the IMA who want to be brave who want to say things that
49:17
are righteous that are just who want to help guide their community towards better position
49:22
so that they can become active and useful members of this ummah but this process inhibits them from
49:28
doing so because the mosque committee which you know sometimes becomes like a business structure
49:35
unfortunately is worried about well if we fall out with the charity commission then what will
49:41
happen to us so they take a a quietest approach they effectively say um you know there's no
49:48
politics in the mosques we're not going to talk about any politics except at election time when they'll invite the local MP to come in and speak from the minbar uh but other than that you know
49:59
it just shuts down debate entirely so this is the problem with the Muslim community's relationship
50:04
with the charity commission now that's not across the board by the way so there are some exceptions to this like Islamic center for instance who mah I think is a beacon mosque where they fully advocate
50:18
for Palestinian liberation they fully advocate against um injustices all over the world both
50:25
domestically and internationally and whenever they have complaints issued against them robustly deal
50:31
with those complaints centering their ethics as Muslims over the spiriousness and vexacious nature
50:39
of the complaints against them so I think they're a really fantastic example of how actually you can be brave and you can stand up for yourself and you can say that actually everything that we're
50:49
doing is completely within charity commission's guidelines but unfortunately most people most
50:55
community organizations most mosques don't take that approach which is why they end up limiting
51:01
the space themselves of what Islam looks like in public life because they don't know how to handle
51:07
um these complaints how problematic is this i mean it is problematic of course um but but just you
Trade off?
51:15
know I I would imagine some mosques uh weigh up the goodness they can uh achieve in their
51:23
communities you know youth programs uh you know mothers and you know having nurseries and and
51:30
uh of course prayer and organizing the prayer versus speaking up on on issues to do with Gaza
51:37
and Palestine and you know of course we've been to masids uh across the UK where you know a hudba
51:43
is given on some uh sorry to put it in this way but an innane topic if it's not covering you know
51:50
the the most consequential event of our of our generation probably which is which is genocide
51:57
um but it's repeated week after week week after week and um the Madalis are content with that
52:05
because in a sense we've implicitly made that trade-off that there are some um places where
52:11
we can't uh talk so openly about Palestine um I suppose I'm asking you like is that tradeoff
52:21
worth it when it comes to the future of our um in this country i think what this tradeoff that
52:28
you're speaking about does is create a religious secularism that ultimately harms us um we then
52:38
create these disperate spaces so the space of religion happens inside the mosque and the space
52:43
of politics happens outside of the mosque whereas as as as Muslims we're supposed to understand the
52:49
dean as something that is holistic so if we are being forced u to watch the live murder of Muslims
52:58
on a daily basis and we're being told at the same time well there's nothing you can do about it so
53:04
it's better that you just focus on maintaining your local Muslim scouts group but not imbuing
53:10
that scouts group with the connection and the dedication and the love and the concern for what's
53:17
happening on in ina then you've created you've automatically created these disperate spaces
53:22
then these disperate spaces that are not supposed to exist the world is intimately connected to our
53:29
spirit and you know if we think about it in these terms the Zionist entity exists in the Middle
53:36
East right it's surrounded by Muslim countries who are they're not apathetic they're complicit right
53:43
jordan is complicit um and maintains the jailing of Palestinians egypt is complicit and maintains
53:49
the jailing of Palestinians people are calling on the Egyptian army to do something the Egyptian army is already there they're standing at rougher except that they're taking tens of thousands of
53:58
dollars of bribes in order to let Palestinians through that's the role they're playing right now as we speak right so what is our relationship that's what we have to ask ourselves we can't wait
54:10
for other people all the time we have to just ask ourselves well Allahh created a scenario where I was born in the UK i was raised in the UK or naturalized here whatever status you have
54:21
but I know right here right now that my government provides diplomatic and political cover to the
54:27
Zionist state that my government is selling weapons to the Zionist state that is allowing for private companies like Elbert Systems to sell weapons to the Zionist state it's those factories
54:38
are producing drones and quadcopters that are going into Gaza and killing men women and children
54:44
the the quadcopter that emits the sounds of women and children screaming so that it lurs adults out
54:52
into the open only to then execute them in the streets right that's what that's what's leaving the UK right so then we have to ask ourselves as mosques as Muslim organizations well we live in
55:05
the UK that's happening in the UK what's our relationship spiritually to that connectivity
