You can read the parliamentary debate secured by Paul Goggins MP (pictured), former minister and current member of the Security and Intelligence Committee, pleading for transitional funding to be made available to the Quilliam Foundation as recorded in Hansard here.

Much like the pleas advanced by QF friends in other quarters, Robert Halfon, Denis MacShane, Nick Cohen and Martin Bright, the parliamentary debate is instructive of politicians who are firm supporters of QF, Mike Gapes (Ilford South), Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles), Patrick Mercer (Newark) among others, and the role they perceive the organisation to have played in counter-extremism.

The debate records the funds QF has received to date from the government, with allocations of £1.2 million from the Home Office and £1.5 million from the Foreign Office, with Paul Goggins seeking a further and urgent £150,000.

Goggins claims, “Quilliam is one of the few Muslim-led organisations willing to confront extremism directly, to name and shame extremist organisations, and to remain unequivocal in its defence of British values, including free speech, freedom of religion, gay rights and respect for others.”

Such hagiographic representations of QF will amuse British Muslims who know the organisation rather better than Goggins appears to. Take for example, its support of a ban on the extremists of Islam 4 UK though it appears to concur that such a ban would indeed be futile, its support for spying on innocent Muslims, its witch-hunt against Osama Saeed, or its claims that “Outside a few flashpoints where the BNP is at work, most Muslims would be hard-pressed to identify Islamophobia in their lives. Yet that is the charge every time the extremists press for new 'rights' – over dress in the workplace, for example.”

Not to mention the infamous “leaked” document in which Quilliam derided a whole host of mainstream Muslim organisations as “Islamists” and urged against Government engagement with them.

So much for its defence of free speech, freedom of religion, and respect for others.

Many other charitable organisations have suffered blows to their budgets with the withdrawal of government funds threatening their future survival so there’s no reason Quilliam should be treated any differently. But the most important observations by Damian Green worthy of pointing out are these:

“…Quilliam was funded by Government …to work in and with Muslim communities to challenge the ideology of terrorism and extremism. In some cases, that has not been done as successfully as Ministers originally hoped.”

“The principle we want to uphold is that Quilliam should be free to contribute to the wider debate, but not depend on Government funding to do so.”

Hear, hear.

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Abdullah   |2011-03-18 01:59:29 Don't forget their attempt to sue Craig Murray for libel because he said - correctly - that QF hadn't filed it's accounts on time. http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2009/11/quilliam-v-craig-murray-another.html This organisation is not fit to receive any more taxpayers' money. What did they do with the 2.7 Million already received?

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