This is no surprise. In 2009, when Blair’s successor and associate Gordon Brown was Prime Minister, the British government gave £48,000 to the Muslim Brotherhood to fight “extremism.” Blair himself has demonstrated a remarkable naivete regarding jihad terror and Islamic supremacism, most notably last summer, when he published an embarrassingly incoherent article claiming that there was not a problem with Islam, but within Islam — whatever that means.
Anyway, now that the Brotherhood is (supposedly) going to be investigated in Britain, will the Tony Blair Faith Foundation be shut down? Will there be a public discussion of Useful Idiocy in the British press? That is wildly unlikely.
“Tony Blair’s advisers and their ‘ties to extremist group,’” by Robert Verkaik and Robert Mendick for the Telegraph, April 13:
Tony Blair is facing accusations that his multifaith charity has links to an Islamic extremist group being investigated by MI5 and MI6.
The Tony Blair Faith Foundation, which was established in 2008 to help combat extremism, is being advised by a Muslim leader who is alleged to be a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, an organisation that could be banned in Britain.
The urgent review was commissioned by David Cameron, and spy chiefs will report their findings to him in the summer.
A second Islamic cleric, who has advised Mr Blair’s charity from its inception, is also accused of having close ties to the Brotherhood.
The Muslim Brotherhood is a worldwide Islamist movement that has been declared a terrorist group by Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Many of its members have moved to London to escape a crackdown in Cairo, where the group backs Mohammed Morsi, the ousted Egyptian president. This week, Mr Cameron said that he had asked the security service MI5, the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, and the Foreign Office to investigate the Brotherhood’s activities in Britain and abroad.
Claims that his charity has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood will embarrass Mr Blair, who has been openly critical of the Islamic organisation in the past.
Last year, he compared the Brotherhood to the Russian Bolshevik party, and described its agenda as undemocratic. He said the Brotherhood was in “pursuit of values that contradict everything we stand for” and, in a television interview this year, he said the party was “taking the country [Egypt] away from its basic values of hope and progress”.
But now it is claimed that two of his own advisers are linked to the party. Inquiries by the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Watch, which has been investigating the Brotherhood for 13 years, have revealed that Dr Ismail Khudr Al-Shatti, an adviser to the Kuwaiti government and a member of Mr Blair’s advisory council, is a leading member of the Islamic Constitutional Movement (ICM), the Kuwaiti branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.
According to a news agency report in 2000, Dr Shatti told a crowd of Kuwaitis protesting over Palestine: “Israel is an evil, and we can never live with evil.” In 1995, it was reported in America that a Palestinian terrorist group wrote to him requesting funds.
The other Islamic adviser to Mr Blair is Mustafa Ceric, the former Grand Mufti of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Mr Ceric, who accepted Mr Blair’s invitation to join the foundation’s religious advisory council in 2008, is tied to the global Muslim Brotherhood through his membership of the European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR), headed by Youssef Qaradawi, considered the Brotherhood’s intellectual leader, and whose extremist views led to his ban from Britain in 2008.
During his last visit, in 2004, Dr Qaradawi defended suicide attacks on Israelis as “martyrdom in the name of God”….
The Muslim Brotherhood denies being an extremist organisation, and has asked Lord Macdonald, the former director of public prosecutions, to help make its case.
It said in a statement that it is a peaceful and lawful organisation that “does not engage in or promote acts of violence to achieve its aims” and it “intends to openly engage with the British Government’s review and will make representations to assist”.
But it threatened court action against “any improper attempt to restrict its activity”.
A spokesman for the Tony Blair Faith Foundation said: “We are grateful for the contribution to our work of Dr Ismail Khudr Al-Shatti and Dr Mustafa Ceric.
“They are great supporters of both the foundation and interfaith dialogue, with long records of commitment to peaceful coexistence.
“We have no knowledge of the links you speak of; but in any event are absolutely convinced they’re both upstanding and sincere in their support for what the foundation is trying to do. “The Tony Blair Faith Foundation is not a religious organisation; we are unaffiliated and work with all those committed to helping prevent religious prejudice, conflict and extremism. The strategic direction and day-to-day work of the foundation is led by our CEO, Charlotte Keenan, and governed by our trustees.”
A spokesman for the Kuwaiti embassy in London was unable to answer questions about Mr Shatti at the time of going to press. But a source said that if Mr Shatti had been a member of the ICM, he did not think he was a member now.
