It does, but the reason seems to be that there are plans to expand the Harrow mosque into a much larger facility.
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Thank you qidniz. I am aware of nothing tangible that has been brought up by SIOE or Stephen Gash to suggest such extremism. I am grateful that you have brought that Spittoon article to my attention. The importance of bringing people to talk with each other is vital. The mosque leaders at Harrow were prepared to talk with SIOE at the time of the SIOE September 11 demonstration and, as far as I can see, Stephen Gash did not have the discussion that thy wanted.

I want to see bridge-building (where possible) between groups. As far as I can see I am not aware that SIOE knows this information, and I am wondering if BMSD is aware of it.

It does, but the reason seems to be that there are plans to expand the Harrow mosque into a much larger facility.

Sigh. Idle word mongering like this would have gotten you plonked posthaste on usenet. I’m sorry, but you really have to do better if you want to be taken seriously.

Bin Laden is not a caricature.

He is a caricature because he is not a scholar.

In contrast most Muslims live in a world where it is quite obvious that the contexts have changed and therefore that Sura’s which invoke (for example) ” a she-camel of Allah!” need a slightly different interpretation when you live in Neasden.

You are being flippant because you haven’t the faintest clue of what you’re talking about. You hope that your style will deflect attention from your ignorance.

The fact of the matter is that, as far as orthodox mainstream Islam is concerned, ordinary Muslims are not free to indulge their personal interpretations of the Qur’an. All schools of Islamic Law are unanimous in requiring Muslims to defer to qualified scholarship. So the issue is which interpretations command significant support among the ulama, because they are the only opinion makers who have any authority or credence in the Muslim world.

Everything else is leftard wishful thinking. And worse, perverse obfuscation, when there is a crying need to grasp why militancy has such widespread sympathy and support, even among the Vast Majority of Moderate Muslims(TM) so beloved of the wrist-wringing face-fanning bien pensants on this blog.

Hmmm, we may need a reprise of Adrian’s Latin here…

One content-free sentence from Wikipedia is “evidence” worthy of nothing but dismissal.

And anyway, there were no “national programmes” until the mid-50s, by which time Azad had retired from politics to write his memoirs and other books.

One reason for the “delay” was that education schemes were inherently regional rather than national. The reorganization of states on linguistic lines paved the way for regional boards to be set up that could regulate and monitor instruction in the vernaculars.

With two exceptions, education policy in Azad’s time was all talk.

One was the establishment of the UGC (University Grants Commission), a bureaucracy that is only now coming to the end of its life. All it did back then, though, was to declare three “national universities” (Delhi, Aligarh Muslim, Benaras Hindu, later Sagar was added as a fourth) and some bumpf about pay scales.

The other was the first IIT at Kharagpur, the result of a collaboration between the West Bengal Government (basically, Bidhan Roy and some educators who had his ear) and the Sarkar Committee. The Committee’s report led to the establishment of four more IITs before the end of the 50s. Azad’s contribution to all this? Zero.

That’s much too civilized. You were supposed to deliver a blood-curdling takfir.

Come on at least drag out some postmodern biography to demolish.

What evidence? Fluff from Wikipedia? “Azad masterminded the creation of national programmes of school and college construction and spreading the enrollment of children and young adults into schools, in order to promote universal primary education.” This is pablum, and you know it.

Good luck with that. I think there are other moves being made as well to try to persuade him to not repeat the Harrow thing. Those ventures also need a lot of luck.

I can’t think why Harrow is singled out as so important – it does not appear to have any extremist/Islamist links.

You mean we have different interpretations of “literalism”?

But this is a schism!

Stubbornly repeating a silly point in the face of evidence to the contrary just makes you look like a child I’m afraid.