The Camel Corps rides again

Camel Corps was a perjorative term for those senior civil servants in the Foreign Office who had spent all their careers in Arab states as Residents or Agents. They could be relied upon to express the idea of Noble Bedu in place of the Westernised Muslim whenever the motives of their Arb friends were questioned.

I've chosen to re-print an article rather than link to it. It suggests to me that those same attitudes of the Camel Corps ride again - 40 years or so after I first experienced them.

I am no Islamophobe
Martin Bright
July 14, 2006 05:25
PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/martin_bright/2006/07/post_230.html
It seems I have been labelled an Islamophobe by the Muslim Council of Britain. This stock response to any criticism of MCB leadership is becoming as tiresome as Zionist cries of anti-Semitism when the state of Israel is put under any kind of scrutiny. The reason for its ire is a programme I have helped make, showing on Channel 4 at 7.30pm tonight, about the government's strange love affair with radical Islam. It didn't help that I also wrote a pamphlet for the centre-right think tank, Policy Exchange, making the same arguments. A series of leaked Foreign Office documents, demonstrate that the mandarins dealing with the Middle East believe we have no choice but to engage with the radical religious right, such as Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. Officials seem to think that Islamists are the coming force in the Middle East and so dialogue is necessary. But what most people don't know is that the same officials, based in a department called Engaging with the Islamic World, also deal with British Muslim issues. My argument is that the government's engagement strategy has become poisoned by the Foreign Office's inaccurate picture of moderate, mainstream British Muslim opinion.My argument isn't with the Muslim Council of Britain, which is merely the Islamist creature of Michael Howard and Jack Straw. My argument is with government ministers who have consistently failed to seek out other voices in the wider Muslim community. I only hope Margaret Beckett takes a good look at the legacy left by her predecessor and seeks out some new partners. It's hard to know whether attitudes in the Foreign Office are changing since the reshuffle, because no minister has been prepared to be interviewed on the subject.
Meanwhile, £300,000 of taxpayers' money has been spent on an Islamist conference in Istanbul, where the head of the Engaging with the Islamic World Group, Frances Guy, held a meeting with the spiritual head of the
Muslim Brotherhood, Yusuf al-Qaradawi. The leaks show that Qaradawi is considered a mainstream figure by the Foreign Office, despite his support for suicide bombing in Israel, the execution of homosexuals and female genital mutilation.Another figure considered mainstream by the Foreign Office's Islamic Issues Adviser, Mockbul Ali, is Bangladeshi MP,
Delwar Hossein Sayeedi. Among the "mainstream" beliefs attributed to Sayeedi are the following: that Hindus can be compared to excrement; that British troops deserve all that's coming to them in Afghanistan and that US troops in Iraq should convert to Islam or come home in coffins. It turns out that Sayeedi has been granted permission to enter Britain despite the concerns of Bangladeshi human rights groups and will speak in east London and Luton this weekend. The Foreign Office has written to Channel 4 in an attempt to remove all references to Sayeedi from tonight's programme. But the TV channel has been robust in its resistance to official censorship.It would be nice to see the MCB condemning Mr Sayeedi's repellent views, which are the real enemy of Islam rather than crying "Islamophobe" at the least provocation. But, unfortunately, there are still questions to be answered about Sayeedi's association with the new head of the MCB, Dr Mohamad Abdul Bari. Meanwhile, the Foreign Office should be forced
publicly to justify its bizarre flirtation with radical Islam rather than trying
to stop journalists doing their job

.