William Shawcross – The Neocon, Zionist, Anti-Muslim Head of the Charity Commission

Muslim charities have been coming under intense scrutiny of late, and it seems that it is no coincidence that this discriminatory treatment of the Muslim charities is in synchrony with Shawcross’s appointment. Him overseeing charities is a major threat to all charities which do not subscribe to the current government’s policies and neoconservative aims.  It is thus necessary to analyse this individual from the Muslim minority perspective to determine whether there is a possibility of discriminatory treatment of charities associated to or run by members of the Muslim minority of the UK.

The Charity Commission Neocon Coup

The fact that William Shawcross resigned from the Henry Jackson Society in 2012, a neoconservative organisation with Douglas Murray on the board, to take up his appointed role as head of the Charity Commission gives us the first clue to his mindset.

It is worth analysing his controversial appointment.  Both the Labour and the Lib Dem MPs criticised Shawcross.  MPs drew the attention of their concern at his pre-appointment hearing highlighting his extreme political views, bias towards the conservative party, and his resultant lack of impartiality.  In a poll by the Guardian in determining whether Shawcross was suitable for the role, 77 per cent of the readers voted “No”.

This neocon coup does not end with Shawcross however. Most of the replacement board members also have some interesting, extremely biased, untenable backgrounds:

• Orlando Fraser was Conservativehome’s “Five for the future”

• Peter Clarke was formerly the Head of Counter-Terrorism Unit and was (through a security contract in Iraq and Libya with Olive Group) and still is employed by major war-profiteers (KBR) as an advisor to them

• Nazo Moosa was the Director of the Carlyle Group – another major war-profiteering company

• Tony Leifer is a Member of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, an organisation which despite claims to the contrary, is an avid promoter of Zionist/Israel supporting events and have campaigned against human rights organisations which are deemed anti-Israel

•  Gwythian Prins is a senior academic advisor to the Defence Academy of the UK. He has written, that

 “Moves are needed to take defence and security, as far as possible, back out of the arena of short-term party politics.”

In other words, defence policies should not be democratically controlled.

The Charity Commission is run by partisan, warmongering elites whose interests and vision are in clear compliance with all that neonconservatism represents: elitism, deception and perpetual war.

Shawcross – Iraq War and Guantanamo Bay

William Shawcross, like Andrew Gilligan was once a journalist of repute. Another Eton College and David Cameron bed-fellow, he switched to neoconservatism and has since supported the Iraq war through his writings by bending legal precedent as per his neocon beliefs, and twisting even the Nuremberg trials to justify his own extremism.

Invoking the legacy of his father who was present in the Nuremberg trials, he has used it as a smokescreen to defend the United States’ disregard for human rights in the context of Guantanamo Bay, stating:

“Any Nazi defendant transported by time machine from the dock in Nuremberg to that in Guantanamo would be stunned by the rights, privileges, and safeguards to which he was now entitled. Most basic of all, there was no right of appeal at Nuremberg. As General Martins said, “Like our forebears [at Nuremberg], we are not seeking “victors’ justice,” but justice consistent with the rule of law and our longstanding values and ideals.””

The falsity in this statement is ridiculously self-evident.  We are not living in accordance with the standards emanating from the atmosphere of shock from the genocide in WWII, where justice was desperately sought.  Rather, the international legal norms have developed and refined over the years to a preventative form, restraining the abuses of power the likes of which the current UK Government is perpetrating and halting the creation of conditions which led to the Holocaust.

However his writings are an extension of his neoconservative philosophy which regards an architected perpetual war as a necessity to govern the masses through fear.  As the Canadian academic Drury (The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss, 2003) regarding neoconservatism states,

“Perpetual war, not perpetual peace, is what Straussians believe in.”  

Shawcross – Zionist, Anti-Islam and Anti-Muslim

His philosophy of neoconservatism extends to his blatant, bigoted bias against Islam and Muslims. This is mostly through the “Islamist” rhetoric, positing the discredited (by MI5 no less) conveyor-belt theory of radicalisation as truth. However, his true position on Islam and Muslims has come out. In a lecture delivered by him regarding his book, he states:

“Europe and Islam is one greatest most terrifying problems of our future, I think all European countries have vastly, very quickly, growing Islamic populations…”

In his Zionist, blind defence of Israel, he has frequently attacked the United Nations for condemning Israeli actions, calling it a “lynch mob”, and rehashes the false claims of Iran’s “threats to obliterate” Israel.  Whilst trivialising Israeli extremisms he maintains that:

“Israel is an imperfect society (like any other), but it has extraordinary social, scientific and scholastic achievements.”

Rehashing the same right-wing neocon extremist, anti-Muslim rhetoric without the same level of nonchalance he writes:

“Radical Muslims, on the other hand, stone women, hang homosexuals and kill to deny free speech. Do Europeans protest that? Not many, not often.”

The above statement is a staple neocon/EDL-esque regurgitation: gross simplification, contextual misapplication, outright lies, and more significantly an attack on the theological rulings established scripturally in Islam through smear and distortion.  Is a man with such overt bigoted bias fit to hold a position in the Charity Commission?

