Rachel Shabi speaks up, or the wail of the muzzled

If you consider that "wail of the muzzled" part of the headline to be a logical or physical impossibility, just wait a bit. Nothing is illogical in the peculiar world inhabited by Ms Shabi, a typical specimen from the stable of the Guardian's pocket anti-Zionists. She proves it quite abundantly in her latest wail opus The reaction to the Woolwich murder denies British Muslims a political voice. The kind of political voice Ms Shabi has in mind is specified in the lede of the piece:

Denying the right to discuss British foreign policy in the wake of the horrific murder in Woolwich is short-sighted and dangerous.

Of course, this article is not about Rachel Shabi's personal freedom of speech, although it is quite important to allay the mere possibility of fear on that account by a quote from her profile:

Her award-winning book, Not the Enemy: Israel's Jews from Arab Lands, was published in 2009. She received the International Media Awards Cutting Edge prize in 2013, the Anna Lindh Journalism Award for reporting across cultures in 2011, and was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize the same year.

So all is good on this account, so far the enemies of free speech haven't got their grubby hands on a fitting muzzle.

And the development of the main premise of the article (see the lede above)? Here:

This debate isn't just sealed shut, it has round-the-clock protection. In the context of the Woolwich killers, there is to be no connection made to British foreign policy in the Middle East. That, we are told, is because the link is erroneous, an attempt to justify (as opposed to just understand), and an appeasement to terrorists. Oh, and also: those making the link only do so because of a tedious tendency to blame the west for everything.

I kept the two links used by Ms Shabi to support her point. The first it to a (fairly timid) article by Jonathan Freedland, where he argues that we shouldn't listen to what the killers have to say - as an explanation and/or justification of their barbarous act. I didn't notice there any attempts to muzzle the general public (did you? cause Ms Shabi did, and her eye might be sharper). The second link, to an article by Nick Cohen, is even less understandable: the article headline is "Terrorism: life-denying ideologies have no place in this country", and its lede says, quite clearly:

So entwined have the English Defence League and radical Islam become, they might as well be married.

I guess that it wasn't Nick's reference to EDL that irked Ms Shabi, but anyway: read both articles and try to find a reason for her complaints about the two gentlemen "shutting the debate" or "denying the right". I dare you. Of course, keep in mind that Ms Shabi is chiefly concerned with the debate being shut for the British Muslims:

All that's bad enough, but British Muslims also say that, for them, making this connection is even harder because of the fear that, despite being just as worried about the issue as anyone else, they will be viewed as having somehow stepped on to a conveyor belt that leads inexorably to violent extremism.

There must be someone in the on-line editing team of CiF that doesn't like Rachel Shabi very much, this is the only explanation I have for the choice of a picture to illustrate her article:

And the capture under it that (quite unnecessarily, but who cares?) says "Students protest against the war with Iraq in front of City Hall, Bradford, England, 2003." Not what I would call your typical muzzling, I have to say. I would also add that this helpful image cuts off the feet of the Shabi's article or, at least, hobbles it considerably. But who knows, it was in 2003, mebbe the muzzling started afterward?  Only, looking back at the last, say, 7 years, it occurs that no matter what the subject, British Muslims were able to express their ire quite forcefully and publicly:

2006 (and another one):

2010 (and another one):

2012:

2013:

And believe you me, I had to restrict myself to the above examples: a week wouldn't have sufficed to produce a full picture of the "muzzled" Muslims protesting this and that in UK these last seven years only.

The peak of the recent muzzling activities could be clearly confirmed by that Choudary bloke. Atrocious, wouldn't you agree? Not to mention the non-Muslim milnes, livingstones, stoppers, greenwalds etc.

Unsurprisingly, Greenwald's "discovery" discussed here was readily and willingly taken up by Ms Shabi:

And meanwhile, the fact that violent extremists all cite the same thing – occupation and wars in Muslim lands – is hastily dismissed as a crazed coincidence.

And meanwhile the fact that brainwashing usually follows the same standard texts and standard arguments and, when successful, produces the same kind of murderous automatons spouting the same slogans, doesn't seem to penetrate the "progressive" hive mind, brainwashed as it is by same methods.

And, of course, Rachel Shabi wouldn't be Rachel Shabi without that:

There's the long-standing dishonesty in the way the west in effect endorses Israel's continued military occupation of the Palestinian people.

Bump...

Oh well, there is more tripe in that piece, but I prefer to round up by this last quote:

So we know about and can understand the anger over British foreign policy because, bluntly, we have eyes and ears.

Indeed, but not much between these ears, is there, Rachel?

Shabby, shabby, Rachel...