This article in pyjamas media quotes al-qaida admitting that
Benghazi's'democracy' movement is nothing other than a front for islamists. Ghadaffi was less than unpleasant but NATO is handing our enemies a stepping stone to Europe on a plate.

In a now mysterious interview published earlier this month in the London-based Arabic-language daily Al-Hayat, a spokesman for the North African branch of al-Qaeda appeared to confirm al-Qaeda involvement in the eastern Libyan rebellion. The North African branch of the terror organization is known as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The spokesman was identified as Salah Abu Muhammad.

According to the April 16th article in Al-Hayat, Salah Abu Muhammad claimed that AQIM had set up Islamic emirates in a series of eastern Libyan cities and he identified a certain “Sheikh Abdul-Hakim” as the ruling “emir” in the rebel stronghold of Darnah. The reference is presumably to rebel commander Abdul-Hakim al-Hasadi. At the outset of the rebellion in February, Libyan government sources claimed that al-Hasadi had declared an Islamic emirate in Darnah.

“Yes, we have Islamic emirates,” Salah Abu Muhammad was reported to have said, according to a translation prepared by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), “and we are not afraid [to say this], since we are not criminals. We fear Allah alone.” “We have emirates in Derna, Banghazi, Al-Bayda, Maraj and Shahat,” the quotation continues, “all of them glorious and proud, especially the emirate in Derna, whose emir is the honorable sheikh ‘Abd Al-Hakim, who founded an Islamic council in his town together with his brothers in order to rule according to Allah’s law.”


The remarks received little attention in the American or European media. (One exception was a post on the American Thinker blog by Jack Cashill, who cited them in turn from a blog post by the French Middle East correspondent Georges Malbrunot.)

As reported by MEMRI’s Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor, one day after the appearance of the Al-Hayat article, AQIM issued a statement on jihadist websites denying that Salah Abu Muhammad had given an interview to the paper. The AQIM communiqué suggested that the published interview was the result of a plot hatched by Algerian intelligence.

Camille Tawil, the author of the Al-Hayat article, quickly fell into line, posting a laconic English-language retraction on his blog. “It seems I was tricked into doing a false interview with Mr. Salah Abu Mohammed, the AQIM spokesman,” Tawil wrote. “Mr. Salah has issued a denial, and I apologies [sic] to him. The interview is not true.”

The issue is not Pastor Terry Jones and burning the 'Holy' Koran but 'al Quran' inspired violence

Whilst I believe the burning the Koran was wrong and the threatening of doing it provocative it is necessary to understand pastor Jones' frustrations and why he felt the need for this stunt. Pastor Jones was trying to raise the profile of christians constantly under attack in moslem countries where freedom of religion, thought and expression is anathema. Such freedoms are vilified in the Koran and as such the pastor felt justified in raising the issue in this way in order to break the silence of the established church and western media. If western media were not complicit in suppressing references to the pogroms and murders of christians happening on a daily basis throughout the muslim world, even in the supposedly moderate regimes in Pakistan and Indonesia, then the Pastor would not have felt driven to this desperate act. It is notable that the media has totally ignored Pastor Jones' message regarding persecuted christians portraying him simply as a crank. He has been condmned for having caused riots in the muslim world.
We in the west rightly have little understanding for citizens who resort to violence in order to resolve their disputed yet we manage to absolve violent muslims of blame for their actions with the excuse that they were provoked. In a court of law provocation might be an argument for some mitigation of a sentence but not to declare a violent attacker innocent of his guilt.

What needs to be condemned is the fact that muslims in their own countries feel they may wrent their wrath on innocent victims whenever they feel outraged. Such behaviour is the law of the jungle and the very antithesis of civilisation. The west must put islamic countries on notice that spilling innocent christians' blood will not go unnoticed or be lightly forgiven. Mrs Clinton should be made to point out to countries like Indonesia and Pakistan that a child's life is every bit as holy as that of the 'holy' Koran and that the US and its allies will aid Christian communities under attack.

The Palestinian Hamas statelet's leader Haniyeh condemns the killing of Bin Laden

Why should we be surprised? The Palestinians celebrated in the streets when the twin towers fell. Palestinian arabs dealt in terror even before they had invented their nationality (Jordan was broken off by the British from mandatory Palestine in 1922 and it is there that palestinian national aspirations lie. The land west of the Jordan was intended for the jewish state and if only for security reasons must remain so).

