sorry Mr
Ali we are very honored to have with us
tonight the right honorable George G who
is the MP for bradf Bradford West his
party by the name of respect is an
acronym of respect equality socialism
peace environmentalism community and
trade unionism respect is a British
leftwing party committed to standing in
defense of the values of Peace Justice
and equality ladies and gentlemen it
gives me great pleasure to to present to
you Mr George
[Applause]
Gallow counselor
ali uh distinguished Scholars brothers
and sisters and
Friends forgive me for arriving late I
had a very busy day in
Bradford and forgive me for leaving
immediately please because I have many
miles to travel back to London this
evening but I'm honored to have been
invited and happy to have attended what
seems to have been a most valuable
exercise and I caught just some of the
speeches uh but I know the work of the
organization well and I highly respect
and commend it councel Ali didn't uh
steal my thunder but he did uh use many
of the argument
that I intended to use and I very much
hope that we can work together when he
is elected to Parliament on the 7th of
May as indeed I hope myself to be and if
we
can begin to make this Common
Ground uh we can make
progress the Young woman who was
talking uh when I came in made the point
that councelor Ali ALS also
made there are there are no muslim
terrorists there are only terrorists
there are no Christian terrorists only
terrorists there are no Jewish
terrorists only terrorists and
terrorists can wear a suit and a tie and
be in the white house or whiteall just
as much as they can have a beard and a
turban and live in the Torah Bora and
that is one of the
distinguishing
characteristics between us and the
people who govern us and about whom one
of whom Mr Nick gleg as he was called on
the scen
uh I will have to say a few words in a
moment but
first I should as the other speakers
have done unequivocally make this
point that there is a problem a big one
called
terrorism and some of the people who
practice it claim to be
Muslims there is a problem of
extremism Muslim
extremists we all know it though
sometimes we deny
it it
exists
abroad in
profusion but it exists here
also all of us know that within this
umah there are people who have
become so
angered by events so radicalized by
events that they
have turned their
minds perhaps their hearts and when
we're particularly unlucky their
hands to ugly murderous
activities I hear Muslims they call me
up live on television on Thursday night
who are living deeply in denial which is
not of course a river in Egypt it's a
state of mind
denial that
if four
Muslims explode themselves on the London
Underground and on a London
bus well they weren't really who they
said they were it wasn't what it was
said to be it was some kind of false
flag it was the British or the Americans
or the Israelis who did it it
wasn't it was the people who told us in
their martydom videos who did
it and they did it for the reasons they
stated and councelor Ali powerfully
understated in a very British way if I
may say talked about his own own
secretary being made for
Life by these extremists these
terrorists it mattered personally to me
also because I was the Member of
Parliament for the old gate East
underground station at the
time I went to the station I saw the
underground Railway workers and the
Emergency Services carrying the BR
broken and the dead to the
surface I went to the Royal London
Hospital as it was called though you'd
never find any member of the royal
family in the Royal London Hospital at
that time I assure you and I saw the
doctors and the nurses and the
pters
triaging the broken the
name named and the
dead this was an Act of mass
murder and by the way as terrorism can
be defined as the punishing of innocent
people for the crimes of guilty
people given the
preponderance of anti-iraq War feeling
in London almost
certainly especially given who travels
on the Underground who travels on the
bus ministers don't travel on the
underground or the bus the billionaires
the powerful the newspaper magnates they
don't travel on the underground or the
bus overwhelmingly
statistically it is obvious that if you
explode an underground train or a bus in
the wake of the Iraq War to show your
rage at the Iraq War you're going to
kill and
mutilate a vast majority of people who
were equally against the war who were
marching against the war it was an
atrocious Act of nihilistic terrorist
violence and it was carried out by
Muslim extremists and none of us is
permitted to deny it
so for whatever else I'm going to say I
don't want to leave any doubt about this
that this kind of activity is not just
murderous and
sinful but it is also utterly completely
counterproductive it strengthens the war
criminals it makes them stronger not
weaker it allows them to introduce new
laws to criminalize and marginalize the
Muslims here in Britain it helps the
Islam islamophobic media and right-wing
political parties to create a climate
ever more
inhospitable to Muslims and make their
lives more
difficult but it is also true as I said
on news night that very night
counselor
77
2005 I said it on you tues night that
very night as I did in the house that
very afternoon up close and personal
with the
Hypocrites Hypocrites who
were weeping crocodile
tears for those who had been murdered in
London but who were planning and had
already executed the murder of hundreds
of thousands of people by Cru Miss
and drone
attacks and shock and
awe and who were ready to do it again
and have done it again in Libya for
example as was alluded to by councelor
Ali that's got to be the difference
between us we're against all terrorism
by anybody anywhere at any time whether
it's a state or whether it is an
individual
idual and when it occurs by an
individual or five individuals it has
occurred as a result of the actions of
one individual or five
individuals Anders
braic The Fanatic
monocultural Christian Norwegian mass
murderer killed scores more than 60
children in Norway his Manifesto was
there
published that he wanted a Christian
Europe nobody in the right mind would
have held Jesus responsible for that or
Norwegian Christians for that or white
people for that and so we will not
accept that the Muslims 17 billion
Muslims in the world can be held
responsible for the actions of
individuals or small groups of people
there is no Authority in the Quran in
the Hadith in the fatwa by the leading
scholars in the world for these
terrorist
actions but there was a famous book
written by the Christian philosopher St
Augustine called city of
God in which he
recounts a story an ancient story of
Alexander the
Great encountering a pirate ship on the
high
seas ordering the pirate to
Halt Alexander the
Great demanded of the pirate Captain how
dare
you terrorize the
world these
Seas with your
piracy and the pirate Captain
answered how dare you terrorize the
entire world you with your great
Navy and all your power can call
yourself an
emperor and can call other men as you
please this story is more than 1,000
years
old but it could have been written
yesterday those who arrogate to
themselves the title of the so-called
International Community though they're
almost never speaking for more than a
tiny proportion of the International
Community can call this state a
terrorist State a failed State a rogue
State and can can do with it as they
please and it is this fundamental
Injustice in the
world which is driving some people crazy
they're always looking for some scholar
some preacher hate preacher to ban some
Muslim organization to
proscribe and they tell us this will to
borrow a phrase
prevent the growth
of so-called
radicalization but all it takes to feel
radical if you're a Muslim in the west
today is the ability to switch on the
television and watch the news that's
what's radicalizing people no
organizations of
cranks or hate
preachers but the
facts Last
Summer Benjamin
nanyu
murdered
2,160 Palestinians in the Gaza
Strip in plain
sight live on
television people who had nowhere to run
nowhere to hide living in a tiny piece
of
land C you were in Jerusalem bad enough
there try
Gaza where some of my friends and I have
repeatedly broken The Siege with our
convoys we've seen it with our
eyes Gaza is 21 M
long and at its narrowest Point 1.6 mil
wide it is entirely surrounded by
wire and
watchtowers both on the Egyptian border
and on the much more
significant isra really bord the people
had nowhere to go they dropped
leaflets saying we're going to be
bombing your village tonight what about
the people supposed to
do catch a plane
somewhere catch a
train move move where the entire Gaza
Strip was under
bombardment
2,160
dead 60,000 thousand houses
destroyed starving people thirsty people
people with no doctors no medicine no
electricity were being relentlessly
bombarded how
radical to the powers who stood by and
watched it or even helped it think that
that is going to make Muslims in the
world feel
of those more than 500 were
children 500 children last
summer mothered in front of our
eyes by a state for which a red carpet
is
rolled wherever its leader
goes and that's the insult that is added
to the injury
that the victims are called the
perpetrators and the perpetrators are
called the
victims now
this fundamental Injustice in the
world is the biggest source of our
problems if it
didn't then the prevent strategies and
all the counterterrorism
measures would be much less L necessary
they would still be necessary we need to
have Smart police we need to have Smart
intelligence Services we have a right to
an obligation to defend
ourselves but the recruits for
fanaticism extremism and terrorism would
dry
up if the Injustice in the world were
not so
great as that which I'm trying trying to
to strive
so I'm all for fighting
extremism I do it all the time it's why
the extremists hate me so because we're
saying to
Muslims we is respect councelor Ali in
his work we're saying to Muslims not
that you shouldn't be
angry what kind of Muslim would you be
if you weren't angry about what's
happening in the world but the right way
to be angry is to unite with others who
are also angry and work democratically
to punish the people who are making you
angry to change the people who are
making you angry that's not just the
legal way it's not even just the moral
way though it is both it is the
effective way it's the only effective
way exploding yourself and killing
others achieves entirely the
opposite
result so I'm
for the prizing that has been done here
today about the true meaning of
Islam the rejection by Islam of such
nistic violence as we are discussing
here
but that in itself will not solve the
problem it's necessary but not
sufficient we have to at the same time
struggle to change the
nature of our own government and the
circles in which it moves because Israel
is only allowed to murder the children
in Gaza because it gets unlimited money
and weapons from the United States the
United Kingdom and the European Union
and others otherwise it couldn't do
it the Diplomatic and political support
the vetos in the United Nations and so
on we must struggle for a different role
for our own country and if we did we
would see this phenomenon of extremism
begin to shrink before our eyes and
quickly if we had a government in
Britain that spoke like councelor Ali or
me how many extremists would find many
takers for their
ugly prospectives my last point is
this that you don't have to be a Western
Government to be involved in terrorism
and you've just heard and
seen that Muslim governments can be
responsible for St take terrorism too in
Model Town in laor in
Islamabad or in Cairo or in Alexandria
where the military Jun of General
CC has massacred
thousands of Egyptian people tortured
thousands disappeared
thousands and we have to face this awful
truth that the Muslim world is ruled
almost in its
entirety from one end to the
other by tyrants puppet presidents
corrupt
Kings who rule their countries in the
service of
others rather than in the service of
their own people we are commanded
it's it's not optional we are
commanded if we can
to raise our hands against
Injustice even against our own
family if they are committing
Injustice and if we cannot raise our
hands we must raise our
voice and if we cannot raise our hands
or our voice we must curse it in our
hearts that too should be the message
from today that Justice is indivisible
and must be struggled
for everywhere wasam alayum thank you
very much
[Applause]
[Music]
indeed thank you Mr C for your very
valuable time and words to conclude this
seminar I would like to call upon Mr
haror who is the president of Pakistan
here in the UK to thank our very special
guests and audience here tonight
[Applause]