In praise of the open-mindedness of my Muslim friends at East London Mosque

Some of you may know that I was Election Agent to Jeffrey Marshall who recently stood as BNP candidate for Bethnal Green & Bow.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethnal_Green_and_Bow_%28UK_Parliament_constituency%29

As Election Agent, I attempted to get him some publicity and thought I would assist in giving the message of a more inclusive BNP by asking East London Mosque if my candidate could address them, after explaining the capacity in which I was acting.

This was politely declined.

Yesterday, I attended a talk about Palestine at the mosque.

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=123247067691570&index=1

I have also attended the New Muslim Circle at East London Mosque and have always enjoyed these sessions of discussing one's faith and one's morals intelligently with others in a spirit of female solidarity. (There is a New Muslim Circle for men too and this is held separately.)

After necessarily outing myself as a BNP member and Election Agent in order to make my request, it occurred to me that I would be henceforth persona non grata at East London Mosque.

As it happened a few of the sisters who also attended the talk recognised me and asked me if I was coming to the New Muslim Circle.

It seemed that the news of my membership may not have been generally known but I thought it would be as well to face the music and explain myself.

I was very touched and heartened that, as far as they were concerned, it wasn't a big deal and detected no change at all in their attitude towards me: which continued to be warm and friendly.

They even suffered to hear one of my suggestions for fund-raising in order to organise a weekend retreat for the women so that they may discuss matters such as parenting.

(The idea was to have a quiz on the Koran, in case anyone's interested.)

They received it politely and even with some hint of enthusiasm and interest. I really am incredibly moved by their lack of side on all this. It can be quite an emotional experience having one's faith in human nature unexpectedly restored from such an unexpected quarter.

This is a stark contrast to the Liberal Left who have defriended me on Facebook in droves and who now make a point of telling anyone of their number who had befriended me to defriend me.

Douglas Gloster-Pretsell of the Labour Party accepted my friendship and then upon being told I was BNP, defriended me and informed me that I was "repellent". I responded that he did not in fact really know that I was repellent until he was informed that I was.

After Suzanne Moore announced that she defriended me, after which Nyta Mann (formerly of The New Statesman and the BBC) and Nick Cohen of The Guardian popped up on her walls to denounce me.

Nyta Mann was someone I actually knew before Facebook had even been invented. Indeed, we met in a London hostel in our starter years in London. She even attended my wedding, though I now understand that such things count for very little with her.

Most of the Liberal Left are really at heart cowards and bullies.

An interesting revelation, is it not, that Muslims can be so liberal and the "Liberal" Left so frankly fascistic?

Perhaps rule under a Caliphate would be somewhat more liberal than rule by the Liberal Left?

Life certainly has many layers of irony.

When academics fear that being my Facebook friend is unacceptable and career suicide, then we have to question the quality of knowledge that these cowards purvey. I am referring to Dennis Hayes and Rania Hafez - academics supposedly concerned with academic freeedom but who are strangely reluctant to discuss the subject and who will defriend anyone who does so without their prior approval.