Back in 2015, a new M.P. from Streatham was among those running to replace Ed Miliband as leader of the Labour Party in Great Britain. This was Chuka Umunna, who suddenly pulled out, explaining that he didn’t want to put his wife through the ordeal of the campaign and his possible win. He worried, he said, about her loss of privacy. He was also 36 at the time, and may have felt unready; he knew he had plenty of time to prepare for a run.
As it happens, the Labour Party then elected, by a landslide, the far-left ideologue Jeremy Corbyn as its new leader. Corbyn has become most notorious for his obsessive hostility to Israel and his indifference to antisemitism. He has declared Hamas and Hezbollah to be “friends,” has attended an Islamic service at a cemetery in Tunisia honoring, among others, those who helped plan the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, and has consistently attacked Israel for being “racist” in its very foundation — a charge he does not think constitutes antisemitism. Many in and out of his party have accused him of “grotesque” antisemitism, including the head of Labour Friends of Israel Joan Ryan, and such longtime members of the group as Margaret Hodge and Frank Field.
The most telling attack, however, may be that of Chuka Umunna, an M.P. for Streatham who has just left Labour, and said last week: “After really soul-searching on this issue, can I in all conscience say that I want to make Jeremy Corbyn prime minister and the team around him – put them in charge of our national security? At the 2017 general election, let’s just be honest, nobody thought that was going to be a prospect. At a future general election, it could be a prospect and in all conscience I can’t do that.”
This is not Umunna’s first harsh words for Labour. In mid-September 2018, he publicly charged what was then his own party with “institutional racism,” and made clear that he was referring to “antisemitism,” the antisemitism exhibited by both Corbyn and others in the party whose unhinged hostility to Israel the Labour leader encouraged. To have a black man accuse Corbyn of turning his party into one of “institutional racism” must have been infuriating and puzzling. Corbyn clearly doesn’t think being against the Jewish state, and its supporters, is “racist.” Corbyn’s constant series of attacks on Israel, his sympathy for Hamas and Hezbollah, his palpable want of sympathy for Israelis, his refusal to even visit the country, even if only to go to Yad Vashem, his apparent indifference to the threats Israel faces, and the terrorist attacks it has endured, and the promotion by Corbyn and others of such attitudes, are what finally pushed Chuka Umunna to break with Labour altogether.
But there are other influences at work here. Chuka Umunna’s father Bennett was an Igbo tribal leader in Nigeria who had emigrated to the United Kingdom, established himself in business, and then returned to Nigeria to enter politics as an anti-corruption campaigner. He died in a car crash that some believe was not an accident. Bennett Umunna lived through the Biafra War (1967-1970), in which the Christians in the south tried to create the independent state of Biafra, where Christians could live free from Muslim aggression. The Biafra War was a pitiless Jihad — as the Biafran leader Col. Ojikwu called it in his Ahiara Declaration — in which two million Christians died of starvation. Though his father died when he was 14, Chuka Umunna surely heard from him, and from his mother, too, and other relatives, about the Biafra War and the Muslim oppression and mass murdering of Christian Igbos that prompted it. Chuka Umunna has as an adult viewed from afar the latest Jihad in Nigeria, that conducted by Boko Haram, whose members specialize in kidnapping Christian girls to be used as sex slaves, and by Muslim Fulani herdsmen, who burn down Christian villages, destroy churches, and kidnap or kill Christian farmers. He cannot be fooled by the apologists for Islam; for them, he’s The Man Who Knows Too Much. One can well imagine what is going through his mind when he reads what Pope Francis wrote in paragraph 253 of his Evangelii gaudium, that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Quran are opposed to every form of violence.” Chuka Umunna must be one of a very few British political figures who has learned about violent Jihad from close family members who lived through such an ordeal.
