“It all started with the publication of the Satanic Verses and how people pushed me away. That’s why I always say I am one of Rushdie’s children. I was radicalised by white liberals.”
So what is the point that the BBC is trying to make? This: if we would all just submit to Sharia blasphemy laws, and stop criticizing Islam, then Muslims will be warm and cuddly and not wage jihad against us.
And of course the BBC is right. The jihadis won’t need to fight us if we have already surrendered.
“‘Salman Rushdie radicalised my generation,'” by Mobeen Azhar, BBC News, February 14, 2019 (thanks to Vikram):
It’s Valentine’s day 1989. Margaret Thatcher is prime minister and Kylie, Yazz and Bros are making noise. Far away, Iran’s supreme leader issues a fatwa demanding the death of British author Salman Rushdie – and the effect on young Muslims in the UK is huge.
Alyas Karmani was soaking up everything student life had to offer. He’d grown up in Tooting, south London, in a traditional Pakistani household, his father a bus driver and trade unionist. Religion was an important part of Alyas’s upbringing but not something he was particularly interested in.
“We were obedient to our parents. We’d go to the mosque when it was required but we had a clandestine double-life existence,” he says. “We were partying, smoking weed, going out with girls and doing everything we could possibly do.”
So when it was time to choose a university, Alyas ran away from his Pakistani Muslim identity and headed 400 miles north to Glasgow. “I was running as fast as possible. I was a ‘self-hating Paki’. I didn’t want brown friends. All my friends were white liberal mainstream types. That was my crowd.”
In Glasgow, Alyas would become an important fixture on the student scene. He ran club nights and loved music and dancing. “I had a wonderful time and then something really inconvenient happened in 1989.”
That inconvenience was Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa – imposed on Salman Rushdie for his novel, the Satanic Verses, which was widely considered blasphemous in the Muslim world. While Alyas didn’t think Rushdie should die, he also didn’t think The Satanic Verses was OK. Now he found himself being blamed for a fatwa that had nothing to do with him.
“I thought these friends understood and accepted me but now they were pointing fingers. The conversations went like this: ‘What’s wrong with you people? Why are you doing this? Why have you put a death threat on Salman Rushdie? What side are you on? Are you with us or against us?’ It was really as stark as that.”
Alyas had felt uncomfortable going to mosques, which back in the 1980s were run almost exclusively by older South Asian men whose first language was not English. So Alyas went searching for Islamic guidance from younger, English-speaking Muslims and found it. Under their influence, he reconnected with the faith of his parent’s generation, but took it in a much more radical direction – the focus was on global Muslim identity rather than personal morality or spirituality.
“It was a counterculture. It had a dress code and a language. I left my non-Muslim friends and when I left university, I completely devoted myself to the movement,” he says.
“It all started with the publication of the Satanic Verses and how people pushed me away. That’s why I always say I am one of Rushdie’s children. I was radicalised by white liberals.”
The Salafi school of thought Alyas became part of is more puritanical than traditional South Asian Islam, and has overt political leanings. Some of the people Alyas associated with ended up fighting in Bosnia, as members of the Bosnian army. He never made it to the battlefield, he says because his skills “were in promoting ideology”.
Today, Alyas has softened his approach. “Back then we only saw binary options: good or bad. With or against. Halal or haram. Now I prefer shades of grey,” he says.
He remains a devout Muslim who champions “the middle way”. He is an unconventional imam and psychologist. He offers his congregations in Huddersfield and Bradford advice on everything from sex and relationships to mental health.
Ed Husain was a few years younger than Alyas when The Satanic Verses was published. Still at school, he was excited when his father took him to Hyde Park to protest against the book….
Niemoller says
No surprise that the BBC was hijacked here again to be on the side Islamists and jihadists. Who is the author Mobeen Azhar and what (covert) terrorist affiliations does he have? It’s worth asking the question in light of the massive crimes Islamists are committing all over the world.
Kay says
“I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses.”
