This is what you might call a holding post because I’m sure many more considered words and analysis will be filed by others on this subject.
This is from the Official Website of Chowdhury Mueen Uddin:
Chowdhury Mueen Uddin was Director of Muslim Spiritual Care Provision in the NHS. Since 2005, he has been advising healthcare providers on how best to provide patients spiritual care at times of need. In this capacity, he currently chairs the Multi-Faith Group for Healthcare Chaplaincy.
He served on the Board of a number of distinguished charities. These include, among others, Board member Labo Housing Association and Gateway Housing Association; Past board member and vice chairman – As-Shahada Housing Association; Chairman and board member – Muslim Aid; Vice Chairman – East London Mosque and London Muslim Centre).
He served as the Secretary General of the Council of Mosques UK and Eire for 2 terms (1984 – 1988) and was involved – along with many others – in setting up the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB).
He was formerly Deputy Director of the Islamic Foundation, Markfield, Leicestershire (1995 – 2005) and, prior to that, worked for a leading Housing Association in London.
Chowdhury Mueen Uddin is married and lives in London. He was born in Bangladesh and read Literature at the University of Dhaka. He began his career as a journalist, filing moving accounts of the Great 1970 Cyclone and interviewing the burgeoning independence leader of that country, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
And today the BBC reports this about him:
A UK Muslim leader and a US citizen have been sentenced to death over crimes committed during Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence.
UK-Bangladeshi Muslim community leader Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin and Ashrafuzzaman Khanwas were being tried in absentia by a special tribunal in Bangladesh.
They were found guilty on 11 charges relating to the abduction and killing of 18 independence supporters.
Verdicts in similar cases have sparked violent reactions in Bangladesh.
The proceedings of the International Crimes Tribunal have come under criticism from several rights groups, including the New York-based Human Rights Watch, which has described the trials as flawed.
The online news service BD24 has more detail:
Al Badr leaders Ashrafuzzaman Khan and Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin have been sentenced to death for killing top Bengali intellectuals in the last days of the 1971 Liberation War.
The two have been found guilty of torture and murder of 18 intellectuals including nine Dhaka University teachers, six journalists and three doctors during the war.
Justice Obaidul Hassan-led International Crimes Tribunal-2 said the prosecution had proven all the 11 charges against the two ‘beyond reasonable doubt’.
The ICT-2 Chairman started the proceedings with his initial remarks at around 11am.
A total 41 pages of the 154-page verdict were read out.
Justice Shahinur Islam read out the first part of the 41-page summary verdict and Justice Mujibur Rahman Mia read the second part.
Justice Mia said the involvement of Ashrafuzzman and Mueen-Uddin with the killings of 18 intellectuals had been proven conclusively.
At times, they carried out the murders, sometimes they instigated and encouraged them, said the judge.
The two had complete control over the Al Badr during the Liberation War, said the verdict.
The tribunal in its verdict said Ashrafuzzaman and Mueen-Uddin will be ‘hanged until death’ for their war-time atrocities.
Other two judges — Justice Md Mujibur Rahman Mia and Judge Shahinur Islam — read out parts of the verdict.
Sunday’s verdict described how the former leaders of the Islami Chhatra Sangha, Jamaat’s student affiliate in 1971, had abducted and killed the intellectuals between Dec 11 and Dec 15 in 1971.
Ashrafuzzaman was the ‘chief planner’ and Mueen-Uddin was the ‘operation in-charge’ of the massacre.
A diary recovered from Ashrafuzzaman’s Nakhalparha residence in Dhaka after independence contained the plan for the massacre and a list of targets.
Freedom fighters waiting outside the court and the Ganajagaran Mancha supporters hailed the sentence. Hundreds turned out on the streets in Gopalganj and Feni — home districts of the two convicts — to celebrate the verdict.
They demanded its swift execution. The prosecution also expressed satisfaction.
It is the ninth verdict of the ongoing war crimes trials involving the two tribunals.
So far, six former and current Jamaat leaders and two BNP leaders have been convicted.
Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin was born in November, 1948 at Chanpur in Feni’s Dagonbhuiyan to Delowar Hossain.
He was a student of Bangla department at Dhaka University during the Liberation War and worked as a staff correspondent of Dainik Purbadesh.
According to case details, Mueen-Uddin was a central leader of Jamaat’s student front and member of the notorious militia outfit Al Badr.
