Ken did a great deal for a multi-cultural city and Boris now has a job on his hands to show that the right itself can respect immigrants needs.

Given Ken’s contributions to all of London then ole Boris has a job to do in convincing people.

Also in the past Muslims have endorsed Ken openly and that didn’t affect the white vote who also voted for him so this time the sematics changed due to other negative press. Thus Asim blaming Muslims is inaccurate and simply a sign of someone who is immature in their own analysis.

Asim is always aiming barbs at the Muslim community and the fact is that in trying to get people to vote they didn’t egt them out. But equally it should serve as a lesson for Muslims that if they don’t vote then they may end up with somethign bad like Boris.

Will Boris turn out to be another Bush?

Also aside from criticising after the fact what did Asim do at the time? Also did he choose to endorse a candidate?

Sometimes it takes a bit of courage to endorse one person who you think may help your community instead of sitting on the fence and saying I told you so afterwards.

Asim needs to provide a degree of mature leadership for his community and his organisation is in itself elitist and rarely has contacts with grassroots. So hardly a shining example in itself being for City based professionals so he himself is endorsing a certain type of Muslim and then telling others off when they do the same!!

As I said before the Muslim Community liek much of the Asian Community is still an maturing community in terms of electoral know-how and mistakes will be made. Thus it is unfair to bash them everytime for trying which is what people here and Asim tend to do.

Sunny – have you ever considered the fact that with the vote being so close and the exposure of his shortcomings and pretty stupid statements led Boris to conclude he needs to do more to understand the immigrant comunity that so despises him and thus he said he would make an effort to work for all of London? Maybe the campaign and this letter itself will lead to a bit of soul searching in Boris?

The reason Boris has a one-sided attitude is due to political exposure but now he can either carry on or fo a Bloomberg and work for all the city.

Don’t forget Bloomberg was a pretty right wing guy in a city with a sizable Jewish and Muslim population and he hasn’t done too badly in reaching out to both sets of communities despite his right wing views. So Boris can either follow him or carry on down his one way street. But either way Bloomberg faced a similar situation and came to a pretty middle ground.

Lets hope Boris does the same.

Anas, the above gives just about anyone licence to call you a terrorist supporter. Sad, but true. If anything your a defensive muslim; were under attack, therefore i must defend my bethren, even if some of them are to put it mildly unsavoury characters.

I will always defend you from such attacks, but you can not justify defending an anti-semitic terrorist organisation on the grounds of anti-imperialism. This is the anti-imperialism of fools; opposing injustice through supporting an organisation that is anti-semitic, misogynist and reactionary you are betraying your own values.

bnp (british) arent fighting a national liberation struggle. its dissapointing that people would join the dots in such a way.

So I’m assuming some of your best mates are BNP members then? Come of it mate. Let us know when you’re back in the real world yeah.

You are a twit.

Muslims are asked to state their opposition to other Muslims blowing themselves up in LONDON IN THE COUNTRY WHERE WE ALL LIVE, because they want to create an Islamic fundamentalist state WHERE WE ALL CURRENTLY LIVE.

What has that got to do with Jews being asked to oppose any particular action taking place in a territorial/religious war thousands of miles away? DO I ask you to condemn the huge list of atrocities being undertaken by your co-religionists across the globe?

You’re right it is anti-Semitic in a particularly vile way, and I condemn those aspects of it. But I don’t think it is as simple as X is associated with Hamas, therefore X is anti-Semitic. There is the possibility that people support Hamas because they believe, at this current juncture, it’s the best way of supporting the Palestinians, the lesser of all evils. Look at that list of names again, Sunny. Take for example Tariq Ramadan; I’ve read a couple of articles where you’ve praised him. Now suddenly he’s become an anti-Semite by association (allowing his name to be added to a list of renowned Jew haters). It’s apparently the same for everyone on that list now, according to your reasoning.

What’s that go to do with Ken’s remarks?

It flags up a strange double standard in the way both candidates were treated in the press and in blogs: one can openly fundraise for an organisation promoting aparthied — no one blinks an eyelid. But Ken makes some unwise, but not overly nasty comments and gets them constantly thrown in his face.

It won’t be you, that’s for sure, when you can’t make a coherent argument.

Hasn’t stopped Mad Mel, Richard Littlejohn, etc.

Last time I looked I was freckly, however, you’d describe me as white. You know you would. However on the substantive issue of a settlement between Jews and Muslims, you bloody well know what I think.