It always comes down to a choice.
mortimer says
The BBC’s ‘choice’ is to submit to Sharia blasphemy laws and become compliant DHIMMIS.
An appeaser hopes the crocodile will eat him last.
Kay says
It’s always someone else’s fault. sarc/off
mortimer says
Mobeen Azhar shifted the blame for the fatwa off of Ayatollah Khomeini who might have simply ignored Salman Rushdie altogether.
Because Muslims assume all of Islam is ‘perfect, complete and eternal’, then it can only be the fault of the dirty kufaar. Allah and Mohammed did not encouraged freedom of expression, and Mohammed executed his critics as often as possible. We are told that the remaining critics of Islam left Arabia.
Niemoller says
Why didn’t this Islamist author of the article give the murdered young boy a name? Is this a known murder “witnessed” by Islamist Ed Husain, or does the Islamist supremacist author Mobeen Azhar think the boy is not worthy of identifying?
Niemoller says
The Islamist author Mobeen Azhar talked about a UK murder of a young boy the jihadist Ed Husain had “witnessed” like it was a quick mention of a dog being kicked. Just a minor crime, no need for names.
mortimer says
MOBEEN AZHAR is a manipulative LIAR. (“‘Salman Rushdie radicalised my generation,’” by Mobeen Azhar)
It was the FATWA of AYATOLLAH KHOMEINI that radicalized Mobeen Azhar, not Rushdie.
Without the fatwa, no one would have read the book or heard about it.
Without the tatwa, Mobeen Azhar would not have known about blasphemy law.
christianblood says
Western governments, media, NGO’s, entertainment establishment, academia, religious organizations, social groups & social media and a very large part of Western societies are All on the side Islamists, including Islamist jihadists! Even Hollywood, the corrupt and godless drivers of Western pop culture are giving Oscars to Al-Qaeda “White Helmets”!!!
Transgendered, Decadent, Anti-Christ, Materialistic and Morally compromised satanic West poses a very great danger to the whole world! Under the guise of “freedom” and “human rights”, the West spreads Islamism, political-correction, chaos, cultural marxism, abortion, atheistic secularism and “LGBTQ” corruption to the whole world.
gravenimage says
christianblood cannot wait for Muslims to destroy the West–and regularly links to sites advocating Orthodox Christians ally with Muslims for just that purpose.
gravenimage says
Besides, christianblood is always lauding the Mullahs for opposing Western values–so why would he have any problem with this Fatwa?
mortimer says
The BBC would blame Jews for ‘making’ Hitler mad.
Halal Bacon says
Well if Merkel posthumously pardons Hitler…
gravenimage says
True, Mortimer.
mortimer says
The Red-Green Axis of Evil defends Islam from criticism, even though Sharia blasphemy law is a SOLLICITATION OF VIGILANTE MURDER directed at critics of Islam.
“There is no indemnity obligatory for killing a non-Muslim at war (‘kafir harbi’) with Muslims.” -Reliance of the Traveller, o4.17, p.593
A critic of Islam is ‘making war’ against Islam verbally and only Mohammed can pardon verbal COUNTERJIHAD. Mohammed is dead, therefore, ALL blasphemers should be executed and vigilantes may carry out the sentence which is automatic. No fatwa is required.
mortimer says
Muslims don’t wish to ponder the FACT that Mohammed admitted he had been INSPIRED BY SATAN in the Satanic verses.
If Mohammed was inspired by Satan in his revelations ONE TIME, it is reasonable to ask ‘Was Mohammed inspired by Satan TWO TIMES … or was it SIX TIMES … or SIXTY-SIX TIMES ?
If the ‘Satanic Verses’ were part of the Koran AND NO ONE NOTICED … then … are there OTHER VERSES of the Koran that are also SATANIC … and which Muslims do not notice?
Anjuli Pandavar says
“I thought these friends understood and accepted me but now they were pointing fingers. The conversations went like this: ‘What’s wrong with you people? Why are you doing this? Why have you put a death threat on Salman Rushdie? What side are you on? Are you with us or against us?’ It was really as stark as that.”
