I recently have recently written extensively about a communty’s fight back against the imposition of a mosque onto the people of Hainault, East London.
I won’t rehash the story here, but if you want to read the whole sorry tale of dishonesty and misrepresentation then click HERE.
After writing these pieces detailing the appalling and dishonest way which the Hainault and Chigwell Muslim Association have behaved, and how this Muslim group have effectively seized a building that was supposed to be for a much wider community use, I expected some sort of communcation from the ‘mosque-e-teers’. What I got was not engagement or answers to the many questions that HCMA need to answer, instead I got a laughable threat from one of the main protagonists for this mosque, one Dr Solihal Hameed.
The ‘threat’, posted as a comment on this blog, read as follows:
“I have reported this website to police. Police has already blocked your video on youtube. you will be arrested soon. run run “
After telling Dr Hameed politely where to stick his threat, and after I had called ‘bullshit’ on his boast that he had had the video blocked by YouTube, I received another communication from Dr Hameed. This time it said:
“police has blocked all the comments. you cannot comment any more and police investigation is on going “
This truthfulness of this secondary claim from Dr Hameed also turned out to vary somewhere between a lie and complete and utter bollocks, comments had not been blocked to my knowledge. I’d also like to add that these ‘threats’ were sent from an IP address that was listed as belonging to the National Health Service. Last time I worked for the public sector, using Government IT equipment to send hostile communications to people, was very much a bit of a no-no. What makes Dr Hameed think that he is entitled to misuse Government property like this?
While researching the story about the illegal Hainault mosque, I did a bit of digging on Dr Hameed himself, and what I found out is that Dr Hameed has another face, one that is very different to that which he has presented to the media, Redbridge councillors and others.
To the planners, diversity officers and those able to help him advance his cause of a mosque for Hainault, Dr Hameed has presented himself as a reliable community man. A person fully committed to living in harmony with those of different faiths and none, and someone with a deep seated caring passion for education and the cause of community cohesion.
The other face, the one which he shows to those who question his motives, honesty or the causes he champions is very different. This kind and moderate seeming man once took extreme exception to those campaigning against the building of 9,000 seat ‘mega-Mosque’, the size of Battersea Power Station and run by the extremist and isolationist Islamist group Tablighi Jamaat, in West Ham in the neighbouring London Borough of Newham.
Alan Craig, the Christian campaigner and former minority party councillor in Newham had dealings with Dr Hameed back in October 2012 when it looked like the battle to stop the mosque was gaining support. Dr Hameed was used by Tablighi Jamaat (TJ) as part of its campaign to ‘pressurise and pursuade’ people into saying yes to the mega-mosque, or stop campaigning against it or even cower and say nothing.
Mr Craig’s blog said that
“TJ uses various techniques to pressurise and persuade. Last October when our campaign against the mega-mosque planning application was gaining traction and likely to be successful (here) I received an email from a Dr Sohail Hameed, Chairman of Hainault & Chigwell Muslim Association, threatening me with legal action because I was “spreading violence and stirring racism” and “hurting feelings of billions of Muslims living worldwide”. He wrote, “I like to give you formal NOTICE to stop negative and baseless without any evidence propaganda against Muslims and Islam and Holy Quran. It is illegal because you are spreading racism.”
I emailed Dr Hameed that I was not spreading racism, that I stand firmly against any form of racism, and that I would be happy to meet with him to discuss his allegations.
In reply he dropped his claims of racism to accuse me instead of illegal “spreading religious hatred”. He refused to meet because he was “very busy with our planning application”. He said he would see me in court…”
I cannot see any evidence from Mr Craig’s site that Dr Hameed ever carried out his claim to see Mr Craig in court, so the only conclusion that I can come to is on this one Dr Hameed knew he was on a sticky wicket, and that the ‘racism’ rubbish would not win, so Dr Hameed withdrew but continued to bluster.
One thing sticks out about the article on Mr Craig’s blog, TJ are Islamists, they also believe in separation from the host society. Surely, if Dr Hameed is as moderate and wedded to the happy clappy doctrine of multiculturalism as he says he is, why was he aggressively supporting a group like Tablighi Jamaat, who are the complete opposite of happy clappy togetherness.
That is not all, there’s more Dr Hameed also made an accusation of racism, against a Councillor from the London Borough of Redbrige, who objected to Dr Hameed’s organisations aggressive ‘Mosque-e-teering’. The Councillor concerned, David Poole, was later told by the council that he had not breached equality rules on the issue of questioning the need for a mosque to be plonked on the people of Hainault.
Dr Hameed is indeed a man with at least two faces. A friendly smiling one set above an outstretched hand of friendship, and a not so friendly visage, a bullying and threatening one above a clenched fist, which comes out when he is either backing Islamists, cornered or caught out peddling bullshit.
Which face is the real one, you decide?
Links
Latest story from here on the Hainault illegal mosque and the battle to stop it. This post contains nearly all the background material on this story including links to the council judgement on Cllr Poole. This post also contains the ‘threats’ made by Dr Hameed.
The website of Mr Alan Craig the Christian campaigner who helped to fight off the Newham mega-mosque project.
http://www.alansangle.com/?p=1203
NB May I express my deepest thanks to all those concerned and informed people who supplied the information that allowed this, and other stories about ‘Islam-creep’ in Redbridge, to be written.
Finally a message for Dr Hameed himself. This is where I put the ‘threats’ you so injudiciously sent to this blog.
You are right. I heard no more from Dr Hameed following his pompous threat to take me to court. It was all smoke and thunder.
Alan Craig
Dear Mr Craig, Thank you for your comment and for confirming to me what I suspected to be true that Dr Hameed is all mouth and trousers.