He was given ‘important’ position in Al Badr and he spearheaded the execution of the Bengali intelligentsia towards the end of the Liberation War.
Mueen-Uddin’s family, too, had come out strongly in support of Pakistan, according to the prosecution.
He fled to Pakistan and to the UK from there, after Bangladesh gained independence. He has been residing in London since.
Apart from discharging important duties of Jamaat-affiliated ‘Dawatul Islam’ in London, he is also the executive editor of weekly Dawat.
He is one of the directors of National Health Services, a trustee of the Muslim Aid and chairman of Tottenham mosque’s executive committee.
On his website, the former Al Badr leader has admitted to his war-time role for a ‘unified Pakistan’.
In an interview to Al-Jazeera’s Jonah Hull for the program ‘Talk to Al-jazeera’ in July, he said the tribunal was a ‘joke’.
For the record, Mueen-Uddin, whom I met on the doorstep of his north London home in 2008, a couple of hours before I was sent a threatening legal letter by libel lawyers Carter Ruck, strongly denies the charges.
(And there’s not a cat in hell’s chance of him being extradited, largely due to Bangladesh’s use of the death penalty, but also because of serious concerns over the way these tribunals were conducted. If the Bangladesh National Party/Jamaat e Islami alliance win back power in the New Year, as many expect, these verdicts will be quashed anyway.)
Although he lives in Enfield, he has very strong links to Tower Hamlets, and not just through his work with the East London Mosque, the London Muslim Centre and the Royal London Hospital.
Note the name Dawatul Islam in the article above. He founded it.
It has received well in excess of £100,000–perhaps way more–over the years, both from Labour dominated Grants Panels and more recently from Mayor Lutfur Rahman’s vote buying fund grant pot.
As recently as August, Lutfur announced another £40,000 for it for a “Girl’s Talk” project. It’s aimed at preventing girls getting involved in gangs, which is kind of ironic given the history of some of Lutfur’s chief supporters..
The detail is here.
Just saying…
Trial by Jeory 
It appears the official Jamaat-e-Islami website admitted their role in genocide.
http://icsforum.org/blog/omarshehab/jamaat-site-admitting-genocide-collaboration/
All wars are nasty, horrible events and the 1971 War was a horrid affair. There was a group who felt that a Muslim nation would be stronger if they stayed united and killed for their beliefs and there was another group who felt if West Pakistan did not respect the rules and laws of democracy because outcome didn’t suit them then there was an absolute need for independence.
I personally am happy that Bangladesh gained independence, I have read about how West Pakistanis prioritised their region over East Pakistan often taking the income generated by the latter to fund the former. I am sad to see that more than 40 years later the pain is still carrying on. This can’t be healthy, it just prolongs the pain.
I hope justice is served and the people who lost loved ones in the war find closure and peace. But sadly I think that it will not and the hatred will keep our community in a downward spiral as the groups from either side of the War try to keep the other down in the UK. How does keeping the other side out of positions of power help our community? It doesn’t. The thing is the 1971 War was won by Awami Leaguers. let’s just leave it at that. Seeking justice for murders does not mean to teach the “whole lot” a lesson. Dispense justice, but remember at the end of the day we all need to pull together if we want to progress. Bangladeshis perform very poorly in every single indices. Let’s look to the future and kindly close the door on the past.
Just saying exactly what, Ted? Mueenuddin was kicked out of Dawatul Islam over 20 years ago, so it’s all the more inappropriate that you should link the very serious matter of the Bangladesh death penalty verdict with a grant given by the Mayor for a girls project.
Ted, Lutfur and his cronies gift feed you more than enough juicy ammunination through their political antics, without having to resort to making associations like this. Disppointing.
Kicked out?
Very acrimonious, by all accounts. Common knowledge in the community, must be 25 years since the fighting. I doubt they’ve made peace since, which is why your link is so tenuous.
Ted, you really need to understand the local Bangladeshi politics a bit more before you start commenting on them. Although IFE and Dawatul Islam are off-shoots of Jamat-e-Islam in Bangladesh, they have been bitter rivals here. Moin Uddin and others had a very public battle over the control of East London Mosque with fellow Dawatul Islam members in the late 80s and early 90s. This resulted them in creating a separate group called IFE which ultimately too charge of the mosque. You need to do a bit more research before you start blabbing away. And linking it all to the Mayor? Next you’ll be saying he started the 1971 war in Bangladesh.
