Remember this photo from 2008? I wrote about it on this blog in 2010.
It shows Lutfur Rahman, then the council leader rather than his current position as executive mayor, with Sheikh Adel Al-Kalbani walking by the Tower Hamlets town hall at Mulberry Place.
Behind them are Rofique Ahmed and Shafiqul Haque. Both were then, like Lutfur, Labour councillors. They are now, according to officers who have worked with them, two of the least productive independent members of his cabinet (but they still get some £20k a year for their ‘work’).
Al Kalbani was at that time the Second Imam of Kabbah, the Grand Mosque in Mecca, considered by Muslims as the most sacred place on Earth.
He had been appointed to the position by the Saudi royal family shortly before his trip to the UK where he was attending the annual Islamic Global Peace and Unity event at the ExCeL centre (Lutfur spoke at this year’s gathering last month).
As he had some down time, according to a conversation I had with Lutfur about it a bit later, he decided to pop over to the town hall where he found Lutfur’s office door open and so they had a cup of tea. “He’s a very pious man,” Lutfur told me.
Ever so spontaneously, Al Kalbani then led prayers at the town hall’s second building, Anchorage House, for staff and councillors.
The episode was cited by Cllr Helal Abbas in his dossier of evidence to Labour’s NEC in 2010 as proof that Lutfur was taking a less than secular approach to politics.
In the months and years after his visit, Al Kalbani, a Sunni, seemed to develop some rather hardline views, arguably against Christian and Jews in Saudi Arabia, but particularly about Shia Muslims.
This five minute YouTube video of him in a broadcast interview is fascinating:
He says Shia scholars are apostates (the punishment for whom in Islam can be a bit harsh), that Shia laymen are ignorant, that there can be no such thing in Saudi Arabia as a “Christian citizen”: they can only be guests, because the guidance from the Prophet Mohammed was to drive Christians and Jews from that land.
In Britain, there is increasing concern about the Sunni/Shia divide. Counter-extremism experts believe the crisis in Syria, which on a simple level is Sunni rebels trying to topple Shia President Asad’s regime, might fuel latent dislike.
In May, Anjem Choudary’s hardline Salafi mob (Salafis follow the Sunni tradition) led a violent demonstration against Shias in Edgware Road.
It is possibly for this reason that the “very pious” Al Kalbani has been refused entry to the UK. Harry’s Place had a piece on this a couple of days ago, while I wrote this article for the Express yesterday. The Home Office refused to elaborate on why his visa was declined.
This Government is clearly taking a much harder line against potential problem preachers coming to these shores.
It means the Water Lily Centre on Mile End Road didn’t have a star guest today, and neither did the Esha’atul Islam Mosque in Whitechapel last night.
ONE of the most senior Muslim clerics in Saudi Arabia has been refused entry to the UK, just as he was to embark on a speaking tour of British mosques.
Sheikh Adel Al-Kalbani, a former senior imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, was prevented from boarding his plane in Riyadh on Wednesday.
He was due to fly to London, where he had been expected to give a lecture in Whitechapel last night and another one in Wembley today.
It is not known why a visa for Al Kalbani was refused.
He has previously been allowed into the country and in 2008 he was a guest of the then leader of Tower Hamlets council in east London, Lutfur Rahman.
Mr Rahman is now the directly elected mayor of Tower Hamlets.
Since 2008, the Sunni cleric has been quoted expounding potentially divisive views regarding Shia Muslims.
There has been increasing concern among extremism experts over attempts to divide Shia and Sunni Muslims in Britain.
Followers of radical hate preacher Anjem Choudary led a demonstration in London in May against Shia Muslims.
According to the Arab News website, Al-Kalbani had performed the noon and afternoon prayers before heading to the King Khaled International Airport.
He was quoted as saying: “I was stopped at the door of the plane and told that the authorities received a message from the British Embassy saying that I was not allowed to enter Britain.”
He said he had received his visa from the British Embassy in Saudi Arabia in October, just two weeks after submitting his application.
The British Embassy apparently did not explain why he was then later refused.
He said: “I don’t really know why they denied me entry. I was in Britain about four years ago and other countries.
