Yvonne Ridley

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Yvonne Ridley
Gender	Female
Born	1959
Birth place	Stanley, County Durham, England
Age	48
Circumstances
Occupation	Journalist and RESPECT politician
Ethnicity	British
Religious belief(s)	Muslim
Notable credit(s)
Official website

Yvonne Ridley (born 1959?, Stanley, County Durham, England) is a British journalist and Respect Party politician best known for her capture by the Taliban and subsequent conversion to Islam.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Marriage and children 1.2 Capture by the Taliban 1.3 Subsequent career 2 Controversy 3 References 4 External links

[edit] Biography

[edit] Marriage and children

Ridley had one daughter, Daisy (born 1992), with her first husband, Daoud Zaaroura, who "was a PLO colonel when Ridley met him in Cyprus" ^[1]. The couple are now divorced. Her third husband was Ilan Roni Hermosh^[2], to whom she was married until 1999.

[edit] Capture by the Taliban

Ridley came to prominence in September 2001 when she was captured by the Taliban in Afghanistan whilst working for the Sunday Express, and held hostage for 11 days. She said she was treated with respect during her captivity, and promised to read the Qur'an after her release, and later did, partly to find out why the Taliban treated women as they do. Despite having been married to Muslims she claims to have had no more knowledge of Islam "than would fill the back of a postage stamp." Reading the Qur'an she says she found no justification for the Taliban's actions, and converted to Islam in the summer of 2003. BBC News point to a popular suggestion that Ridley "is a victim of Stockholm Syndrome, in which hostages take the side of the hostage-takers." ^[3] Ridley rejects this, however, saying "that at no time did anyone try to brainwash her. She tells me that, at one point, she was visited by a cleric who asked if she wanted to convert to Islam. She refused but said that she would read the Koran if she ever got out." ^[4] Indeed she says she "was horrible to [her] captors. I spat at them and was rude and refused to eat. It wasn't until I was freed that I became interested in Islam." ^[5]

[edit] Subsequent career

2003 saw Yvonne Ridley employed by the Qatar based media organization Al Jazeera where, as a senior editor, she helped launch the English language version of their website, but soon after on November 12, 2003 she was fired because Al Jazeera found her "overly-vocal and argumentative style" was incompatible with the station’s programme ^[6] After her departure from Qatar, she published an article about her experiences there. She won her case for unfair dismissal against the channel, ^[7] but was asked to return in May 2006 when the station lodged an appeal against the Qatari court decision.

Ridley was placed at the top of the Respect coalition's party list at the 2004 European Elections for the North East England region but was not elected. She stood as the Respect candidate at the Leicester South by-election in 2004. She came in fourth, with 12.7% of the vote. However, when she stood again in the May 2005 general election, her share of the vote dropped to 6.4%. In the local government elections in 2006 she unsuccessfully stood for a seat on Westminster council.

Ridley is the author of In the Hands of the Taliban: Her Extraordinary Story soon to be re-published by Islam Channel 2006, detailing the 11 days she was held captive by the Taliban; as well as Ticket to Paradise (Dandelion Books, LLC 2003), a novel with fictional characters based on the real backdrop of 9/11. It was written before she converted to Islam and friends say it was never published in the UK because she was too embarrassed by its risque content. She began presenting The Agenda, the Islam Channel's politics and current affairs show, in October 2005; the show is broadcast Europe-wide and available for download at the Islam Channel website.[1] However, the show is currently off-air as "It would appear that the top people at the channel found her views too radical at times. But she disputes this and is considering taking them to an employment tribunal"; the Islam Channel also emphasises that "has not been sacked and is still working for us."^[8] She still writes a regular column for the New York-based Daily Muslims [2] and other publications.