55:14
because we as British Muslims or as American Muslims as Western Muslims are closer to what's
55:22
happening in Israel in many ways because of the structure of power and the way that power works in this earth than the vast majority of Muslims on on this earth right like what do we honestly
55:34
believe that you and me as people born or raised in the UK that we have less of a responsibility
55:42
than a fisherman off the coast of Somalia or a farmer in Afghanistan do we have we not understood
55:48
that the punishment of Allah subhana tala may come at us before it comes on anyone else and
55:55
if if we genuinely believe that's not the case then I think we're fooling ourselves because we live in a state that is directly connected to the machinery of violence against Palestinians so
56:06
we are as taxpayers we are implicated by our very presence here and so so are our mosques and so are
56:16
our organizations and so these institutions have to ask themselves very very seriously what does it
56:24
look like to stand before the Palestinians of Yama and to see their fingers pointing at us because
56:33
I would hope that inshallah when that if that happens that they're pointing at us to say that oh Allah they they were the ones who protected us they were the ones who worked for us rather than
56:42
pointing their fingers in blame because that would be a very dangerous position to be in
56:47
patasim you wrote an article uh a few months back um I don't know if this is the right word but you
Silence of Imam’s
56:54
were criticizing uh imams and scholars in this country and I suppose across the western world
57:00
for their silence sometimes or and I think you it struck me that it was you know you were very firm
57:07
in in in that article you almost express the sort of idea that they're being complicit in
57:13
this genocide for their silence now you know we we know that there are a number of scholars in this country who maintain a very high profile who give conferences who are sell out tickets at you
57:24
know Excel center and beyond um uh who say very little about about Gaza i mean what is the value
57:33
maybe that's again the wrong term and I'm trying to sort of pick the right words here what is the value I suppose of the Islam that's been taught if it's devoid of justice i mean that's that was
57:46
the entire purpose of the article which was to question that very that very thing um you know
57:53
we we talk about um having a platform and what it means to have a platform like you you you've made
58:00
it you've reached the the apogee of social media fame you've got 10 million followers potentially
58:08
on Instagram or Twitter or whatever or X whatever it's called and you get to that point and then you
58:17
have to start making considerations all right what if I say the wrong thing what happens to
58:23
me now the the Islam that I was taught and the reason why I I I wrote maybe not in critique but
58:34
as as in in inshallah in as a form of advice to myself and to to these is you know I I was taught
58:46
to to respect our that they they literally wear the mantle of the prophets and I don't know a
58:55
single example of a prophet in the Quran that we were told about who said to his people you guys go ahead and fight you guys go ahead and and you know command the good and forbid the evil
59:06
And what I'll do is I'll stay back and I'll teach the people right now we we are taught that in
59:13
times of jihad there should always be a group that remain behind to teach the people but what happens
59:18
when that group is like literally all of them or the vast majority of them and actually the ones
59:24
who are going forward are so few that between you and I we can probably count them uh between
59:30
our fingers right that's that's a problematic situation and when I speak to them they say
59:37
"Oh brother how how how will our da'wah survive how will the people learn?" And my response is
59:43
always the same that you are the ones that have taught me that this religion does not rise and fall off a single person that do you think that if Allahh's guidance is to reach a person that
59:54
you are the suburb that you are the cause for that or that we know that that guidance will reach that person regardless of your position and presence and I think this is a conceit that many Muslim
1:00:05
organizations in the UK have have unhelpfully learned about themselves that sometimes they have
1:00:10
gone into this trap of believing that without them the work that they're doing won't succeed
1:00:16
and I think that that is a conceit that is actually contrary to the ethics and the virtues
1:00:23
of our faith that we should actually embody this idea that speaking the truth carries its own
1:00:30
baraka and that it carries its own protection from Allahhanaa um and you know not to say that Cage
1:00:38
doesn't make mistakes like we are like any other organization we we will and you know we we h we
1:00:44
will always admit to where we believe that we've gone gone wrong somewhere but I think one of the things that does separate cage from so many other organizations is that we think about our ethics
1:00:54
first and what our position is in relation to the oppressed and regardless of the consequences we
1:01:00
center that before all else we don't think about like for example when we criticize Saudi Arabia
1:01:08
publicly you know people told us that you might not be able to uh perform Haj Umrah again so many
1:01:14