—
So now the BBC expects us to believe that this partying, weed-smoking, womanising student who, “ran club nights and loved music and dancing,” was surrounded by a circle of “white liberal” friends who reacted with such revulsion to an arcane world event (how many even knew what a fatwa was?) that they called out their own club night fixer, apparently unaware that he had just, “ran away from his Pakistani Muslim identity and headed 400 miles north to Glasgow,” so badly did he want to be with them. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against student hedonism, but to ascribe to the Glasgow student club scene the level of social awareness *and care* implied by the appallingly badly scripted “conversation” above is to take us all for idiots.
Oh yes, this is the BBC. I wonder whether Alyas Karmani is going to watch Tommy Robinson take them down on 23 February.
Alyas kindly pulls it all together for us:
“It all started with the publication of the Satanic Verses and how people pushed me away. That’s why I always say I am one of Rushdie’s children. I was radicalised by white liberals.”
No, mate. You’ve never read The Satanic Verses. Moreover, you can’t string a convincing lie together. Many will be impressed with your racism. We are not.
[That person so quick to jump in with accusations of ad hominem attack, save it.]
mortimer says
Agree with AP. Alyas Karmani is spouting racism… and he revealingly he always puts ‘white’ and ‘liberal’ together as if it is the enemy to be brought down. It is those ‘white liberal’ DHIMMIS at the BBC who agree with Alyas Karmani … they deserve to be scolded … and never get tired of the scoldings. The BBC is a case of Stockholm syndrome.
gravenimage says
Also, the idea that liking to “party” is a real embrace of Western values is absurd–yet you hear this all the time.
Anjuli Pandavar says
Yes, good point. Hamed Abdel-Samad makes a similar point vis-à-vis Germany, where Muslim men are assumed to have adopted Western values simply on the basis of their wearing suits and ties, as opposed to looking like they’ve just raided Muhammad’s wardrobe.
mortimer says
BBC … MAKING UK SAFE FOR JIHAD.
janwog says
Fake accusation of the lying media BBC. The book of Salman Rushdies was years before we have heard about Jihad.
Anjuli Pandavar says
True, janwog, and ten years *after* Iran started laying the basis for exactly such a move. I was an undergrad in South Africa in 1979 and still in contact with many of my Muslim school friends, some of whom were at university with me. Shortly after the Iranian Revolution, one of them went to Iran. She returned as the pioneer hijabi. My friends were electrified, becoming much more deliberately and overtly Muslim, i.e., Middle Eastern. The Muslims amongst whom my friends and I grew up were led by old men for whom being a good Muslim meant doing the five things, sending your kids to madrassa, not eating from Christians and keeping your head down. The Muslims of my generation brought a bravado political ideology that split that traditionalist community down the middle. From then on, being Muslim still meant all the usual stuff, but now included singing the praises of Iran and declaring a willingness to fight for Palestine (as opposed to just praying for Palestine, as we did in mosque every time there was a war)[1]. This Iranian agitation went on around the world. It was against this backdrop that I apostatised. Nine years later the Satanic Verses was published and the next year Ayatollah Khomeini — journalists back then still had enough backbone to call him “The Mad Mullah” — pointed his bony finger and pressed the button, and the rest, as they say, is history. Alyas and his friends had been long in the making by the time The Satanic Verses came along.
[1] Just to keep this in context, political agitation was already underway amongst the Muslims in the early to mid-70s, though very underground. Fatah material circulated in our mosque.
RodSerling says
In their attempts to blame non-Muslim “white liberals”, the BBC/Mobeen Azhar admits unintentionally that moderate, even nominal Muslims can become “radicalized” upon the mere suggestion that Islam may not be true, or when non-Muslims reject any aspect of Islam.