“I was told that other Muslim scholars have also been denied entry and had their visas cancelled.
“My gut feeling is that they don’t want to see me interacting with the Muslim community there.”
He said he would not be appealing the decision. He said Allah “has chosen the best for me”.
Al Kalbani was the star billing on the Qibla speaking tour over the next 10 days.
He was due to talk at the Water Lily centre in Whitechapel tomorrow, then at Luton later in the day, then Swansea and Cardiff on Sunday.
He had a talk planned in Kingston, Surrey, on Monday while Muslims in Birmingham and Walsall were due to welcome him on Christmas Eve.
A Home Office spokeswoman said she was unable to comment on specific individuals, but added: “All visa applications are considered on their individual merits and in line with the immigration rules.
“The onus is on the individual to ensure they provide the correct evidence when submitting an application.”
I’ll leave it for you to debate whether this sheds new light on Abbas’s warning three years ago.
Trial by Jeory 
Interesting. So the visa was granted but then withdrawn?
Am I wrong in thinking that this suggests that some new information came to light subsequent to the original granting?
Worrying that someone who holds such undesirable views can be seen as a ‘Star’ of any kind. That says something about Qibla and the people who wanted to go to it.
Tim.
The photo at the town hall was taken by a Spanish freelance photographer called Carmen but the Express credits it to AP. Did she sell the rights, is this a mistake or or did AP nick the credit?
I wonder if the far left in the shape of Livingstone and Jon Lansman will now resurrect their allegations of the ” dodgy dossier” attributed to Helal Abbas Uddin who now of course is completely vindicated or will they just keep their mouths shut?
About time. England should never again be a ‘safe haven’ for extremists whatever their beliefs.
What’s Lutfur reaction ? Assume its not joyful :-0
Curious Cat.
(Haven = Dutch for harbour)
Probably one of his useful idiots like the Revs Alan Green or Giles Fraser will be saying the whole thing is a smear and that he has been misunderstood.
Yes it’s that fifth column of out and out national traitors who are the real problem. How big is Rev. Green’s flock of Islamophiliac Neo-Marxists anyway? I bet he can count them on the fingers of one hand.
I have said it before and I’ll say it again. The unspeakable truth is that we are being colonised. The vanguards of this process are a fifth column of socialists controlling organisations like the UAF, SWP, BBC, Equalities Commission, the Socialist Teachers Alliance and “Liberty”. They work together to soften up British society and ready it for the takeover. They do this by promoting division, forbidding us from even talking about what’s happening and brainwashing the young. We are becoming a nation of informants. People are scared to speak out – even children are now being trained to inform on each other at school (under the guise of “anti-bullying”); adults who speak out are filmed by citizen spies and jailed. The BBC has become a mouth piece of the left, wilfully ignoring issues and opinions which don’t fit the paradigm.
Ain’t that the truth – GM, you are painfully close to the mark.
“we are being colonised” Utter rubbish, the world belongs to everyone.
Immigrants can enrich a nation. But there is a difference between immigrants and colonists. The former are eager to learn the ways of their adopted home, to integrate and perhaps assimilate — which does not require relinquishing their heritage or forgetting their roots. Colonists, by contrast, bring their culture with them and live under their own laws. Their loyalties lie elsewhere.
So when a distinction is made between what an immigrant is and what a colonist is it gets down-voted – surely proof enough of “the agenda” at work. Can’t handle the truth?
Jon. The problem is that most of the world doesn’t want to be where it is and would rather, or so facts would indicate, with us. We in this case being Europe, the area north of the Rio Grande, Australia and similar countries.
Grave Maurice has a point, several in fact, although he could have expressed himself differently. I have previously recommended three recently published books that deal with the whole matter of immigration, identity and the impact of Islam on the west and specifically this country.
” From Fatwa to Jihad” by Kenan Malik.
” The British Dream” by David Goodhart.
” The Diversity Illusion” By Ed West.
These three writers non of whom can be described as right wing demolish all of the left wing myths and sometimes downright lies about immigration.
