Ahmad Thomson
Encyclopedia
Ahmad Thomson is a British
barrister
and writer and a member of the Murabitun movement.
on matters related to Muslim
s, although he has never set foot inside No. 10 or met any Prime Minister except Kenneth Kaunda, in Zambia, in 1965. He made both written and oral representations to the House of Lords Select Committee on Religious Offences in 2002, arguing that different religious groups including Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs should have equal rights and equal protection under English law. He has given regular talks about Islam throughout the United Kingdom, including the annual Gateway to Divine Mercy event. He has been a regular contributor to the annual interfaith conferences held at the Regents Park Mosque and Islamic Cultural Centre and also contributed to the College of Law LNTV Programme 1378 which is concerned with Islamic Family Law and its interaction with English Family Law. He has recommended that Muslim personal law should be recognised and accommodated by English civil law – and that the personal law of other minority faith communities should receive similar recognition and accommodation by English civil law if they too desire this confirmation of their ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights) Article 9 rights, as enshrined and guaranteed by the Human Rights Act 1998
.
, now Zambia, and educated in Southern Rhodesia
, now Zimbabwe
, and England. Most of his early years were spent in remote locations in the African bush where there was no electricity, gas or piped water. After being awarded an LLB (Hons) in 1972 at Exeter University, England, he worked as a bus conductor in Exeter, Devon, for a year before moving to London where he worked firstly as a labourer building the Piccadilly Line extension to Heathrow and then as an accountant at Luzac & Co, Oriental Booksellers. He embraced Islam
on August 13, 1973. After going on Hajj (the pilgrimage to Makka) overland in 1977, Ahmad Thomson completed his training as a lawyer and was called to the Bar of England & Wales on the 26 July 1979.
series broadcast on Channel 4 on the 18th May 2004 and 25 May 2004 and in April 2005. He also participated in The Muslim Jesus and Celebrity Lives Sharia Style. He has been an occasional guest on the Hassan & Habibah show, Legal Corner, Legal Forum, Weekly Review and the Hayaat show broadcast on Islam Channel.
Following his support of Dar Al-Taqwa’s successful complaint to the Press Complaints Commission concerning a deliberately misleading and inflammatory attack by the Evening Standard in July 2005, a group of British journalists (including Toby Helm, David Cesarani and Daniel Kahtan) who had never met or interviewed Mr Thomson, retaliated by alleging that Thomson's 1994 book, The Next World Order (which had, by then, been out of print for several years), contained allegations that Freemasons and Jews control the governments of Europe and America, and that it was a "big lie" that six million Jews died in the Holocaust.
In fact Thomson had simply stated that it is a “big lie” to assert that those whom Arthur Koestler has described as “the thirteenth tribe” are descended from the Tribe of Israel (Jacob the son of Isaac) when in fact they are not descended from Shem, the son of Noah, but from Yapheth, the son of Noah and are accordingly turkic. It is the Arab Palestinians who are descended from Shem and accordingly 'semitic', this adjective being derived from the word 'shem'. Thomson had allegedly written that Jews have no right to live in what he called "the Holy Land," because they are not a "pure race," and are therefore not biblical Israelites. In fact he had simply pointed out that the homeland of the descendants of the Khazars
is between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, not Palestine.
Elsewhere it was alleged that Thomson has said that Saddam Hussein
was used as an excuse for U.S. troops, "including thousands of Jews," to occupy Saudi Arabia
and that the invasion of Iraq was "part of a Zionist
plan, " to realise the publicly declared Zionist aim of establishing the Greater Eretz between the Nile and the Euphrates.
By using each other as their sources, these journalists created the impression that their articles were thoroughly researched and were therefore eligible to be regarded as “reliable sources” by newspapers and internet bloggers alike.
Asked about Thomson's role as an informal advisor to the government, a government spokesperson told the Daily Telegraph: "We talk to a lot of people, including many whose views we do not necessarily agree with," – and some whose views are deliberately distorted by the media in order to encourage involuntary disagreement with them from the outset, just in case they might possibly have something worthwhile to say.
