Corbyn salute associated with Islamist terror group
Labour leader condemned for being pictured making four-finger sign with links to Muslim Brotherhood
JEREMY CORBYN has been condemned for making the salute of an Islamist organisation that was described by a government inquiry as “counter to British values and democracy”.
The Labour leader was pictured making the four-fingered Rabaa sign, a symbol associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, during a visit to Finsbury Park Mosque in his Islington North constituency.
The brotherhood has been accused of engaging in terrorist activities and is proscribed across much of the Middle East and in Russia. A counter-extremism activist compared Mr Corbyn’s behaviour to a right-wing politician showing support for the BNP.
It came as Mr Corbyn refused to apologise for attending a commemoration at a Palestinian graveyard where he was accused of laying a wreath at the graves of four men alleged to have been behind the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, in which 11 Israelis were killed.
He also gave yet another muddled explanation of what he was doing there, in which he appeared to accept for the first time that he had been honouring members of Black September, as well as others. The picture of Mr Corbyn making the Rabaa sign is believed
to have been taken in February 2016, after he became Labour leader.
In 2015 David Cameron warned that membership of the Muslim Brotherhood was a “possible indicator of extremism”. The former prime minister added that “aspects” of the brotherhood’s ideology and activities ran contrary to British values, “the rule of law, individual liberty, equality and the mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs”.
Maajid Nawaz, a former member of Islamist group Hizb ut-tahrir turned counter-extremism activist, said the Muslim Brotherhood was “to Muslims what the BNP are to the English: bigoted, identitarian and dangerous”.
He added: “It should be as taboo for a Left-wing politician to be associated with that group, as it is with the BNP.”
Last night a spokesman for Mr Corbyn said: “The four-fingered gesture is a well-known symbol of solidarity with the victims of the 2013 Rabaa massacre in Cairo.”
On the picture of him with the Palestinian officials, Mr Corbyn originally insisted the purpose of the event was to honour victims of a 1985 bombing of a PLO building in Tunis, but last night said: “The Black September attackers, as you refer to them, some of those that were accused of that were actually killed in Paris and some of those were killed in Beirut by Israeli agents.
“There were people there who were not involved with anything to do with that whatsoever, and indeed it was Yasser Arafat’s number two who was actually killed during that raid.
“And I, along with other colleagues who were delegates to the conference, laid a wreath in memory of all those who have died in the hope that we have
a peace process and peace in the future, so those raids are never repeated.”
Asked to clarify if he had laid a wreath on the graves of Black September members killed by Mossad, he said: “It was laid on the grave of all those who died.”
Jeremy Hunt, the Foreign Secretary, yesterday questioned Mr Corbyn’s suitability to be prime minister, asking how he could wield “the moral authority” to condemn “terrorist murders of British citizens” when he appeared to think some forms of “terrorism is justified”.
‘It should be as taboo for a Left-wing politician to be associated with that group, as it is with the BNP’