The Muslim Brotherhood has not answered questions about its alleged links to the two men.
Paul Lewis says
If the British Foreign Office are involved in this ‘investigation’ wil Brotherhood supporter Mockbul Ali be involved via their Engagement with the !$lamic World section?
Jay Boo says
How long will it be until Tony Blair converts to be a Muslim?
PGuud says
Lauren Booth, a POS convert to Islam and Blair’s POS sister-in-law, is probably working on it–that is, if Blair isn’t a crypto-Muslim.
The free world is its own worst enemy.
Islam: where freedom ends and slavery begins.
Angemon says
Are muslims involved in any step of the investigation? Because i remember not so long ago a mahomedan in an investigation decided to inform another mahomedan he was being investigated…
Wellington says
As I’ve written once before here at JW back in early June of 2013, there is both a problem within Tony Blair and with Tony Blair. How sad. How destructive.
Quite simply, the man is part of the problem and not part of any solution. Frankly, the only way he could sleep soundly at night, while his nation is dying of political correctness and multiculturalism, courtesy of his own efforts on many occasions, is if he is insouciantly and sincerely completely ignorant of all the harm he’s done. I suspect that he is actually this blithely ignorant. In the alternative, then he is even more wothy of condemnation because knowingly complicit.
Saleem Smith says
It seems likely that the only thing Tony Blair knows about Islam is what the London imams and various spokespersons tell him. Which amounts to a sugarcoated pack of lies. Maybe the official and ‘unofficial’ spread of Sharia law across the UK will open up his eyes to the reality of Islam.
PJG says
I’m not sure if there is much difference between naivety and treachery any more. They seem to co-exist in the same person…in many, many people. A peculiar combination. Unless naivety is really, really easy to feign.
mortimer says
Tony Blair still doesn’t understand taqiyya, does he? I wonder how many betrayals by his ‘close Muslim friends’ it will take before he concludes no Muslim can be trusted to tell the truth to a kafir. They don’t tell the truth to one another.
Jay Boo says
We could have senile ex US President Jimmy Carter serve as a cautionary example for Tony Blair.
dumbledoresarmy says
From the article –
“The other Islamic adviser to Mr Blair is Mustafa Ceric, the former Grand Mufti of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
“Mr Ceric, who accepted Mr Blair’s invitation to join the foundation’s religious advisory council in 2008, is tied to the global Muslim Brotherhood through his membership of the European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR), headed by Youssef Qaradawi, considered the Brotherhood’s intellectual leader, and whose extremist views led to his ban from Britain in 2008.”
A little more on Mustafa Ceric. From 2009 –
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2009/08/bosnias-muslim-spiritual-leader-calls-for-incorporation-of-sharia-into-bosnian-constitution
“Bosnia’s Muslim spiritual leader, Reiss-ul-Ulema Mustafa Ceric, has drawn strong criticism from moderate Muslims and from Bosnian Serbs, after he called for Islamic Sharia law to be incorporated into the Bosnian constitution.
“Ceric made the controversial suggestion when he conducted Bosnia’s first Sharia mass wedding on Saturday in the central city of Zenica.”
also to be borne in mind – Mr Mustafa Ceric was one of the 138 Islamic “scholars” who signed off on that sinister “A Common Word” letter from the Muslims to the Christians, that was sent to most of the world’s top Christian clergy in October 2007. A letter that, when carefully examined, could be understood as the ritual “call to Islam” that must be issued before full-on Jihad is unloosed.
I wouldn’t trust Mr Ceric as far as I could kick him.
gerard says
So again the question will be: Is MB extremist?
This will save them having to ask the real question: Is MB good or bad?
They will go through the motions of an enquiry so they can feel good but nothing will come of it.
Fools like Cameron and Blair will never get the right answers because they never ask the right questions.
veggiedog says
How have we let (the US, UK and other nations) those representing Islam into powerful positions? Do our leaders not realize the danger they are playing with, that they are surrendering our nations to a fanatical ideology? By the time they awaken, if they do, it will be too late. Once Islam is the world religion will our true God strike them down and destroy this earth, will the experiment be over as Satan will have won? Now I am putting this is far more religions terms than I believe in myself to make a point. In other words, WTF is the matter with our leaders, this has to be more than PC, we just seem lost to something.