[edit] Controversy

Since her conversion to Islam, Ridley has increasingly come under criticism for her allegedly controversial stances^[9]. In particular surrounding her apparent support for suicide bombings, which she insist on calling martyrdom operations^[10]. As another example, She is reported to have said that, "I hate the term 'suicide bombers' it's an offensive term which was invented by the West to ridicule what many people regard as 'martyrdom operations' and you have to look at each one in context." ^[11] On 21 September 2004 she described radical cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri as "quite sweet really," while her former captors, the Taliban, had suffered an "unfair press." ^[12]

Her vocal support for causes involving Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Chechnya and Uzbekistan have made her a popular speaker in anti-war circles. At a debate at Imperial College London on 16 February 2006 she outlined a viewpoint that is "pretty much in line with that of Hamas." She described Israel as "that disgusting little watchdog of America that is festering in the Middle East" and further that her party, the Respect Party, "is a Zionist-free party… if there was any Zionism in the Respect Party they would be hunted down and kicked out. We have no time for Zionists", while both the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties are "riddled with Zionists." ^[13]

At the "Muslimer i Dialog" conference in Copenhagen in September 2005, Ridley was asked if she didn't see it as a problem that militant Islamists distribute recruiting videos of Iraqi insurgents killing hostages. She replied that it was necessary for Muslims to have these videos at home as an alternative form of news to what she perceived as the propaganda of Western media. At the same meeting she compared British Prime Minister Tony Blair with Pol Pot. ^[14] She returned to Copenhagen in May 2006 to take part in a conference on Islamophobia and was given a standing ovation after urging Muslims not to "kneel before their enemies" or "kiss the hand that slaps them."^{[citation needed]} Along with former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke and several other speakers including scholars and politicians, the Copenhagen Declaration was formed and signed.

Critics have accused her of defending the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his campaign of violence in Iraq and Jordan, describing the victims of the November 9 2005 Amman bombings in Jordan, which saw 60 persons killed and 115 injured, as Iraqi collaborators, Saudi, Indonesian and Chinese intelligence officers and the upper echelons of society. The outpouring of public outrage manifested in spontaneous demonstration she described as staged and the work of "Jordanian troops out of uniform" and "government lackeys" together with "Christian and Muslim Bedouins" who had all been commandeered or paid to demonstrate by the Jordanian government and the CIA. Al-Zarqawi was denounced by his family after the bombings, a move that Ridley thought "cowardly." She said of al-Zarqawi himself that she would "rather put up with a brother like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi any day than have a traitor or sell-out for a father, son or grandfather" – a reference to Jordanian royal family. ^[15].

At a meeting of the Respect party on 6 June 2006, following a police raid in Forest Gate, East London, on 2 June 2006, Ridley urged all Muslims in Britain to "boycott the police and refuse to co-operate with them in any way, shape or form," including "asking the community copper for directions to passing the time of day with a beat officer." Her comments were labelled as "sheer, undiluted madness" by Shadow Home Secretary David Davis, who added that "To not co-operate would be of no benefit to the Muslim community; no benefit to the police; and no benefit to the security of our country." ^[16] George Galloway, leader of the RESPECT Coalition to which Ridley belongs also distanced himself from her comments, saying "Our policy is not that we should withdraw co-operation from the police." ^[17]

After the Chechen terrorist leader Shamil Basayev (architect of the Moscow theater hostage crisis and the Beslan school massacre) was killed, Ridley wrote a column stating that Basayev had become a "shaheed", that is, a martyr whose place in Paradise is assured. She went on to refer to Basayev as leader of "an admirable struggle to bring independence to Chechnya". In response to objections that Basayev's actions killed many civilians, Ridley stated that he "resorted to targeting Russian civilians in the latter years of his struggle to try and bring the plight of the Chechen struggle to the wider world," and blamed the majority of civilian casualties on Russian troops sent in to rescue the hostages,^[18] despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Official Yvonne Ridley site
• Official Yvonne Ridley 2005 election site
• " Video media of Yvonne Ridley Explaining Her kidnap Ordeal, Islam and Women Clears Misconceptions", www.TurnToIslam.com, April 25, 2006. - webpage with 1-hour long interview. Page contains streaming Flash video.
• "Yvonne Ridley", BBC Inside Out – North East & Cumbria, October 6, 2003.
• "Online Journalist Profile: Yvonne Ridley, Al-Jazeera.net", interview by Jemima Kiss, Journalism.co.uk, January 10, 2004.
• Yvonne Ridley's account of her experience with Afghanistan and Islam, MSA NY, March 23, 2006. MP3 audio.

• "Stop collaboration with police", Ezania.net. – Includes link to MP3 of June 7, 2006 BBC 4 interview with Yvonne Ridley after the 2 June 2006 London terror raid in which she urges Muslims to quit all collaboration with the police.
• How I Came To Love The Veil an article by Yvonne about women veiling themselves.