Hasan denies suggesting that our government should change foreign policy because angry Muslims don’t like it. Yet this is hard to square with the overall tenor of his argument
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/3683/mehdi_hasan_s_suicidal_solution_to_islamic_extremism
Mehdi Hasan is the political editor of UK version of The Huffington Post and the presenter of Al Jazeera English shows The Café and Head to Head…..Another “moderate”…..not to be confused with the late Pakistani tenor Mehdi Hassan …..rsk
Mehdi Hasan likes nothing better than to launch sanctimonious tirades against Western foreign policy. Whether it’s Iraq, Afghanistan, the ‘War on Terror’, or support for Israel, Hasan is usually ready to pounce with a scathing and ill-informed diatribe.
So it’s hardly surprising that he has chosen to exploit the tragic murder of Drummer Lee Rigby for his latest rant.
In an article this week for the Huffington Post, Hasan rebukes the political class, particularly David Cameron, for denying its own role in this act of terror.
He accuses David Cameron and others of trying to “zealously police the parameters of the debate, pre-emptively warning off those who might dare connect the dots between wars abroad and terror at home”. He then goes on to quote from Michael Adebolajo’s vengeful tirade and his claim that he hacked a soldier to death because “Muslims are dying daily…This British soldier is an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”. Hasan thinks that we are deceived by our political masters. Foreign policy is purportedly a recruiting sergeant for terror yet it has become “the issue that dare not speak its name”.
For starters, Hasan should become familiar with the Islamic notion of taqiyya, the idea that Muslims can legitimately conceal their beliefs and deceive others if circumstances require it. Nowadays, radicals usetaqiyya to promote the view that terrorism is a cry of despair from the anguished and the aggrieved, a device for fighting back against the perceived wickedness of western foreign policy. They know that such victim-centred narratives play out well among our sceptical and often war-weary liberal commentariat, Hasan included.
In reality, jihadis everywhere entertain dreams of recreating a global Islamic caliphate ruled by sharia law. They detest any ‘apostate’ Muslim government which has not been thoroughly purged of its ties to western governments. Above all, they view all western interference in Muslim lands as automatically illegitimate and colonialist. For them, there is no legitimate self-defence against Islamist assault and even terrorists blown up in drone strikes are regarded as innocent.