In the days when 'palestinian' referred to jews living in the Land of Israel arabs living there never ceased their terror against jews. They were also less mealy mouthed then, claiming proudly that they had killed jews. It's only nowadays that they euphemistically refer to 'zionists' when they fire rockets indiscriminately at Israel. Their recent successes were the murder of a teenager after his school bus was hit by an anti-tank rocket. Last year a Thai worker was killed on a farm.

Arab terror in Israel dates back to the turn of the 20th century with the murder of jews peacefully farming their lands. In 1929 the jews of Safed and Hebron were massacred by their neighbours with whom they had thought they were on good terms. The jews living in those communities were not even zionists but traditional orthodox jews. This gives the lie that the arab hatred is for Israel and zionism rather than good old fashioned anti-semitism.

So just as the Palestinians celebrated the horrors of the twin towers and are al Qaida's most avid supporters ,Gaza is grieving today on the news of Bin Ladens death. The West should take note. A palestinian state is just another islamist waypost on the way to the caliphate.

Pope forgets about murdered and ethnically cleansed christians in easter message

The pope's easter message urged both sides in the Libyan conflict to protect civilians. It's strange that he prioritised this over christians suffering throughout the moslem world. He might spare a thought for the christian girls decapitated for 'blasphemy' by dogma crazed murderers high on religious bigotry Pictures of gruesome murders - Warning: the pictures are gruesome. He might spare a thought for the coptic demonstrators recently gunned down by the military shouting 'allah akbar'. The copts were objecting to the ejection from their church and newly built community center. It seems that such centers are 'provocative'.
The only place the established church ever shows its ire is where it's least needed, in condemning Israel when it defends itself from attack.

Just the other day an Israeli was gunned down by a Palestinian Authority policeman after according to spokesman Saib Erekat he was 'provocatively' attempting to pray at Joseph's tomb near Nablus. Why does Israel take this lying down? Just as muslims in Israel are allowed to pray without hindrance in their holy places, jews must assert their rights to do so without fear of being killed. The west must face down bigotry and intolerance by muslim fanatics or face ever increasing attacks.

In the West and Israel there is quite rightly zero tolerance for religious bigotry directed at muslims. The west that is so powerfully intervening in Libya to protect 'civilians' must demand that arab and muslim nations afford protections to christians, jews and other religions coming under their rule (as in Gaza with Hamas gunmen who fight out of uniform, the fighters in Libya also describe themselves as civilians. A ragtag bunch they may be, when holding a gun it is a travesty to allow them to describe themselves as 'civilians').

And let's not forget Iraq where thousands of American soldiers still serve and have died yet the christian community is being ethnically cleansed from there. Iraq is steadily becoming a satellite state of Iran whilst the US pretends to be helping set up a democracy there. And Afghanistan? The US has lost the war in Iraq and Afghanistan because it picked the wrong enemy. Sadam Hussein wasn't much of a threat to regional peace after the first Gulf War, but Iran is and is getting stronger using its Hezbollah proxy first to suppress the Lebanese democracy, and now to support the brutal Syrian state.

The US needs to stop trying to reform arab and muslim countries and to unabashedly protect western interests. State building has failed in Afghanistan, Iraq and will fail in Libya. The west must intervene to protect its own interests, and save its bombs for when it is atacked. It is madness to intervene in a civil war in Libya when Gadaffi was a cowed man, who had given up his nuclear ambitions and stopped his terror against the west, paid compensation, and was a bulwark against al-qaida. Democracy is a wonderful concept, but the islamists of Benghazi will most likely not be so democratic once they take power. NATO and the US should leave Libya alone. As usual, western intervention is going to make matters worse in this civil war.

The first ( successful ) anti-imperialist struggle

I've been reading the autobiography of Meyer Levin author of Exodus. He reminds me that at one time to be a zionist was as often as not to be understood not just as someone who wished to build an egalitarian society free from anti-semitism in the ancient jewish homelands, but also as a forward thinking socialist. In 1936 he was a journalist for a new american magazine 'Inside' and went to report on the Spanish civil war. It was then in steady decline faced with an arms embargo by the west and the USSR whilst the fascists had the support of Germany. Levin saw the infighting between the different factions in the Republican side which he saw as resulting from and partly the cause of the sinking morale amongst the fighters. Despite that he had to fight with himself not to remain not as a writer but as a fighter against the fascists.
In the end he was given one hour to leave, presumably because the military unit he attached to did not wish him to see them in retreating.

