Ajmal Masroor
In the last six months the world has witnessed the blatant double standards of those who claim to be Muslims, secularists and liberals, all at the same time. The problem with such people is that they are not confident Muslims, they are not true secularists and certainly they are not liberals at all. They claim to believe in democracy but in truth they are more violent than the Al-Qaeda inspired terrorists. They mercilessly order the execution of their political opponents.
Editor's Comment Although I have endorsed articles from Ajmal Masroor in the past, however on this occasion, the article reinforces the hostile anti-Islamic propaganda that emanates from the mainstream media. My comments are further elaborated below the article
It is gut-wrenching, stomach-churning and sickening to hear how a bunch of British Pakistani men have sexually exploited young girls and groomed them for sex in various cities in our country including Rochdale, Derby, Manchester, Telford and Oxford. Their activities pose many questions that the Muslim communities in general, and the Pakistani community in particular need to ask themselves. This may be seen as a colossal failure on the part of the Pakistani Muslim community; however, it must not be generalized to the whole Pakistani or Muslim community.
Editor's Comment This is a reasonable article overall, I concur with many of the points. However, it missed out references to many pertinent points, for example the Falkland Island war, and the sinking of the Argentinian ship that was moving away and outside the military exclusion zone; this was a war crime. She also labelled Nelson Mandela as a terrorist, and sided with notorious fascist dictators like Pinochet in South America. On the positive side, she took the country out of the debt. And set the wheels in motion for economic recovery by encouraging business, increased ownership of houses through the sale of council flat. The article also makes an error about her being evicted by back-stabbing colleagues. On the contrary, she started to become really arrogant and dictatorial; hence, senior MPs in the Cabinet like Geoffrey Howe and Nigel Lawson, men of character and substance took a stance. Her eviction ironically was needed and good for democracy, it demonstrated the limits of power.
To be honest I had a love/hate relationship with Mrs Thatcher throughout my political formative life. I remember clearly how much I admired her strength of character, resoluteness and impeccability in the way she run her party and the country but I also vehemently hated some of her very blinkered extremely right wing conservative policies.
I still remember how I lost my voice shouting anti Thatcher slogans at a National Union of Student's led demonstration against her most lunatic students' grants cut policy. She angered me along with thousands of other students all over the country when she suddenly stopped students’ maintenance grants. It forever changed the fate of university students and opened up a floodgate for successive governments to cut further and further the university students’ funding including the introduction of the unfair tuition fees.
Today, an Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio has been elected the Roman Catholic Church's new Pope. I would like to send him my sincere congratulations and best wishes on the momentous responsibility that lies ahead. I am not a Christian but I believe in God too, the One God to be precise. As a local Imam in London and a member of the Abrahamic faiths, I have a list of special requests to the new Pope elected at the Vatican: