The Two Faces of Abdullah al-Andalusi

The British government is finally catching on to the extremist views of Abdullah al-Andalusi. Britons should be disturbed that their own security specialists took so long to figure this out, especially since I wrote an article on Abdullah's radical views more than five years ago. The article is titled: "Abdullah al-Andalusi Defends Terrorism, Tries to Cover-Up His Words, Condemns Muhammad, and Threatens Legal Jihad!"

The Telgraph—The Government watchdog which inspects police forces’ readiness for terrorism admitted that it employed one of Britain’s most notorious Islamic extremists.

For almost two years Abdullah al Andalusi, led a double life, the Telegraph can reveal.

By night, he taught that the terror group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) was “no different to Western armies,” said that “kaffirs,” non-Muslims, would be “punished in hell” and claimed that the British government wanted to destroy Islam.

By day, using a different name, he went to work for the same British government at the London offices of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC), the official regulator of all 44 forces in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The disclosures will be intensely embarassing to the Prime Minister, David Cameron, who has criticised parts of Britain’s Muslim communities for “quietly condoning” Islamist extremism.

HMIC’s staff, who number less than 150, are given privileged access to highly sensitive and classified police and intelligence information to carry out their inspections.

The inspectorate’s work includes scrutinising police forces’ counter-terrorism capabilities and top-secret plans for dealing with terror attacks.

It has also recently published reports on undercover policing and the use of informants.

HMIC admitted that Mr al Andalusi, whose real name is Mouloud Farid, had passed a security vetting check to work as a civil servant at the inspectorate.

He was subsequently promoted to executive grade, a management rank, placing him at the heart of the security establishment.

He was only sacked after bosses spotted him on television defending extremist Islamic positions on behalf of his organisation, the Muslim Debate Initiative, which is heavily dependent on Saudi money.

The inspectorate insisted that he did not handle classified material but former friends of Mr al Andalusi said he had done so.

“His work did involve security areas. He said he had a role in overseeing the police response to terrorism and there were areas he couldn’t talk about,” said one former colleague at the Muslim Debate Initiative, who asked to remain anonymous.

“He would discuss the reports that HMIC were working on and the data they needed to present.

“His story is so odd and so scandalous in many respects. He had these two completely incompatible lives that went on for years. He despised Britain, yet worked for the British government. He would talk about the right of oppressed people to take up arms against the oppressor and yet he was overseeing the police.

“Opportunities came along to do dawah [preaching] as a full-time job, but he was never tempted to do that because he had a stable income and pension with the civil service.”

One anti-extremism activist, who knew said Mr al Andalusi, said: “[Al-Andalusi] admitted it to a few people. It is the hypocrisy of it that surprises me.”

MPs have called for a full investigation into how someone with as long a record of extremism as Mr al Andalusi had survived vetting and been appointed to his post.

Under the name by which he was known to HMIC, Mouloud Farid, his links with the Muslim Debate Initiative were a matter of public record.

He was registered as a director of the organisation at Companies House, though he earlier this year changed to yet a third name, Wazir Leton Rahman, on the companies register.

“This man’s unsuitability for sensitive work should have been obvious from the start,” said Khalid Mahmood, Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Barr.

“There is a lack of understanding of different strains of Islam in the civil service. I will be asking why the systems designed to prevent this did not work.”

Mr al Andalusi, a prominent figure on the extremist lecture circuit, is closely associated with the extremist group Hizb ut Tahrir, which believes that voting and democracy are un-Islamic.

He is also a strong supporter of the terrorist lobby group Cage, which sparked outrage earlier this year when it defended the Isil hostage-killer Mohammed Emwazi, “Jihadi John,” as a “beautiful” and “gentle” man who had been radicalised by MI5. Like Cage, Mr al-Andalusi fiercely supports the right of British citizens to travel to Syria to fight.