Levin went straight from the Spanish War to Palestine where he drew the parallel with Spain, where the fascists were supporting the anti-semitic Mufti of Jerusalem in the inciting of the arab riots and attacks on the jewish commnunities there. The British did not intervene whilst the attacks were aimed only at the jews, but when the situation started to get out of hand with attacks being made on them they enlisted more jewish police to protect their towns and villages whilst allowing Orde Wingate's Special Night Squads to be set up. These took the war to the marauders instead of, as had been the policy until then (of 'Havlaga', the restraint of the Hagana whereby jewish towns were defended from attack but without seeking to actively pursue the attackers. This policy meant that the initiative was always with the arab terrorists and many jews died as a result).

Benny Morris in '1948' has written that the arab defeat of 1936-39 affected their ability to wage war against the jews in the period that really mattered during 1947-48. When the arabs in Palestine restarted their murderous attacks on jews after the UN resolution on 29th November 1948 (the day after this resolution a pogrom was organised against jews in the new city of Jerusalem and jews were taken off buses in Jaffa and slaughtered) as a presage to the invasion by the surrounding arab countries, they were subdued within a few months by the better organised Hagana, just in time to deny the invading arab armies the benefit of friendly palestinian arab bases.

The British in Palestine were almost overwhelmingly sympathetic to the arab cause, partly because of the anti-semitism rife in the British army and culture and romantic notions about desert arabs. The Jews moreover were not the easiest of imperial subjects.
Unlike the case in Africa or elsewhere the Jews knew they were at least the equals of those British who governed in Palestine. The Jews hardly benefited from British institutions, with jewish taxes paying for those and for programes that were intended to improve the economic and health situation of Palestine's arabs. At the same time jewish institutions arose and became a parallel state awaiting the time that the British occupier would leave Palestine. When the British finally did leave, 'driven out' in Fieldmarshal Montgomery's own words, the imperialists were not missed by those jews who had just pulled off the first successful anti-colonial struggle. The efforts of the tiny Stern Group, the Irgun and the Haganah had managed to evict the British superpower with its 100,000 soldiers in Palestine seeking to hand that territory over to arab dictators. The British might have had much experience in empire and in ruling colonial peoples through the tried tactic of 'divide and rule' reinforced by ruthless brutality, but they had not managed to adapt their methods to ruling the jews in Palestine without alienating them. They could not do this as British sympathies did not lie with jews. Jews recognised that the British after 1917 wished to prevent Jewish self-determination in that land.

Levin gives an account of the British chief of police in his district who lived in the same building as him:

“...a young man who was the epitome of the bored colonial. His room was devoid of books or any other sign of interest in human activities. One day I went out with him on his rounds as paymaster for the Jewish settlement police in the area. In each village, the Jewish boys lined up smartly, each lad advancing in turn to receive his bit of pay from the hand of the ruling Briton, then performing the ritual Thank you , Sir, the smart salute, the about-face, and march away. The entire story of imperial reign was in this silly little ceremony-the British hand collecting money from a people and doling out part of it to them again for their own services in their own protection. In some countries, the British contribution as a nation expert in the business of government was probably valuable, but I couldn't help seeing, as the British couldn't help seeing, that every Jewish boy who marched up and thanked his chief for his pay considered himself an individual of higher development than the little colonial policeman. There were Jewish heads fermenting with theories, ideas, ambitions, and resentments, and to them the hand of the Briton was the very hand that impeded their country's development.”(p122, In Search)

Palestine Awareness according to the Elder of Zion

The elder of Zion is determined to educate British students out of their ignorance and starts off pretty well. The fact is that palestinian nationalism is determined by what it wishes to destroy rather than anything it would like to build. Let's see how democracy in the arab world pans out before believing the old lies that palestinians would build a democratic, secular state in place of Israel. The only time they were tested Hamas the Moslem Brotherhood offshoot emerged to maim and kill secular palestinians. Gays, christians and women now exist under a state of terror.