Thomson responded to the reports by saying that the story was "grossly distorted." He said that he had not denied the Holocaust and that: "I have always said that one unjust death is one too many." At present only the slaughter of Muslim civilians requires independent verification. He also wrote, “To be anti-Zionism is not to be racist or anti-Jewish”, and, “To be anti-Zionism is not to be anti-Semitic”, and, “To be anti-Zionism is not to be a conspiracy theorist.”
Since then, in partial confirmation of some of the allegations made by Toby Helm about Mr Thomson, former Prime Minister Tony Blair was appointed UN advisor to the government of Israel and became a grateful beneficiary of lucrative oil contracts in Iraq.
and simultaneously a violent terrorist
." He has also written unequivocally against any form of military-industrial-complex dictated, bank authorized, state sponsored, indiscriminate laser precision bombing (whether this involves the collective punishment of civilians or their decimation or their genocide) or suicide bombing.
Thomson has also been quoted as saying: “Islam is not just a matter of words. As the Prophet said, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, ‘The Shahada is easy on the tongue, but much flows from it.’ Ever since I said Shahada, I have lived every moment of my life finding out what it entails. It is a process that never ends.” The Shahada is to bear witness that there is no god other than Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace.
When describing his first pilgrimage to Makka, Thomson wrote: “When I had first embraced Islam some four years earlier, I had known next to nothing about it, other than the fact that the community of Muslims whom I had joined were more knowledgeable and radiant and better behaved than any other human beings that I had ever met during my life up until then. I had embraced Islam in the hope of acquiring that knowledge and radiance and courteous behaviour, and as time passed my hopes were gradually fulfilled, as, little by little I learned about and tried to embody the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, may the Blessings and Peace of Allah be on him.
In a personal face-to-face FiveBooks interview with Tom Dannet in 2010, Thomson said, "We’re 14 centuries-plus from the time of the Prophet now, and if you look at the history of Islam there have been high points and low points. As within any religion, you find people of wisdom and also people of great ignorance who use Islam for political expediency, who distort it knowingly or unknowingly. And so, for anyone who wants to follow in the dust of the footsteps of the Prophet Muhammad, blessings and peace be on him, you have to get to the point before there are any schools of jurisprudence, before Sunni and Shia – and if you go to that point there's no argument, just knowledge … As they say, the nearer you get to the source, the purer the drink. If you go to the source of the Thames it doesn’t taste the same as where it reaches the sea."
In 2009 Thomson gave a talk at Cambridge University entitled Shariah Law: A Stairway to Heaven. In 2011 he participated in an interfaith event hosted at the House of Lords honouring Mary, the mother of Jesus.
He has consistently pointed out that before any financial product can be described as Sharia
compliant, the means of exchange must be Sharia
compliant – and that the Sharia
of Islam prohibits the use of an unredeemable IOU (paper money) either as a means of exchange (unless it is backed by gold or silver) or in order to pay the annual zakat on wealth (which must be paid in gold or silver).
Thomson has accordingly recommended that the interest-generated portion of the national debt be written off, institutionalised usury be proscribed and Islamic gold dinar
s and silver dirhams be minted by the Royal Mint
, utilising the weights and measures for these coins originally established by sayyedina Umar ibn Al-Khattab (the second Muslim Khalif), if London is to become a global centre for Islamic Finance as advocated by the former Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer
, Gordon Brown
.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
barrister
Barrister
A barrister is a member of one of the two classes of lawyer found in many common law jurisdictions with split legal professions. Barristers specialise in courtroom advocacy, drafting legal pleadings and giving expert legal opinions...
and writer and a member of the Murabitun movement.