He spoke at a Cage rally outside his own employer’s parent department, the Home Office, to demonstrate against the arrest of the former Guantanamo detainee, Moazzam Begg, on Syria-related terror charges, later dropped. Alongside him were other high-profile extremists and hate preachers including Haitham al-Haddad and senior figures in Hizb ut Tahrir.

Mr al Andalusi has spoken at at least three other Cage events in the last ten months, including on September 20 last year when he claimed that, as part of its “war against Islam,” the British government wanted to force Muslims to eat non-halal meat.

He says that Western liberal society is committed to the “destruction” of all Muslim belief and shows on his Facebook page a picture a concentration camp with a Nazi swastika and “21st century” written on the watchtower.

In the foreground is a gallows with a short route to the hangman’s noose for “Islamists” and a longer route for “Muslim moderates.”

A spokesman for HMIC said: “Mr Farid was investigated for gross misconduct by taking part in public activity that compromised his impartial service to government, thereby breaching the Civil Service Code. He was suspended immediately whilst investigations were ongoing.”

The HMIC accepted Mr Farid’s resignation in July last year, the spokesman added. But the security lapse has only just emerged – coinciding with the government putting a new statutory duty on public bodies, including schools, to monitor and root out extremism.

In a talk at Queen Mary University, in East London, on 16 January, he asked why the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra, was treated as a terrorist organisation by the West while the moderate Free Syrian Army was not.

He condemned memorials to 9/11, describing the terror attacks as “the day a vicious world empire [the US] found a publicly-acceptable excuse to bomb others, invade non-threatening nations, torture political dissidents and kill at least 300,000 innocent people.”

After Isil took over large portions of Iraq last year, he wrote that “most Muslims would be jubilant at the return of the caliphate [Islamic state], which is a vital obligation upon Muslims that has been conspicuously missing for so long.”

He condemned the group for killing civilians but said that the West had “no basis to judge Islamic State” because “IS are no different to Western armies and even some of the ‘founding fathers’ of Western nations… IS’s crime is being actually a good student of the West, right down to their corporate structure and organisation and ability to use social media.”

He said that “those who reject IS merely because IS’s school of thought is disagreeable to them should remember that Islam permits difference of opinion. To reject something as outside the fold of Islam, due to it being a different school of thought to one’s own, makes one a purveyor of disunity among Muslims.”

The former friends of Mr al Andalusi said they had left the Muslim Debate Initiative when it became increasingly extreme and dominated by donations from a wealthy Saudi businessman. (Continue Reading.)

To understand why Abdullah claims to support and defend Great Britain during the day while promoting extremism at night, watch this video on taqiyya:

Upcoming Debates

For those who are interested, here is a flyer for the debates that are coming up in September. Another debate that is not reflected on the flyer below, Does Islam Teach Pure Monotheism? Shadid Lewis vs. Anthony Rogers, is scheduled to take place on the 8th at 1:30pm. The location for this debate may or may not be the same as the others. I will update this post once I find out for sure.  

***Update 8/27/13***

The first debate on Does Islam Teach Pure Monotheism? is officially scheduled to take place on September 8th at 1:15pm at the following location:

Calvary Chapel Anaheim
270 E. Palais Rd.
Anaheim, CA 92805

Abdullah al-Andalusi: Does MDI Need New Leadership?

Well, we finally have the missing piece of the debate-cancellation puzzle. As it turns out, my first suspicion was spot on. If you recall, I initially accused Yahya Snow and the Muslim Debate Initiative of conspiring to shut down open dialogue. When two members of MDI (Sami and Yahya Seymour) said they didn’t know what I was talking about and that there was no ban from MDI, I removed all mention of MDI from my initial post.

Alas, I acted too soon, not because I pointed a finger at MDI, but because I excused the organization. The primary culprit in ending several public debates next month was none other than MDI’s director, Abdullah al-Andalusi. (I assume Sami and Yahya weren’t aware of Abdullah’s actions when they posted their comments here.)

