I’m normally a fan of Scott Burgess. But I’m not sure I approve of starting a witch-hunt to get someone fired for their religious views…
Update: "religious views" is unfair to Scott, and Hizb ut Tahrir is certainly a highly unpleasant organisation. In general, though, I’m not particularly comfortable with seeking to expunge people from view because their political views are viewed as dodgy – it all seems a bit McCarthyite (I oppose all no-platform policies, against the BNP or Islamists or whoever, for the same reason). And I’d be delighted if the Daily Mail were to employ a KKK-affiliated commentator (as long as the pieces published were no more hateful and bigoted than the rest of that organ’s output, which would be a challenge even for the most dedicated cross-burners.)
It’s intersting to see that Verity is one of Scott’s commentators.
I think you’ll find the views are political rather than religious.
Not his religious views, John, but his vocal membership of an international Islamist group, banned in most of Europe for such things as calling for Muslims to "kill [Jews] wherever you find them."
As the BBC has pointed out, Mr. Aslam’s group:
"promotes racism and anti-Semitic hatred, calls suicide bombers martyrs, and urges Muslims to kill Jewish people."
So not for his religious views, but for the genocidal ones expressed by a group that he actively contributes to.
Incidentally, I sincerely appreciate the kind words.
John often makes fairly astounding logical leaps in order to pin blame on someone he doesn’t like. That’s why he has this blog, I believe.
John B is an illogical attention-seeking prat. Every post he makes demonstrates it.
John B is an illogical attention-seeking prat. Every post he makes demonstrates it.
You and he should get on pretty well then.
John,
I’m not with you on this one – if the Daily Mail employed a paid up member of the KKK in a position where their political views are highly relevant, then I’d want them sacked. I’d be happy if they were employed to sweep the floors of course, as long as they behaved themselves. The same should apply here.
Speaking for the Muslim Council of Britain, Mr Inayat Bunglawala said "The Guardian has a better record in giving space to minority voices but [by employing a Hizb ut-Tahrir member] it exacerbates the idea that this is a mainstream Muslim voice".
Larry
Even you reject John B’s stupid post. It was the statement of a prat.
He only does it to try to attract traffic. = Attention-seeking.
Ergo, John B is an attention-seeking prat. Pushed to it, he would probably admit it.
Updated above to reflect Scott & Larry’s comments. (meanwhile Spade is patently talking shit – for fuck’s sake, I like Scott’s blog and respect Scott, as I’ve said on many occasions – and JiL’s comment is, as Larry says, beautifully self-unaware).
John B, fair play. But (a) your link to Hizb ut Tahrir doesn’t work, and (b) I’m with you in so far as I wouldn’t want to expunge people from view and nor would I wish to advocate no-platform policies against such people. But having said that I don’t think that The Guardian has any duty to provide a platform for hateful nutters, and as a Guardian reader, I would strongly encourage it not to do so.
So while the Guardian shouldn’t be under any legal obligation to sack him, it should do so nevertheless, just as it would sack anyone else with views miles out of keeping from its own. (Cue wingnut to explain why killing Jews is not actually at all out of keeping with Guardian policy…)
It’s intersting to see that Verity is one of Scott’s commentators.<em/>
Not sure what point you’re making, Andrew, but I hope you’re not dismissing The Ablution because one logorrheic loon comments there. It’s true Verity has ruined more than one comment section with her one-dimensional banalities but that can’t be a reason to stop reading a blog, afterall B-BBC is still worth a look dispite john b’s drivellings in the comment threads.
Damn, I fucked up that tag there. Hate when that happens.
KD:
a) TDA is indeed excellent, despite attracting the appalling Verity;
b) do feel free to link (B-BBC kindly provides permalinks to all comments) to anything I’ve said in the B-BBC comments section that you feel is less than articulate and pertinent.
"articulate and pertinent " LOL
JiL – that’s an open offer, by the way. I’m even happy to post a new article containing nothing but links to everything I’ve said on B-BBC that people think is idiotic (or bad in whatever other way).
I can’t be bothered to track back to nonsense and non-seaquiturs you have spouted at B-BBC. Life’s too short to be regurgitating your OLD crap.
Or "I know I won’t find any, so I’m going to spout some lame retort about how I can’t be bothered to look".
Life’s too short
That’s pretty rich coming from someone who, almost 48 hours ago posted this:
john b stays at home and writes nonsense on his PC. Attention-seeking prick.
and who has been constantly rephrasing and reposting the same thing ever since. And he’s still not bored, and his imagination has as yet only taken him as far as
John B is an attention-seeking prat
Tedious simpleton. Go away.
I believe I have posted bunch of links, to try to help you stop going round in circles until you disappear up your whatsits.