Career
He was called to the Bar of England and Wales in 1979. He was a co-founder of the Association of Muslim Lawyers in 1993. He has been the head of Wynne Chambers since 1994. He is the author of several books, including The Difficult Journey and The Way Back (1994); The Next World Order (1994); the revised editions of Jesus, Prophet of Islam and Blood on the Cross (in two volumes, For Christ's Sake and Islam in Andalus) with Muhammad Ata Ur-Rahim (1996); the revised edition of Dajjal: the AntiChrist (1997); Making History (1997); The Last Prophet (2000) and Golden Days on the Open Road (2005) and is co-author of The Islamic Will with Hajj Abdalhaqq and Aisha Bewley (1995). He has been described by some in the press as having acted as an informal advisor to 10 Downing Street10 Downing Street
10 Downing Street, colloquially known in the United Kingdom as "Number 10", is the headquarters of Her Majesty's Government and the official residence and office of the First Lord of the Treasury, who is now always the Prime Minister....
on matters related to Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
s, although he has never set foot inside No. 10 or met any Prime Minister except Kenneth Kaunda, in Zambia, in 1965. He made both written and oral representations to the House of Lords Select Committee on Religious Offences in 2002, arguing that different religious groups including Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs should have equal rights and equal protection under English law. He has given regular talks about Islam throughout the United Kingdom, including the annual Gateway to Divine Mercy event. He has been a regular contributor to the annual interfaith conferences held at the Regents Park Mosque and Islamic Cultural Centre and also contributed to the College of Law LNTV Programme 1378 which is concerned with Islamic Family Law and its interaction with English Family Law. He has recommended that Muslim personal law should be recognised and accommodated by English civil law – and that the personal law of other minority faith communities should receive similar recognition and accommodation by English civil law if they too desire this confirmation of their ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights) Article 9 rights, as enshrined and guaranteed by the Human Rights Act 1998
Human Rights Act 1998
The Human Rights Act 1998 is an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom which received Royal Assent on 9 November 1998, and mostly came into force on 2 October 2000. Its aim is to "give further effect" in UK law to the rights contained in the European Convention on Human Rights...
.
Background
He was born as Martin Thomson in Northern RhodesiaNorthern Rhodesia
Northern Rhodesia was a territory in south central Africa, formed in 1911. It became independent in 1964 as Zambia.It was initially administered under charter by the British South Africa Company and formed by it in 1911 by amalgamating North-Western Rhodesia and North-Eastern Rhodesia...
, now Zambia, and educated in Southern Rhodesia
Southern Rhodesia
Southern Rhodesia was the name of the British colony situated north of the Limpopo River and the Union of South Africa. From its independence in 1965 until its extinction in 1980, it was known as Rhodesia...
, now Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe is a landlocked country located in the southern part of the African continent, between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. It is bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia and a tip of Namibia to the northwest and Mozambique to the east. Zimbabwe has three...
, and England. Most of his early years were spent in remote locations in the African bush where there was no electricity, gas or piped water. After being awarded an LLB (Hons) in 1972 at Exeter University, England, he worked as a bus conductor in Exeter, Devon, for a year before moving to London where he worked firstly as a labourer building the Piccadilly Line extension to Heathrow and then as an accountant at Luzac & Co, Oriental Booksellers. He embraced Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
on August 13, 1973. After going on Hajj (the pilgrimage to Makka) overland in 1977, Ahmad Thomson completed his training as a lawyer and was called to the Bar of England & Wales on the 26 July 1979.
British Media and The Next World Order
Thomson first came to public attention in 2001 when he featured in an award winning documentary My Name is Ahmed broadcast on BBC2 on the 14th August 2001 and in Prince Naseem's Guide to Islam broadcast on BBC2 on the 15th August 2001. He subsequently appeared in the first two Shariah TVShariah TV
Shariah TV is a Muslim-themed talk show, presented by Tazeen Ahmad, broadcast on a late-night slot on Channel 4. The audience, made up of British Muslims, asks a panel questions relating to life as a Muslim in Britain...
series broadcast on Channel 4 on the 18th May 2004 and 25 May 2004 and in April 2005. He also participated in The Muslim Jesus and Celebrity Lives Sharia Style. He has been an occasional guest on the Hassan & Habibah show, Legal Corner, Legal Forum, Weekly Review and the Hayaat show broadcast on Islam Channel.
