MPAC and Irving, sittin' in a tree . . .

Didn't get to this story last week, but I'm just sittin' here with my teeth in my mouth so here it is. The Observer:

One of Britain's most prominent speakers on Muslim issues is today exposed as a supporter of David Irving, the controversial historian who for years denied the Holocaust took place.

Love how the Brits put things, sometimes.

Asghar Bukhari, a founder member of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC), which describes itself as Britain's largest Muslim civil rights group, sent money to Irving and urged Islamic websites to ask visitors to make donations to his fighting fund.

He did more than that; he gave Irving a "luv ya, babe, hang in there":

Bukhari contacted the discredited historian, sentenced this year to three years in an Austrian prison for Holocaust denial, after reading his website. He headed his mail to Irving with a quotation attributed to the philosopher John Locke: 'All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good people to stand idle.'

Actually the quote's always been attributed to Burke--er, Burke, probably wrongly, but never to Locke. In any case, if the founder of a front-group for islamofascists can quote it to David Irving, everybody else probably ought to quit using it for a century or two. The Observer continues:

In one email Bukhari tells Irving: 'You may feel like you are on your own but rest assured many people are with you in your fight for the Truth.' Bukhari pledges to make a donation of £60 to Irving's fighting fund and says that he has asked 'a few of my colleagues to send some in too'. He also offers to send Irving a book, They Dare to Speak Out, by Paul Findley, a former US Senator [actually a member of the House from Illinois. Well, we had Lincoln too], who has attacked his country's close relationship with Israel. Bukhari says Findley 'has suffered like you in trying to expose certain falsehoods perpetrated by the Jews'.

In a follow-up letter, Bukhari writes: 'Here is the cheque I promised. Good luck, if there is any other way I can help please don't hestitate [sic] to call me. I have also asked many Muslim websites to create links to your own and ask for donations.' . . .

The Observer concludes:

MPAC, which strongly denies allegations that it is anti-semitic, accused The Observer of 'twisting an innocent gesture of support (even if gravely mistaken) into more than it is'. The story was just another Islamaphobic attack aimed at undermining and harming the brave individuals who support the Palestinian cause
and the cause of Muslims within Britain.'

Scoop!

Bukhari posted a rambling reply yesterday at the MPAC website. He barely mentions Irving, naturally, and, equally naturally, devotes most of his time to blaming the jooooooooos for everything. Why, MPAC can't even post a picture of a famous comic-book character without being accused of anti-semitism:

It got so crazy that at one point in a talk with Alan Hart, a Zionist blogger accused us of anti-Semitism because we had a Spiderman picture on our website. I was honestly baffled? Was the man who made Spiderman a Nazi or something and were we going to be accused of knowing his history and using a Nazi superhero. It felt like you needed a degree in anti-Semitism to make sure they couldn’t get you on it. It turned out that 60 years ago or something some spider was used by the Nazi’s to represent Jews, so they accused us of knowingly putting Spiderman up. So you need a degree in Nazi history to work this stuff out!

You sure do! The MPAC site isn't working too well, so I couldn't do much of a search for this picture of "Spiderman," but what do you want to bet it wasn't Spiderman at all but something a little more traditional like this? Bukhari continues, whether about Spiderman or another picture I can't tell:

We used an image from a neo-Nazi website and that is another charge. Even this was crazy to me. For a start, I don’t believe anything I hear from the Zionists at all, as I have said before. If they used such machinery on MPACUK, I would be a fool to think they were not using it on all their opponents. Right now somewhere out there they are claiming MPACUK is a neo-Nazi website or anti-Semitic or a Muslim extremist or hate website, any old thing to label us. If they could claim that about us, they could claim it about the next website.

That ol' chill wind threatening dissent again. Bukhari moves on to one of his core principles:

To this day I believe that any pro-Muslim or pro-Palestinian person charged with anti-Semitism is almost definitely innocent. If ever I heard that they were calling someone anti-Semitic, I no longer believed it, and I still don’t. I may have got it wrong with Irving, but I’m not taking any blame for that, the way I see it is you can’t blame a man for not believing a compulsive liar because one time he was telling the truth [huh?]. The Zionists were always lying and smearing people. For once they told the truth and complained when people didn’t believe them.

There's much more, but the only other time Bukhari mentions Irving is in a note at the bottom of the piece:

*Please note I wrote this not because of any pressure from the Irving smear, because I don’t care what these Zionists think of me. But after reading a Blog by a sincere non-Muslim who seemed to stick his neck out for MPACUK (conscientious blogger at Lenin’s tomb). I thought the least I can do is tell him and others like him where I am coming from, and why I made any of the mistakes I made in the past and may make in the future. It is simply in my journey to freedom with my people.

Why, he's just like Martin Luther King.

Update: Earlier Irving argle-bargle here and here. Love dat man!