Here’s another – from soimeone who tries wit and facts rather than the inbred childish smut this blog represents :
http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_showa.html?article=57825
Or haloscan comments aren’t readily searchable. Even using the google query <"john b" inurl:patrickcrozier> only returns 7 pages, and none of them link back to the original B-BBC entry so I have no idea how "pertinent" they might be. Perhaps If you’re feeling so industrious you can archive and cross reference your own B-BBC comments, I’m sure it’ll be a delight to wade through your collected opinions. Until then I’ll just let you and JiL relive old campaigns together.
BTW, nice stealth edit on my html usage there, ever thought of working for BBC-online?
Applied for a job with them years ago, actually. These days I wouldn’t be interested – the pay’s too low.
"inbred childish smut"….must be why you come round here so often, know it’s why I do. I am, after all, completely in touch with my inner child. Look, look! a fart joke!
About that Groan kid. No, I don’t want him fired. Perfectly happy for him to be writing for the G. For the Indy or the Torygraph for that matter. Just as I’m happy for the Mail to publish whatever hate fantasies Peter Hitchens has this week.
I don’t agree with or like the opinions of either of them but if someone wants to pay them, just fine by me.
I’m just giggling over the fact that the Guardian, which puts itself about as resolutely anti-fascist, definitely part of our post religionist world, ends up employing and presumably finding itself in some sort of ideological agreement with (they did give a trainee part of the comment page after al) what appears to be a fascist theocrat.
kenzdawg, you wrote: "B-BBC is still worth a look dispite john b’s drivellings in the comment threads".
But you have not a single example of John B actually writing anything that could be classed as drivel. The onus is on you, not John, to demonstrate the value of his comments on B-BBC. The evidence for JiL’s contributions to debate being less than reasonable are here for all to see. He regularly enages in the misrepresentation of other people’s positions, even when they are clearly stated in the same thread, and often reverts to simple insult unattached to any justification.
There is a categorical difference between JiL’s pollution of debate and some, up until now, non-existent, drivel that John B has contributed to B-BBC.
but if someone wants to pay them, just fine by me.
Someone, yes; but a newspaper which I read and by and large approve of, no.
Alastir Hetherington would have the litle snake out on his ear instantly. But the loony left has a serious thing going on with Islamist extremism these days.
Who rattled youur cage Mr Bartlett ? You are positively frothing.
I can assure you, JiL, that I am positively calm.
If that is your calm I’d hate to see you frothing !
I can’t see much sign of any "frothing", myself – at least not in any of Andrew’s posts. Which one did you have in mind?
His peeved attempts at defending the BBC’s ludicrous policy on the T word – a policy it is apparently now ditching in embarassment.
I am with John on this one. I am really very concerned that all the case against this guy appears to amount to is "he is a member of group X" and "other people in group X did Y". For one thing, I don’t actually think that anyone’s found this guy’s membership card for Hizb-al-whatever; what they’ve found is that he wrote some articles for their magazine a couple of years ago. For another, where I come from, you make your case against a guy based on what he’s actually done, not on whatever you can dig up to associate him with. This leaves a very nasty taste in the mouth.
" I don’t actually think that anyone’s found this guy’s membership card for Hizb-al-whatever;
Erm, actually, the Guardian specifically says that he is (not ‘was’) a member:
"The Guardian newspaper is refusing to sack one of its staff reporters despite confirming that he is a member of one of Britain’s most extreme Islamist groups."
" where I come from, you make your case against a guy based on what he’s actually done, not on whatever you can dig up to associate him with"
Would you say the same about Nazi/BNP members? Why or why not?
D^2,
For one thing, I don’t actually think that anyone’s found this guy’s membership card for Hizb-al-whatever
Well the Guardian have said he’s a member:
The Guardian released a statement to The Independent on Sunday saying: "Dilpazier Aslam is a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir"
you make your case against a guy based on what he’s actually done
Unless the Guardian are lying he has (a) voluntarily joined a fairly abhorrent organisation (comparable to the KKK), and (b) he has written articles expounding the views of that organisation: e.g "The establishment of Khilafah is our only solution, to fight fire with fire, the state of Israel versus the Khilafah State"
I repeat that I think the Guardian should be legally allowed to employ him nevertheless, but I wish that they would choose not to, give his very unsavoury political opinions.
Damn, Scott beat me to it.
I repeat that I think the Guardian should be legally allowed to employ him nevertheless, but I wish that they would choose not to, give his very unsavoury political opinions.
I’m closest to this opinion: I think sacking him outright would open up a fresh can of worms (and turn it into a contractual/union dispute, which it shouldn’t be), but that the Guardian cannot now ignore the issue – not least in terms of their moral duty to inform their readers about the background of their new recruit.
To answer Scott’s question, I similarly wouldn’t want BNP members sacked purely for that reason – but I would expect media organisations that employed them to be honest when confronted. The Guardian has at least made the first step in the right direction (and I completely accept that they were genuinely unaware of Mr Aslam’s background last Wednesday), but I’m waiting to see how/if they respond in the printed paper itself.
You’re sounding pretty reasonable, Michael. Let’s see what they do.
