Dilpazier Aslam

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dilpazier Aslam is a 27-year-old British Muslim from Yorkshire and former trainee journalist with The Guardian, who lost his position with the newspaper in July 2005 when it discovered he was a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir.

The Guardian was alerted to Aslam's membership of the group by bloggers who read Aslam's July 13 article [1] in the newspaper about the July 7 London bombings. Entitled "We Rock the Boat," the article discussed the attitudes of young British Muslims, but without mentioning the writer's membership of an Islamist group.

The Guardian subsequently found an article posted by Hizb ut-Tahrir on its British website, Khilafah.com, in March 2002, which quoted a passage from the Qur'an that states, "kill them wherever you find them," and in another paragraph: "the Jews are a people of slander ... a treacherous people ... they fabricate lies and twist words from their right places." The Guardian wrote: "The effect of this juxtaposition appeared to be the incitement of violence against Jews." Before joining The Guardian, Aslam wrote three articles for Khilafah.com, and was once called its Middle Eastern correspondent. [2]

Aslam told Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger that he personally rejected anti-Semitism, but was not willing to leave Hizb ut-Tahrir and did not consider the website to be anti-Semitic. Rusbridger and other executives decided that membership of Hizb ut-Tahrir was not compatible with membership of the newspaper's trainee scheme. [3]

1 Early career
2 Controversy
3 References

[edit] Early career

Aslam studied journalism at Sheffield University with the help of a bursary from the Sheffield Star. Previously he had been a journalistic trainee at the Matlock Mercury in 2004, and won the National Union of Journalists George Viner award for promising black journalists in 2003.

[edit] Controversy

After the London bombings, Aslam wrote or co-wrote a number of articles. In a final, more personal one on July 13, entitled "We Rock the Boat", while formally condemning the attacks, his main point was to suggest a gulf between younger British Muslims and both mainstream British society and the older generation of Muslims. His generation, he claimed, were not prepared to suffer in silence but were "sassy" and prepared to "rock the boat". From recent personal experience in Leeds and Sheffield, he reflected, in particular, upon what he saw as the failure of "community leaders" to express the anger and politicization of British Muslims of his age.

Scott Burgess, a conservative American blogger living in London, searched for Aslam's name on the Internet and discovered that he was a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir and had written articles for its website, khilafah.com. A blogging campaign soon began, supported by notable left- and right-wing blogs, and taken up by some of the mainstream press, to get Aslam sacked. At first The Guardian appeared to stand by its employee, but he was finally given his notice for refusing to end his membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir. The Guardian said it was unaware of his membership of the party, a claim questioned by Aslam's newsroom colleagues, who reported that Aslam had made no secret of it during his time at the paper. It was also said he submitted his work for Hizb ut-Tahrir's website as part of his application.

On announcing that Aslam had been dismissed, The Guardian also published an unusually anonymous story on how the blog campaign had unfolded which was said by many of the bloggers to be an example of 'sour grapes'. The Guardian noted in particular that Scott Burgess had made a failed application for the Guardian traineeship that had gone to Aslam; Burgess countered that he had only facetiously posted the application on his weblog in order to entertain his readers.