of my guests tell me that and and and and quite frankly what would be the point of that Haj Umrah
1:01:22
if we abandoned somebody who's been tortured so close to the prophet's mosque they could see the
1:01:28
minar of the prophet's mosque in a secret prison and that's what we're being told and we have a
1:01:33
choice either we expose the member of the royal family who's carrying out the torture himself by name or we keep it to ourselves in the hope that we can perform the Haj and the Omrah and perform
1:01:44
these these acts of that that are of course personal to us and they don't benefit anybody
1:01:49
else except for ourselves right and so this is the question right and it just ultimately
1:01:56
comes down to a question that I think that our scholars have to ask ourselves what is the value of the knowledge that they have what is the value of the positions that they They have if you have
1:02:04
10 million followers on in on on social media and you can't even name the entity the Zionists that
1:02:13
are murdering Palestinians you've gone almost 2 years without taking that entity's name what is
1:02:18
the value of that of that platform that you have and if it's just to encourage people to towards
1:02:27
the dean then I promise you brother that Allahh will encourage those people regardless of whether
1:02:32
or not you exist in the world do you subscribe to Sheikh Ali Hammuda sent out a message where he
1:02:37
said if someone if a scholar today is not talking about Gaza um then it disqualifies that scholar
1:02:47
uh um when it comes to talking about Islam don't listen to that scholar on any issue of Islam if
1:02:54
they're not talking about ka I mean Shah Ali Hammud is one of the people that I I love and respect in the UK and so um I very much agree with with that position I I just at a personal level
1:03:07
let's take let's take Islam out of it in the sense of um you know just as a as like a as a human
1:03:14
being and as a man right if I knew that somebody had acquired so much knowledge that memorized
1:03:20
books and whatever else right that they weren't applying that to one of the most important issues
1:03:27
that we have been forced to contend with day in day out literally to witness that the the tearing
1:03:33
off of limbs of children and to not use that knowledge for the sake of speaking out against
1:03:39
it just at a very human level i would just have no respect for that person whatsoever like none
1:03:45
i just wouldn't be able to look that person in the eye and think of them as a decent human being or
1:03:50
as a man forget about the religious implication the spiritual implication of them not doing so like I just wouldn't want that person in my life because I would find them weak and pathetic and I
1:04:01
and I don't know how people I get to do this work day in day out i get to work with Palestinians get
1:04:08
to try and represent Palestinians and their cause and it's such a blessed position to be in and I
1:04:13
feel constantly like Allahh's punishment hangs over my neck and I don't know how other people
1:04:20
who who have the ability who have the resources who have the knowledge um are not utilizing it
1:04:29
and doing whatever they can for the same cause because you know people can't hide behind the
1:04:35
excuse of oh well we're doing stuff behind the scenes brother we know everything that's going on in terms of the Palestinian cause there is nothing you can do in private that uh hasn't
1:04:45
already been tried in the past that hasn't already been expressed that hasn't already been done what
1:04:51
we're looking for is leadership right now when we seeing so much innovative work going on out
1:04:57
there in the world where are you in relation to it yeah uh today you lodged an application to
De-proscription of Hamas
1:05:03
the home secretary yes to deprescribe Hamas as an organization and that follows a couple of weeks
1:05:09
back or a month back maybe um Riverways Solicitors a lawyers firm here in the UK Fahad Hanssari of
1:05:17
course who lodged a very similar application to deprescribe uh Hamas as an organization that's
1:05:25
on the terrorist list in in the UK so explain explain that that that to me like what why did
1:05:30
you feel the need Cage feel the need to do that so let me just go through the law quickly first because I think it's important in the UK we have section 12 the terrorism act which makes it an
1:05:40
offense to express to support or to express support for a banned terrorist organization
1:05:47
what's known as a proscribed organization right so um nothing that I say or nothing that we have
1:05:54
done with the legal case should be taken as support or an expression of support for Islam
1:06:00
or Hamas or the Islamic resistance movement as it's known in English um so with that said
1:06:09
um Cage wasn't involved in the riverway law application except in two ways well Cage wasn't
1:06:14
I was personally involved as the person who led on the research so the application itself that was
1:06:19
drafted by Fahadanssari Frank McInness and Daniel Grutters is about 100 pages long and it includes
1:06:26
uh testimony from Dr mus Abulk who is the one of the political heads of Hamas um in relation to
1:06:34
all the reasons why Hamas should be removed from the list of of banned organizations it's a very
1:06:41
um wellought through document it's very clear on the international law uh it makes it very clear
1:06:47
that not only does Britain have a responsibility to not um support the Zionist state but actually
1:06:56
going further to say that really Britain has a responsibility to support the resistance
