Book Ban: Muslim News Site Demands Amazon Withdraw Kassam’s ‘No Go Zones’

Kassam

A Muslim news website has demanded that online retailer Amazon remove Breitbart London editor-in-chief Raheem Kassam’s forthcoming book No Go Zones: How Sharia Law Is Coming to a Neighborhood Near You from its virtual shelves, branding it “Islamophobic hate”.

The Muslim Vibe targeted Kassam’s book alongside a self-published work by Rebel Media contributor Tommy Robinson.

The site, which has links to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), branded the as-yet-unreleased work a “fear mongering book… which claims Muslims are a growing serious cultural and political threat who want to impose ‘Sharia Law’ in Western countries”.

CAIR has been declared a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates, and was named by U.S. federal prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror-funding operation.

As Kassam’s book is also not released for another twelve days, it will not have actually been read by Muslim Vibe writers.

The site was launched in October 2014 under the editorship of Muhammed Salim Kassam — no relation — who acts as director for a number of businesses based in England.

He appears to be highly sympathetic to the Iranian regime, publishing an inflammatory “open letter to young people in the West” written by ruling theocrat Ali Khamenei and helping to disseminate it on social media.

Khamenei’s predeccesor, Ayatollah Khomenei, once issued a fatwa against author Salman Rushdie — like Breitbart’s Kassam, of British Indian descent — for his book The Satanic Verses.

Muhammed Salim called for Muslims to stop condemning terror attacks after Islamist terrorist Khalid Masood ran down a number of people near the Palace of Westminster, murdering Police Constable Keith Palmer with a knife.

His website has also voiced opposition to the British government’s anti-extremism Prevent programme, characterising it as “widely considered to be a monitoring and spying exercise which targets the Muslim community” and naming and shaming Muslim organisations which co-operate with it.

The Muslim Vibe describes itself as “a vast digital media network promoting ethical, positive, engaging, relevant and thought-provoking Islamic content” as well as a platform to “[empower] Western Muslims and to enable us to reclaim the narrative on Islam”.

Its backers are not immediately obvious, and a page which lists the members of its advisory board of “highly respected and learned individuals — who help us make certain editorial decisions” is mostly blank.

The page does list four controversial, U.S. or Canada-based Muslims: Dawud WalidSyed Abbas AyleyaZafar Bangash, and Syed Asad Jafri.

Dawud Walid is Executive Director of the Michigan chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

Walid has been linked to the explicitly racist Nation of Islam and its leader Louis Farrakhan — who has said “White people deserve to die” and “the Satanic Jews … control everything” — and praised him as someone whose “preaching & work is more relevant to the mass of Blackamericans [sic] than what imams “on the Sunnah” are preaching on minbar. #truth”

Walid has also spoken in Dearborn on Al Quds Day — an annual demonstration instituted by the late leader of the Islamic revolution in Iran, which sees Muslims all over the world call for the destruction of Israel.

Pakistan-born Sayed Abbas Ayleya, who teaches at the Zainab Center in Seattle, has also spoken at Al Quds events, and shared a platform in Dearborn with Muslims deriding “the shaytani [Satanic] character of the U.S. government” and branding that government “Zionist occupied”.

Ayleya himself is reported to have said that “There is no room for [democratic] pluralism in Islam. It is un-Qu’ranic”.

Toronto-based Zafar Bangash — director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought (ICIT) and Imam at the Islamic Society of York Region Mosque — is another Al Quds speaker, and has urged devout Muslims to emulate Iran’s late Ayatollah by taking over their governments, writing: “Muslims must strive to overthrow the oppressive systems in their societies through Islamic revolutions, and not by participating in fraudulent elections organized by the elites”.

Rounding off the quartet, Syed Asad Jafri received an “Islamic education” at the Hawza Ilmiyyah in Qom, Iran.

Jafri is yet another Al Quds speaker — telling attendees at one event that Israel is led by a “Zionist regime that sucks the resources, the blood, and everything that belongs to the people all across the world [to] use it for themselves”.

 

The Muslim Vibe states on its website that “The views and opinions of The Muslim Vibe do not represent those of any members of our advisory board, nor do the views and opinions of the advisory board reflect those of The Muslim Vibe.”

It is therefore unclear why the group maintains an advisory board, especially one populated by activists 3,000 miles away from the site’s home in London, England.

Another Tehran-backed group — the unironically named Islamic Human Rights Commission — has previously targeted Raheem Kassam, declaring him “Islamophobe of the Year” in 2014.

Kassam celebrated the award in a Westminster pub.

You can pre-order No Go Zones: How Sharia Law is Coming to a Neighborhood Near You, on Amazon… for now.

Follow Jack Montgomery on Twitter: @JackBMontgomery
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