Ten days ago I got a call. It was journalist Hugh Muir, formerly of the Newham Recorder but now lively diarist at the Guardian. He has a new column in the paper’s G2 section ‘Hideously diverse Britain’ , presumably borrowed from Greg Dyke’s ‘hideously white BBC’ jibe (here) and wanted to interview me about the projected West Ham mega-mosque that I’ve been opposing for the past three years (here).

We met at the Christian Peoples Alliance office at Canning Town and talked about the mosque and our campaign. He questioned me at length about the acceptability of a Christian challenging the construction of a Muslim place of worship. Eventually he asked how I felt about the pro-mosque websites and videos that virulently attack me for my opposition and attempt to taint me with a BNP brush, for instance here and here.

I told him how I’d discovered that the person responsible for the websites, Tahire Faruq, lives just half a mile from my home, and how I called on him unannounced earlier this year to see if he’d have a cuppa and chat. Suddenly Muir lit up; he’d smelt a story. Astonished that I’d visit a hostile opponent who’d obviously crawled all over my past life (why? – after all, Christ teaches his followers to ‘love your neighbour as yourself’), Muir became animated. I realised he’d suddenly found the narrative for his ‘Hideously diverse’ column the following week.

It was published in the Guardian last Friday – ‘Friendship across the religious divide’. You can read it in full here.

I especially like Muir’s optimistic ending: ‘If that’s the future, it’s not so bad’.

Newham Labour Party has an interesting turn in personal insults, and their primitive invective is an outer reflection of the inner nature of the party. ‘Things that come out of the mouth come from the heart… evil thoughts… false testimony… slander. These are what make a person unclean.’ (Jesus Christ)

I previously have quoted Labour activist John Gray’s views about CPA members (here), among the most revealing of which are his opinion that my colleague Simeon Ademolake is a ‘thoughtless thug’ and a ‘bigot’, and that I am a ‘squalid, grubby, tin-pot politician’ and a ‘super-egotist’. I’m not sure a senior local activist dolling out such personal abuse helps the high calling of politics in Newham, but it certainly tells us a lot about Gray.

Now we have some more, the crown of which is that ‘CPA are a bunch of scumbags’ – according to Clive Furness, Labour councillor and Newham mayoral adviser, who attributes this scintillating soubriquet to his colleagues. As you see, Newham’s power-driven ruling party doesn’t do sophistication, nuance or self-restraint – or even maturity; the cave-man’s club and the brutalist’s bludgeon are their weapons of choice.

This Labour name-calling came about as follows: 

Colleagues and I recently commissioned an independent ComRes poll of opinion in the borough about the mega-mosque proposed for West Ham close to the site of the 2012 London Olympics. Amongst other things ComRes came to the promising conclusion (here) that the majority of Newham Muslims would prefer a mixed-use development on the site rather than a mega-mosque. However this is the first such survey and it is early days to come to a settled conclusion.

Furness has been an avid proponent of the mosque project. He even used his executive authority at the town hall to invite voluntary sector leaders in the borough to the mega- mosque’s botched Open Day last year. Such promotion would normally be the responsibility of the project’s smooth PR agents, Indigo Public Affairs, but Furness stepped in and instructed a council officer to dispatch Open Day invitations to over 270 community workers across the borough. I publish the facts; you join the dots.

Last week Furness had a letter published in the Newham Recorder that criticised our survey and contained factual errors about our campaign (here). I’ve been wanting to raise public discussion about the mega-mosque and to this end I even made it one of the main planks in my London Mayoral campaign last year (here) – but Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson both managed to cleverly skirt round the issue at hustings and elsewhere. So last Friday I emailed Furness (copy to the Recorder) challenging him to a public debate about the mega-mosque, never thinking he’d agree. Why should he? Labour doesn’t do democracy or public debate within its Newham fiefdom as it can see no party advantage, and Furness’ favoured mosque project has survived so far by keeping its head down and avoiding public scrutiny wherever possible.  

(Interestingly Indigo has been increasingly mocked by journalists for being the only hired PR agency that refuses to promote their client to the media. A Finnish TV crew became so incensed at Indigo’s Trappist silence one day, that after covering the mosque story they went off to film the company’s office building in Berkeley Square for a news piece about a dumb London PR agency – apparently to be accompanied in part by a silent soundtrack.)