The results have been disastrous. Locations had been rented, a professional film crew hired for all of the debates, and advertisements sent out. When Sheikh Awal backed out of his debates with me, Sam no longer wanted to debate him. Since Sheikh Awal’s cancellations had such a negative effect on next month’s plans, the Center for Religious Debate is no longer willing to work with him for future debates (which put an end to two debate series in September and November, and to most of Sheikh Awal’s debate opportunities in the U.S.). Due to MDI’s underhanded involvement in the cancellations, the Center for Religious Debate has decided not to work with MDI in the future. (Note: The vast majority of Christian-Muslim debates in America are arranged by the Center for Religious Debate.) In other words, somewhere in the ballpark of 90% of the Christian-Muslim debates that would have taken place over the next few years are now officially over.

So why did the leader of a group called the “Muslim Debate Initiative” work behind the scenes to put an end to public debates? I debated Abdullah three times less than a year ago (see here, here, and here). What’s changed since then to account for his move from “Let’s debate David” to “Let’s ban David”? Only one thing. I drew attention to Abdullah’s comments on terrorism. When Abdullah defended the Fort Hood Massacre, I pointed out what he said (and allowed him to respond, giving readers the opportunity to make up their own minds). Not long after, Abdullah called in to “Jesus or Muhammad” during our discussion of the Fort Hood Massacre, and he admitted that he agrees with some of the most violent teachings of classical Muslim scholars (properly interpreted, of course). Interestingly, after a call for peace from Sami Zaatari, I never posted the clip. But since things have changed a bit, consider what Abdullah says.



Abdullah was in a position that no debater wants to be in. He was applying his “Argument from Orthodoxy” against us. If he were consistent, he’d have to agree with the violent teachings I quoted (which would get him into quite a bit of trouble). If he doesn’t agree with the violent teachings I quoted, then he would have to admit that he doesn’t really believe the “orthodoxy” criterion he so vehemently applies to Christians (meaning that he was being deceptive or illogical in applying it to us). His solution? He says he agrees with the violent passages . . . without the spin. Unfortunately for Abdullah, we didn’t spin any of the passages, and the meanings were perfectly clear to our viewers.

So what does a young debater do when his true views start rising to the surface? Does he apologize for what he’s said? Does he try to keep a tighter reign on his words? No. Abdullah’s solution is to silence anyone who would dare expose him. Normally, this would be impossible. But Abdullah has been spending all his time over the last two years getting Muslims around the world to join his group. Why? To debate? Obviously not. It seems that Abdullah wants to control the debate spectrum. He wants to control who debates, when they debate, what topics they debate, and so on.

There is one thing that bothers me more than anything else, however. Instead of openly declaring some sort of “Anti-David” boycott, Abdullah decided to work behind the scenes, shutting down opposition under cover of darkness. What’s worse, he was completely willing to let Yahya Snow take the fall for his manipulation. If you recall, Yahya Snow had proclaimed a boycott by a Muslim apologetics group. When MDI assured me that there was no such ban, and Yahya refused to identify a group, I accused Yahya of telling tall tales. In reality, Abdullah was secretly shutting down debates, and he apparently convinced Yahya to keep quiet (which ultimately didn’t work too well, since Yahya decided to point me in the right direction). But what did Abdullah do when I was accusing Yahya? Did he jump in and say, “Don’t blame him. I did it. I’m responsible.” Not at all. He was completely willing to let Yahya take the fall, despite the fact that Abdullah played a much larger (and more sinister) roll. While Yahya has always been open about his desire to shut down public debates, Abdullah continued to portray himself as a champion of public debates (even though he was behind the scenes plotting to overthrow anyone who dares challenge him, all the while letting other people take the blame).

Is this the sort of person who should be running a debate organization—a man who can’t handle criticism, who uses his position to thwart those who expose his statements, who throws his fellow Muslims under the bus to further his own selfish agenda, and who lets his fellow Muslims take the fall for his deceptive and manipulative misdeeds?