1:07:01
against Zionism and settler colonialism that's the actual correct international position and
1:07:07
that application is very very sure that it should succeed the home secretary should read the 100
1:07:13
pages of the application and the 700 100 pages of addended expert reports from people like John
1:07:18
Dugard who's the South African judge Abby Schllay the Oxford professor and and many others right who
1:07:24
are all making the argument of why Hamas should not be on the list of prescribed organizations so
1:07:32
that that was the application a month ago um that was that was submitted now from a cage perspective
1:07:39
so they they application my personal capacity application was directly issued by the leadership
1:07:45
of Hamas themselves so they have applied through the law legal team to the home British home
1:07:51
secretary cage had a report in that in relation to some of our cases but it's a very very small thing
1:07:57
we decided at Cage that actually because we've had so many cases come into our organization where
1:08:04
people have been affected Yeah by um by section 12 of the terrorism act or through regulatory bodies
1:08:14
um due to this accusation of Hamas that we should actually highlight the extent to which the
1:08:22
prescription regime in the UK has an implication for freedom of expression and democracy itself
1:08:29
now you you can imagine a bizarre situation in which you have a Palestinian let's imagine
1:08:35
that there's next month there's there's elections right somehow there's a ceasefire and everybody
1:08:41
agrees we should hold Palestine elections all over again right hamas runs as you know elected
1:08:50
body it wants to run in the elections it does so you have in the UK somebody who's a British
1:08:56
national or somebody living in the UK but wants to do a postal vote and wants to issue their vote for Hamas technically that would be a a terrorism offense under the current regime right so I just
1:09:10
want to give you like like this bizarre scenario as an understanding of the extent to which this
1:09:17
prescription regime inhibits one of the the main parties in Gaza and in Palestine across Palestine
1:09:28
from actually being able to um operate in the world the prescription regime is a political
1:09:34
regime right it's an entirely political construct you know it from from all the evidence that we've
1:09:41
presented to us presents no no existential threat to the UK uh or any or you know or anyone in the
1:09:47
west they have only operated within the occupied territory itself so people who are interested in
1:09:54
what's going on in the Middle East if they're talking about the resistance that's been taking place historically and now within Palestine you kind of have to talk about the Islamic
1:10:03
resistance movement it's almost like you can't talk about it and unfortunately what's happened is that those who have been speaking about it have found themselves falling foul of terrorism laws or
1:10:15
a pseudo form of the terrorism laws so this is why it's where it gets interesting right because yes some people have been charged for expressing support for Hamas but actually the vast majority
1:10:25
of the cases we show are all regulatory body cases so either it's a criminal offense or it's not
1:10:32
why are regulatory bodies picking on this and effectively running with it within their
1:10:39
own frameworks right if the regulatory body thought that a doctor had breached section
1:10:44
12 the terrorism act surely they should have just submitted the the complaint directly to
1:10:50
the police and that the police deal with it as a matter of criminal law but they're not as as this
1:10:56
uh this application to the prescribed shows what we see is actually that regulatory bodies or
1:11:02
schools or governing bodies are effectively acting as pseudo policemen themselves right on an issue
1:11:10
that ultimately is very political and as Dr sophie Haspes uh writes in her book prescribing peace all
1:11:19
of this is political that every single conflict in the world where you have a group that is labeled a
1:11:26
prescribed terrorist organization that always the west will talk to that group it is inevitable it
1:11:36
is it is it has been the history of the world it is always the case things change we see with uh
1:11:43
HTS in Syria right now that you have got Western governments bending over backwards in order to talk to Ahmed which we would say is the correct position but why did it take you so long to get
1:11:53
there why did you have to um diminish Syrian resistance for so long and prescribe it and and
1:12:01
uh create this environment in which people were being criminalized all over the place when actually what could have happened is that that process could have been sped up much sooner
1:12:12
so you know with in the case of Hamas we believe that it's inevitable that at some point um the
1:12:21
British government will have to talk to them the question is when right and what we're trying to
1:12:28
do is trying to say don't wait until that point in the middle of a genocide right you have the
1:12:33
opportunity as a British government to understand what the implications are we are presenting those findings to you it is better that you deposcribe now and allow for pathways of peace allow for that
1:12:44
that environment to emerge where people can have honest conversations about what is going on rather
1:12:49
than criminalizing um the space of legitimate discussion it's going to fail isn't it i mean you
