The biggest news of this week was Tommy Robinson leaving the English Defence League, with the media full of speculation as to his reasons and people analysing what his future strategy might be, writes Laura Stuart.
After reading so many articles all week, finally one paragraph made sense to me when the Guardian published an article by Shiv Malik and the truth suddenly became apparent for all to see.
“(Maajid) Nawaz said he would work to introduce Robinson to his own contacts in government and the Home Office in an attempt to procure government funding.”
There we have it. Tommy Robinson didn’t suddenly develop ethics, he just left the virtually defunct EDL and joined the other so-called “anti extremism” experts at the Quilliam Foundation. The trough of “anti extremism” government funding seems to have been replenished, or perhaps it is about to be after Maajid Nawaz’s coup. The government had cut funds to Quilliam based on their realisation that no Muslims would ever listen to anyone associated with it and that it was therefore largely irrelevant, but are things about to change?
This begs the question who was funding Tommy Robinson during his time at the EDL? It also shows us how Tommy Robinson unceremoniously dropped Mo Ansar (a Muslim political commentator) who has been investing much time and effort into a program of “education and discourse” with the leadership of the EDL these last eighteen months.
Mo Ansar obviously put himself in the line of fire from fellow Muslims when he was photographed hugging Tommy Robinson a few months ago, but he must have felt that Tommy was worth the trouble and judging by Mo Ansar’s tweets the news that Tommy sold him out to Quilliam was as big a shock for him as everyone else.
It was rather interesting to see a post on the Zionist/NeoConservative “Islamophobia award winning blog” Harrys Place by Sarah AB stating that she was glad Robinson’s departure happened as a result of Quilliam and not Mo Ansar, which just goes to show that no matter how reasonable and open-minded Muslims are willing to be they will never be accepted until they sell out completely.
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Quilliam Foundation is the refuge of those who would sell their own grannies when other sources of income dry up. Usama Hasan famously reported his old mosque (where his father was a trustee for years) to the Charity Commission for extremism after he was acrimoniously kicked out as Imam by a new committee.
Definitely a man is known by the company he keeps.