Following his support of Dar Al-Taqwa’s successful complaint to the Press Complaints Commission concerning a deliberately misleading and inflammatory attack by the Evening Standard in July 2005, a group of British journalists (including Toby Helm, David Cesarani and Daniel Kahtan) who had never met or interviewed Mr Thomson, retaliated by alleging that Thomson's 1994 book, The Next World Order (which had, by then, been out of print for several years), contained allegations that Freemasons and Jews control the governments of Europe and America, and that it was a "big lie" that six million Jews died in the Holocaust.
In fact Thomson had simply stated that it is a “big lie” to assert that those whom Arthur Koestler has described as “the thirteenth tribe” are descended from the Tribe of Israel (Jacob the son of Isaac) when in fact they are not descended from Shem, the son of Noah, but from Yapheth, the son of Noah and are accordingly turkic. It is the Arab Palestinians who are descended from Shem and accordingly 'semitic', this adjective being derived from the word 'shem'. Thomson had allegedly written that Jews have no right to live in what he called "the Holy Land," because they are not a "pure race," and are therefore not biblical Israelites. In fact he had simply pointed out that the homeland of the descendants of the Khazars
Khazars
The Khazars were semi-nomadic Turkic people who established one of the largest polities of medieval Eurasia, with the capital of Atil and territory comprising much of modern-day European Russia, western Kazakhstan, eastern Ukraine, Azerbaijan, large portions of the northern Caucasus , parts of...
is between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, not Palestine.
Elsewhere it was alleged that Thomson has said that Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
was used as an excuse for U.S. troops, "including thousands of Jews," to occupy Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
and that the invasion of Iraq was "part of a Zionist
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
plan, " to realise the publicly declared Zionist aim of establishing the Greater Eretz between the Nile and the Euphrates.
By using each other as their sources, these journalists created the impression that their articles were thoroughly researched and were therefore eligible to be regarded as “reliable sources” by newspapers and internet bloggers alike.
Asked about Thomson's role as an informal advisor to the government, a government spokesperson told the Daily Telegraph: "We talk to a lot of people, including many whose views we do not necessarily agree with," – and some whose views are deliberately distorted by the media in order to encourage involuntary disagreement with them from the outset, just in case they might possibly have something worthwhile to say.
Thomson responded to the reports by saying that the story was "grossly distorted." He said that he had not denied the Holocaust and that: "I have always said that one unjust death is one too many." At present only the slaughter of Muslim civilians requires independent verification. He also wrote, “To be anti-Zionism is not to be racist or anti-Jewish”, and, “To be anti-Zionism is not to be anti-Semitic”, and, “To be anti-Zionism is not to be a conspiracy theorist.”
Since then, in partial confirmation of some of the allegations made by Toby Helm about Mr Thomson, former Prime Minister Tony Blair was appointed UN advisor to the government of Israel and became a grateful beneficiary of lucrative oil contracts in Iraq.
Views on Islam
Thomson has written that "radical Islam" is a contradiction in terms. "It is not possible to be a true MuslimMuslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
and simultaneously a violent terrorist
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
." He has also written unequivocally against any form of military-industrial-complex dictated, bank authorized, state sponsored, indiscriminate laser precision bombing (whether this involves the collective punishment of civilians or their decimation or their genocide) or suicide bombing.
Thomson has also been quoted as saying: “Islam is not just a matter of words. As the Prophet said, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, ‘The Shahada is easy on the tongue, but much flows from it.’ Ever since I said Shahada, I have lived every moment of my life finding out what it entails. It is a process that never ends.” The Shahada is to bear witness that there is no god other than Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace.