It is that either one lot will kill the other lot, or that they will reach a compromise. I’d vote for the latter, wouldn’t you?

Don’t get upset Douglas, I was just replying to Sunny’s attack on the Guardian letter.

Establishing hamas on the uk’s terror list was a mighty success of zionists in this country. It hasnt helped the situation, only drawn lines that obstruct progress and generate pariahs, sorry ‘democratic’ pariahs. Extending the fear of the politically islamic to all others with ideologies resembling theirs (upstream and down stream) was another score. (ironic because secularists of muslim cultural background do admire ‘grassrootedness’). Extending it even further so that a white labour chap pays holocaust guilt related electoral damage for meeting an egyptian has been another acheivement.

I think there is a muslim political aspiration, and that it does express itself partially through our voting mentality. Only it seemed stronger and electorally visible when the Iraqi and Afghanistani Occupations were younger. This time around other actors have also expressed themselves, giving us a complete result for Boris.

for the past x years groups close to kens way of thinking on the ‘equality’ front have benefitted from his regime and policy environment. now its policy exchange’s turn. its the nature of the beast i guess. asims analysis is based on headlines and not voters mobilised by muslims4ken vs those mobilised negatively by them. makes good comment fodder though.

I’m a bit upset about this, as I consider myself a, sort of Liberal:

Maybe they didn’t think it through enough, or smartly enough. But there has to be a way of countering the anti-Islamic propaganda spewing out of media sources like the Evening Standard — but you’re right we should probably wait until the nice White (& non-Muslim) liberals notice to do anything about it; don’t wanna risk getting accused of paranoia.

Last time I looked I was freckly, however, you’d describe me as white. You know you would. However on the substantive issue of a settlement between Jews and Muslims, you bloody well know what I think.

It is that either one lot will kill the other lot, or that they will reach a compromise. I’d vote for the latter, wouldn’t you?

Yes. Read the Hamas charter lately?

Funny how no-one mentions BoJo’s extremely partisan pro-Israeli stand,

What’s that go to do with Ken’s remarks?

Makes you wonder who sets the agenda on these things

Tell me, who does?

It won’t be you, that’s for sure, when you can’t make a coherent argument.

. But there has to be a way of countering the anti-Islamic propaganda spewing out of media sources like the Evening Standard

Sure there is – get organising against the ES. What did they do though? Think that publishing a letter on the Guardian site and setting up a blog would do the job. Bloody hell, if that’s the modern Muslim activist for you, then you’re fucked aren’t you?

Yes, I am naive because I don’t see how the inclusion of the names of a few people associated with Hamas immediately renders the whole entire list offensive to Jews and anti-Semitic (is the Muslim Brotherhood also an affront to Jews now?; i mean it’s as simple as that anyone linked with Hamas/MB is anti-Semitic now?). Or are you claiming the list consists of nothing but Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood supporters?

On top of that Ken was under attack for not apologising over the ‘concentration camp’ remark, though Boris apologied for the ‘watermelon smiles’ comment.

Funny how no-one mentions BoJo’s extremely partisan pro-Israeli stand, that causes no offense to anyone, right? He was never under attack for that, for his fundraising for the Jewish National Aparthied Fund, his comments during the Lebanon War. Makes you wonder who sets the agenda on these things (and no that’s not a reference to a Zionist conspiracy)

These guys just wanted to maek a statement to big themselves up. They have little clue about grassroots organising and it showed. If they quietly went about their business, no one would have cared.

Why should they keep their heads down? Maybe they didn’t think it through enough, or smartly enough. But there has to be a way of countering the anti-Islamic propaganda spewing out of media sources like the Evening Standard — but you’re right we should probably wait until the nice White (& non-Muslim) liberals notice to do anything about it; don’t wanna risk getting accused of paranoia.

And re: the Jewish community. If everything was so hunky dory with British Jews, why the need for the Sunny-inspired IJV to challenge pro-aparthied, pro-Zionist trends among many British Jews? (and you can’t tell me that most of the British Jewish community isn’t uncritically pro-Israeli despite a number of dissenters, bananbrain) Why is there no pressure on the Jewish community as a whole to make its views on (Israeli state) terrorism clear as there is on Muslims, whenever something horrible is committed in the name of Islam? Nothing like that happened during Lebanon which was an utterly savage act of terrorism, nothing like that is happening now with Gaza.