The entire Rushdie affair is a case of Muslims having an internal conflict among themselves about their own bs sources, then blaming non-Muslims for it and shifting the attacks outward against non-Muslims to prove their piety.
gravenimage says
+1
infidel says
Any country is ruined and degraded and brought down in its level if it has a sizable Muslim pop. And that’s what happened to ONCE GREAT Britain.
mortimer says
The compliant BBC wimps are virtue-signalling that their WIMPISH, UNQUESTIONING SUBMISSION TO SHARIA BLASPHEMY LAW IS ‘VIRTUE’.
The compliant BBC wimps are selling out the freedom of expression and TWISTING THEMSELVES INTO CONTORTIONS to defend their counterfactual narrative that Islam is PEACEFUL and FEMINIST and COMPATIBLE with democracy.
MESSAGES FOR BBC:
Islam is AT WAR with democracy.
Islam is misogynistic.
Islam has an ‘essential’ doctrine of hatred directed against non-Muslims called ‘AL WALAA WAL BARAA’.
– “The doctrine of al Walaa wal Baraa is the REAL IMAGE for the actual practice of this faith.” – source “Al Walaa wal Baraa According to the Aqeedah of the Salaf”, by Sheikh Muhammad Saeed al Qatani, authoritative Saudi Sharia lawyer and imam at the Abu Bakr and Al Furqan Mosques in Mecca.
James Lincoln says
Here’s just another example of the corruption in the BBC.
Watch Tommy Robinson expose BBC Panorama.
FYI says
The BBC
Britainistani Bolsheviks Corporation
Leftard News World.
Once upon a time they were an honorable,objective news service:not any more.
Jimmy Saville who?
The BBC has protected well-known pedos for many decades.
john says
islam is islam, there is No Middle as Pakistan is the perfect example of islam in control. Barbaric SAVAGES.
R Russell says
Typical. If there is any bad behaviour among Muslims, it is never their fault. Someone else has always provoked them. They are unable to take responsibility for their own actions.
Mirren10 says
muslims are so special !
Let’s see, how did Christians react over the piss christ and the dung madonna. Demands that the ‘artists’ be murdered ? No. Screaming shrieking protests, chanting ” death to
serrano !” No.
Quiet, civilised protests, and a couple of acts of vandalism, that was it. Compare and contrast.
gravenimage says
Spot on, Mirren.
Ravi says
Islam is effed up garbage and BBC is more effed up
thebigW says
“‘Salman Rushdie radicalised my generation,’” by Mobeen Azhar, BBC News…”
You lost me at “Mobeen Azhar”. I ain’t gonna read anything by a Muzzie; “Mobeen”‘s got nothing to offer — except to help me learn more about how they do taqiyya,
gravenimage says
Notice his admitting that someone exercising freedom of speech “radicalized” him. In that case, he was never anything but “radical” to begin with.
somehistory says
moslims are psychopaths. Psychopaths never accept responsibility for wrongs they commit, and moslim psychopaths refuse to admit that any wrong was committed. moslims consider that anything they do is a good thing, and they cannot commit wrongs or crimes, or acts of terror…because everything they do is for islam.
Because the world disapproved of the death wish against Rushdie, moslims must point fingers to blame others for things that happened which received condemnation, and absolve themselves of the guilt.
Psychopaths have an “oh poor me” when others seek to make them accept responsibility, and moslim psychopaths are no different. “Oh, poor me, my friends asked me questions and I didn’t want to answer them.” How dare his friends ask questions. That was the problem, not islam’s violence and bloodlust.
jewdog says
It’s the old the-racists-made-me-do-it canard. What a poor schlep. I think he’d be happier in Pukistan.
gravenimage says
Yes indeed.
Kepha says
Well, well, well. Ayas’ “liberal” friends blamed him for Khomeini’s fatwa against Rushdie? I thought liberals did not stereotype [sarc]. Or, could it be, that these “liberals” are in fact the party that demands that everyone conform to a type?
Lydia Church says
BBC blames Salman Rushdie for Muslims who turned to jihad in rage over his “blasphemous” book
Ah! Time for another timeline!
1. mohammed writes the koran, and fills it with mandates to kill innocent non muslims.
