🧵It was the summer of 2006. I was 24 years old. Israel was bombing Lebanon with British weapons. And a Labour PM was refusing to call for a ceasefire.

Hezbollah (not then proscribed) was defending its people in Lebanon and like many many others at the time, I supported that.
So broad was the support against Israel's incursions into Lebanon that a Guardian/ICM poll at the time indicated that only 22% of the British public believed Israel's actions were proportionate, a view shared by many senior politicians. A lawful protest was arranged. I attended.

🧵Anyone who has been sanctioned for describing Israel an apartheid state, calling for its dismantlement, or comparing it with Nazi Germany, MUST read this recent High Court decision that provides critical guidance on the controversial IHRA definition of antisemitism.

https://twitter.com/JudiciaryUK/status/1922607729471848892

1. The judgment came in the context of an appeal by a solicitor against a decision to strike him off for tweets that were deemed to be antisemitic. While Mr Husain lost his appeal, the Court's findings in relation to the IHRA definition of anitsemitism are illuminating.

Yesterday, my firm @riverwaylaw filed an application to the Home Secretary @YvetteCooperMP on behalf of Hamas for its removal from the list of proscribed organisations. The public reaction over the past 24 hours demonstrates a great degree of misunderstanding and ignorance of the law surrounding proscription. A short thread to clarify some of those matters. 1. When passing the Terrorism Act 2000, parliament intended to create a mechanism for any group the government banned to be able to apply for the ban to be lifted. This process is contained in s4 of the Act. The application by Hamas is made under this provision.

🧵 Not many people know it but yesterday 26 June was #NationalCoconutDay . Let’s see how this great occasion was marked in London. Marieha Hussain started #NationalCoconutDay by appearing at Westminster Mags Court to enter a plea of not guilty to the ‘crime’ of comparing Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman to coconuts, i.e. brown on the outside, white supremacist on the inside, during a protest against the Israeli genocide in Gaza. The court is to determine whether this placard constitutes a racially aggravated public order offence.

On this day 20 years ago, Israel assassinated one of the most popular Muslim leaders in recent history, a man who despite being a paraplegic from the age of 14, struggled his entire life for the freedom of his people. A 🧵on the life and legacy of the martyr, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Sheikh Yassin was born in 1938 in the now depopulated and destroyed Palestinian village of Al-Jura, adjacent to the present-day Israeli town of Ashkelon. Yassin’s father died when he was only five years old, the first great test of his life at such a tender age.

🧵The Home Office has conceded that the Israeli government is likely to persecute a Palestinian citizen of Israel if returned to Israel & has agreed to grant him asylum.

The decision came less than 24 hrs before a tribunal hearing at which the Home Office was to defend its original decision to refuse the claim. In documents filed with the tribunal, ‘Hasan’, whose real identity cannot be disclosed for his protection, claimed that Israel maintains an ‘apartheid’ system of racial domination of its Jewish citizens over its Palestinian citizens, whom it systematically oppresses.

Hizb ut-Tahrir is not a terrorist group. It has a history of promoting non-violent struggle and has not been connected with any terrorist plots or activities. It is for these reasons that previous plans by both Blair and Cameron to ban the organisation had been shelved.

In moving to proscribe the organisation, the UK is demonstrating three things:

1. The lowering of the threshold for proscription in order to silence free speech.

2. Its subservience to Israeli policy.

3. It’s desire to join the great bastions of freedom that have also banned the group - Bangladesh, China, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Uzbekistan, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Germany. In order to proscribe a group, the Home Sec must believe that it is concerned in terrorism (not ‘is or has been concerned’). This means that he must believe that the group currently commits or participates in acts of terrorism, prepares for terrorism, promotes or encourages terrorism or is otherwise concerned in terrorism.

Short 🧵 on #Ashura. Today is the 10th of Muharram, the day Muslims celebrate Allah saving the prophet Musa & the Israelites from Pharaoh.

Here are 7 lessons about speaking truth to power from the story of Musa and Pharaoh. Lesson 1: Islam requires us to speak truth to power regardless of the personal consequences for ourselves. This is the best form of jihad as understood and practiced by the greatest Muslims.

🧵on how British Muslims have been the canaries in the coal mine when it comes to restrictions on civil liberties for over two decades and how the chickens are coming home to roost. Following widespread condemnation of the closure of Nigel Farage’s bank account from across the political spectrum, with even Sunak describing it as wrong, the Treasury is now taking steps to ensure the rules will change to protect customers better bbc.co.uk/news/business-…

Dr @AzzamTamimi relating how atheist Zionists exploited Judaism to create a state that disrupted historic cohesion between Muslim and Jewish communities, the latter who who were granted safety in the Muslim world having fled persecution in Europe. “Oslo accords were designed to turn the PLO, a national liberation organisation, into a collaborating agency to uphold the occupation”

- Dr @AzzamTamimi

#OnePalestine

🧵Last week, the editor of “the world’s oldest and most influential Jewish newspaper” posted the following tweet propagating news that was both falsified and divisive. @JakeWSimons later deleted the tweet but not before it has been seen by thousands of people. The tweet sought to equate anti-Christian violence with Islam and Palestinians. Specifically using the phrase ‘Ramadan attack’ at a time of collective worship across both Christianity and Islam was particularly emotive and designed to foment division between the two communities.