Abdullah al-Andalusi (like Yahya Snow, leaders of CAIR, etc.) portrays himself as a respectful Muslim. But there’s a massive difference between what Abdullah says to your face and what he says behind your back. Is anyone surprised? As Muhammad’s companion Abu Darda put it, "We smile in the face of some people although our hearts curse them.''

I have no desire to continue debating in an atmosphere of deception, manipulation, intimidation, and cowardice. It seems I’ll now be turning to atheists for a good debate. (Sadly, I suspect I’ll find more integrity among atheists than I have found with Abdullah.) I will continue to expose Islam on this blog, on YouTube, and on “Jesus or Muhammad.” But after the events that have already been scheduled for next month, I will not engage in public debates with Muslims.

In case anyone wants the context to the above video, here’s the full discussion with Abdullah. (Note: This was shortly after the Fort Hood Massacre, which Abdullah had already defended. After going through Major Nidal Malik Hassan’s PowerPoint presentation, a Muslim called in to defend the massacre. Needless to say, with temperatures running high, Abdullah’s attempts to distort the Bible and evade questions were not well-received. As a rule, don’t expect a perfectly polite exchange following terrorist attacks!)

Sad, Sad, Sad

(NOTE: PLEASE READ THE UPDATES AT THE END OF THIS POST, AS NOT ALL OF MDI WAS INVOLVED IN THESE EVENTS.)

The Muslim Debate Initiative has posted their version of Mary Jo's debate with Tabasum. If you'd like a good introduction to Muslim ethics, I invite you to watch the intro. Notice that when we post debates, we don't attempt to bias people against speakers, even if we disagree with those speakers. Yet when MDI posts a debate, they find it necessary to spend several minutes attempting to discredit the opposition. MDI posts scenes of Mary Jo in a discussion with me, Robert Spencer, and Pamela Gellar, in an obvious attempt to focus Muslims' dislike for Spencer and me onto Mary Jo. The intent is to get Muslims so angry at Mary Jo that they will not listen to her arguments. But if you don't want people listening to her arguments, why even have the debates? Moreover, if MDI is satisfied with the debate as it stands, why try to bias people from the start? This is simply pathetic. MDI claims that they respect women, when they clearly show no respect for Mary Jo. I think I speak for several of us when I say that I'm done with the Muslim Debate Initiative.



On a different note, I can't imagine why they would attack Mary Jo for being on a program which claims that Islam promotes the death penalty for apostasy. Could she be thinking of passages like these:

Sahih al-Bukhari 6922—Muhammad said: "Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him.”

Sunan An-Nasa’i 4068—The Messenger of Allah said: "Whoever changes his religion, kill him.”

Sunan Ibn Majah 2535—It was narrated from Ibn Abbas that the Messenger of Allah said: “Whoever changes his religion, execute him.”

Al-Muwatta of Imam Malik 36.18.15—The Messenger of Allah said, “If someone changes his religion—then strike off his head!”

How dare this lying infidel Mary Jo suggest that Islam promotes the death penalty for apostasy! (For a fuller discussion of apostasy, click here.)

Anyone care to guess Mary Jo's impression of Muslims? The first time she was around a large group of Muslims, she was physically assaulted by three of them. (Note: The virtually universal Muslim response to these assaults was: "She deserved it, since she was with David and Nabeel.") Now Muslims post her debate, and they try to discredit her before the debate even starts. And Muslims wonder why Westerners are getting suspicious!

*****UPDATE***** I hear from Roger (Mary Jo's husband) that MDI UK denies responsibility for the video. If this is correct, then it seems that the Muslims from the Islamic center in Canada (friends of Tabasum?) have produced the video. Hopefully, we'll have this cleared up soon.

*****2ND UPDATE***** The video has been removed. I assume it will be reposted without the pre-debate attacks. Everything I know is second-hand, but it seems that most of the members of MDI were not aware of the attacks against Mary Jo and did not approve of the content. Based on the little information I have, the attacks appear to have come from Tabasum, her husband, and the Canadian Muslims, and have little or nothing to do with UK or US members of MDI.