Meanwhile East London Mosque has once again broken its promise not to host homophobic hate preachers – in September it had Ismail ‘homosexuality is worse than animals” Menk to give its Friday Sermon and he’s being hosted there again on 15th November. That’s to add to the scores of other ‘Kill the gays and apostates’ preachers hosted there in recent years.
I appreciate that in Tower Hamlets you’re all deprived victims of discrimination, prejudice etc., but it’s hard to have much sympathy for you while the beloved heart of your community, East London Mosque, is the biggest single fountain of hatred in the country. You should be ashamed of that. Sort yourselves out.
For those wondering why ‘Lamia’ appears trolling here, he is one of the most notorious hate mongers who posts below the line at the blog Harry’s Place. He spews more hatred in an average week than all the hate preachers manage together in a year, mostly against Muslims and anyone associated with them. Not so much a fountain, more a Victoria Falls of hatred.
Back to the issue of Mueenuddin, many of the older generation in the local Bangladeshi community have personal experiences of the horrors of the war for independence, and after all these decades still strongly feel a lingering lack of justice to redress terrible war crimes. But political exploitation has robbed them of their justice. I suspect they will not see it in their lifetimes.
I challenge the liar Konnu or anyone else here to show where I have said anything like ‘Muslims are dirty filthy dogs who deserve to be murdered’, which is what Abu Usamah, a repeated preacher at East London Mosque, has said about gay people.
You won’t find it. I’ve never said anything remotely in that league.
Carry on hosting hate preachers on your home patch and then wailing when you are called out on it, you self-pitying scum.
So I get three down votes but…
No one has refuted that ELM is hosting the said hate preacher and has hosted numerous hate preachers before,OR produced any evidence of me saying anything like ‘Muslims are dirty filthy dogs who deserve to be murdered’.
Your silence on those says quite lot more than your pitiful down votes.
When Sheikh Mujibur Rahman democratically won the elections in 1971 he was refused his rightful position of Prime Minister on trumped up charges by Zulfiker Ali Bhutto. Then Mujibur Rahman led the Was of Independence and won with his Awami League Party. One would then assume Awami Leaguers would respect the rule of democracy due to their being treated so unjustly. Yet they did the same injustice 40 years later when Lutfur democratically won the selection they brought trumped up charges against him using Labour Party as an unwitting vessel. The charges by Abbas against Lutfur of vote rigging were never proven, yet no one remarked on Abbas’s significant increase in votes between the two selections, a hundred votes to be precise! Lutfur’s votes had no significant difference from his previous selection votes.
Labour Party really do need to get rid of all groups that try to influence party decisions. It’s unhealthy and they are not doing anyone any favours, certainly not the Bangladeshi community which continues to under-perform.All this past business is not healthy. IMO all people who supported the Pakistanis during the war should have been expelled to Pakistan with no right of return and the problem would have been solved. The situation is becoming desperate.
Also Lutfur won as an independent just like Shiekh Mujibur. Haha. comparing these two will offend some people badly but my point is we are all Bengalis please move away from the past!
@Konnu and his mates seem very eager to whitewash the past and say “let bygones…” etc. Also very critical of people who try and publicize the truth about today’s hate preachers. One wonders if he and his mates have things which they would sooner the public did not know.
All hate preachers are people who are insecure about their identities and want to force others to follow their perspective because they fear being an outcast. If everyone was to follow their version of life they would be with the ‘in-crowd’. They cheat themselves (and others) of this wonderful experience called life which is beautifully diverse. Life is a kaleidoscope, not a tunnel.
I didn’t say anything of the sort, never even hinted at “let bygones…” Newspaniard, why do you feel the need to lie so blatantly?
With regards Bangladesh, I couldn’t be happier if an independent judiciary could call to account those accused of war crimes, but corrupt politicians have put paid to that. This is why we need something like the International Criminal Court in cases like this.
The Jamate Islam Party has been banned from standing in the Bangladeshi elections and some of the affiliates are standing as BNP candidates. I don’t like what the Jamati lot stand for and secretly happy they have been banned but in a true democracy all parties should be able to stand. I don’t think banning parties is the right way.
Jamat is nothing but a religious Nazi party (they even didn’t accepted democracy in their manifesto, they did put it in their party manifesto only after their election candidacy were legally challenged ….), anyway, I am not sure if some people want to start a jew hating, Hilter worshipping neo-Nazi party at England how this country of democracy will react ….. ha ha ha ….