I’ve just finished reading the #shamimabegum judgment and despite the many assertions to the contrary, it can be summed up as the Home Secretary’s assessment of national security is a trump card, regardless of all other considerations. It’s important to understand the difference between ‘national security’ and the Home Secretary’s assessment of ‘national security’. They’re not the same.

Thread: Britain's relationship with Hindutva nationalism is the real reason that events have spiralled out of control in #Leicester. Laying the blame on 'Islamists' is tiresome, racist and will only lead to things deteriorating. First things first - India is currently being governed by the BJP, a regime that constitutes the political wing of the fascist Hindutva group, the RSS. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a lifelong member of the RSS, having joined them as a child.
thewire.in/politics/naren…

🧵on foreign fighters and Ukraine. The Foreign Secretary has said she will support British citizens who go to Ukraine to fight Russian troops. This seems to fly in the face of established govt policy on British citizens engaging in conflicts abroad.

https://twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1497874899007856640

Truss' sentiments seem to have chimed with many members of the British public who, judging by callers to radio talk shows, see this as a noble action. Some columnists are even circulating fundraising links to arm the Ukrainian resistance.

https://twitter.com/IanDunt/status/1497547260011458563

Citizenship Deprivation: A thread on how the origins of the current practice have their roots in Tony Blair's desperation to deport one British man in the wake of the 9-11 attacks 20 years ago, the Muslim preacher Abu Hamza.

cage.ngo/citizenship-de… Subjected to one of the most grotesque racist media campaigns of dehumanisation in the post 9-11 world, in which his prominent disabilities became the focus of acceptable mockery and ridicule, press and politicians alike regularly called for Abu Hamza's deportation from the UK.

Thread: Is Priti Patel's decision to proscribe Hamas lawful?

In order to be lawful, she must first actually believe that the organisation is concerned in terrorism. The belief must be honestly held on reasonable grounds. Mere suspicion is not enough.

dailysabah.com/world/mid-east… She must then consider 5 factors in deciding whether or not to ban the group.
(i) the nature & scale of its activities
Hamas is the democratically elected representative of the Palestinians & the civil admin authority in Gaza. She must show how its activities constitute terrorism

(Thread) This event last night helped put the #September11 attack into perspective, both in terms of the motives behind it & the brutal. It really highlighted just how much devastation has been inflicted on the Muslim world over the past 20 years and beyond. History did not begin with the death of 2,996 people on 11 September 2001. That atrocity was a reaction to decades of direct and indirect oppression of Muslims by the USA.

A thread on how the @BBCNews has deliberately propagated lies about the situation in Jerusalem.

Describing it as “clashes” belies the reality of this being a military assault by a powerful army on unarmed worshippers in a mosque during Ramadan.

#SaveSheikhJarrah Note how the Palestinians are described as initiating the violence to which the Israeli soldiers “responded”. Another lie. No question about why the soldiers were there in the first place on the holiest night of the year for Muslims.

Thread: The Sunday Telegraph has published a story aimed at pressuring @ManchesterUP to not publish a book about the politics of condemnation. The instigators of the campaign are counter-extremism careerists @CommissionCE and @QuilliamOrg, who have not actually read the book. In the book, @AsimCP has collated essays from a number of writers discussing society’s expectations of what is an ‘appropriate’ response to acts of political violence from innocent people of colour unconnected with the perpetrators except for similarities of race or religion.

Thread

Yesterday, I retweeted an article by @lizziedearden reporting that a UN Special Rapporteur had found that #Prevent breached human rights, calling for it to be scrapped. The @NILC disputed the accuracy of this.

So what exactly did the UN say?

ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HR…

https://twitter.com/natcoordprevent/status/1235317535727382528

As noted, the report was not focussed just on the UK but on CVE programmes globally. As the most elaborate and well funded CVE programme in the world and a key reference point for the globalisation of CVE policy making, its reasonable to assume she did have #Prevent in mind.

This is deeply concerning. Rupert Sutton was a fellow at the Islamophobic neocon think tank @HJS_Org and director of its campus wing @student_rights. He is now the #Prevent programme manager for @lambeth_council and has been invited to speak at #IqraPrimarySchool tomorrow. Sutton was once described by an ex-British ambassador as "an anti-Muslim bigot". A founder of @HJS_Org, Matthew Jamison described them as “a far-right, deeply anti-Muslim racist organisation … utilized as a propaganda outfit to smear other cultures, religions and ethnic groups”.