Lord Nazir Ahmed
Posted on 01/26/2009 9:14:45 AM PST by Graybeard58
The House of Lords is a venerable British institution, but what does one get if one accepts Muslims in? This:
A member of the Lords intended to invite her colleagues to a private meeting in a conference room in the House of Lords to meet the Dutch politician Geert Wilders, an elected member of the Dutch parliament, to watch his controversial movie Fitna and discuss the movie and Mr. Wilders’ opinions with him.
Barely had the invitation been sent to all the members of the House when Lord Ahmed raised hell. He threatened to mobilize 10,000 Muslims to prevent Mr. Wilders from entering the House and threatened to take the colleague who was organizing the event to court. The result is that the event, which should have taken place next Thursday was cancelled.
Lord Ahmed immediately went to the Pakistani press to boast about his achievement, which he calls “a victory for the Muslim community.”
A victory for the Muslim community, but a defeat for British democracy where topics to which Muslims object cannot even be debated. That, apparently, is what one gets when one accepts Muslims into the House of Lords.
Lord Ahmed is considered to be a “moderate” Muslim. The Pakistani born Nazir Ahmed became the United Kingdom’s first Muslim life peer in 1998. He is a member of the Labour Party and was appointed to the Lords by Tony Blair. Lord Ahmed took his oath on the Koran. He led one of the first delegations on behalf of the British Government on the Muslim pilgrimage of the Hajj, to Saudi Arabia. In February 2005, Lord Ahmed hosted a book launch in the House of Lords for anti-Zionist author Israel Shamir. In 2007, he responded to the award of a knighthood to Salman Rushdie by stating that he was appalled, saying that Rushdie had “blood on his hands.”
Lord Ahmed was among the founders of The World Forum, an organization set up “to promote world peace in the aftermath of 9/11 with an effort to build bridges of understanding between The Muslim World and the West by reviving a tradition of Dialogue between people, cultures and civilizations based on tolerance.”
What does “dialogue” mean to those who make discussion about controversial issues impossible? Thank you, Mr. Blair, for bringing “diversity” to the House of Lords.
Lord Nazir Ahmed
This is more proof of that.
Disgusting.
How does that work when the Anglican Church is a state church?
Geert Wilders should assemble an invasion force a la William of Orange to overthrow the British government and reestablish sanity and order.
Well well, the whole House of Lords held hostage by its one Muslim member. More fools them for caving in to him. They deserve to look like the jellyfish they are forgiving in.
Can the House of Lords expel one of their own?
Tony Blair destroyed the House of Lords. It is no longer a hereditary body of the British nobility. It is a gang of people awarded a “lordship” by the Prime Minister—who has been a Labour Prime minister for long enough to stack the house with leftists.
“Lord Achmed” is only too typical of the House of Lords as Tony Blair remade it. The reason he did so was because the House of Lords resisted his bill to lower the age of consent for homosexual sex with minors. So he destroyed this ancient institution in response.
After they booted Maggie Thatcher from office, the Conservative Party basically lost its course and made itself irrelevant. So there has been nothing but Labour, Labour, Labour, and it seems likely that traditional England will never recover from the results.
“....now they know how many holes it takes to fill the House of lords”
Gasp.. ALMOST as ugly as Franken...but not quite.
Equally stupid and obnoxious, tough.
I know where he can stick that al jiz mic!
If you're questioning whether members of a religion other than the established Church can be members of the Lords, the answer is that they always have been - ever since the Reformation there have been Catholic peers, even in the early 20th century there were a couple of Buddhists, and there have long been many Jewish peers. All religions and none. The only special provision for the established Church in the Lords was the right of certain Bishops to sit, although their voing rights have recently been much curtailed.
Not to mention their voting rights...
Seems a bit odd that religions of cultures that Britain colonized now rule as Lords in the House of Lords. I suppose that is progress, even if at odds with British tradition.
Thanks for the clarification.
I was under the impression that Blair changed to rules to make the House of Lords entirely life peerages, which was different from adding a few life peers to the mix, but maybe I’m wrong about that. Or maybe he didn’t get through everything he was pushing for.
Yes - he seemed to lose interest in Lords reform after the initial rather half-hearted changes proved such a slog to force through.
They’re certainly represented in the Lords, though it’s going a bit far to say that they ‘rule’.
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