There is a good article in this morning’s Guardian by John Harris which challenges the misconceptions spread by, among other other outlets, his own paper. ” It’s not racist to be anxious about immigration” can be read online and even the same paper’s black diarist Hugh Muir, usually a drum beater for the we’re all oppressed because of slavery and colonialism lobby, has discovered the white working class so there is hope for a rational discussion.
One of the main points made both Goodhart and West is to demolish the idea of Britain as a nation of immigrants. They both show that immigration into this country was very small, took place over a long period of time, was from areas of Europe, the nation state scarcely existed at the time, which had cultures very similar to the indigenous one and which, after the middle of the first millennium, a shared religion.
Ultra leftist and black extremist examples of African troops in the Roman Legions on Hadrian’s Wall are as relevant as British troops in Indian and Africa, they came, they served and they went home. Similarly the odd person from another part of the world who lived in London and was remarked upon by a diarist can in no way be equated with what took place after the Second World War.
From 1066 until 1948 apart from a relatively small and easily and quickly absorbed trickle of Hueguenots, Jews and Irish, what is now the UK was more or less racially and religiously homogenous. Since the late forties and certainly the mid fifties of the last century this country has increasingly absorbed wave after wave of immigrants and refugees with relatively little disruption.
The perception was generally that if this influx wasn’t all good it certainly wasn’t all bad, that was definitely the view of the liberal elite which has dominated the political system whichever party was in power. Two things have changed this consensus and changed it very quickly.
Firstly Islamist terrorism. It has been pointed out quite correctly in my view by several writers that while the vast majority of Muslims aren’t terrorists most terrorists are Muslims, and that is true world wide. The worst atrocities since WW11 in Europe, American and other parts of the world have been carried out by individuals and groups citing Islam and a supposed campaign against it as the reason for their actions.
It is only now, and in terms of the UK in the last year , that the ranks of those who have sought to defend or explain the phenomenon of young Muslims blowing up planes, tubes and buses have begun to break. From the decision to not allow Al Kalbani onto a London bound flight to today’s announcement that Mozzam Begg has had his passport withdrawn to the continuing isolation of the Islamic State of Tower Hamlets the tide has inexorably shifted and is flowing against the terrorists and their sympathisers and apologists.
When, last week, the deputy editor of the Guardian Seamus Milne reiterated the old slander that the murder in Woolwich has to be placed in the context of the west’s war on Islam he is an increasingly isolated and despised voice.
The second factor to upset the liberal apple cart has been the sheer size of the influx from Eastern Europe. Poles now outnumber most other ethnic minorities and have achieved this in just over a decade. While most are hard working they have driven down wages and placed yet more strain on education, housing and medical services. The price of the cheap plumber from Poznan or the cleaner Bucharest is that the already overstretched welfare state is now at breaking point.
A few points that I thought I would share with Jon and I would like him to respond and not disappear the way Mr Barnes did recently.
…what you say is a load of contradictory bunkum. By your logic South Africa “belongs” to the coloniser Boers and Palestine “belongs” to the colonising Ashkenazim. Totally bogus and against various totems of Socialist belief as you well know. The world consists of a beautiful, diverse patchwork of many nations of people who are united by shared bonds of ancestry, history, culture, cuisine, language, ethics and religion. As much as Arabia is “Muslim Land” thus Europe is “Christian Land”. By the flawed and contradictory logic of the “progressive left” (which self evidently you are part of) if the Jews must leave Muslim “Palestinian” land; which they have colonised since 1948; then so too must the Muslims leave Christian England; which they have colonised since 1958. You cannot have it both ways.
That previous comment is meant in reply to “Jon” but the posting thing went awry.
Madmullah – I whole heartedly agree with what you say. I am familiar with the excellent and groundbreaking book by Ed West and I urge more people to read it.
“The world consists of a beautiful, diverse patchwork of many nations of people” It is very telling that you put nations before people!
Jon your ‘universalist’ argument is circular and illogical and you communists employ it selectively when it suits you. Are the Palestinians are nation? If not, and they’re just people who speak Arabic then they won’t mind leaving Palestine will they?
