THREAD: In remote India, I found an abandoned Ottoman tomb.
It helped me uncover how the deposed last caliph, a painter and musician, launched a plan to revive the caliphate in India - with the help of a billionaire prince, the world's richest man:
THREAD: Peter Oborne and I have spent weeks investigating the close ties between Rishi Sunak, his family, the Tory party and India’s Hindu nationalist far right.
This is what we found:
EXCLUSIVE: The UK government has ignored communications from the country’s largest body representing British Muslims since far-right riots began last Tuesday, Middle East Eye can reveal
BREAKING: Benjamin Netanyahu refused to meet British Foreign Secretary David Lammy on his Israel trip - despite Britain asking multiple times - reportedly because of the UK's support for the ICC
EXCLUSIVE: Middle East Eye can reveal that Trinity College Cambridge, one of the UK's richest landowners, has decided to divest from all arms companies.
MEE revealed in February that Trinity invests in Elbit, Israel's largest arms manufacturer
Labour conference: David Lammy meets Israeli politician who called for Palestinians to "starve to death" - as Rachel Reeves poses with ambassador who suggested it was legitimate to destroy every building in Gaza
On TalkTV today I argued that Qatar shouldn't be criticised for asserting Islamic values regarding alcohol, Qur'an recitation and prayer times. Why should they submit to the preferences of Western visitors?
The Muslim head of a high-performing London school was forced to resign in 2019 and then banned from teaching, accused of obstructing a counter-terrorism investigation.
Today, nearly four years later, he was cleared of all allegations. My story:
The slightest hint of an international boycott and the BJP releases a statement. What this shows is that if the Muslim world applied *real* economic pressure the persecution of Indian Muslims simply would not be escalating at this pace.
The Grand Mufti of Oman along with Twitter handles with a large following have called for the boycott and also launched a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
UK home secretary says waving Palestinian flag could be a criminal offence - this is the criminalisation of Palestinian identity.
Where are the free speech warriors now?
Disgusting. Repressive. Racist
I spoke to the protesters hauled out of the Labour conference after heckling Rachel Reeves.
Jack, aged 37 and a Labour member, told me it's "disgusting that this government continues to send arms licences to Israel as it carries out a genocide"
Recently I revealed that Trinity College Cambridge - where Lord Balfour studied - has millions invested in companies fuelling Israel's war on Gaza.
Since then, Trinity has been given a legal notice over potential "complicity" in war crimes
BREAKING: Palestine Action spray and slash a historic painting of Lord Balfour in Trinity College, University of Cambridge.
Written in 1917, Balfour’s declaration began the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by promising the land away — which the British never had the right to do.
EXCLUSIVE: The UK is likely to introduce restrictions on arms sales to Israel, Middle East Eye can reveal.
Labour is also expected to drop its objection to the ICC’s arrest warrant for senior Israeli leaders
Peter Oborne and I write for Middle East Eye: How King Charles opposed the Iraq War, sympathises with the Palestinians, and had his worldview shaped by French Muslim intellectual Rene Guenon.
@OborneTweets
Peter Oborne and I examined Lord Walney's dossier on election abuse, sent to the Home Office.
We found it uses partisan and unreliable sources, including an anonymous twitter account - and fails to examine abuse and death threats against independent MPs:
NEW: Independent pro-Gaza candidate Adnan Hussain has defeated Labour in northwestern Blackburn - which has been represented by Labour MPs for 69 years
Electrifying atmosphere outside Cambridge's King's College.
Students of all backgrounds and religions, including many Jewish students, have started an encampment denouncing investments in companies complicit in Israel's war on Gaza.
The Nizam of Hyderabad, an Indian Muslim prince, died last Saturday. Few people know that he was nominated Caliph by Abdulmecid II, the last Ottoman Caliph. I tell the full story, which takes us from Istanbul to the French Riviera and Hyderabad, here:
The Green Party has voted to recognise Israel's actions in Gaza as genocide - the first major British political party to do so.
Cllr Mothin Ali told me the party has "shown leadership on the issue", and Aasiya Bora (Muslim Greens) said it's "made history"
“These Pakistanis have no right to speak.” Tory peer Lord Rami Ranger has made a series of racially charged statements about British Pakistanis while condemning the BBC over its documentary on Modi. Peter Oborne and I write for Middle East Eye:
If you search "ICJ hearing" on Google, an Israeli government advert appears at the top of the page accusing South Africa of "malicious blood libel".
