The Quilliam Foundation launch document, released on the day of their launch, contains a number of proposals and references that are curious in the light of their namesake and exemplar Abdullah Quilliam.

As a way of highlighting yet more inconsisties of this claim to be the inheritors of Abdullah Quilliam, I have compiled a few examples from the Quilliam Foundation launch and contrasted them to what we know about Abdullah Quilliam.

  • ON MUSLIM UNITY

Quilliam Foundation says “End the ‘them-and-us’mentality prevalent among elder Muslim leaders. Britain belongs to all of us, non-Muslims and Muslims.” (Launch Document Page 7)

Abdullah Quilliam says “At the present time union is more than ever necessary among Muslims. The Christian powers are proposing a new crusade to shatter the Muslim powers, under the pretext that they desire to civilise the world. This is nothing but hypocrisy, but armed as they are with the resources of Western civilisation it will be impossible to resist them unless Muslims stand united as one solid phalanx.”

  • ON  “FOREIGN” SUPPORT

Quilliam Foundation says “Cut ties with Islamist groups and funding agencies from Saudi Arabia” (Launch Document Page 7) (*NOTE QUILLIAM FOUNDATION TAKES FUNDING FROM KUWAIT)

Abdullah Quilliam – The Shah of Persia made him a consul to his country. In 1894, Sultan Abdul Hamid II, the last Ottoman emperor, gave Quilliam the title of “Sheikh al-Islam of Britain”, leader of British Muslims. The Sultan of Afghanistan gave him a £2,500 “personal gift”, to help him continue his good works

  • ON DRESS SENSE

Quilliam Foundation says “Encourage students and imams to wear clothes that ensure belonging to mainstream society, and not Pakistani ethnic attire designed for a different climate. Islam requires modesty, not Arab or Pakistani clothing” (Launch Document Page 7)

Abdullah Quilliam was said to have appeared in court wearing Turkish ceremonial dress. Others claim he travelled through Liverpool on a white Arab horse

  • ON “RADICAL” Sermons

Quilliam Foundation says “Radical sermonizers should be actively rejected by Muslim student bodies, and not given succour in the name of ‘Muslim unity'” (Launch Document Page 10)

Whereas Abdullah Quilliam was never one to go quietly and launched a series of attacks on the British government. When the Prime Minister, William Gladstone, was due to give a speech in Liverpool urging action against the Ottoman Empire for its treatment of Armenians, Quilliam leapt to the emperor’s defence. He gathered his congregation at the mosque to make a rival speech, during which he declared the West was quite happy to ignore “Christian atrocities” elsewhere.

“An Armenian explodes a bomb in the crowded streets of Constantinople and slays innocent women and children and, because he calls himself a Christian he is extolled in England as a hero and as a patriot!” Quilliam wrote. “An Afghan fights for his fatherland in the Khyber Pass, and because he is a Muslim he is denounced as a traitor and a rebel.”

  • ON INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 

Quilliam Foundation says “The vast majority of mosque imams and congregations cannot distinguish a pious believer from an extremist. Matters are made worse by the fact that organizations that claim to represent British Muslims have at their helm men who believe in foreign political ideologies that seek to usurp Islam for political purposes” (Launch Document Page 5)

Abdullah Quilliam says “O Muslims, do not be deceived by this hypocrisy. Unite yourselves as one man. Let us no longer be separated. The rendevous of Islam is under the shadow of the Khalifate. The Khebla of the True-Believer who desires happiness for himself and prosperity to Islam is the holy seat of the Khalifate”

  • ON ISLAM AND POLITICS

Quilliam Foundation says “Educate Islamists that the first group of people that called for the equivalent of ‘political sovereignty belonging to God’ (as Islamists do) were the Khawarij, who killed Imam Ali, son-in-law of the Prophet” (Launch Document Page 6)

Abdullah Quilliam replies “All praise be to God Who, in His unlimited goodness, has favoured us with the gift of the True religion of Islam, and Who has ordered the brethren to be united, and declared this to be His law in the before-quoted Ayat of the Holy and Imperishable Koran!”

 

This should be sufficient for everyone to draw their own conclusions as to the twisting of the memory of Abdullah Quilliam to suit the opportunistic sycophantes of today.