The idea that there is no such thing as a “indigenous Briton” is given the lie by the male genetic markers that reflect our paternal ancestry. I am currently reading “Deep Ancestry, inside the Genographic project” by Spencer Wells. This explains that the genetic marker R1b is present in 75% of the population of the British Isles and arrived here around 15,000 years ago from the Ice Age refuges of SW Europe. This is millenia before the arrival of incomers like the Celts, Angle-Saxons and Danes. What is true is that those who’s ancestors arrived here 15,000, 1,500 or 150 years ago are bigger stake-holders in “Britishness” than those who arrived 50 years, 15 years or 15 minutes ago.
All good points pwi34 and I must get that book. I do think however that this is a path that must be trodden carefully. While the race industry multi-cultis are busy propagating the lie that this country is a nation of immigrants the far right also use the phrase indigenous in a racial/political context although that now the far left in the shape of the SWP and their mirror image on the right the BNP are both eclipsed there is time and space for a rational discussion of the issues.
What also has to be taken into account is that, apart from their self appointed spokespersons, the vast majority of immigrants are happy to be here and share our values. The rot set in in the late sixties/early seventies with the formation of the Commission for Racial Equality and the emergence of various “black power” groups preaching separation in some shape or form and demands for apologies and reparations for slavery.
Happily all that is either gone or in permanent retreat witness the all time winner of Private Eye’s disappeared without trace award Lord Bukhu Parekh’s ” The Future of Multi Cultural Britain”. A bigger load of embarrassing drivel I can’t imagine and surely many of those who contributed must be ruing the day they put their names to it.
Strangely enough when I pulled it down from my bookshelf a couple of minutes ago next to it was another must read. ” The Race Gallery. The Return of Racial Science” by Marek Kohn. The latter author, if you haven’t read him do, takes apart what he calls the pseudo science of genentics as espoused by such luminaries on the white racial right as Eysenck, Richard Lynne, J Phillip Rushton, and the authors of the Bell Curve, Murray and Hernstein.
In the same chapter, number seven, Cave Men with Attitude, he then does the same with the Afrocentrists have not only claimed that Africans were and aresupperior to other races but are actually accepted and discussed and appear on the curricula of serious universities.
Fantasists like Cheikh Anta Diop, Molefi Kete Asanti, Leonard Jeffries and Martin Bernal who preach racial supremacy theories are never, at least until now, regarded as dangerous racists which is exactly what they are.
Interesting discussion for a new years day. I’ll leave you all now with the wish that the announcement that there are to be six festivals in Victoria Park in the summer will finally galvanise John Biggs into something like a campaign to be elected Mayor. He has thousands of vote across the north of Tower Hamlets from people, some of whom have had to move out of their homes for the day,
He is claiming that he has to do this because of the cuts to services brought in by the government and needs the money. This argument is torn apart by the leader of the Tory group on the council Peter Golds in a very good article in the current edition of the East London Advertiser. I will reproduce the article.
WITH ALL THE SPIN DOCTORS-HOW DO YOU MAKE GAFFES?
The Rahman administration’s publicity and communications budget is enormous.
There is the £4.2 million budget for the communications department, a further £1.2 million of taxpayers money devoted to East End Life and the media and spin doctors in the Mayor’s Office.
In the 2013 budget process the council, by a two thirds majority, declined to grant the Mayor £700 000 funds for his office and ordered him to close East End Life.
Lutfur Rahman, using every trick possible, by way of a Mayoral decision (that is him alone) raided reserves to continue this funding. By use of Freedom of Information requests we have established that at least £240 000 of the money has been used to employ staff and, of these, some are so-called media advisors.
Seddon Communications will be collecting an estimated £57 000 to the end of the year and Media Do; run by the main reporter of Channel S will collect £54,000. Which means it beggars belief how Mayor Rahman has stumbled on his latest gaffe.
Anjem Choudhury is a dangerous influence with a well honed ability to create community dissent just with legal statements. His entry into Brick Lane to stop the sale of alcohol was inflammatory and gained him publicity yet the council press office issued a few words of concern on be-half of the Mayor.
We now understand that he did not see the statement or approve it. This was an important local event involving community cohesion and the local politician with full responsibility for cohesion failed to sign off a press release.
With the hours the administration spends deciding on the best pictures for East End Life one wonders who actually runs this council? In five months the electorate will have the opportunity to say: “Not You!”.