2. muslims obey the commands.
3. Some people live to take note of it, including Salman Rushdie, and they report on it in books and other places.
4. muslims get angry that people are pointing out this FACT.
5. muslims commit more acts of jihad as a result, but then again, they would have done that anyway and this gave them their needed ‘excuse.’
6. Fake news media like the BBC then turn around and blame the one who exposed the crimes.
So on that note, is BBC to blame when it reports on real crimes and the criminals get angry and lash out? Are detectives and police and judges to blame when they reveal who was guilty of a crime? Does that make it ‘their fault’? No, of course not, and this is equally absurd!
gravenimage says
BBC blames Salman Rushdie for Muslims who turned to jihad in rage over his “blasphemous” book
…………………..
How *dare* anyone exercise freedom of speech?
That the BBC is promulgating this is especially grotesque.
Hari Singh says
This just shows you how ignorant Muslims are of their own history’s sources and their propensity to blame others.
Ibn Ishaq the earliest biographer and a Muslim wrote that account in his biography of Muhammad. It is also in Hadiths-traditions of the Muhammad’s actions.
They can’t accept it might be true and that Satan-the Devil tricked Muhammad into thinking the devil was the angel Gabriel with messages from God.
It could well be that the whole of the Koran is from the evil or some evil source especially if its blood covered revelations considered from God and put into action resulting in the deaths of at least 250 millions of peoples,60 millions enslaved and more rapes and castrated.
If true it calls the whole of the Koran into question.
WPM says
The book was written 10 years after Iran was taken over by mad jihadist .Ten years of killing its own citizens for not being Moslem enough, Iran government funding terrorist groups ,planning and performing terrorist acts against Israel, America ,and the west. The book that most of these jihadist have not even read ,but follower blindly a madman opinion that it a book that poses the real danger to their belief system .How many authors ,debaters ,artist put down Christianity in books ,art work ,open debate ,opinions written to papers like The New York Times no out cry for the blood of the author or artist by any Christian or government leaders. Why is Islam the only religion in the world that is not open to criticism ,or examination ,or debate without the person doing the criticism or debate facing a death sentence .This is why Islam should not be a respected religion, like Nazism it should be look at as a unacceptable political belief system that gets no respect because it gives no respect to non-believers basic human rights, as free speech ,freedom to practice non-Islamic beliefs, freedom from sharia law for non-believers, freedom to not be a slave to Moslem masters. So a partying frat boy who was smoking pot, trying to get pick up girls at college raves , hung out with a lot of “white liberals friends ” had his jihad button push to the “on” mode because a mad foaming at the mouth straight out of the 7th century leader 2000 miles from his college, centuries removed western culture called for a book author death sentence based on sharia law ? That he must obey this fatwa without question ,that his “white liberal friends” do not understand death sentences are normal for voicing anything that questions his belief system? Right! free will, freedom of choice ,anything out of the ridged box of Islam must be stomped to death and ban to protect the hurt feeling and protect the grand religion of Islam.
WPM says
I might add that now 30 years later as the BBC ,The New York Times ,CNN ,and many other western news networks are hard at work appeasing these bullies the jihadists have less to fear of any examination or condemnation for their violent acts to please their mad moon god. Like the woman who is raped the blame falls on her not the rapist ,that is Islam in a nut shell core belief system , they are never at fault or responsible for their own actions.
Joe says
“the focus was on global Muslim identity rather than personal morality or spirituality.”
——–
Islam has no morality or spirituality, after Mohammed ruined the religion. This is what happens when you make a warlord your spiritual leader.
WPM says
Islam was ruined from the start because it is really Mohammed worshipping ,the perfect man that should be imitated ,a thief ,lying ,murdering ,raping, stealing, child molesting, warlord ,the perfect man in Islam.
Singh The Sikh says
Muslims become so easily radicalised. The fire of radicalisation burns just below the surface. Any excuse will do. It’s like second nature. Never their fault. It’s always the fault of others.