That is one part of his family’s history that surely has helped to shape his world view. For the confused likes of Jeremy Corbyn, Muslims are part of the underdeveloped Third World, and have been victims of colonialism, and so are deserving, naturally, of the guilty white West’s total support. Never mind that many Muslims are not part of the impoverished Third World, but among the very richest states per capita. Can we really call Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Kuwait, and Qatar Third World countries? An accident of geology has made their people fabulously wealthy. Yet the corbyns of this world are ready to see all Muslims as deprived. As for Muslims being victims of colonialism, in the Arabian Peninsula there was no colonialism in the strict sense, no moving in of large numbers of colonists from the metropolis. The “Trucial States” — later the Emirates — were not colonies, but protectorates. The Royal Navy helped to stamp out piracy on what was called the “Pirate Coast,” as well as to suppress the trade in African slaves. There was also a British protectorate in Aden, helping to guard the sea lanes to India. As for colonialism in North Africa, the French were in both Morocco and Tunisia for less than 40 years, and the only place where large numbers of French colonists lived was in Algeria, which was a colony from 1830 to 1962. Elsewhere in the Middle East, the British (in Iraq and Palestine) and the French (in Syria and Lebanon) held mandates; these were of limited duration, and designed not to further any colonial project, but to prepare the locals for independence. Other Muslim states in the Middle East, Turkey and Persia, were never colonized by the Europeans. Nor was Afghanistan. In India, the Mughal rulers were suppressed by the British, who liberated the Hindus from the harshness of Muslim rule, replacing it with a much more humane form of administration.
In fact, the most successful colonialists, or imperialists, in human history have been the Muslims themselves. They conquered many lands and many peoples, forcibly convincing many of those peoples to adopt their faith. Those who converted would usually take on Arab names; some would even claim false Arab lineages: Pakistan is full of “Sayyids” who thus indicate a (false) descent from the Quraysh tribe of Muhammad himself. Thus did many of those conquered and colonized by Muslims come to identify with their colonizers. No European colonialists managed that feat.
Jeremy Corbyn cannot see Muslims as conquerors; 1400 years of violent jihad and conquest have left no imprint on his brain. He has a most selective memory. He didn’t at first remember having been at a cemetery in Tunisia in 2014 where “Palestinian” terrorists were buried, until a photograph emerged showing him at that cemetery. Then he didn’t remember that while at that cemetery, he took part in an Islamic prayer honoring the dead, until another photograph appeared showing him, hands cupped and head bowed, taking part in such a prayer.
It would be fascinating to find out if Jeremy Corbyn remembers the Biafra War, remembers its more than two million Christian victims, remembers — did he ever know? — why the Christians in Nigeria felt the need to declare their independent state of Biafra in the first place. Perhaps Chuka Umunna could give him, and any other Labour MPs who are interested, a little history lesson about the Jihads in Nigeria, including the Fulani Jihad of 1804-1808 that established the Sokoto Caliphate, the Biafra War (1967-1970) that suppressed the Christian attempt to attain independence, and the latest Jihad in in northern and central Nigeria in the last few years, conducted by both Boko Haram and by Fulani herdsmen.
Jeremy Corbyn is yesterday’s man, his mind full of standard leftist mush, with an admixture of his special house blend of antisemitism that he refuses to recognize. Cometh the hour, cometh the man: I’d place my bets for Britain, now, on Chuka Umunna.
Mirren10 says
Umunna opposed Brexit and campaigned for a *second* referendum. He may not be anti-Semitic, and may have left Labour, but he’s still a leftist.
”This was Chuka Umunna, who suddenly pulled out, explaining that he didn’t want to put his wife through the ordeal of the campaign and his possible win. He worried, he said, about her loss of privacy. ”
Yeah, riiiiight … he’s a politician – if he **really** thought he might win I doubt his wife’s ‘loss of privacy’ was a factor – what about her ‘loss of privacy’ now ?
The politician *I* will vote for is the one who will stand for scrapping the first past the post system, which resulted in the Scots Nats gaining 60 (I think) seats to UKIP’s one, despite the fact that UKIP garnered 3 million more votes than the SNP. I’m quoting these figures from memory, so they may not be entirely accurate, but the principle remains the same.
I have only ever voted Labour once, when I was very young and idealistic, I would *never* vote for them again, no matter which sparkly turd rises to the top. If UKIP field a candidate in my constituency, I’ll vote for them, although I would rather be able to vote for a LibertyGB candidate.
thebigW says
I guess Hugh didn’t Google “chuka umunna” + “islam”. five minutes into it, I can see Chuka is pro-Muslim and anti anybody who’s anti Islam.
like this (clocked at 30 seconds of Googlin’):
https://twitter.com/ChukaUmunna/status/875372291009515520
UNCLE VLADDI says
Ouch. Hugh failed to do his due diligence on this one, for sure!
