When i was at college i used to hear Ed Husain regularly insult Muslim scholars in the Middle East because of their ties to their governments, accusing them of not being impartial and towing the government line in their fatwas.
I think its a valid point, and you can’t deny that there could be a conflict of interest in such circumstances. However, to go around like he used to, naming specific clerics, accusing them of being “scholars for dollars” without presenting any real evidence was clearly silly.
So it was with much amusement that i read the following article in the Times last week:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5549138.ece
The brother(s) over at the Traditional Islam blog have done an excellent job of tracking Ed’s activities and I’ll let readers judge for themselves whether Ed is truly working independently, or whether he has become one of those “scholars for dollars” that he used to accuse others of being a decade ago. (Though obviously Ed is no scholar).
UPDATE: I’ve removed the reference to Dilwar Hussain since – as Yusuf points out in the comments – he is not a contributor to Muslims Against Shari’ah as was mistakenly assumed.
2 Comments
January 26, 2009 at 8:05 pm
As-Salaamu ‘alaikum,
“Muslims Against Shar’iah” is run by people who do not even claim to be Muslims themselves. I suspect it is something that was set up to “invite” Muslims to join, knowing that nobody would – much as with the “Free Muslim Coalition”, run by a Palestinian wannabe Republian politician in Virginia – which invited people to support their march in 2004, and got plenty of signatories but none from Muslims.
January 26, 2009 at 8:16 pm
Also, I did a search for Dilwar Hussain’s name on the MAS website (through Google) and I couldn’t find evidence that he’d actually written for them. Perhaps they just reproduced something they’d written. I think they gave him their so-called MASH award for this and then revoked it after he co-signed the recent Gaza letter.