As we noted here at the time. From CNSNews, with thanks to Skeetstreet:
(CNSNews.com) - London Mayor Ken Livingstone's previous support of a Muslim cleric who advocates suicide bombings may cause him some embarrassment as he now must speak for the city in the wake of Thursday's terrorist bombings.Livingstone condemned the Thursday attacks as "mass murder," and added that "this was not a terrorist attack against the mighty or the powerful, it is not aimed at presidents or prime ministers, it was aimed at ordinary working-class Londoners."
Yet Livingstone has in the past labeled Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi a "man of peace" and a "moderate," despite the fact that Al-Qaradawi has supported suicide bombings and the targeting of American allies.
Livingstone welcomed Al-Qaradawi to London's City Hall last year as an honored guest, and the mayor appeared in a video shown at a solidarity conference for the sheikh on Feb. 17 of this year in Doha, Qatar. Livingstone has publicly defended the sheikh against critics in the media and various grassroots organizations.
The Anti-Defamation League has labeled Al-Qaradawi the "Theologian of Terror," while the website GayEgypt.com has dubbed him the "Dr. Goebbels of modern Egypt," for Al-Qaradawi's anti-homosexual rhetoric.
"he now must speak for the city in the wake of Thursday's terrorist bombings."
--- from the article above
Ken Livingstone is part of the problem, an apologst for Islam, as well as a known antisemite (now don't accuse me of suggesting that "criticizing Israel" is equivalent to "antisemitism" etc. -- no need to accuse me, because I accept the charge fully: at this point, given the legal, moral, and historic claims of the Israelis, and the relentless Jihad against them, and the affect of Israeli retreat on swelling the pride and determination of Jihadists everywhere, whose goals go far beyond that tiny strip known as Israel but really part of dar al-Islam at this point, yes, I am, if one completely ignores the history of the Mandate for Palestine, the history of that area from the Ottoman vilayets backwards in time, the history of Ottoman land ownership), and embodiment of all that is worst in the Western world today, should not be speaking at such an event. He happens to have been elected Mayor.
So what? His views are well-known. His meetings with Qaradawi, who has endorsed suicide bombings (of course there will be some taqiyya-flavored attempt by Qaradawi to explain that "was not what I meant at all, not what I meant at all") and his own warm support of Qaradawi which means he, Ken Livingstone, finds nothing wrong with a man who supports terrorism, makes him unfit to "speak for London," to represent London in any way, to be Mayor of London, to be anything at all.
This degraded version of Dick Whittington has "turned" once; a turncoat to the West, he cannot "turn again."