The ad says Hamas committed genocide - and adds that accusing Israel of genocide is antisemitic
My piece:
I am a secondary school student. Last week a Prevent-funded 'Real Talk' workshop was held at our school. My friend and I organised a demonstration against it and held these banners. We were threatened with behavioural sanctions if we did not stop.
@StudentsNotSus
@UK_CAGE
2. Last summer Rishi Sunak made a surprise visit to Cambridge University, where he paid tribute and bowed to Morari Bapu.
Bapu was then the largest donor to the Ram temple, built on the ruins of a mosque demolished amid anti-Muslim riots
In Dewsbury & Batley, pro-Gaza independent Iqbal Mohamed received more than 40 percent of the votes - a thumping majority.
Labour's Heather Iqbal came a distant second with 22.9 percent of the total vote share
@Aakar__Patel
7. Sunak understands Hindutva and the Modi govt better than most politicians.
His grandfather was a member of the RSS, which has been repeatedly accused of violence against minorities.
Note: Hindutva is not to be confused with Hinduism, which is practised by a billion people
5. In Feb 2023 when the Indian govt banned the BBC film and then launched an attack on the BBC, Sunak didn't defend the broadcaster.
Instead he took a swipe at the BBC
4. The event at Jesus College Cambridge was organised by Lord Dolar Popat, a Tory peer who supports Indian PM Narendra Modi and last year urged the BBC not to air a documentary highlighting Modi’s attacks on minorities
The King is a critic of the secularism of France and Belgium, disagreeing with their bans on women wearing the veil in public. He also openly criticised Trump's demonisation of Muslims.
Prevent Officer to a Muslim child: "There's parts of the Bible, as with every religious text including the Qur'an, that are no longer relevant in today's society because time has moved on."
That's the new coercive secular liberalism summed up in a single line.
Exposed: Exclusive audio recording of Prevent officer undermining a Muslim child's religious belief". Like and Share to expose Prevent. Donate to keep prevent watch going
Donate at
#keepPreventWatchgoing
@Aakar__Patel
10. Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murty, was co-director of Catamaran Venture’s UK arm when the firm invested in far-right Indian media outlets OpIndia and Swarajya.
Both have been described as “inflammatory” and “anti-Muslim”
NEW: Mark Smith, the British civil servant who resigned, has said he was formerly the lead author of the central assessment governing the legality of UK arms sales in the Foreign Office's Middle East and North Africa Directorate
There's crucial context missing from most reporting on the slashed portrait of notorious antisemite Balfour.
As I revealed for MEE last month, Trinity College Cambridge has millions invested in companies directly involved in Israel's bombardment of Gaza:
6. Chair of Amnesty India’s board
@Aakar__Patel
: "The BJP carries out its majoritarian agenda under the carapace of constitutional pluralism.
"It is disappointing for this reason that Sunak chose to allow the BBC to be bullied for its journalism"
In Britain, a new domestic war on terror is about to begin.
In this piece Peter Oborne and I explain what it will look like.
We show how figures from controversial right-wing think tanks have designed a new security architecture targeting Muslims:
3. The Ram temple has been a key cause for India's Hindu nationalists.
In India's last election cycle in 2019, Bapu campaigned aggressively for the Ram Temple and joined ranks with the chief of the paramilitary RSS, Mohan Bhagwat, to lobby for its construction
I reported on the Muslim independents throughout the election: they campaigned on Gaza but also local issues. They appealed to voters unhappy with the 2-party system (common trend).
And they won diverse support - not just from Muslims.
This is the opposite of sectarian politics
@Aakar__Patel
8. Meanwhile Sunak’s in-laws are firmly ensconced in India’s pro-Modi establishment circles.
His father-in-law Narayana Murthy has criticised the Modi govt but in recent years become a full-throated Modi supporter
The International Centre of Justice for Palestinians has issued a legal notice to Cambridge's richest college warning it could be complicit in Israeli war crimes - following my report for Middle East Eye revealing Trinity invests millions in companies involved in Israel's war
🚨BREAKING🚨
ICJP has issued a notice to Trinity College Cambridge for their investments in companies potentially complicit in Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity and plausible genocide.
Lots of tweets suggesting the Queen was some awful white supremacist. In fact she was a protector of Britain's ethnic and religious minorities.
@tanjil_rashid_
's fantastic piece sets the record straight.
After the British government denounced the National Union of Students over "antisemitism", I spoke to the students who had been condemned.
In fact, they were anti-Zionist Jews.