At first it appeared I might be wrong. Furness seemed to rise to the bait and by return he accepted the challenge. We agreed on an independent chair for the debate and he proposed some rules for the event to be held sometime in September. But then came the sucker-punch that laughably – and presumably deliberately – torpedoes the whole event. He emailed his Labour colleagues’ preferred motion, ‘The CPA are a bunch of scumbags pandering to racism’, before making his own ‘more moderate’ suggestion.

Receiving such mindless abuse from the ruling party goes with the territory in Newham, and CPA has been in Labour’s sights for years. Furness’ colleague James Butler got in early by opining in the national press that CPA ‘are every bit as evil as the BNP’ (Sunday Express, 1 October 2006).

I am of course interested to know which of my warm-hearted colleagues in our multiracial Christian and democratic party is a BNP racist scumbag. Is it…

Councillor Denise Stafford or Councillor Simeon Ademolake?

Or perhaps, maybe… it’s me!

Furness is now on holiday but he’ll be wriggling following his rash acceptance of the challenge. The Labour Party will be leaning on him to not engage in public debate as democracy is against party policy in Newham. He’ll be looking for a way out, and proposing silly motions and setting impossible conditions should provide him with a smokescreen for escape.

Watch this space. Let’s hope I’m wrong.

A Newham political blogsite, John’s Labour Blog, often adds lots to the partisan political prattle but little to the serious discussion of issues. Amongst other things the blogger, John, has got the ‘ump with me over my opposition to the mega-mosque proposed by Islamic sect Tablighi Jamaat at West Ham, close to the site of the 2012 Olympics

So recently I promised him I’d blog the mega-mosque issue.

The topic is too big for one post so I’ll write more in due course dv. Meanwhile there are half a dozen videos up on YouTube (such as this and this) explaining my position, as well as our website www.megamosquenothanks.com - although they could all now do with refreshing.

But as the Labour Party rules the borough with an iron fist, it is instructive to look at their response to the huge mosque project at local level before it moves up onto the national stage and into the clunking fist of their party colleagues in government – in the unlikely event of course that Gordon and crew are still in power at the time.

Newham Mayor’s executive adviser, Cllr Clive Furness, and more recently the Labour MP for West Ham, Lyn Brown, have actively joined the charm offensive orchestrated by Tablighi Jamaat’s Mayfair-based PR agents, Indigo. Last year Cllr Furness instructed Council officers to invite some 150 Newham voluntary sector leaders to the mega-mosque’s ‘Indigo Consultation’. (I attended, and you can see on my YouTube video what a farce it was.) And earlier this year Lyn Brown invited Newham community and church leaders to the House of Commons to hear Tablighi Jamaat elders promote their project.

It’s extraordinary that Labour politicians should enthusiastically encourage the project. Are they simply clueless about the neo-fundamentalist ideology that would be promoted and gain credibility from this national landmark mosque? Tablighi Jamaat’s fierce Islamic separatism runs directly contrary to all government policy on social inclusion and community cohesion (‘scuse the Whitehall jargon). And their treatment of women is repressive, ugly and unacceptable in 21st century Britain, as I demonstrated in a recent guest post on Harry’s Place blogsite.

Of course some say that Labour is not clueless but cynically courting the Muslim vote Livingstone-style. However, I’ve been encouraged by the strength of opposition to Tablighi Jamaat’s proposals within the wider Muslim community. They are not all as articulate as the irrepressible Taj Hargey from the Muslim Educational Council at Oxford, but he has spelt out in stark terms in a letter to The Times what progressive and reasonable Muslims are thinking.

(It is interesting that there are also reports of opposition even within the sect itself. A Lapido Media report last week claims that the Indian leadership of Tablighi Jamaat at their global headquarters in Nizamuddin, Delhi, is against the mega-mosque project promoted by the UK’s primarily Pakistani leadership.)

East London is reckoned to be the prime territory in Britain for belligerent benighted Wahhabi/Jamaat Islami activists, and a Counter Terrorism Command officer from New Scotland Yard told me eighteen months ago that Newham is at the top of UK hot-spots for militants and terror suspects. But nonetheless there are courageous Muslims in the borough who object to fundamentalist Islam in all its forms.

It’s a pity Newham Labour Party doesn’t show the same discernment and courage.