Labour Party Leader Finds A Friend In Hamas
In comments to this reporter, Hamas said on Monday that it “welcomed” Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn’s reported refusal to condemn the Islamist organization.
Taher A-Nunu, a spokesman and senior Hamas official, further said Hamas views Corbyn’s willingness to engage with his Gaza-based group as a “painful hit that the Zionist enemy received.”
Al-Nunu said Corbyn’s refusal to disavow talks with Hamas serves as proof that the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sactions (BDS) campaign is succeeding.
Al-Nunu, who heads Hamas’s media section, stated: “We welcome the declaration of the Labour Chairman and see his engagement as a very important statement that is also a painful hit that the Zionist enemy received. It comes as part of the international boycott campaign that the enemy [Israel] is suffering from. This campaign is succeeding on both the economic and political levels and it comes at a moment that the enemy is facing difficulties in justifying its crimes against the Palestinian people.”
Al-Nunu divulged that Hamas met recently with unnamed Western leaders “who expressed their understanding about Hamas’s positions and Hamas’s resistance to the occupation, especially in the 1967 borders.” The 1967 borders refer to the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and eastern sections of Jerusalem.
Al-Nunu added that Corbyn’s stance on his group shows “that freedom movements are still appreciated and respected.”
The Hamas spokesman continued: “We consider the statements of the Labour leader to be an important message to people in Western countries that Hamas is not and will not be considered a terrorist group and our struggle is reduced to the borders of occupied Palestine.”
Are British Muslims Truly ‘British’?
Muslims living in the UK increasingly want self-determination and the implementation of Sharia law nationwide, according to radical Islamist preacher Anjem Choudary.
Choudary, speaking in an exclusive interview with this reporter, was responding to polling data last month that suggests a fundamental gap between the values of British Muslims and the rest of society.
Trevor Phillips, the former chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the activist who popularized the term Islamophobia, commented that the statistics show “the unacknowledged creation of a nation within the nation, with its own geography, its own values, and its own very separate future.”
Asked to respond to Phillips’ statement about a “nation within a nation,” Choudary replied: “I think that we are increasingly heading toward that direction, definitely. The more the population grows, the more they find their roots, the more they want to implement Islam in their lives, and the more they see around the world the failure of so-called democracies and socialist governments, the more they want self-determination.
“And we can see that that is not just the case in the Middle East and Africa, but also in the West. People want to call for the Sharia. And we shouldn’t be surprised. Europe had the Sharia for about 800 years in Spain, so why not in Britain? You know, we don’t call for the killing or the oppression of anyone. We want to live peacefully together. So why not try divine law? We tried secularism for long enough.”
The ICM poll found an astonishing two-thirds of British Muslims would not inform law enforcement if they thought someone close to them became involved in a terrorist plot.
Choudary said he was not surprised by that finding. “We live at a time now, Aaron, of third- or fourth-generation Muslim communities. Where they have no trust of the government. Many people have grown up and all they have known are wars against Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan and now in Syria.