Couldn’t have put it better myself!
@themadmullahofbricklane Point taken, I certainly don’t endorse the concept of racial superiority, only that national identity is a real concrete thing rather than a mere “construct”. I believe we need to discuss concepts like race, ethnicity, nationality, migration and cultural identity in a rational reasonable way, and not leave it to the extremists. I will also check out the books you mention as well as some of the “anti-role models” from a previous era who I’m not aware of. It does seem that one after the other of the Secular Elite’s shibboleth’s are being exploded. Multi-culturalism has failed, the only alternative being integration and inevitable absorption.
I’m not quite sure how we moved from Ted’s original post to such esoteric matters, but I’m pleased your most recent post brings us back full circle, via Peter Gold’s excellent piece in the “East London Advertiser” to the pressing question; Who is going to pull down the curtain on Rahman’s trouser-losing farce of an Administration?
If that’s the best you can do Jon then I think I have won the argument, whatever it was! I didn’t understand why GM used that description and I don’t know why you have repeated it. Can you tell what your point is?
Jon.
Could you explain why, when GM put the word nation before people, you believe that it is very telling?Telling of what?
The Left have managed to create a situation where any recognition of nationality is “racist”. Therefore, through preventing English people from saying there is an English nation of people the Left can render any principled opposition to mass immigration impossible.
I think that used to be the case GM but the extreme left is now in total disarray and organisationally in its weakest position since the formation of the Communist Party in the early nineteen twenties. The demise of Livingstone and the collapse of the Socialist Workers Party have dealt the loonies pretty much death blows.
The abolition of the Commission for Racial Equality, what a misnamed entity that was, and the recognition as I have pointed out elsewhere on this blog by even Guardian columnists and their black diary writer that the white working class exists and has rights are really the death knell for political correctness.
What started the process was the electoral success of the BNP which shocked the chattering classes into seeing the mess that they had gotten the country with their pandering to every minority group that threatened to call them racist.
The refusal of entry to Al Kalbani is a very significant step forwards as is the confiscation of the passport of Moazzim Begg of Cage prisoners after he went to Syria. There are very few mainstream voices like Seamus Milne left as they realise that blaming the West for Islamic terrorism just doesn’t wash anymore and can be a real hindrance to a political or media future.
I’m still waiting for a response from Jon but not holding my breath.
Scroll back for my latest post.
there are six very sad socialists in denial down-voting everything… or perhaps it is just Axel logging on to half a dozen different machines and doing it all by himself (perhaps with his friend Mr. O’Driscoll)
Could you explain that GM?
every comment with a particular critical view point as espoused by you and me was – overnight – down voted six times… either by six people all of a sudden logging in shortly after each other and all agreeing on exactly the same thing or the same person doing it six times… it was suspected some time ago that Axel Landin was “Steve O’Driscol” and when that conclusion was first aired on here…suddenly Steve disappeared.
I see. I don’t actually follow that part of the blog especially as there are I understand commercial organisations that can inflate viewing and approval figures for a fee. I remember Mr O’Driscol who was obviously paid to disparage anything anti Lutfur and wondered where he had gone to.
I seem to recall when these people are confronted with their posts being dissected and asked to reply point by point they disappear to be replaced with someone else of a similar point of view.
Talking about people paid by Lutfur I see that Mark Seddon is going to New York to write speeches for the UN Secretary General. Or is this a case of a rat leaving a sinking ship? There is article in The East London Advertiser which has him saying that all parties in Tower Hamlets should work together for the common good.
This is of course shorthand for let Lutfur back into the Labour Party and when it was last raised by Livingstone at the Labour NEC it was laughed out. I am waiting to see what position on all of this Jon Lansman of Left Futures takes as he is a big fan of Lutfur and has in the past been a decryer of any wrong doing by the Dear Leader.
I think it is about time that the Labour Party started to take a strong line against the likes of Landin and Lansman. Either support the Labour candate or be expelled. At the last election in the ward, Weavers, where Lansman lives, Labour beat Lutfur’s nominee support for whom Lansman openly canvassed.
I will have a look at Landin and see what I can find.
