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Dilpazier Aslam, Guardian and Bloggers
July 24th, 2005 at 11:11 Björn Hallberg
According to the Agonist, this played out something like this.
On July 12 - The day it was announced that the July 7 London bombs had been placed by young British muslims from West Yorkshire - Guardian trainee Dilpazier Aslam was asked to write a piece for the comment page, published the following day as “We Rock the Boat”.Today Aslam’s contract with the Guardian has been terminated. How this came about and whether it was justified is currently the subject of a serious debate within the Guardian.
(see also “Aslam targeted by bloggers” (free subscription required))
The sacking of course is neatly timed when considering the possible upcoming ban on “preparing, inciting or glorifying violence” and indeed free thought in the UK. Also from the Guardian Article:
Rightwing bloggers from the US, where the Guardian has a large online following, were behind the targeting last week of a trainee Guardian journalist who wrote a comment piece which they did not care for about the London bombings.The story is a demonstration of the way the ‘blogosphere’ can be used to mount obsessively personalised attacks at high speed.
Within hours, Dilpazier Aslam was being accused on the internet of “violence” and belonging to a “terrorist organisation” - both completely untrue charges.
Scott Burgess, a blogger from New Orleans who recently moved to London, spends his time indoors posting repeated attacks on the Guardian for its stance on the environment, its columnists such as Polly Toynbee, and its recent intervention in the US presidential election campaign.
Mr Burgess fished out a website article written by Mr Aslam before September 11 for Hizb ut-Tahrir. He quoted one line: “Establishment of Khilafah [the worldwide Islamic caliphate] is our only solution, to fight fire with fire, the state of Israel versus the Khilafah state.”
Incidentally, Burgess had applied for the exact same job of trainee journalist with the Guardian, but on being turned down, apparently opted for libel and online punditry instead. Something Burgess has a history riddled with, just as Aslam also has a few radical ideas. I wont humour any right-wing pundits by linking them but suffice it to say this was the biggest happening during the last week. We have seen just about everything on a scale from demanding Aslam’s execution to outright lies regarding the organization he was active in and the opinions he may or may not have had almost a decade ago.
Dilpazier Aslam for all intents and purposes is right on with his analysis of the situation. It is therefore a shame that the Guardian didn’t dare stand up for one of their journalists and rather bowed to pressure from other newspapers and a ragtag rabble of American pundits.
One of Guardian’s nemesis newspapers, the Independent writes:
A trainee journalist at The Guardian newspaper is considering legal action after being sacked for refusing to give up membership of a radical Muslim organisation, first revealed in The Independent on Sunday.Dilpazier Aslam, 27, was sacked on Friday after refusing to give up membership of Hizb ut-Tahrir. The organisation is banned in Germany and elsewhere. Although Hizb ut-Tahrir is non-violent and legal in this country, The Guardian said it considered the organisation to be anti-Semitic.
The Guardian says that its comment editor was unaware of his membership. However, colleagues say he made no secret of it in the newsroom.
“There was a failure of understanding about what this organisation was,” a Guardian source said. “It just shows the media’s lack of understanding of Muslim life. It was much more Guardian cock-up than conspiracy.”
But perhaps the most important lesson here is the so called success story of non-mainstream media networks. Blogs if you will. Being sceptical to what I usually refer to as corporate media, one should think I would be happy about how things turned out. But after the “Rathergate” incident and now this I am not so sure anymore. I’d take REAL corporate media any day of the week. The real problem here is that what goes on in the online world is almost beginning to look like a beacon of light for some. At best it’s a deviation of reporting, slanted witch hunting, but it could also in time transform mainstream or corporate media to showcase the worst of both worlds. Perhaps it is already so to some extent in the US. Right and Left wing blogs are both crap. Deconstructing Instapundit.
I have been reading political blogs to try and find out what makes particular ones good meme spreaders. One the left I looked at Eschaton and DailyKos and on the right Instapundit and Little Green Morons.Conclusions: The left is full of crop circle paranoids. The right is full of stupid angry people.
The sheer volume of information in both does manage to strip things to bare bones facts, but not by virtue of intelligence, just volume - like a colony of bacteria feeding on a corpse.Analysis still seems to be better in MSM - so I’ll be sticking to my favorite publications for the moment: The Economist and Atlantic Monthly.
Amen to that. The left may be paranoid, in the sense that the opinions voiced are shielded so deeply in the hegemony that it must be conspiracy, right? But being paranoid is still better than being stupid and aggressive. Personally I settle for being aggressive and paranoid, but then again I am sort of an eclectic.
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Idiot.
Scott Burgess’s application for Guardian job was ironic. He made that clear on his site.
Why do you go for the kneejerk term “rightwingers” when the site that has been objecting most about the Guardian on this issue is Harry’s Place, definitely not right wing.
It was reprehensible to ANY decent strand of British political opinion for the Guardian to KNOWINGLY employ someone who flaunted his membership of HuT. His editors knew this for long time - the Guardian background piece says.
Ironic? Really. Well I don’t understand irony anyway. Especially not that right wing extremist kind. At all. And neither does the Guardian apparently. And neither does it matter. It was not my main point, but it seems to be yours?
Not familiar with “Harry’s Place” .. nor do I care. Whether you can provide a few leftist web sites that have succumbed to Islamophobia or whatever is of no concern to me. These are treacherous times and the board is set for fear mongering. I applaud anyone who can stand his ground but I can’t blame he who falters and succumbs to disinformation.
I move to sack anyone who is a member of a religious organization. One has to consistent right … As for the exact workings of the “HuT”, most of the information I could find came from Jewish Congresses so it’s pretty much useless in this context. And yeah, everyone knew his affiliations, he didn’t try to hide it, and apparently it wasn’t a problem until the witch hunts started. Don’t give me the grandstanding, if you’re so eager to prove something, do it. You can’t just come waltzing in here, and by definition besmirch an organization just because it has an Islamic political agenda and an Arabic sounding name.
Why is HuT banned eg in Germany ? It is NOT just a religious discussion club. Moderate Muslims ban it from their mosques, it is banned from UK universities.
You say Harry’s Place is Islamophobic ? You really are a nutter.
If you can’t see anti-semitism and a supremacy cult you are being blind. It is fascism, plain and simple.
Germany has seriously silly rules regarding anti-semitism and so on and so forth. For the longest time they haven’t dared do anything else. It has improved somewhat in recent years. The “Holocaust industry” as it were of course has a strangle-hold on many other countries as well. Bottom line, we are far from equal under the law. People always ban what they fear. Sometimes for no reason. It remains to be seen whether there is any substance to opposing HuT. But fearing, hating it, like we have seen so far, now that is extremism.
Ironically, the people whom your sort idolize, I must assume, and seem to side with are the real fascists. An obscure, irrelevant Muslim radical political group, which you still haven’t been able to implicate in anything tangible (except being banned), is not worth a damn in the grand scheme of things. At best it’s a scapegoat for further crimes against less fortunate nations and peoples. Try looking up fascism and see if it really fits the bill. Don’t cry wolf, don’t overexploit specific terms like fascism, anti-semitism, totalitarianism and so forth. There is enough of that already. For a movement that isn’t even close to achieving anything, you sure have them pinned for what their ideology would look like. As for Sharia / Islamic law, which I assume you’re getting at, one shouldn’t be so quick to judge. I’d say Christian law is ruling the US for instance. And that every western society is underpinned by Christian values and legacy, which is just as bizarre.
You people are barking up the wrong tree. Try turning around and see who is about to stab you in the back instead.