How far gone is Britain? Practically every day there are new revelations that boggle the mind. As that unhappy land collapses into chaos, civil war, and jihad violence in the streets, its intelligentsia can settle into their bunkers secure in the knowledge that they were never “racist” or “Islamophobic.”
“Revealed: Islamic State’s ‘banker’ was director of a private Muslim primary school in Birmingham,” by Leon Watson, Daily Mail, August 31, 2014:
One of the Islamic State terror group’s key financier was director of a Muslim faith school in Birmingham, it emerged today.
Prominent Islamic cleric Dr Nabil al-Awadi, a naturalised Kuwaiti, was partly resident in the UK until last year, living in Brixton, south London.
Until February 2013, the Sunni was a director of the independent Al-Birr school in Nechells, Birmingham, which was founded in seven years ago.
Now he is president of the Kuwait Scholars’ Union, which has reportedly channelled tens of millions of dollars to the Islamic State and other jihadi groups in Iraq and Syra.
“Kuwait Scholars’ Union”? Islamic scholars? But…but…the Islamic State has nothing to do with Islam!
Earlier this month Dr al-Awadi was stripped of his Kuwaiti citizenship along with nine other Kuwaitis, after the state cited ‘security reasons’.
He has also been accused by other prominent clerics in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia of using donations to fund the Islamic State.
Dr al-Awadi, who is also reportedly close to the Muslim Brotherhood, claims he is part of a collective fundraising campaign for Syria by Kuwaiti charities
In June he said: ‘Pressure has been put on me to stop collecting aid to Syria,’ adding that directives from the Kuwaiti government ‘were clear: Syria is over’.
But he said money is still finding its way through back channels.
The £1,500-a-year mixed school he was a director of has also been accused of having close links to the radical Al-Muntada Trust, the Sunday Telegraph reported.
The London-based trust has attracted controversy in the past for giving a platform to radical clerics.
It also attracted scrutiny when it was alleged some of its funds have ended up in the hands of Boko Haram, the militant Islamist group in Nigeria.
The trust said it has never had any connection with Boko Haram and that it condemns terrorism in all its forms.
In July 2012, it ran a conference with al-Awadi and another jihadi cleric, Muhammad al-Arifi, who has now been banned from Britain.
Al-Arifi is banned now only as a face-saving gesture: the week before Pamela Geller and I were banned from Britain, he was let in again.
Al-Arifi allegedly groomed Nasser Muthana and Reyaad Khan, two young Cardiff men who became the first Britons to appear in an IS propaganda video.
The trust has said it has no links to terror organisations and says it is ‘delivering much needed aid to refugees in bordering countries’.
Khalid Mahmood, MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, the Sunday Telegraph: ‘For too long this country has tolerated in its midst people who are actively working to destroy us and everything we stand for.
‘With the rise in the threat level, we can simply no longer allow it.’
Indeed. But to oppose it would be “Islamophobic.”