How did Sheikh Raed Salah, revered by many Palestinians and by millions of Muslims across the Middle East, come to be arrested in Britain as a "vile militant extremist"?
He is an Islamic "preacher of hate" whose views reflect "virulent anti-Semitism" and who has funded Hamas terror operations, according to much of the British media.
The furore last week over Sheikh Raed Salah, described by the Daily Mail newspaper as a "vile militant extremist", goaded the British government into ordering his late-night arrest, pending a fast-track deportation. The raid on his hotel, from which he was taken handcuffed to a police cell, came shortly before he was due to address a meeting in the British parliament attended by several MPs.
The outcry in Britain against Sheikh Salah has shocked Israel's 1.3-million Palestinian citizens. For them, he is a spiritual leader and head of a respected party, the Islamic Movement. He is also admired by the wider Palestinian public. The secular Fatah movement, including Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Authority's prime minister, were among those condemning his arrest.
Many Palestinians, like millions of Muslims in the Middle East, revere Sheikh Salah for his campaign to protect Muslim and Christian holy places from Israel's neglectful, and more often abusive, policies. They struggle to recognise the British media's characterisation of him as an Osama Bin Laden-like figure.
Most in Israel's Jewish majority would not have been aware of Sheikh Salah's supposed reputation as a Jew hater either, despite their hyper-vigilance for anything resembling anti-Semitism. True, he is generally loathed by Israeli Jews, but chiefly because they regard his brand of Islamic dogma as incompatible with the state ideology of Jewish supremacism. They fear him as the leader of a local Islam that refuses to be tamed. Those Israelis who conclude that this qualifies him as an anti-Semite do so only because they class all pious Muslims in the same category.
Israeli officials detest Sheikh Salah as well, but again not for any alleged racism. His long-running campaign to prevent what he regards as an attempted Israeli takeover of Jerusalem's al-Aqsa mosque compound – part of a wider "Judaisation" programme in the occupied areas of the city – has made him a thorn in their side.
In other words, Israeli Jews view Sheikh Salah as an inveterate trouble-maker and provocateur, while the country's Palestinian minority accuse Israel of persecuting him for his political and religious beliefs.
The British media and government, meanwhile, have stumbled cluelessly into this domestic Israeli feud and, in the name of Enlightenment values, revealed their own deep prejudices. The humiliation of Sheikh Salah at the hands of the British legal system – supposedly in the interests of promoting "decency and respect" – will serve only to remind Muslims of the hypocrisy so often evident in Western policy.
The double standards are especially glaring given the British government's recent pledge to Israel to change its universal jurisdiction laws. That move will ensure Israel's growing constituency of suspected war criminals avoid any future threat of prosecution in the UK, receiving a far warmer welcome than Sheikh Salah. [...]
The furore last week over Sheikh Raed Salah, described by the Daily Mail newspaper as a "vile militant extremist", goaded the British government into ordering his late-night arrest, pending a fast-track deportation. The raid on his hotel, from which he was taken handcuffed to a police cell, came shortly before he was due to address a meeting in the British parliament attended by several MPs.
The outcry in Britain against Sheikh Salah has shocked Israel's 1.3-million Palestinian citizens. For them, he is a spiritual leader and head of a respected party, the Islamic Movement. He is also admired by the wider Palestinian public. The secular Fatah movement, including Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Authority's prime minister, were among those condemning his arrest.
Many Palestinians, like millions of Muslims in the Middle East, revere Sheikh Salah for his campaign to protect Muslim and Christian holy places from Israel's neglectful, and more often abusive, policies. They struggle to recognise the British media's characterisation of him as an Osama Bin Laden-like figure.
Most in Israel's Jewish majority would not have been aware of Sheikh Salah's supposed reputation as a Jew hater either, despite their hyper-vigilance for anything resembling anti-Semitism. True, he is generally loathed by Israeli Jews, but chiefly because they regard his brand of Islamic dogma as incompatible with the state ideology of Jewish supremacism. They fear him as the leader of a local Islam that refuses to be tamed. Those Israelis who conclude that this qualifies him as an anti-Semite do so only because they class all pious Muslims in the same category.
Israeli officials detest Sheikh Salah as well, but again not for any alleged racism. His long-running campaign to prevent what he regards as an attempted Israeli takeover of Jerusalem's al-Aqsa mosque compound – part of a wider "Judaisation" programme in the occupied areas of the city – has made him a thorn in their side.
In other words, Israeli Jews view Sheikh Salah as an inveterate trouble-maker and provocateur, while the country's Palestinian minority accuse Israel of persecuting him for his political and religious beliefs.
The British media and government, meanwhile, have stumbled cluelessly into this domestic Israeli feud and, in the name of Enlightenment values, revealed their own deep prejudices. The humiliation of Sheikh Salah at the hands of the British legal system – supposedly in the interests of promoting "decency and respect" – will serve only to remind Muslims of the hypocrisy so often evident in Western policy.
The double standards are especially glaring given the British government's recent pledge to Israel to change its universal jurisdiction laws. That move will ensure Israel's growing constituency of suspected war criminals avoid any future threat of prosecution in the UK, receiving a far warmer welcome than Sheikh Salah. [...]
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