David Cameron is not as politically savvy as he thinks

When I heard that David Cameron had appointed the first Muslim woman to his Shadow Cabinet, Sayeeda Warsi as the Shadow Minister for Community Cohesion, I assumed that she must be a progressive Muslim and that this was a good move for Community Relations. However I have been doing a little bit of research on Sayeeda Warsi and I am less impressed than I had hoped to be.

First the pen portrait from The Telegraph "Sayeeda Warsi, 36, a British-born Muslim of Pakistani origin who has been nominated for a peerage, was named the 10th most influential Asian woman in a poll this year. At the 2005 election, Mrs Warsi, who is married with one child, was the first Asian woman to be selected by the Tories to fight a parliamentary seat. She will be responsible for community cohesion."

From The Times in 2005 "Conservative activist has fuelled mistrust of the police in Muslim communities by making false statements on the detention of terror suspects.
Sayeeda Warsi, a rising star of David Cameron’s party, said that almost 900 “innocent people” had been “locked up for 14 days” under anti-terrorism laws. In reality, 36 terror suspects have been detained for more than seven days. Of the 10 who were freed without charge, none was held for 14 days.

Mrs Warsi, 34, the Conservative vice-chairman with responsibility for cities, asserted that the tightening of anti-terrorist legislation had turned Britain into “a police state”.

The claims appear in an article that she wrote for Awaaz, a newspaper read by Asians that is distributed in the West Yorkshire towns and cities that were home to the July 7 suicide bombers. Readers were told by Mrs Warsi that the Government’s anti-terror proposals were “enough to tip any normal young man into the realms of a radicalised fanatic”."

This article also reports that in an election leaflet she had said "her concerns are homosexuality, which Labour is accused of promoting, and the “illegal” war in Iraq, which she says “may lead to further military action in places such as Syria, Lebanon and Iran”."

An article on UK.gay.com from May 2005 looking at the voting intentions of Gay voters ahead of the 5 May General Election includes this comment "Sayeeda Warsi, the Tory candidate for Dewsbury in West Yorkshire, was revealed to have distributed a leaflet to her potential constituents warning that the lowering of the age of consent allows children to be "propositioned for homosexual relationships", the Guardian reported.

"Labour has scrapped section 28 which was introduced by the Conservatives to stop schools promoting alternative sexual lifestyles such as homosexuality to children as young as seven years old... now schools are allowed and do promote homosexuality and other alternative sexual lifestyles to your children," the leaflet also said."

In July 2005 following the July 7 bombings, in which one of my friends lost his wife, Sayeeda Warsi is reported in a BBC reported Press Conference outside Downing Street to have "dismissed the idea that pressure should be placed upon British Muslims to root out extremists within their midst, commenting that “when you say this is something that the Muslim community needs to weed out, or deal with, that is a very dangerous step to take.” She also urged a public debate over the possible linkage between issues such as the American Guantanamo Bay detention facility and the Iraq war, and the 7/7 bombings: “Although the government may not accept that these were the causes for 7 July, to go into denial mode is not the way forward.”

You can read the BBC article here.


From the same National Revie articele:
In a January 2006 BBC Any Questions? debate, Warsi welcomed the election of Iranian-backed terrorist organization Hamas, a brutal movement officially proscribed as a terrorist group by the British government. Hamas murdered 377 Israelis in 425 terrorist attacks between September 2000 and March 2004, including 52 suicide attacks. Despite Hamas’s track record, as part of the BBC panel Warsi told her audience: "I think what’s happened in the Middle East with the election of Hamas is actually an opportunity and I think that’s the way we’ve got to see it. When groups that practice violence are suddenly propelled into power through a democratic process they get responsibility and responsibility can be a tremendously taming factor. And I think that Hamas, when it realizes that it wants a safe and stable and prosperous Palestine for its people, will realize that the way to deal with that is through dialogue and democracy and not through violence… I actually think that Hamas has been given a mandate and I think it will now hopefully adopt a responsible position because that is the only way." I think the events of the past few months in Gaza show just how wrong she was about this.

The same National Review article also draws attention to Sayeeda Warsi's views on Kashmir, a serious problem between immigrants from Indian and Pakistani backgrounds:
"Warsi has also entered the fray over the highly sensitive issue of Kashmir and, according to the Press Association, suggested in a July 2005 BBC One Politics Show interview that new antiterror laws should not prevent support among Britons for “freedom fighters” in Kashmir. Comparing Islamic rebels in the disputed province with Nelson Mandela and the ANC, Warsi observed that: We have a community in Britain, a Pakistani and Kashmiri community, who holds a very, very strong view about Kashmir and the scope of freedom-fighting in Kashmir. It would concern me if… the definition of terrorism was to cover maybe (the) legitimate freedom-fight in Kashmir. It should be noted that Britain currently outlaws no less than six Kashmiri terrorist organizations: Harakat Ul-Jihad-Ul Islami, Harakat-Ul-Mujahideen/Alami and Jundallah, Harakat Mujahideen, Jaish e Mohammed, Khuddam Ul-Islam and splinter group Jamaat Ul-Furquan, and Lashkar e Tayyaba. It is hard to see how such extreme views will actually enhance “community cohesion” in Britain’s inner cities, and it is difficult to think of a more explosive issue than Kashmir in fomenting tensions between British citizens of Pakistani and Indian origin."


Earlier this year Sayeeda Warsi wrote an article for the Guardian in which she advocated "allowing refused asylum seekers to work (as that) would benefit everyone"


So David what was your thinking behind this appoibntment?