Fair do’s on the membership, however I would never accept that anyone, even a Nazi, should be sacked from their job simply for belonging to a political party and am rather surprised that anyone should think I did. This guy has been writing things for at least four years and, apparently, hasn’t ever produced anything that could be described as a smoking gun. The fact that Larry has to scramble around for that out-of-context quote shows how small the actual evidence is. Hizb-ut Tahir is not an illegal organisation in the UK.
A bit like the Women’s Institute, eh ? Not subversive, inflammatory, evil ? Just n error that it is banned elsewhere ?
"Move along there, nothing to see here." Sheeeeesh !
Like it or not, it’s a statement of fact – it’s not a banned organisation in this country, and so Aslam’s membership of it is clearly not a disciplinary matter (unless there’s anything in his contract with the Guardian that specifically forbids membership).
Obviously, it’s likely to colour what he writes, and so it’s a good thing that it’s out in the public domain – kudos to Scott for his research here – but I’m entirely with John B and Larry on the general principle that "no platform" policies are usually ill-advised, and that sacking people for their views is a gross infringement of one of the basic principles that we should all hold dear.
After all, freedom of speech is a key factor that separates Us from Them – and I doubt even you’d disagree with me when I express it in those terms.
We already have limits on freedom of speech. Which loom likely to be extended, with criminal sanctions.
Thye organisation is not banned. It is for that sort of stupidity that we are known as Londonistan – laxer than any other caputal in Europe.
This is a liberal newspaper we are talking about.
If they gave Nick Griffin a job writing a column (the BNP is not a banned organisation), would we all welcome it as a sign of the Guardian’s tolerance?
I repeat: the Guardian claims that it was unaware of Aslam’s affiliation with Hizb-ut-Tahrir until Scott pointed it out (and there’s no evidence to suggest that this isn’t the case), so it’s a tad unfair to blame them just yet, especially as the story has only just broken in another national newspaper.
So until we get some idea of how this is going to pan out, here’s another question: are you saying that everyone, even trainee journalists, should have their political views minutely investigated beforehand as though they’d applied for a job with MI5? Indeed, as a regular contributor to an outspokenly political blog, would you really feel comfortable if your boss applied this kind of vetting to you?
You don’t have to apply positive vetting. That is a straw-man argument. You just apply common sense and sack someone who did not himself declare a link that is totally at variance with the Guardian’s known ethical stance.
The Guardian looks real stupid right now. Alastair Hethrington would have sacked the creep in a trice. For entryism.
You don’t have to apply positive vetting. That is a straw-man argument.
Not at all, it’s entirely relevant to the point you and others seem to be making. The only way you’re going to prevent a situation like this occurring is if you apply positive vetting to your employees in advance of offering them a contract. I would suggest that this is not the kind of direction we want this country to move in, regardless of current circumstances.
You just apply common sense and sack someone who did not himself declare a link that is totally at variance with the Guardian’s known ethical stance.
But was he contractually required to declare such a link as a condition of employment? Is there anything else in his contract regarding bringing the organisation into disrepute? If not, you can’t just sack someone because you disagree with their views: if he isn’t actually in breach of contract, there are no good grounds for dismissal, and he’d certainly win if he took them to an industrial tribunal.
The Guardian looks real stupid right now.
I agree that it’s acutely embarrassing for them, and it will be fascinating seeing how this pans out over the next few days (they really can’t ignore it given the attention), but I don’t actually think they’ve done anything wrong.
Not least because sacking someone purely because of what someone else wrote on a blog (with all due respect to Scott) without a proper internal investigation into the circumstances, not to mention an interview with the person concerned, would be outrageous.
I’d be amazed if that investigation isn’t going on right now, if only to stave off a PR catastrophe, but you’re making the situation sound vastly simpler than it actually is.
The Guardian has egg on its face. Not many people would blame it for sacking this creep. Just pay him off, would cost less than the likely loss of credibility, readership or advertising, cuts the aggro.
The creep is member of an evil organisation. Period.
The Guardian has egg on its face. Not many people would blame it for sacking this creep.
Indeed not, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right – or legal – thing to do.
Just pay him off, would cost less than the likely loss of credibility, readership or advertising, cuts the aggro.
And how would you prevent him from suing for wrongful dismissal – a case he would almost certainly win handsomely (doubtless with a hefty payout to compensate for its very public nature)?
The creep is member of an evil organisation. Period.
If this isn’t an explicit infringement of his contract, it’s not a sackable offence. Period.
(I don’t for one second condone Mr Aslam’s views, but even the man who broke the story admits above that my stance is "pretty reasonable". More to the point, it takes the law into account, which yours doesn’t).
I have taken the law into account. I did not say it is legal to just sack him. But it is highly expedient. Face the legal consequences, they are not severe. Bite the dmn bullet.
Let him sue. Pay him off. Get bloody rid of the snake. I don’t think he would get much of a payoff for damages. I see nil grounds for any extravagent compensation claim. Probably just pay in lieu of notice plus a bit. He has not been there long enough to build any solid case.