1:12:57
know the um uh you're lodging that an application to the Labor government that Cooper is a home
1:13:05
secretary um the Labor Party is a Zionist party through and through it supports Israel it has
1:13:15
um uh it has given diplomatic and political cover to the state of Israel where politically possible
1:13:21
and it continues to do so um um some would say it's a fool's errand like why why even try what
1:13:30
is was never going to come to fruition we're not at this stage ready to deprescribe Hamas as
1:13:37
an organization well for a start I I I think that the arguments are very strong that if Iette Cooper
1:13:43
comes back and gives reasons why we're going to learn a lot about the British government itself
1:13:50
so she has to respond she has to respond now she may choose not to give reasons okay even though
1:13:55
she should which then takes us to the prescribed organizations appeals commission right which is
1:14:01
POA it's a court that we can then appeal to which is a judge-led court we're able to present our
1:14:08
arguments there right and unfortunately sometimes in POA what the government do is they'll they'll
1:14:14
claim uh public interest and they will ask the judge to go behind closed doors in order to
1:14:20
present their evidence against the case that we're making and in that circumstance neither we nor our
1:14:27
lawyers will be permitted to see the evidence that the government is presenting what they do in that
1:14:32
circumstance is that they they appoint a court special advocate who stands who can speak to us
1:14:40
as the appealing uh team prior to the proceeding starting but once that special advocate hears the
1:14:47
government's evidence they cannot confer with us at all we have to rely upon them behind closed doors to advocate on on our behalf um without knowing exactly what's going on an individual that
1:14:59
the government appoints well there's a there's there's a pool of special advocates okay uh so
1:15:05
you know it would be somebody from that pool effectively okay um and there's some some some
1:15:12
you know fairly decent lawyers in that in that group so hopefully we'll we'll find the right person if if it gets to that stage but you know let's see if I Cooper changes her mind and decides
1:15:23
to do the right thing and be on the right side of history as opposed to being on the genocidal side of history which they already are on yeah um but then of course there are layers of appeals and
1:15:33
we you know I think we're confident that we'd want to take this all the way to the European Court of of Human Rights and ensure that we follow because you know like anything else we can only do
1:15:45
the things that we have been trained to do and to use them to the maximum efficacy that we can
1:15:50
we believe that this application is the the the quickest way to help reduce um the the tensions
1:16:01
in the Middle East by opening up corridors to actual negotiation and discussion by exposing
1:16:08
Zionism for what it actually is by getting the British government to admit that Zionism is an
1:16:13
is an evil racist ideology and that resistance is perfectly legitimate under international
1:16:20
law so we we've we've assessed the the legal landscape and in our assessment we believe that
1:16:27
this is the fastest route in order to achieve that goal um now it's probably going to be a
1:16:33
bit bumpy along the way but we have to try that because that is the burden that you know people
1:16:39
like Riverway Law and ourselves at Cage and whoever is bringing these types of application that that's the responsibility on us we're not Islamic scholars right our duty is not to stand
1:16:48
on the niner and teach the people about how they should be involved in our job is to use our legal
1:16:54
training and our political training in order to to use what the tools we have in front of us in order
1:17:00
to affect that change and we're responsible to Allah before Allah for for using those skills in
1:17:05
the right way right so right now in our assessment this is one of the the best things that we can do
1:17:12
and of course it's not it is it is it is in a paniply of actions we don't put all of our eggs
1:17:18
in one basket this is just one action that we have taken an important one a significant one one which
1:17:24
we believe turns the table upside down because most people are arguing out there that oh you know
1:17:30
maybe Hamas shouldn't be considered a terrorist organization actually what we're interested in is
1:17:36
Zionism itself this is why we're attacking the lobby groups you know why are we always on the
1:17:42
defensive at Cage yes we're representing lots of different people saying you know we have to help this person we have to help this person but actually what we need to be doing is attacking
1:17:51
the source of the complaints themselves why are we only dealing with the after effect so
1:17:57
if we know that UK lawyers for Israel and Campaign Against Anti-semitism are issuing these vexacious
1:18:03
complaints to these regulatory bodies what we need to be doing is explaining to those regulatory
1:18:08
bodies why you should not be listening to these rapid Zionists in the first place that's that's
1:18:14
really the work that needs to be done cutting off the source of the complaint itself like how
1:18:20
can you take seriously these complaints from this organization that believes in X Y and Zed so it's
1:18:27
always multifaceted but you know the really the the the best work is the work that is an offense
1:18:34
