UK Human Rights Group Launches Book By US Muslim Brotherhood Figure

The UK-based Islam­ic Human Rights Com­mis­sion (IHRC) has announced the launch of a new book titled Black­ness and Islam. Accord­ing to the announce­ment:

April 10, 2021 Despite the egal­i­tar­i­an spir­it of Islam, the lived real­i­ty of many Mus­lims is very dif­fer­ent, and this is most appar­ent when we observe how Mus­lims deal with race and eth­nic­i­ty. Mus­lims who are Black in the West in par­tic­u­lar, have found that while Islam may not dis­crim­i­nate based on race, many Mus­lims do. To make mat­ters worse, some of those Mus­lims will delve in to the Islam­ic tra­di­tion to jus­ti­fy their bias­es and big­otries, see­ing no con­tra­dic­tion between their racism and the Islam­ic ideals. This work seeks to clar­i­fy and debunk some tra­di­tions which sup­port their racist posi­tions, and presents biogra­phies of ear­ly Mus­lims who were Black. The biogra­phies of these great Mus­lim per­son­al­i­ties shows us how Black­ness was a nor­mal part of life for ear­ly Mus­lims, in sharp con­tradis­tinc­tion to mod­ern prej­u­dices against Black folks found in some Mus­lim communities

Read the rest here.

Although Iran and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood are often por­trayed as rivals, the book’s author is Imam Dawud Walid, who serves as the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Michi­gan chap­ter of the Coun­cil on Amer­i­can-Islam­ic Rela­tions (CAIR-MI), a part of the US Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. CAIR describes itself as “a grass­roots civ­il rights and advo­ca­cy group” and as “America’s largest Islam­ic civ­il lib­er­ties group.” It was found­ed in 1994 by three offi­cers of the Islam­ic Asso­ci­a­tion of Pales­tine, part of the US Hamas infra­struc­ture at that time. An Octo­ber 2007 report on Walid said he was influ­enced by the auto­bi­og­ra­phy of Mal­colm X. The Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Dai­ly Watch pre­vi­ous­ly exam­ined coop­er­a­tion between the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and the black move­ment in the US here and here. It con­clud­ed that the US Broth­er­hood was attempt­ing to cap­i­tal­ize on recent events for pur­pos­es of Dawa (con­ver­sion to Islam) and for gain­ing allies for its Hamas-relat­ed activism.

Pre­vi­ous report­ing by the Glob­al Infor­ma­tion Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) on the IHRC has included:

• A March 2021 report that the IHRC has called on the UK’s Edu­ca­tion Sec­re­tary to retract his con­dem­na­tion of the protests in Bat­ley; West York­shire, cen­tered on a school­teacher who showed car­toons of the Prophet Muham­mad in class.

• A Decem­ber 2020 report on the IHRC’s annu­al Islam­o­pho­bia Con­fer­ence, which com­pared a French pro­pos­al to what Hitler did to the Jews in Germany.

• A Decem­ber 2020 report on an IHRC webi­nar held in ear­ly Novem­ber 2020 on the Boy­cott, Divest­ment, and Sanc­tions (BDS) Cam­paign against Israel, describ­ing Israel’s regime in terms of set­tler colo­nial­ism and apartheid.

• An Octo­ber 2020 report on a book launch in Tehran, which was pub­lished by the IHRC, and ana­lyzes the work of three lead­ing Amer­i­can think-tanks, accus­ing them of help­ing to frame U.S. poli­cies against the Islam­ic world and Islam­ic resis­tance [muqawamah] movements.

The Islam­ic Human Rights Com­mis­sion (IHRC) is a UK-based NGO found­ed in 1997. Since 2007, it has had Spe­cial Con­sul­ta­tive Sta­tus with the Eco­nom­ic and Social Coun­cil (ECOSOC) of the Unit­ed Nations.  Its web­site says it works with dif­fer­ent orga­ni­za­tions from Mus­lim and non-Mus­lim back­grounds “to cam­paign for jus­tice for all peo­ples regard­less of their racial, con­fes­sion­al, or polit­i­cal back­ground.” The IHRC is con­sid­ered sup­port­ive of the Iran­ian regime, and for many years has been cen­tral to orga­niz­ing the events of the annu­al Inter­na­tion­al Quds Day, ini­ti­at­ed by the Iran­ian rev­o­lu­tion­ary regime.

For more on the IHRC, go here.