US Neocons Found UK "Muslim" Cover Group

From Craig Murray's blog:

Just take a look at the SMC website [www.sufimuslimcouncil.org] and the influence of the neocons in Washington becomes very clear. The majority of the content is written by neocons that criticise Islamic groups – 'Wahhabis', the Muslim Brotherhood, MCB, MAB, Hizb ut-Tahrir, Tablighi Jamaat and Jamaati Islami are some of the examples that come in for criticism. There are articles entitled "The Muslim Brotherhood's Conquest of Europe", "Hizb ut-Tahrir – Islam's Political Insurgency" and "Islamic Radicalism – Its Wahhabi roots and current representation".

We found that one of the prominent authors on the SMC website, who also writes for the SMC magazine "Spirit", is Zeyno Baran – a self confessed neocon who works for the ultra right wing Hudson Institute. She is close to the Uzbek regime and close to the oil and gas interests in Washington and Central Asia. She tirelessly does the bidding of the dictatorial regimes of Central Asia by playing down human rights abuses and encouraging western governments to enact draconian measures against Muslims. She has condemned Sheikh Qaradawi and the International Union of Muslim Scholars, amongst others. She says that Islam should play no role in politics and condemns even the mere mention of Islam in the Iraqi and Afghan constitutions.

From our enquiries it seems that for some time now, Baran has been trying to establish a neocon-friendly Muslim organisation in the UK. She has talked of the need to, "provide money and help create the political space for moderate Muslims to organize, publish, broadcast, and translate their work." We also uncovered evidence that she has also held meetings with government officials in the UK, urging them to ban the Muslim Brotherhood and Hizb ut-Tahrir and cease working with Muslim organisations that mix Islam with politics.

What do real Sufis and local Muslim leaders say about the Sufi Muslim council?

In a recent survey of Sufi Muslim Scholars and Imams in the UK none had heard about the SMC or its founders until its launch. Most found it very disturbing that there was no real evidence of real tassawuf in their organisation.

The hard right neocon think tank the Nixon Center published a document by Zeyno Baran which encouraged using Sufism as a means to attack Islam.

[http://www.nixoncenter.org/publications/monographs/Sufism.pdf]

Similarly the RAND corporation in their paper Civil Democratic Islam talk of using one group of Muslims against another - Shia vs. Sunni; Sufi vs. Non Sufi. Divide and Rule.

You really should go read the whole thing. It details yet another case of cynical manipulation of the media and the democratic process by the neoconservatives - never forget the neocon movement was begun by Trotskyites who decamped for the ultra-right when the evolving left refused to go along with their totalitarian agenda. They quite literally are antagonistic to democracy, no matter what their rhetoric.