July 22, 2005

Guardian Dumps Terror Group Trainee

I noted a few days ago that London's Guardian newspaper had an honest-to-God (or should that be "honest-to-Allah") terrorist supporter working for it, and writing columns in support of terrorism. Well, the paper has finally done the right thing, and dumped trainee journalist Dilpazier Aslam.

Trainee journalist Dilpazier Aslam had his contract with the Guardian terminated today.

The move followed an internal inquiry into AslamÂ’s membership of the political organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir.

A statement said: “The Guardian now believes continuing membership of the organisation to be incompatible with his continued employment by the company.”

“Mr Aslam was asked to resign his membership but has chosen not to. The Guardian respects his right to make that decision but has regretfully concluded that it had no option but to terminate Mr Aslam’s contract with the company.”

The inquiry followed a piece written by Aslam for the Guardian’s comment pages entitled “We rock the boat”.

The statement added: “The Guardian accepts that it should have explicitly mentioned Mr Aslam’s membership of Hizb ut-Tahrir at the end of his comment piece.”

A correction will appear in the paperÂ’s Corrections and Clarifications column.

The paper also went into a deeper explanation of its association with this jihadi wannabe, and the group of which he is a member.

Now normally I get upset when employers fire people over their religious and political associations (though, for the record, I recognize the moral right of a private employer to fire for any reason -- including race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, etc). But this case falls into the exemption from my outrage. Decent people do not associate with members of certain organizations -- The black panthers, the Klan, the Nazi Party, NAMBLA, the Jewish Defense League, and the like. Aslams's group, Hizb ut-Tahrir, falls into this catgory. So far from feeling a need to condemn the Guardian, I applaud it -- and hope that it eventually the paper drops its own anti-Semitic, terrorist-apologist editorial line.

(Hat Tip: Michelle Malkin)

UPDATE: Ripclawe at Narcissistic views on News/Politics points out that the Guardian can't seem to get its story straight about what they knew, when they knew it, and why the got rid of Aslam. And Princeton Progressive Review's Asheesh Siddique engages in a gratuitous attack on Michelle Malkin (questioning her mental health and grouping her with Aslam as an extremist) while reluctantly agreeing with her.

Posted by: Greg at 05:45 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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