never the work that is in defense because the defensive work is something that we have to do because we're obligated to help those who are in need but if we want to bring about change we have
1:18:42
to change the system and the structure that is embedded at the level of the establishment which
1:18:47
of course we understand is is Zionism itself uh this has been a really fascinating conversation
Politically educating children
1:18:54
can I can I move to um a conversation we had off camera which I found extremely fascinating
1:19:00
and and it was about um your your children are now coming of age you know they're teenagers and um as
1:19:07
a father you know especially I think uh a lot of Muslims across the country and beyond are thinking
1:19:14
about this um we're trying to politically educate our children we want them to be um uh activists we
1:19:23
want them to uh to to imbue their Islam into their sense of justice we we want that for our children
1:19:31
um uh and you were saying that you've sort of embarked on this journey with your with your
1:19:36
kids to inform them about the world now just talk us through that like how are you you're doing that
1:19:42
and how do you prevent because there there's a lot of horribleness in the world right you know
1:19:48
and and of course we do as parents want to shield our children from especially at a very younger age
1:19:54
but shield our children from um you know what's happening in the world times some of the images we see of the of Gaza we find troubling we we find it very difficult to to look at those those images
1:20:06
so just talk me through that sort of political education that you're that journey that you're
1:20:12
embarking on no in Zaken I think I think there's lots of things that as I mean you know subhan
1:20:19
Allah being being you know what it's like being a parent is a huge huge burden and um you always
1:20:25
feel like you're getting it wrong 99% of the time yes um you know and I always joke with people and
1:20:30
saying that you know you know the best decision we made uh in terms of child rearing was to reduce
1:20:36
my role with the kids and make sure that the wife did most of it but I mean it's jokes aside you know it's uh it's it's tough it's tough and especially when we do this type of work yeah when
1:20:47
you know I'm coming home and from like maybe an investigation trip where I've had a mother and her
1:20:54
son describe being held in a Moroccan prison where the son was trained by the torturers to like hate
1:21:00
his mother to the extent that he almost killed her in her cell one night when he was 10 years old right this is my world yeah um and I'm like doing these interviews these trauma interviews and I'm
1:21:13
coming home and sometimes the last thing you want to do is talk about work when you get home but it
1:21:20
stays with you right so like I think you know my wife definitely knows my kids would know when you
1:21:28
know I was in a space that was uh a little bit more quiet because it affects you like doing this
1:21:33
type of work you can't be around the stories and the lives of those who've been tortured and trauma
1:21:39
traumatized in so many different ways without it um being present in your in your daily life
1:21:46
um and you're right that what we do when when when the children are younger is to try and shield them
1:21:53
uh from a lot of this as well to like make sure that you're not talking about the you know any
1:21:59
any cases obviously you know kind priv you know privilege does remain even at home but you're
1:22:05
not kind of bringing your home back work back in a way that that that kind of harms them but at
1:22:12
some stage they have questions what do you do for a living right like what what what is what is this
1:22:20
that you're doing what's going on you know they they they're watching the same things that you are during Ramadan and you know Palestine for some reason an issue that always comes up in Ramadan
1:22:29
you take them on protests um when they're from a very very young age they like learn to shout from
1:22:35
the river to the sea Palestine will be free before they even really understand where Palestine is in the world you know they're going and they're pushing them along in their in their pram and
1:22:45
whatever else with everyone else so that education happens in some ways when they're younger by
1:22:50
osmosis it's happening constantly you're talking to your to your spouse to your siblings to your
1:22:56
parents about what's happening and the kids are always picking stuff up they're the sponges they And then one day one one will have a conversation you've maybe been a bit negligent about an issue
1:23:06
that you've been talking about in the world and they'll be like "Oh you were speaking about this one day." And then you realize "Oh damn like my kids actually like they're listening." You have
1:23:14
this moment of realization where you you you know that oh they're picking this stuff up and they have questions relating to it yeah so it was just a case of um trying to think about how how
1:23:26
do you develop that instinct um that they have of being curious about the world and understanding
1:23:35
how the world operates itself and there's so many tools I found that you can actually use to do this
1:23:42
um from an Islamic perspective we found that the sharing of uh talks by uh like IM for instance
1:23:52
is a really incredible um entry point for our children into um to understanding the world
1:24:01
by connecting it to their dean all the time like may Allah preserve uh our sheh but he's he's he's