 
Thursday, February 17, 2011
UCLA's having "Palestine Awareness Week." Let's help them out.
UCLA's having "Palestine Awareness Week." Let's help them out.
I just saw a Facebook page advertising UCLA's "Palestine Awareness Week" next week.

I deeply believe in awareness for Palestine, so here is my small contribution to the cause:


Are you aware that Palestine was never a country?
Are you aware that the word Palestine is Roman, not Arabic?
Are you aware that Jerusalem was never the capital of any Arab nation?
Are you aware that before 1920, the area known as Palestine included much or all of what is now Jordan?
Are you aware that practically every written history of the Palestinian Arabs starts after Jews started returning to the area in the late 1800s?
Are you aware that practically no Arabs called themselves "Palestinian" before 1964?
Are you aware that the first Palestinian Arab leader, Haj Amin al Husseini, originally wanted a "Greater Syria" to include Palestine and only changed his mind in the 1920s?
Are you aware that this same Husseini instigated murderous rampages against the Jews of Palestine - including Jewish communities that had been there for centuries?
Are you aware that this same Husseini colluded with Hitler to perform genocide on all Jews during World War II?
Are you aware the Palestinian Arabs have never accepted any peace plan that included a Jewish state?
Are you aware that modern terrorism was created by Palestinian Arabs?
Are you aware that Palestinian Arabs never demanded their own West Bank or Gaza state when they were under Jordanian and Egyptian control?
Are you aware that Yasir Arafat embezzled as much as $3 billion from his people, yet he is still regarded as a hero and no Palestinian Arab leader is trying to find his stolen money?
Are you aware that the constitution of Palestine states that Sharia law would be the main source of legislation?
Are you aware that Mahmoud Abbas bankrolled the 1972 Olympic massacre of Israeli athletes, and that he praised the ringleader of that attack as recently as 2010?
Are you aware that Mahmoud Abbas' doctoral dissertation denied the Holocaust?
Are you aware that Hamas does not want a Palestinian Arab state but instead a pan-Islamic caliphate that spans the world?
Are you aware that the Palestinian Authority still officially states that there was no Jewish Temple in Jerusalem?
Are you aware that the PLO wants to build a state with no Jews in it?
Are you aware that the elected Hamas government has laws discriminating against women?
Are you aware that Yasir Arafat was born in Egypt, but Ariel Sharon was born in Palestine?
Are you aware that the biggest heroes to ordinary Palestinian Arabs are terrorists like Dalal Mughrabi and Samir Kuntar?
Are you aware that the original 1964 PLO charter specifically excluded the West Bank and Gaza from the land they wanted, and their only desire was to destroy Israel within the Green Line?
Are you aware that not a single refugee camp has been dismantled in the territories governed by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas?
Are you aware that even after signing the Oslo Accords, Yasir Arafat publicly said that a Palestinian state is simply a stage on the way to destroying Israel altogether?
Just a small public service for Palestine Awareness Week.

God doesn't love the Jews - The New Statesman wishes to reinvent the wheel of anti-semitism

In the British broadsheet media the whiff of antisemitism is never far below the surface. Yet another example of a British publication's sneering and hate filled invective against jews comes from this week's winning entries in the captions competition in the New Statesman magazine. Were it not for an overwhelming mass of invective against Israel and the fact that both winning captions had anti-semitic overtones I would be tempted to take the captions in a lightearted vein.

The picture showed someone whispering guardedly into Netanyahu's ear.

The winning caption was,”It's God, sir. He says if you don't ease off on Palestine, he's choosing another people.”(Adrian Fry).

So here we have something that the left in the UK tries so hard and so often to deny, that hatred of Israel and anti-semitism are often linked. Here we find yet another example of this linkage, it being God himself who has bought the line of the collective jewish people oppressing others, so much so that God addresses himself to the prime minister of Israel as the representative of that people so as threat to sever links with the jews, their having by their behaviour renounce all claim to God's indulgence. In case you are wondering where we've heard this before and what it led to ''Holocaust” is the clue.

