Uk Islamic Centre Marks 42nd Anniversary Of Iranian Islamic Revolution

The Islam­ic Cen­tre of Eng­land (ICE) report­ed in Feb­ru­ary that it had held an online cel­e­bra­tion to mark the 42nd anniver­sary of the Islam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion in Iran. Accord­ing to the ICE announce­ment, “ISIS and ter­ror­ism are the works of the West and Iran is at the fore­front of the fight against it”:

Feb­ru­ary 9, 2021 Accord­ing to the esteemed Chris­t­ian and Mus­lim Pan­elists in the cel­e­bra­tion of the 42nd anniver­sary of the vic­to­ry of the Islam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion, which was held online last night in the Islam­ic Cen­ter of Eng­land, ISIS and ter­ror­ism are the works of the West and Iran is at the fore­front of the fight against it… The Direc­tor of the Islam­ic Cen­tre of Eng­land added that in the end of the fourth decade of the rev­o­lu­tion, the Supreme Leader of the Islam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion wrote two let­ters to the West­ern youth, which con­tained impor­tant mes­sages, and con­sid­er­ing the ful­fil­ment of the wise pre­dic­tions of the Supreme Leader, he con­tin­ued: The first let­ter of the Supreme Leader in 2014 was pub­lished two weeks after the insult of the French Mag­a­zine Char­lie Heb­do to the Holy Prophet of Islam, and In this Let­ter, The Leader of The Islam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion advised that the youth should gain their knowl­edge about Islam from authen­tic sources rather than the prop­a­ga­tions of west­ern media and that our com­mon wor­ry, today, is ter­ror­ism… The direc­tor of the ICEL con­sid­ered Islam­o­pho­bia as anoth­er impor­tant mes­sage of this let­ter and asked about the ori­gin of the Islam­o­pho­bia… The rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the supreme leader in the UK said: One of our duties dur­ing the sec­ond phase of the Islam­ic rev­o­lu­tion, is to pay atten­tion to the con­tent of this let­ter to alle­vi­ate the anti-Islam feel­ings in the west.

Read the rest here.

The announce­ment also report­ed that that “The par­tic­i­pants of this dis­cus­sion pan­el were all in agree­ment that Islam is the final solu­tion for all the prob­lems that the world is suf­fer­ing from.”

One of the notable par­tic­i­pants in the event was Rod­ney Shake­speare, co-founder of the anti-glob­al­ist Glob­al Jus­tice Move­ment. In 2008, Shake­speare spoke at the first con­fer­ence of the Islam­ic Uni­ty Forum (IUF) in Lon­don, an orga­ni­za­tion head­ed by Kemal Hel­bawy, the for­mer offi­cial spokesper­son of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in the West, and which brought togeth­er mem­bers of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Iran­ian regime and oth­ers. At the IUF con­fer­ence, Shake­speare called for Mus­lim Chris­t­ian joint efforts to “chal­lenge the world­wide inter­est-based bank­ing sys­tem,” which, accord­ing to him, “was respon­si­ble for the ongo­ing glob­al finan­cial cri­sis.” In 2013, Shake­speare was accused by the Anti-Defama­tion League of mak­ing anti­se­mit­ic remarks on the Iran­ian Press TV chan­nel. In a 2015 inter­view on Press TV, he said that the use of poi­soned gas in the Iran-Iraq war was a delib­er­ate act of UK for­eign pol­i­cy. In 2018, he spoke about Imam Khome­i­ni, the founder of the Islam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion, say­ing that, “with the glo­ri­ous vic­to­ry of the Islam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion, the late Imam Khome­i­ni (RA) revealed the depth of tyran­ny and cor­rup­tion of despot­ic regimes.”

Oth­er par­tic­i­pants at the ICE event includ­ed Rindala Jab­bour, described as a Chris­t­ian Lebanese aca­d­e­m­ic fig­ure, jour­nal­ist, author, and polit­i­cal activist, and Dr. Hasan Ramadan said to be based in Germany.

The Glob­al Infor­ma­tion Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed that in June 2020, the UK Char­i­ty Com­mis­sion had addressed a warn­ing let­ter to the trustees of the Islam­ic Cen­tre of Eng­land, in response to an event com­mem­o­rat­ing the mem­o­ry of Iran’s Major Gen­er­al Qassem Soleimani, com­man­der of the Quds Force of the Islam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps (IRGC) who was killed in a 2020 US drone strike.

The Islam­ic Cen­tre of Eng­land (ICE) is part of the Iran­ian influ­ence net­work in the UK. Its web­site states that it was found­ed in Decem­ber 1995 and opened offi­cial­ly in Novem­ber 1998.

For more on the ICE, go here.