I guess the people running the campaign might not be to the taste of the Evening Standard and its readers, and I guess that Ken would not want the votes of people who think along such lines. I never even knew about it, and it would not have affected my vote if I did.

What I would raise is that I am somewhat interested in the political philosophies and principles of candidates reflected in where they stand on global issues. I hope I am not voting for a civil service administrator, but a decision-maker who will take account of things like human rights and social justice, equality and peacemaking when making judgments and pronouncements about policy. So they may not be standing to be Mayor of Jerusalem, but a question on this issue might shed more light on their attitude to my rights than a question on bendy buses.

I was on holiday with my family returning the day before the election and my wife asked if we could stay on for a few more days. I said no for one reason only – I wanted to come back and vote against Ken.

People don’t give a damn about Boris one way or the other. As the vote showed, all they cared about was getting rid of someone who has caused a huge amount of harm to large tranches of London and who thinks that he has the absolute right – like Mugabe – to keep on governing.

I have yet to find someone who voted for Ken. And I have yet to find someone who chose positively to vote for Boris. If there had been a monkey put forward, he would also have got our votes.

And let’s be clear on one thing. Sunny understands the reality of the world out there:

“Similarly, a proponent of suicide bombing and another supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood running a campaign in favour of a candidate already under attack for alienating London’s Jews – not a good idea. Actually its a stupid idea.

The letter was also a stupid idea because it perpetuates the belief that identity politics, and pitting one community against another, is the only way for anyone to win. Ken must suck up to Muslims, without care for Jews and others, is how it comes across.”

It certainly meant that I came home to vote for Boris and it encouraged many others who were sitting on the fence to actually go and vote against Ken.

Sunny, we all know of your pathological hatred for the MCB, and in this instance, you’ve remained consistent. Have you actually read Asim’s article in full, or does your eyes glaze over at any positive reading of the MCB?

“British Muslim lobby groups need to internalise all this. Other UK minority lobby groups such as Operation Black Vote, the Jewish Board of Deputies and, to give them credit, the Muslim Council of Britain did not endorse any political party; rather, they encouraged minorities to vote to keep the BNP out.“

so its wrong and divise [sic] for Muslims to organise as a community – but its OK for other communities like Jews?

read the jewish press, mate. there was no concerted campaign to vote for boris. each of the candidates (apart from the bnp, hur hur) including ken, took the trouble to do an interview with the jc and pitch for the supposed “jewish vote”. ken’s interview for some reason chose to take the tone that “what did i say? why are are you all offended?” unfortunately for him, we are not stupid.

what people i think probably fail to understand is that there isn’t a “jewish vote” – we don’t “organise as a community” or vote as a bloc – we are british citizens and all the research i’ve ever seen (plus my own empirical knowledge) says in no uncertain terms that we all divide along party lines. there are guardianista jews and torygraph jews, there are daily mail jews and galloway-sucking jews. the idea that there is a “communalist bloc” which can be delivered to city hall or to this or that party is laughable and belongs to the sort of benighted, hidebound identity politics that we may hopefully have seen the last of in london with ken’s departure – but then again i doubt it.

b’shalom

bananabrain

What I find most inspiring about Obama is that he hasn’t used his race to play the victim card. He is a far superior candidate than McCain, yet his skin colour handicap makes him an equal to his opponent, and the race to the general election remains competitive. But life is never fair, and we are born with different talents and capabilities, and it is up to us to use them to get ahead in life.

I am well aware that if I was white and rich I would probably have a better shot at life and would not have to work as hard as a brown-skinned with middle-class parents. But why should you resign and play victim? It is more than possible to get ahead in life in this tolerant and liberal country, and shatter any glass ceilings if you work hard enough, and realise your dreams and aspirations in life.

The effort to overcome the disadvantages of being a minority (perceived and real) is an individual one, and will never be overcome by unscrupulous identity politics groups and the Left unknowingly playing racism of low expectations. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was no one talking about Muslim/Sikh/Hindu/Jewish/Christian/Brown/Black/White voting blocs, but of individuals with different political, social and ideological preferences regardless of the colour of their skin or religion?

Nyet….

I was referring to many politicans in general who are dumping their ideals in order to ally with arch-conservatives of minorities…

It is insane to see so many so-called British liberals (even though I am not one) betray their ideals and embrace anti-semitism and homophobia just to get in good with the “oppressed minority” flavor of the month.