Thursday, March 22, 2007

The Muslim Council of Britain

The MCB was launched in 1997 as an umbrella group for Muslims in the UK. It is currently headed by Dr Muhammed Abdul Bari. It was the government's favoured Muslim group up until last October when it was announced that the government was switching funding away from groups who do not take a "pro-active" role against terrorism.

The MCB presents itself as a mainstream Muslim group, and indeed many of its positions are wholly sensible. However, it sends out lots of extremist messages.

The most famous of these is its refusal to attend National Holocaust Memorial Day events. It insists that the day be renamed to a "Genocide Memorial Day" and should include the (fake) genocide of Palestinians.

Its current head, Dr Bari, threatened the government with "2 million terrorists", last September. He told a newspaper, "If that demonisation continues, then Britain will have to deal with two million Muslim terrorists, 700,000 of them in London".

Panorama journalist, John Ware, wrote an article about the MCB. He reveals that the former MCB secretary-general was also a trustee of a terrorist-encouraging group; that the deputy secretary-general affiliated himself with Hamas; and that the MCB refuses to categorically reject the myths about 9/11 or the idea that the Iraq war is a war on Islam. He states, "the MCB is also good at keeping young Muslims angry."