His anti-Muslim tirade, through his emotional plea for Israel continues:

“No one marches or calls emergency meetings of the UN and the EU to protest the vicious Muslim brutality against other Muslims that takes place every day throughout the Islamic world – and beyond. No one demonstrates on behalf of Christians murdered in the Middle East, their churches burned.”

His pro-Zionist/anti-Muslim bias is most acute in the language used in the following quote:

“The Muslim world and the Western Left are in an unholy alliance; they do not want to improve the Jewish state, they want to remove it… [Obama] He has showed himself far more tolerant of (or unconcerned by) abuses of power in the Muslim world than by mistakes of Israel.”

Muslims abuse power.  Israel makes “mistakes”. “Mistakes” which include habitual violations of international law and committing crimes against humanity. “Mistakes” where Palestinian children as human shields in war, torturing them and imprisoning them for 20 years for throwing a stone at a tank. “Mistakes” in which the reality of the hatred of the Israelis comes to the fore in their massacres of the Palestinians and the racist graffiti by the IDF in Palestinians homes. These are of course, but “mistakes”.

His constant drum-beating against Islam in his writing clearly postulates a position akin to Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations. His Neocon, Zionist motivations are evident in the article from which the above quotes are taken.  He sets the piece up to depict the “Muslim world” – not Islamist extremists, or terrorists – as one which is intolerant and racist towards Jews.  Ironically, similar quotes can be found in the statements of Jewish oppressors such as Ariel Sharon and even Ehud Barak who infamously called Palestinians “crocodiles”. Recently the mayor of Jerusalem Nir Barkat was endorsing Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu for the Chief Rabbi position. He is an outright racist who has gone on record to say,

“Arab society is generally and without generalizations, a violent society”

“It is forbidden to sell apartments to Arabs, it is forbidden to rent apartments to Arabs. Say ‘racist’ all you want, I’m unimpressed by such words. This, by the way, is prohibited by Jewish law.”

In Shawcross’s blatant wanton bias, extremisms amongst Jewish Israelis are not recognised, and are categorised as “mistakes”.

He has also endorsed the extremist neocon Douglas Murray, who views Islam and Muslims in the following light:

“Islam is a proselytising faith, and one that is incompatible with British history, British law, and British society. With nearly two million Muslims currently living within Britain’s borders, no risk whatsoever should be taken… Britain must start implementing its response… we must not allow tolerance to prove the Achilles heel of our freedom. To defend our tolerance we must be intolerant to those who oppose us, even when we express tolerance. We must not tolerate them” (Murray, 2003)

The above quote is from Douglas Murray’s Neoconservatism: Why we need it. Shawcross endorsing his work in his book writes:

“Conservatism is lost in crisis – Douglas Murray brilliantly defines the way out.”

Shawcross also references him in his own publication (Justice and the Enemy: Nuremberg, 9/11, and the Trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) which is an exemplification of neoconservatism, justifying outrages like the Iraq war, Guantanamo Bay and imperial American foreign policies. In the acknowledgements he cites Douglas Murray and even “mad Mel” Melanie Philips among other anti-Muslim haters and thanks them for helping him in writing his book (p.219).

Brievik cited Phillips’s articles in his terrorist manifesto

It is interesting to note that Andres Breivik, the right-wing, anti-Muslim terrorist who bombed Norwegian government buildings and massacred innocent civilians cited articles written by Melanie Philips in his terrorism manifesto. Regarding Muslims she has gone on record saying,

“The problem, however, is that it doesn’t understand what Muslim extremism is. Believing that Islamic terrorism is motivated by an ideology which has ‘hijacked’ and distorted Islam, it will not acknowledge the extremism within mainstream Islam itself.”

There is no distinction here between an “Islamist” threat and Islam itself, as is tactfully done by the current UK Government. This is understandable given her views are similar to Robert Spencer’s, with whom she has shared platforms as a speaker spreading her message of anti-Muslim hate. Platforms, which have been organised by the extremely bigoted David Horowitz Freedom Center, the umbrella organisation running Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch website.

Pamela Geller, who is the anti-Muslim speaker for the American Tea Party and who has advocated an alliance with the EDL, is an admirer of Phillips and cites her work.

Note that both Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer were banned from entering the UK, by non-other than Theresa May the government extremist. So even by government extremist standards, these two are extreme beyond extreme!

Shawcross  – An Extremist According to the Government

Such are the associations  of William Shawcross, some of whom have links with individuals who have inspired terrorist atrocities and violent right-wing movements. He is an extremist neocon.  And an extremist even according to the government’s PREVENT definition of extremism:

“Extremism is vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including… individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs”

He has praised and defended Guantanamo Bay, the anti-thesis to the human rights paradigm and has therefore vocally opposed individual liberty of all human beings.  And his extremely bigoted, anti-Muslim views expressed through his articles, books and lectures are an active opposition to “mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs”.

Arriving at the precipice of our discussion, I end with following question and recommendation: how can such an individual, who openly proclaims is deceptive neoconservative philosophy, associates with people who are outright Muslim-haters and who have connections with individuals banned by the Home Secretary, is an extremist by laymen’s standards as well as the government’s, be allowed to remain as the head of the Charity Commission?

The above analysis points to the overwhelming conclusion: he must be removed.