They told me they feel attacked and made invisible by the establishment:
@Aakar__Patel
@edanderson101
14. Not to be ignored is Priti Patel, Sunak’s potential successor.
She appeared at an event with the joint secretary general of the RSS, notorious for promoting anti-Muslim hate speech.
Patel: It was "an honour that he has travelled to the UK to speak about the RSS"
@Aakar__Patel
11. Back to UK politics. Dr
@edanderson101
told us there have been "concerted efforts to normalise Hindutva" ideology.
"Although this hasn’t been limited to any single party, the Conservatives have probably been more receptive and sympathetic"
@Aakar__Patel
@edanderson101
15. Meanwhile Lord Rami Ranger, a Tory peer widely accused of making racially charged remarks attacking British Pakistanis, was recently photographed wearing a BJP-branded scarf.
Is this appropriate? The Tory party wouldn’t say
Chris Doyle
@Doylech
told us it was extraordinary that it had taken "11 months of carnage".
But it's greatly significant that "for the first time a British government has accepted that Israel was likely to have violated international law in Gaza"
@Aakar__Patel
@edanderson101
17.
@SAsiaSolidarity
told us: "Links between Rishi Sunak and far-right, rapidly Islamophobic Hindu supremacists are deeply concerning."
The
@UKIMCouncil
said all of the UK’s political parties should undergo training on what Hindutva is - including Labour and the Lib Dems
Please donate what you can and help this family in Gaza rebuild their lives. This is a verified campaign and every little helps. And if it’s beyond your means, feel free to share and amplify 🙏🏼
NEW: Cambridge University's Trinity College has millions invested in companies fuelling Israel's war on Gaza.
The ICJP described the elite institution's involvement in Israel's military and illegal settlement industries as "beyond belief"
My latest:
@Aakar__Patel
@edanderson101
13. Bob Blackman told us the president was there campaigning for him.
The group recently pedalled the anti-Muslim trope that Muslims are Islamising the UK.
We asked Bob Blackman about it. No response
@Aakar__Patel
@edanderson101
12. One example: Bob Blackman, incumbent Tory candidate.
This month the president of Overseas Friends of the BJP UK was seen in Blackman’s campaign office.
Why?
NEW: Jeremy Corbyn has defeated Labour as an independent candidate.
He received more votes in Islington North than Labour leader Keir Starmer did in Holborn & St Pancras
@Aakar__Patel
@edanderson101
16. The Sunak government appointed Ian Austin, then Trade Envoy to Israel, to lead a review into the Leicester riots. Austin has been widely accused of making anti-Muslim comments
The Nizam of Hyderabad, Mukarram Jah, has passed away. Few know that he was nominated Khalifa (Caliph) by his grandfather, the last Ottoman Caliph Abdulmecid II - the result of a plan by Indian freedom fighter Maulana Shaukat Ali. His son, Prince Azmet Jah, will succeed him.
Britain's problem: an epidemic of disgusting, unchallenged anti-Palestinian racism.
Journalists smear innocent people as terrorist supporters. They treat the Palestine flag as illegitimate and murderous.
@OborneTweets
and I write for MEE:
Emotional scenes at the Cambridge encampment for Gaza as students find out Trinity College Cambridge, which (as as we revealed at Middle East Eye) invests in Israel's largest arms manufacturer, has decided to divest from arms companies
Sunday marks 100 years since the Ottoman Caliphate was abolished.
Abdulmecid II, a talented painter, poet and musician, was the only Caliph of the Turkish Republic.
Here I tell the story of his Caliphate, conflict with Ankara and expulsion from Turkey:
Pickthall: an amazing man. He was commissioned to translate the Qur'an by the Nizam of Hyderabad, Mir Osman Ali Khan - at that time the world's richest man.
@mohammed_hijab
I understand you.
I understand the frustrations of the white man because he is losing his country right before his eyes.
I try to be fair in my world view.
It disgusts me seeing Gaza being conquered by Israel.
So I understand how the native English man feels.
As Muslims do
'The Great Mughal Purge': the Indian government aims to annihilate the very memory of Indo-Islamic civilisation and replace it with their own fiction as they disenfranchise Indian Muslims. Why is the Muslim world sitting back and letting this happen?
I revealed in a Middle East Eye investigation that Cambridge's wealthiest college invests millions in companies involved in Israel's war on Gaza.
