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Wednesday 8 October 2008

The Spectator’s Notes

The Spectator’s Notes

Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, the leader of the Muslim Council of Britain, was in the clerical party at the Cenotaph for Remembrance Day. I wonder what he was commemorating. The MCB consistently refuses to condemn the killing and kidnapping of British servicemen in Iraq and Afghanistan. The day before, Dr Abdul Bari said that Britain resembled Nazi Germany. In its recent report, ‘The Hijacking of British Islam’, the think-tank Policy Exchange revealed that among the various publications for sale at Dr Abdul Bari’s East London Mosque and Islamic Cultural Centre (as well as one called Women Who Deserve To Go To Hell) is a multi-volume, Saudi-funded work called Islamic Verdicts. The book includes questions and answers. In one, a man seeks guidance because he lives with ‘Christian brothers’. The answer starts by saying that the phrase must be ‘a slip of the tongue’ because ‘there is absolutely no brotherhood between the Muslims and the Christians’. Dr Abdul Bari stood with Christian clergy in apparent fraternity in Whitehall on Sunday, yet when the Daily Telegraph on Saturday invited him to condemn the publications sold under his roof he defended them on the grounds that the bookshops are ‘independent businesses’. I rather think that if you could buy a book called, for instance, The Only Good Muslim is a Dead Muslim, in the Westminster Abbey bookshop, Dr Abdul Bari would (rightly) have something to say.

Last week, a Finnish teenager shot eight people dead in a Finnish school. It was interesting that the coverage of this horror was rather perfunctory. Whenever similar killings take place in the United States, huge stories run for days, with BBC reporters saying things like, ‘Just another example of America’s love affair with the gun.’ ‘Finland’s love affair with the gun’ doesn’t have the same ring. Besides, gun laws are strict in Finland, so there was no cheap point to be made. But the eight people are just as dead.

Sir Ronald Cohen, the plutocrat and Friend of Gordon, now says that he wouldn’t mind a Tory government. His most important non-financial contribution to New Labour has been his Commission on Unclaimed Assets. The fruit of its work is in the Queen’s Speech. There is a lot to be said for trying to make ‘orphan’ assets work for good causes, but the scale of what is involved (£5 billion, say some) makes it all too likely that we will have a new National Lottery on our hands, with government unfairly directing the bonanza to its own purposes. It would be much better if such funds could be put in the hands of the admirable and independent Charity Bank. The Tories should take up this idea, and ensure that Sir Ronald does not become, politically, an orphan asset.

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