The Runner-up:

Aid to Netanyahu: “”We have sent a plane for Mubarak.”(James Mackinshaw)

And this is another accusation against Israel, that it spends its time propping up dictators in the middle-east, that it looks after the puppets who have supposedly carried out Israel's bidding of suppressing the democrats in the arab world. Of course that the jew controls the banks, the american government and world politics is nothing new, dating back to the Tsar's publication of the Protocols of the Elder of Zion and most recently given new impetus by Walt and Mearshimer. The muslim world's dictators such as Ben Ali, and Idi Amin of course usually end up Saudi-Arabia. The dictators in the middle-east are home grown.

For the anti-semite Jews are behind everything bad in the world. What's new?

Possibly once the New Statesmen realises its been caught out again, an article will be commissioned on Holocaust commemoration. That's the usual way that the jewish people's detractors nowadays believe they can buy their 'Get out of jail free card', all the better to carry on demonising jews and Israel.

The antisemitic British University and Colleges trade union UCU that has seen much of its jewish membership leave in recent years has been quite adept at using this tactic.

The Nazis and the BBC

In a report yesterday the British BBC journalist Bowen talked about the influence of Cairo radio in radicalising the middle-east in the 1950's. Strangely enough he failed to mention the broadcasts by the Mufti of Jerusalem from the 1930's and throughout World War II praising the nazis and how they dealt with the jews (The mufti didn't just cheer from the sidelines but founded the SS muslim battalion that killed jews and partisans in Croatia and Serbia). Arab and muslim anti-semitism nowadays is the result of those nazi broadcasts by the still venerated palestinian. Even the palestinian president Abbas has praised the mufti as "outstanding", saying that his role in history should remain in the forefront of Palestinian Arab consciousness.
Well it shouldn't be surprising that Abbas knows so little about the Mufti's role in the Holocaust, because Abbas wrote his Phd thesis denying the holocaust. In communist Russia of all places!

The BBC might peddle its slanted history of the middle-east but it doesn't help in educating its audience of the true realities there. Its strange, but even the BBC hasn't been peddling the hoary myth of the root of all problems in the middle-east being related to the jewish settlements in the ancient jewish homelands of Judea and Samaria  (the 'West Bank') lately. Maybe it's because nobody would now believe this particular lie any more.

The demise of theTurkish secular state

Kemal Attaturk is most likely rolling around in his grave, realising that using the guise of 'democracy' islam is on the ascendant.

Erdogan's islamist AKP government having put the US' nose out of joint when it wished to invade Iraq from bases in Turkey in 2003 recently tried to stymie attempts to have Iran condemned for refusing to ship its uranium fuel to neutral third countries such as France and Russia by teaming up with Brazil to offer their own plan. Iran of course does not want its uranium enriched abroad to 20% as this would only be sufficient for peaceful uses.

Erdogan's government knows all this, so why is it supporting Iran in its pursuit of nuclear weapons? For that matter why is Turkey supporting the extreme islamic movements of Hezbollah in lebanon and Hamas in Gaza? Why did Erdogan's government organise the islamist flotilla in 2010 ostensibly to break the israeli blockade of Gaza (Israel is under daily bombardment by Grad, katyusha and Qassam missiles from there and argues it must inspect ships before their cargoes are delivered)?

There are many questions that could be asked of the Turkish government, not least as to why it is supporting islamist and rejectionist governments throughout the world, not least that of Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir President Omar al-Bashir responsible for the genocide in Darfur.

Whatever the AKP is doing abroad, its changing of the constitution, lauded by the EU means that it can appoint judges, surely a dangerous thing even in a western democratic country where it the separation of powers, of the legislative, the executive and the judiciary are seen as essential to a true democracy.

This article was published before the new constitution was adopted.In it Ilke Akdeniz warns about the AKP's increasing hold over the judiciary.

"Of the proposed amendments to 26 of the articles, the most controversial point of debate lies in the change to the law of who controls the Judges and Prosecutors; a change which would significantly change the balance of power in Turkey. Under the 1982 constitution, Judges and Prosecutors are free from the control of the government, as one would expect it to be in any democracy, as it eliminates the possibility of punishment being used as a political tool. However, under the proposed changes, members of parliament will get to choose the majority of the members of the High Council of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK), which in effect puts the HSYK under the control of the ruling party. Brings to mind a dictatorship, does it not?"

The bastion of secular authority, the army is also being emasculated. Today 162 army officerswere imprisoned along with the 400 other academics, journalists, politicians and soldiers already imprisoned by this islamist regime that is intent on crushing democracy in Turkey.

