The Muslim cleric who blames British mosques for the 7/7 bombings, says multiculturalism is a disaster and would throw Islamic fanatics out
By
Richard
Pendlebury
on 30th
April 2009
You can usually find
at least one in any saloon bar, ready to
give you the benefit of their peppery
views on the parlous state of Britain
today.
This particular
example is a clean shaven, middle-aged
man with the de rigueur attire of
carefully knotted mustard tie and blue,
golf club-style blazer.
Brass cuff buttons
flash as he pounds an angry fist on to
his knee.
Terror: The bus destroyed in the 7/7 London bombings
'I will give £5 to anyone in Britain who wants to live under Sharia law,' he declares. 'It will help pay for their ticket to Sudan, Yemen, Pakistan, or wherever it is customary to live under Sharia law.
'Please, please go and leave us alone. This is Britain, not 10th century Arabia!'
We are indeed sitting
in a bar, on a busy main road in Oxford.
But the man before
me is no stereotypical Islamophobe.
For one, he is sipping
a glass of water rather than something
more inflammatory.
More importantly,
though by no means obviously, Dr Taj
Hargey is himself an Islamic cleric;
perhaps the most controversial imam in
Britain today.
In an age when the
highest-profile Muslim preachers are
bearded, anti-Western firebrands such as
Abu Hamza or Omar Bakri Dr Hargey seems
an anomaly.
He does not care much
for male facial hair. He believes that
women can be both seen and heard, even
in a mosque at Friday prayers.
And don't even get him
started on the sort of fanatics who blow
up London buses, or the poisonous
teachings that inspired them.
After three men were
cleared this week on charges of
assisting the July 7 bombers, there have
been calls for an inquiry into blunders
made by the security services.
But Dr Hargey has
little doubt who, and what, is truly to
blame for unleashing such terrorism on
our streets.
'It is the extremist ideology present in many UK mosques which is the cement behind nihilistic plots such as this,' he says. 'They are twisting Islam.'
Violence: Dr Taj Hargey deplores fanatics such as the suicide bombers who targeted London
He has little or
no time for the Government's
'pussyfooting' policy of encouraging
multiculturalism.
'That is the
biggest disaster to happen to Britain
since World War II,' he says. 'It has
given the extremist mullahs the green
light for radicalism and segregation. We
have to, we
must,
adjust to British society. And we can do
so without losing our faith.'
Hardly
surprisingly, such statements have made
him wildly unpopular among those who
adhere to the brand of
ultra-conservative Saudi-funded Wahhabi
Islam which currently makes most noise
in Britain and around the world.
Certainly, if you
Google Dr Hargey's name you will find
him vilified as a 'charlatan' on any
number of Islamic website forums.
In return, he is
quite happy to describe his critics as
'fanatics'. Recently, one hostile
publication went too far.
When we meet, Dr
Hargey, 56, is still basking in the glow
of his successful libel action against
the English-language Muslim Weekly
newspaper, which had accused him of
being a heretic.
Earlier this month
it agreed to pay him a five-figure sum
and issue a grovelling apology, which
was a little more esoteric than most
heard in the High Court.
It stated: 'Dr Taj
Hargey has never subscribed to, belonged
to or been affiliated with any sect or
minority group, religious or otherwise.
On the contrary, Dr Hargey has
consistently and openly reiterated his
unconditional belief in the absolute
finality of prophethood in Islam and
Mohammed (peace and blessings upon him)
as God's last prophet and final
messenger.'
Afterwards, the cleric described the case as a 'watershed moment' in the battle between 'progressives' such as himself and what he called the 'Muslim McCarthyists', after the U.S. senator who accused opponents of being communist and 'un-American' with little or no evidence.
Headscarves: Dr Hargey says they are not necessary
But despite his
victory, or perhaps because of it, when
his phone rings now it is still almost
as likely to be an anonymous death
threat as a request for spiritual
guidance.
Certainly more
people hate him than follow him.
'The masses have
been brainwashed by the mullahs,' he
says.
Which begs the
question: can this intellectual Oxford
imam really succeed with his ambition to
lead a 'reformation' of British Islam?