It's remarkable now to see so many students protesting against Trinity. Seems like they aren't going to tolerate genocide complicity
It's not just Musk and Twitter bowing to Modi. Here's my investigation with
@OborneTweets
into how Facebook gives a free pass to genocidal hate speech broadcast to millions by figures close to India's ruling party:
A series of anti-Muslim hate crimes. Racist remarks made by a professor with no consequences. A student warned not to mention Palestine in the classroom.
My piece on Cambridge University:
"Labour is 30,000 dead Gazans too late": my piece on The Muslim Vote, a group which is supporting independent candidates against MPs who didn't vote for a ceasefire - and has the Labour leadership worried
Loads of people on Twitter are furiously criticising Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad, meanwhile the man himself right now is just doing what he's devoted his life to doing: tirelessly serving his local Muslim community - most of whom are immigrants, by the way.
If you haven’t yet read Travelling Home, a summary might be: “Nobody is safe, I’m coming for everyone. And anyone can get it.”
The shaykh wasn’t wrong when he said it might ruffle some feathers.
Here on Muslim immigrants to the UK:
An outstanding Muslim headteacher, wrongly accused of obstructing a terror case, lost his livelihood and was held in limbo for years - as government agencies made false claims about his school.
My investigation for Middle East Eye tells his story:
Deputy Green Party leader Zack Polanski tells me antisemitism is being weaponised. Parliamentary candidates Aasiya Bora and Sharmen Rahman say the Greens are morally clear on Gaza - unlike Labour.
My latest: How Gaza is transforming the Green Party
NEW: The five independent MPs are forming an official alliance as a parliamentary grouping.
Jeremy Corbyn MP told me: "We will ensure the government knows the true scale of public disgust over its continued, shameful refusal to end arms sales to Israel"
Why is India's ruling party inciting Hindutva violence against Muslims in Britain? Hindu nationalism is now a global threat.
Security sources have revealed that the riots in Leicester last year were stoked by the BJP:
"We need to permanently remove Islam": A deep dive into how misinformation by Andrew Tate, Tommy Robinson, Laurence Fox and others fuelled anti-Muslim riots in Southport
EXCLUSIVE: Tory peer Lord Daniel Hannan says Oxford University caved into "legal and political pressure" to block jailed Imran Khan from running for chancellor
Sky News published a headline referring to Israeli soldiers as teenagers, saying they were killed by Hezbollah.
The same headline put Palestinian deaths in quotation marks and didn't mention that they were killed by the Israeli military.
Why?
Britain is now likely to BAN pro-Palestine protests.
Then what political action is available to people in solidarity with Palestine? The two main parties won't even back a ceasefire.
Looks like the criminalisation of dissent - but also of Palestinian identity itself
The explosion of attacks on Jews in the UK since 7 October is a national emergency. In my forthcoming review, I’m planning to recommend change in the law to give police powers to ban the marches for fuelling antisemitic crime
NEW: Taylor Swift is partnered with a firm that bankrolled Israel’s largest weapons maker - as her fans urge the singer to speak out on Gaza.
My story for Middle East Eye:
Prominent social media figures, including Andrew Tate, spread misinformation about the Southport stabbing (the attacker is neither Muslim nor a migrant).
Now a far-right mob has launched a violent attack on a mosque. Here's how it all unfolded:
At breaktime, "no more than four pupils can gather to socialise. Teachers will intervene to ensure that groups are ethnically and religiously mixed"
The school championed by the Tory press is an authoritarian nightmare
Piece by Professor John Holmwood:
In the Hunger Games series, the government kills children as collective punishment and bombs a hospital, while rebels kill civilians.
But it's not stirred controversy, and the director and a main star are avowedly pro-Israel. My piece:
People with ‘extreme hatred of Britain’ could be referred for deradicalisation under Prevent scheme as Sunak vows to expand definition of ‘extremism’ to include ‘vilification of the UK’.
I hope the government’s got sufficient resources to manage this.
The British government intends to stop funding a major interfaith charity, potentially forcing it to shut down.
Why? Because one of its trustees is a member of the Muslim Council of Britain.
My story for Middle East Eye:
BREAKING: The US and UK say they will boycott a Nagasaki bombing memorial in Japan after Israel was excluded from the event.
The US killed tens of thousands of Japanese civilians when it used atomic bombs on Nagasaki in 1945
King Charles is out of step with Britain's political class: he opposed the Iraq War, sympathises with the Palestinians and has a deep interest in Islamic tradition and thought. Peter Oborne and I wrote on this for MEE when Charles became king: