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Indy and Times promote fringe activist Taj Hargey

Tuesday, 14 April 2009 09:04

Both the Independent and The Times covered the story of Taj Hargey winning compensation last week over libellous remarks printed in the Muslim Weekly newspaper. The Indy ran the story under the headline, ‘The imam who took on the 'Muslim McCarthyists’’, and The Times, offering Hargey a guest column, ran it under ‘My persecution by the Muslim McCarthyites’.

The problem with Hargey’s claims that he is singled out and persecuted by ‘Muslim McCarthyists’ because he seeks to fashion a reformed Islam more at home in its British setting is that he wishes for himself what he will deny others. While championing his right to engage in 'free thinking', he decries the thinking of other Muslims that don’t share his vision of what a ‘British Islam’ looks like.

The problem is all too characteristic of the travails of being a British Muslim with ‘liberal’, ‘progressive’ and ‘enlightened’ Muslims all looking to exclude others as they unilaterally shape the contours of the fashionably new liberal theology that will define the 21st century British Muslim. But this liberal theology is often liberal only in name, as Hargey’s stance on the wearing of face veils makes clear.

Were Hargey sincere in his endeavour to empower Muslims to align themselves with imams of a progressive tradition without fear of being maligned, he would realise that most Muslims are not enamoured of his thinking, not because they fear the so-called McCarthyite majority, but because the thinking Muslim majority simply don’t find his sermons or ideas convincing. This Ummah Pulse piece on the 'Friday prayer' organised by Hargey, and led by Amina Wadud, is instructive of this. It was notable that more journalists attended Hargey's rather obvious publicity stunt than actual Muslims.

Of course, neither the Independent nor The Times makes any mention of this. But then, where’s the story in a fringe figure like Hargey winning a libel case against a newspaper that ill researched an article before putting it into print?

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Sack Blears - Hargey is an Ahmadi

|2009-04-14 12:21:54

It is well known that Taj Hargey is a Lahori Ahmadi kaafir. To prove this simply ask him to publicly condemn Mirza Ghulam Ahmed as an imposter. He will refuse to do so.

What willing dupes sections of our media are!

Ashraful - Condemnation

|2009-04-14 12:28:45

Whether the case came to the correct conclusion is a moot point but Dr Hargey’s heretical injunctions must be opposed. I was offended, as every Muslim should be, when he invited the reprehensible Amina Wadud to lead a congregation of men and women in prayer in Oxford last year. When we see the manifestation of such gross deviation from Islamic ideals I wonder where the British Muslim condemnation of people like Hargey and Wadud is.