Or will medieval orthodoxy triumph in
the end?
Dr Hargey was born and raised in apartheid- era South Africa. The racist state classified him as 'coloured', a second-class citizen.
One of eight
children, his father was a supermarket
packer; his mother illiterate.
But Hargey was a
natural scholar and destined for a
better, if consistently controversial,
existence.
His first battles were against the Pretoria government, rather than fundamentalists from his own faith.
'The masses have been brainwashed by the mullahs'
The attention he received from the South African security services prefigured the intimidation and intolerance he says he receives from British extremists today: 'I was an anti-apartheid fighter, against institutionalised racism.
'For me, Islam was
a liberating vehicle for attaining
justice on this Earth. I was pursued
then by the South African secret police,
so why should I fear these people now?'
Hargey attained
his doctorate in Middle Eastern and
Islamic studies from Oxford University.
His thesis was on the slave trade in
Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.
Back home, his CV
shows that he taught history at the
University of Cape Town before
relocating to the U.S. in the 1980s to
drum up funds for a projected South
African-based anti-apartheid newspaper.
It is there that
his efforts ran into his first
experience of widely reported criticism,
as allegations were made about his
money-raising efforts.
'Prophet or
Phoney?' was one newspaper headline,
which, according to his critics, could
equally apply to his current endeavours.
Whether these
smears had any substance is unclear,
although his combative approach has
clearly attracted, if not invited,
brickbats for the best part of a quarter
of a century.
Nevertheless, he
did hold down a number of academic posts
in the United States, not least of which
was a spell teaching African studies at
the Sarah Lawrence University in New
York State, alma mater of Rahm Emanuel,
Barack Obama's White House Chief of
Staff.
His latest venture
is the Muslim Education Centre of
Oxford, of which he is founding
chairman.
Firebrand cleric: Abu Hamza
Dr Hargey also
leads the city's Summertown Islamic
congregation. 'The most progressive
pulpit in the land, from which we do
everything in English except prayer,' he
states.
From a borrowed
Masonic hall rather than a dedicated
mosque, his enemies sneer.
The ideological
core of his opposition towards the
fashionable Islamic fundamentalists lies
in his rejection of the absolute
importance of hadith and Sharia law.
To explain, the
Koran is the teaching of Allah, handed
down to the Prophet Mohammed.
The hadiths,
meanwhile, comprise the sayings and
actions of Mohammed, as recorded by
others, some time after his death.
For many Muslims,
the hadiths are a fundamental guide and
part of their faith. For Hargey, they
are often unreliable and an obstacle to
the integration of Islam into
contemporary society. He believes the
Koran is all.
'This is a big
fight for the hearts and minds of Islam.
There is nothing in the Koran which is
incompatible with (living in) British
society, unlike what I call "Mullah
Islam" and their reliance on hadiths.'
And so he explains
his position: 'These people say they
have a right to stone adulterous women.
We say show us where it says that in the
Koran.
'The Koran must
have precedence. It must be sovereign.
Everything else is supplementary or
subservient. All that stuff about jihad,
women's rights, apostasy, all these
issues come from the hadiths.
'We do not say get
rid of the hadiths. But we do say that
every hadith must pass two litmus tests.
First, it
must not conflict with the Koran.
Second, it must not conflict with reason
or logic.
'One of the
hadiths, for example, says the majority
of people in Hell will be women. But
let's do a forensic examination of this.
First, let's look at the fact that 88
per cent of crimes are committed by men
rather than women.
'How then,
logically, can there be more women in
Hell? Theologically, the Koran says that
every human irrespective of gender will
be rewarded for what they did and
punished for what they did not.'
Of Sharia law he
is even more dismissive. 'The Koran is
clear that blasphemy is dealt with in
the next life by God. The Sharia,
meanwhile, is a medieval compilation of
religious opinion which is not
immutable, not eternal.
'How can we be
dependant on 10th-11th-century jurists
and scholars? It makes no sense.'
He also wants
Muslims to integrate more with
mainstream Britain.
'The (Muslim) reaction to 9/11 was to withdraw. I think the best way is to go out and belong.