1:24:06
a unique gem and I I remember sending Imam Omar a picture of my son during Ramadan like a few years
1:24:12
ago where you know he's sitting with his iPad with Imam Omar speaking about I think it was to do with
1:24:19
Alexa maybe but it could have been another topic but he's got his headphones on he's got it plugged in and he's sitting there with Ben Jerry's by himself like I think he's like 9 years old at the
1:24:27
time Jerry's good ice cream yeah right so like he you know it was such a cute picture in many
1:24:34
ways but I was just like this is what we want this is what we want our kids to be to be this is what
1:24:41
how we want them to be learning but there are so many different resources you know they can learn
1:24:48
um through people like Loki you know watching his interviews for instance they can um read books my
1:24:55
my kids alhamdulillah they they're a little bit like me uh one of my sons says that he reads more than I do so you know we haven't tested it yet but uh they're all they're all big readers but
1:25:05
because they're embarking on that reading journey and the question that I had to myself is okay well
1:25:11
how can I introduce them to my world in a way that is staged so for example one of the early
1:25:18
books that they read uh is Betty Before X by Ilasa Shabbaz and it's it's actually about Betty Shabbaz
1:25:25
the wife of of Malcolm X and her childhood but it's written for really small children but it's
1:25:30
you get introduced to the concepts of like racism and racial segregation and discrimination without
1:25:37
it like smacking you on the nose with the big fat hammer um and you know you can read graphic novels
1:25:43
like Mouse for instance which kind of teaches about uh Nazi Germany and the Holocaust in a in a
1:25:49
very very clever graphic novel um uh way which you know my my kids really benefited from in terms of
1:25:59
um understanding how fascism works and operates and how you can end up with something like the
1:26:04
Holocaust um there's a brilliant I've forgotten its name there was a brilliant um graphic novel
1:26:09
on Syria and the Syria refugee crisis and again you know came at the perfect time it was a perfect
1:26:16
tool for me to use to help explain to my children wh why are there Syrian refugees coming to the
1:26:21
country why are these politicians that you're seeing on the media demonizing Syrian refugees what's going on here where does it stem from and of course some of this stuff is a bit liberal uh
1:26:32
and the litics are quite liberal and so you have to kind of help them navigate the politics of what they're reading as well um they used to subscribe to a magazine a kids magazine as well political
1:26:44
magazine again very very liberal magazine but they'd read it and the the conversations that we'd have coming out of it were for me sometimes the most interesting aspect of their reading process
1:26:54
because it's not you know we're all human beings we're all absorbing material all the time yeah
1:27:00
but it's so important and I'm probably still not very good at doing this enough which is it's the
1:27:05
conversation you have after the input has been received right it's not just about giving them
1:27:11
literature and just saying vend for yourself in the world now it's about okay fine you read this
1:27:18
what does this mean for you in your life like how did you understand it what does it mean in in in
1:27:23
your cosmology of your relationship to Allahh of your relationship to this um um and so part of it
1:27:31
is trying to readjust the notions of what what it means to have heroes in our lives you know and I
1:27:39
I always hold back Malcolm X's autobiography I mean you have to hold it back a little bit because the first as you know we've discussed before the first part of the book you know is
1:27:47
uh can be a bit troubling for younger readers but you know by the time that they're 16 this
1:27:52
is this is a book that you they should be working their way up to so that when they read it you know
1:27:59
this this this book that had I think for most of us such a profound political impact on our lives
1:28:05
um is one that they're able to then kind of relate to more closely as well themselves and
1:28:10
so you know there's no you know I don't say to anybody there's a prescription for any of this it's it's more about a process right about making sure that at various stages you're giving your
1:28:21
children material that they can they can engage with that they can think about that they can be
1:28:26
critical in their in their understanding of the world and the interactions that they're having with other people too foreign trips um so many of uh Muslims in Britain take their kids to Dubai
Trips for kids
1:28:39
um to you know because Dubai is a is a halal uh place to to you know to uh to go and enjoy enjoy
1:28:46
oneself and eat halal food and whatever right which you know we can talk about the problems with that but um uh of course there isn't that much learning when it comes to your you know the
1:28:58
sort of political justice thinking about the um um give us some tips on on where to take kids i mean
1:29:06
honestly we haven't traveled that much together as a family um you know we've been to Istanbul
1:29:11
and mah you've you're a regular uh guest of yours on here Jakob Ha he has been kind enough to give
1:29:18
my family a guided tour of of the city which more than I got which which was really incredible um
1:29:24
and you know the kids really benefited from that a lot um they uh my my uh my family my kids my
1:29:31
wife they went on Omra recently and it was an interesting experience for them i wasn't able
1:29:37
to go because um you know perhaps I'm persona non grata there but the it was it was so fascinating
1:29:44
that you had to remind them that that land is a work for Muslims and it's quite hard to envisage
1:29:55
what that means because you have border agents and you have Saudi police and you have military and
1:30:02
you have checkpoints and you have visas and you have all of this and all of that is constructed in
1:30:08
a way to to reinforce that there is Saudi Arabia there is the rest of the world and it's by their
1:30:18
grace that you are permitted into this land and you know one of the most important conversations
1:30:25
that I had with them before and during their travel and afterwards was trying to remind them
1:30:31
that that land is a walk for all of us that no one has the ability or the right at least to stop you
1:30:39
when Allahh has invited you to to claim that you are an outsider to a place that is your spiritual
1:30:47
home and it's very cognitively it's very hard to do that because the physical manifestations of
1:30:54
bordering and control and policing and everything else of course gives the impression that that
1:31:00
that is a land that belongs to others but that is simply not true and it is not the case that
1:31:07
anyone has the right now if they are denying you that right if they are inhibiting you and your
1:31:14
right that is a sin on them and you've done your bit which is to try and attempt to go there and to do the things that you need to do but um it is important that cognitively our children understand
1:31:27
that they are connected to that land by virtue of the prophet sallallaihi wasallam and by virtue of
1:31:33
their relationship to Allah subhana tala that that that that they have a right to be there that they
1:31:39
have a right to move there if they wanted to and if Allahh allows a political environment one day
1:31:44
when that's possible okay but you have to you have to you have to embed that otherwise we we
1:31:52
go through life with this colonized mentality of you know this world is split in the way that
1:31:57
it is like I even remind my kids you know we lived in Egypt for for a while and you know just recently I was talking to them about the fact that left Egypt as a w for the Muslim
1:32:08
ummah not for the Egyptian people and that's so so important for us to think about because it it
1:32:15
talks about what is our relationship to the land what is our relationship to all of these lands what is our relationship ship to one another and it cannot be that until the end of time that this
1:32:27
bordering that exists in the way that it does now that this is Allah's final intention for this earth for us as Muslims that this was his the final form of what the perfection of being
1:32:37
a Muslim in the world looked like it cannot be that so even like inshallah hopefully maybe if
1:32:43
Allahh allows us one day I hope to take my kids to Bosnia maybe to to to learn about a genocide
1:32:50
that happened pretty much on our doorstep that was only a couple of hours flight away from us
1:32:55
uh about what happened to the people there when they just look like every other European you know
1:33:00
as somebody who's traveled to Bosnia you know you've you walk around there and you're like "These are all white people." Like it's like it's it's cognitively it's so difficult to understand
1:33:10
how racism in that way Islamophobia in that way operated to permit a genocide to take place but it
1:33:17
did and it happened in our lifetimes and I think I've got a world exclusive you're writing a novel
1:33:22
are you for um for young adults tell us a little bit about that inshallah inshallah um uh a new
His novel
1:33:30
publishing house called Quillspire they've taken on a novela so it's a it's a it's a short book but inshallah it's going to be around um the the hadith of the the man that killed 100 people and
1:33:41
was still forgiven by Allahh kind of use that as a device in order to create a fictional world to to
1:33:48
really think about you know especially through my work why why does violence happen and is it
1:33:56
possible that somebody might commit a hundred murders but has still have something inside
1:34:03
them that is worth forgiving by Allah subhana tala and I think sometimes we don't we concentrate on the aspect of that hadith which is to do with um Allah's forgiveness but we forget the bit where
1:34:17
Allahh only forgives those who have something that is forgivable and so what is it about the
1:34:24
world that we live in where violence is is such a natural part of human behavior a terrible but
1:34:29
natural part of human behavior could we understand that violence within within like specific contexts
1:34:36
so I try and leverage much of um the world that I've witnessed into the pages of the book into
1:34:44
the into the characters that I've that I've made up in this kind of fictional world obviously there
1:34:49
it's nothing to do with the hadith in terms of the world that I've I've made but inshallah hopefully it's it's a way of helping young people to understand um how cycles of oppression
1:34:59
of cycles of trauma cycles of violence um you know ultimately create worlds that are unjust
1:35:06
and in order to stop those cycles of violence we actually have to have more justice in the world
1:35:13
thank you so much for your time
1:35:19
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