It seems Landin is a typical new Labour leading light. He is a permanent student, has never had a proper job in life and is a “writer” and “blogger” shorthand for a total waste of space with no experience of life who thinks he has a big career in the media and politics with a safe seat waiting somewhere and a ministerial portfolio by the time he is thirty, eeer, no!
What he doesn’t seem to have realised is that he either leaves a gap in his CV or admits he took the Lutfur shilling, either way is the kiss of death for a future in anything Labour Party or trades union, there are simply too many talented people out there looking for work.
The fact that he took a position as an advisor on boundary changes when he had no experience of anything, especially that, means that he was recruited by Lutfur to write stuff and give an appearance of The Dear Leader bringing talent on board at a when he thought he could get back in the Labour Party. The fact that he enlisted Axel is yet a further sign of Lutfur’s tenuous grasp of reality.
Maybe you would like to comment Axel as your name is being mentioned. GM, I see what you mean about the position of the thumbs. As Del Boy would say, ” Axel, you plonker!”.
The mayor’s paid adviser on boundary changes was basically an exercise in gerrymandering. The end result was a trade off whereby the LGBCE sought to equalize the political bonuses for each of the three main political factions in LBTH and paid little or no regard to community boundaries whatsoever. The day they put the Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green and Whitechapel LU Station in “Spitalfields and Banglatown” was the day the LGBCE basically admitted that all their lofty principles are worthless.
Lutfur and this mad cleric are birds of the same feather. Both are islamists hell bend on imposing their own poisonous ideology on an otherwise peaceful society.
Both are intolerant of the views of others and are blinded by prejudice towards others. They don’t play by any set of rules and see no problem contradicting anything if it not islamic. Look at the postal vote scandal and the attempted smearing of Helal Abbas at the last election. Despicable.
Lutfur is a monster. Nothing anybody could say about him or his cronies would surprise me.
The only comforting thing is that Lutfur is totally out of his depth as mayor. If he were smarter he would be alot more dangerous. He is supported by a team of highly paid advisers and media people. The kind of people who would not last 2 minutes in the real world, but nevertheless buffet him from alot of valid criticism.
The man is a coward who throw around threats of legal action like confetti. That is the action of a very paranoid individual. He’s not bright, but he might be just bright enough to realise this.
The only answer is to reject Lutfur and this aggressive brand of town hall islamism as soon as possible.
I agree, especially about Helal Abbas Uddin bearing the subject of a Lutfur inspired smear campaign. The problem is how do we get rid of him. Over to you Mr Biggs.
I think you meant buffer not buffet!
It seems that Axel Landin has given up giving the thumbs down after he was exposed by GM. I started to have a look at him and his brother and they are exactly as I have described above. A couple of students who have never done a days work in their lives who think that because they have had a few articles published on the likes of The Guardian, The Morning Star and on Left Futures, of which Conrad Landin claims to be an associate editor, they will be taken seriously. conradlandin.wordpress.com/about/.
What is also interesting are the links between Lutfur and the Left Futures crowd which then links to the far left of the Labour Party generally. I don’t have the time and resources but it would be useful to see if there have been any payments to Lansman and Left Futures by Lutfur or related groups or businessmen because a look at a number of articles two years ago shows a clear pro Lutfur /IFE bias which cannot be explained, I believe, in any other way.
Look at these three posts.
http://www.leftfutures.org/2012/05/the-flames-of-hatred-are-still-alive-in-the-east-end/
http://www.leftfutures.org/2012/08/tower-hamlets-labour-first-as-farce/
http://www.leftfutures.org/2012/04/the-politic-of-hate-in-tower-hamlets/
The support seems to have stopped as Lutfur and co have become more and more bizarre and unpredictable and as Livingstone has faded from view altogether. The linking of Lutfur and Livingstone by Left Futures would bear out the rumours that have surfaced from time to time that Livingstone was using Lutfur as a back stop possible employer hence his public endorsement of him at the Tower Hamlets Mayoral election and Lutfur’s employing of a number of former Livingstone aides effectively creating a kitchen cabinet in waiting for the king over the water. Unfortunately Bonnie Prince Ken was rejected by the electorate.