'I love this country, I follow Spurs and I go to the pub, if only to drink orange juice'
'If you met me walking down the street,
for example, would you know I am a
Muslim? No.
'I know I am a
Muslim in my heart and my actions, not
in my beard or the niqab face mask. The
niqab only comes from a hadith and even
that only refers to the Prophet's wives.
This is a big fight for the hearts and
minds of Islam. There is nothing in the
Koran that is incompatible with (living
in) British society.'
Of the cries of
'heretic' to which he is frequently
subjected, he argues: 'Faith is between
the person and God. No one can pronounce
you a heretic (in Islam) and I think
that is a wonderful thing.
'But we do need a
reformation in Islam. We have to go back
to the pristine principles in our faith.
We need a British Islam and by that I do
not mean a compromise.
'Christianity was
once an alien faith. We have to
integrate in a matter of decades rather
than centuries.'
But what of the
accusations that he is simply a State
stooge? This angers him.
'I have called for Bush and Blair to be indicted at the international criminal court for their wars. What kind of stooge does that make me?
'We have a
multicultural community of men and
women, including converts. We are not
fanatics and appeal to a very broad
constituency. We do not appeal to those
who have been brainwashed by the
mullahs.
These people
refuse to debate with me and instead
send their minions to do their dirty
work on the internet or via anonymous
phone calls. We get death threats,
intimidation and blackmail tactics. But
it does not dissuade us.
'Our
group is based on the "Three Es":
Enlightenment, Egalitarianism and
Erudition.
But the
Government, with its anti-terrorist
strategy, has never contacted us, even
though we say violence and suicide
bombing are against the faith.
'What a mistake.
In this city we have the Wahhabi-backed
Oxford Centre of Islamic Studies. It
preaches the most repressive and
egregious theology.
'We want to
establish an Oxford Centre for British
Islam. We will have a mosque and the
leader could be either male or female.'
So, for example,
he has supported a state school which
banned the niqab, much to the fury of
his Muslim foes.
And last October
he hosted the appearance in Oxford of
Professor Amina Wadud, a female Islamic
academic, who gave a sermon at Friday
prayers before a mixed-gender
congregation, which was anathema to the
extremists.
Dr Hargey says:
'She is the undisputed authority on
women in the Koran. We invited this
heavyweight intellectual and the people
who made the most protest outside our
prayer hall were women dressed in niqabs
who had been brainwashed by their
menfolk.
'It was like the
time of Emmeline Pankhurst and the
suffragettes agitating for the vote.
'Then, many of the
women were conditioned to think their
behaviour a scandal. Now look at all
those women walking past us who have the
vote and think nothing of it.'
He also frowned on
the recent extremist demonstration
against the troops parading through
Luton.
'While we feel it
was an illegal war, you cannot punish
the average squaddie for what is done in
the name of New Labour and that toxic
Texan.
'Yes, the war was
wrong, but you cannot call soldiers
murderers, or cowards. My life's work is
to make British Muslims integrated.'
He is also utterly
dismissive of the Muslim Council of
Britain, which until the Government's
recent reversal of policy, was the
state's contact point with British
Islam.
'They are
Indo-Pakistani and sexist,' he says.
'It's a reactionary group, infused with
the repressive ideology of the Wahhabis.
'If we go along
their path we will have a ghetto
mentality, segregated and giving our
enemies such as the British National
Party the opportunity to target us like
the Jews in the 1930s. Isolation is our
greatest peril.'
For the record, he
supported BNP leader Nick Griffin's
recent appearance at an Oxford Union
debate, although he certainly did not
endorse his views.
'We should not
silence him. We should expose him.
'I love this
country, I follow Spurs and I go to the
pub, if only to drink orange juice. I am
also a Muslim. But I am not a threat. If
people like me are smothered then we
will all sleep less safely in our beds.
'These people are
religious fascists. The view that Islam
is incompatible with British society is
something that the Muslim Council of
Britain and their hangers- on have
promulgated.'
And with that, he
adjusts the knot in his mustard tie,
drains the last drop of his
(non-alcoholic) drink and leaves the
bar.
He may be a deeply controversial imam. But he is undoubtedly a brave one.
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