From today's Huriyet,

"More than 400 people — including academics, journalists, politicians and soldiers — also are on trial on separate charges of plotting to bring down the government. That case is based on a conspiracy by an alleged gang of secular nationalists called Ergenekon.

Critics say the Sledgehammer and Ergenekon cases are built on flimsy evidence and designed to silence Erdoğan's pro-secular opponents. The government denies the cases are politically motivated and says it is just trying to work to improve democracy."

It is time for the west to realise what is happening in Turkey, to downgrade its membership of NATO and to put on hold any further trade concessions by the EU. The US should bring its political influence to bear but there is no chance of that happening whilst Obama is still in power. The US is in decline, and the islamists not least in Turkey are filling the vacuum.

Egyptians beware - the moslem brotherhood's 'moderation' is equal to its belief in democracy (one man, one vote, one time).

It is hard to criticise those brave people in Tunisia and Egypt and elsewhere in the arab world who are confronting the dictators and generals. The only problem is what comes after the secular dictators are gone? The moslem brotherhood is waiting in the wings, organised and ready to take power through the ballot box as we have seen repeatedly in the recent past.

In 1979 the people supported by the secular mujahideen toppled the Shah of Iran with the support of the US under president Carter. What happened was that shortly afterwards the ayatollahs let loose their legions of islamic troops on those brave people who had fought for democracy, slaughtered many thousands of those democracy activists, and we have today that theocratic state of Iran that whips, rapes and hangs women, gays and anyone else who the regime finds fault with. That regime in its race for nuclear weapons is igniting an arms race in the middle-east, among as we see are very unstable regimes. Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Saudi-Arabia and Algeria all have nuclear programmes which are being stepped up.

Lebanon has now a prime ministerNajib Mikati who represents Hezbollah, the long arm of Iran, and Hamas had an election in January 2005 with next election supposed to have been in July 2010. With those elections now getting on for a couple of years overdue, it is hard not to believe that those islamists who are so into human rights and democracy when in opposition, really believe in one man, one vote, one time.

The moslem brotherhood in Egypt of which Hamas in Gaza are an offshoot have lain pretty low recently, keeping their strategic interests to the fore in not taking over the running of the protests so as not to ruin the chances of bringing an end to Mubarak's regime (with US and Europe's support). But the long term goals of the moslem brotherhood have not changed, to bring an islamic regime to Egypt, preferably through the ballot box on the way to the great caliphate (most likely not by way of the ballot box).

A recent leader of the moslem brotherhood made clear its long-term goals:

"The Islamic Ummah['s]...rightful position which was intended by Allah, [is] the most exalted nation among men, as the leaders of humanity....Jihad [is] not only for the purpose of fending-off assaults and attacks of Allah's enemies from Muslims, but are also for the purpose of realizing the great task of establishing an Islamic state and strengthening the religion and spreading it around the world..."

Mustafa Mashhur, Jihad Is The Way, (Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leader, 1996-2002)

As Rubin shows, the muslim brotherhood is anything but moderate or exhausted or democtratic. In a recent speech the Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Muhammad Badi shows the Brotherhood as bigoted as ever, and as intent as ever on bringing down western oriented governments (starting with their own), on ending peace between Egypt and Israel, on bringing down the Palestinina Authority and replacing it with the islamists of Hamas who have been responsible for bombings and killings of christians in Gaza. If Hamas takes control of the Palestinian Authority territories in Judea and Samaria then the days of the christian community will be as numbered there as it is in Iraq (Even under the PA chrisitians have been leaving Bethlehem at an alarming rate in recent years due to the discrimination there, not unsimilar to other arab regimes such as in Egypt whereby pork was forbidden on 'health' grounds  last year)

Islamic extremism is an extreme threat to those democracy activists. Ignoring the Moslem Brotherhood will only lead to their takeover of the budding democracies in the arab world. Once the islamist have taken over they will crush the democratic opposition, promote new wars in the middle east, undermine western interests and promote new terror outrages in the west.

We must support the democratic groups in the arab world, but with caution. Change needs to be managed, allowing democratic institutions to emerge that are strong and able to counterbalance the islamic organisations who know very well that the way to success at the ballot box is through well funded grassroots campaigning, not least through efficient social and medical organisations.