Dawne says
Yes – and as for the Muslims helping the residents of Grenfell Tower, many of these were themselves Muslim immigrants (in social housing) – they were helping their brothers and sisters rather than proving themselves to be humanitarians.
gravenimage says
Thank you, Mirren and thebigW.
Stuart Smith says
Could Chuka Umunna Save Britain?
Not a chance in hell. Just another useless leftie.
UNCLE VLADDI says
Barchuk Ubumma? The latest black Jesus to save the West from itself?
HAH! Haven’t we already seen this movie!?
eduardo odraude says
Thanks to Hugh Fitzgerald for this extremely interesting window into the UK.
CRUSADER says
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJcuKfcxo9w
EU Debate | Daniel Hannan MEP | Proposition
One of the better Oxford Union debate speeches on BREXIT.
What’s happening with the British is very important, as soon a bridge may be strengthened across the Pond.
Rarely says
From your mouth to G’d’s ear.
Anjuli Pandavar says
This is an incredibly weak piece of writing: Jeremy Corbyn is bad for Britain, therefore Chuka Umunna is good for Britain. Yes, I agree that Jeremy Corbyn is a Stalinist scumbag, but that says nothing whatsoever of Chuka Umunna. It might’ve been more convincing had spend the same column-length been spent on why Chuka Umunna is good for Britain — not Chuka Umunna’s dad, Chuka Umunna himself. I very much doubt weather Umanna senior, given his actual experience of jihad, would have wanted to keep Britain ineffectual in fighting jihad. That is precisely what his son has been campaigning for. Or does Chuka Umunna not know that it is membership of the EU that has laid Britain open to be ravaged by Muslims in pursuit of global domination for Islam, the very thing 2 million Biafrans died to prevent?
Caroline Jones says
Umunna is a self-serving careerist. Never held down a proper job and he is part of the left-wing London elite. He is campaigning hard to keep us in the Muslim migrant loving EU.
Dawne says
Yes. If this was an argument “is Umunna better than Corbyn” – fine. But both are going to send the UK further down the path to hell.
jewdog says
Umunna may be a leftist in his own right, but at least he would inject a note of realism into Britain’s political system. I get the impression that beneath the red-chic patina, Corbyn is an ignoramus.
ploome says
Britain has ALWAYS been antisemitic and her foreign policy has ALWAYS been anti Israel.
Corbyn is just less ‘diplomatic’ but his attitude mirrors that of British foreign policy.
While the royal family kisses arab azz-all those perverts who behead people in parking lots and have fine racehorses, and lots of jewelry and watches to bribe the royals-
Israel is probably the only country in the ME which has not had an official royal visit.
betrayed
arthur says
if Israel wanted a royal visit perhaps it shouldn’t have been blowing up British soldiers during the mandate. there was a time when the older generation could comment that half the Knesset are terrorists without being anti-semiotic but just an observation from being aware of the Israeli bombing campaign prior to the end of the mandate.
CRUSADER says
May our heroic Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer be soon allowed back to the U.K.
should it be the case that freedom comes back to the landmass of “Braveheart”….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Islamization_of_America
gravenimage says
I’m afraid that Chuka Umunna doesn’t appear to be much of a potential savior. This is what he wrote after the Jihad terror attacks on London Bridge and in Manchester:
“It isn’t just terrorists who need their minds opened to other cultures, it’s all of us”
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/chuka-umunna-it-isnt-just-terrorists-who-need-their-minds-opened-to-other-cultures-its-all-of-us/
“Why only Muslim schools?
“Becoming ‘integrated’ isn’t something that should only apply to those at risk of radicalisation, or even those at the margins of society – it should apply to us all. We know that it isn’t just would-be terrorists who need their minds opened to other ways of life and other cultures, it’s all of us…”
“Integration is a two-way street”
In other words, Muslims shouldn’t integrate into British society–we are supposed to “integrate” with them.
CRUSADER says
Okay….
Well….
The UK is back to the choice of a populist, like Cromwell, to do the harsh things necessary to make a turn in society…since society doesn’t seem to know what it is doing.
Bill says
Quietly, in the most efficacious manner possible, convey this information to President Trump.