When describing his first pilgrimage to Makka, Thomson wrote: “When I had first embraced Islam some four years earlier, I had known next to nothing about it, other than the fact that the community of Muslims whom I had joined were more knowledgeable and radiant and better behaved than any other human beings that I had ever met during my life up until then. I had embraced Islam in the hope of acquiring that knowledge and radiance and courteous behaviour, and as time passed my hopes were gradually fulfilled, as, little by little I learned about and tried to embody the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, may the Blessings and Peace of Allah be on him.
In a personal face-to-face FiveBooks interview with Tom Dannet in 2010, Thomson said, "We’re 14 centuries-plus from the time of the Prophet now, and if you look at the history of Islam there have been high points and low points. As within any religion, you find people of wisdom and also people of great ignorance who use Islam for political expediency, who distort it knowingly or unknowingly. And so, for anyone who wants to follow in the dust of the footsteps of the Prophet Muhammad, blessings and peace be on him, you have to get to the point before there are any schools of jurisprudence, before Sunni and Shia – and if you go to that point there's no argument, just knowledge … As they say, the nearer you get to the source, the purer the drink. If you go to the source of the Thames it doesn’t taste the same as where it reaches the sea."
In 2009 Thomson gave a talk at Cambridge University entitled Shariah Law: A Stairway to Heaven. In 2011 he participated in an interfaith event hosted at the House of Lords honouring Mary, the mother of Jesus.
Views on Islamic Finance
Thomson advocates a return to the use of gold and silver as means of exchange which possess intrinsic value.He has consistently pointed out that before any financial product can be described as Sharia
Sharia
Sharia law, is the moral code and religious law of Islam. Sharia is derived from two primary sources of Islamic law: the precepts set forth in the Quran, and the example set by the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the Sunnah. Fiqh jurisprudence interprets and extends the application of sharia to...
compliant, the means of exchange must be Sharia
Sharia
Sharia law, is the moral code and religious law of Islam. Sharia is derived from two primary sources of Islamic law: the precepts set forth in the Quran, and the example set by the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the Sunnah. Fiqh jurisprudence interprets and extends the application of sharia to...
compliant – and that the Sharia
Sharia
Sharia law, is the moral code and religious law of Islam. Sharia is derived from two primary sources of Islamic law: the precepts set forth in the Quran, and the example set by the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the Sunnah. Fiqh jurisprudence interprets and extends the application of sharia to...
of Islam prohibits the use of an unredeemable IOU (paper money) either as a means of exchange (unless it is backed by gold or silver) or in order to pay the annual zakat on wealth (which must be paid in gold or silver).
Thomson has accordingly recommended that the interest-generated portion of the national debt be written off, institutionalised usury be proscribed and Islamic gold dinar
Islamic gold dinar
The modern Islamic gold dinar is a currency that aims to revive the historical gold dinar which was a leading coin of early Islam. They consist of minted gold coins, Dinar, and silver coins, Dirham.-Dinar history:According to Islamic law, the Islamic dinar is a coin of pure gold weighing...
s and silver dirhams be minted by the Royal Mint
Royal Mint
The Royal Mint is the body permitted to manufacture, or mint, coins in the United Kingdom. The Mint originated over 1,100 years ago, but since 2009 it operates as Royal Mint Ltd, a company which has an exclusive contract with HM Treasury to supply all coinage for the UK...
, utilising the weights and measures for these coins originally established by sayyedina Umar ibn Al-Khattab (the second Muslim Khalif), if London is to become a global centre for Islamic Finance as advocated by the former Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer
Chancellor of the Exchequer
The Chancellor of the Exchequer is the title held by the British Cabinet minister who is responsible for all economic and financial matters. Often simply called the Chancellor, the office-holder controls HM Treasury and plays a role akin to the posts of Minister of Finance or Secretary of the...
, Gordon Brown
Gordon Brown
James Gordon Brown is a British Labour Party politician who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 until 2010. He previously served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labour Government from 1997 to 2007...
.
Book Reviews
- Qur'an Review Review of the Bewley translation of the Qur'anQur'anThe Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...
by Ahmad Thomson - Review of Zakat - Raising a Fallen Pillar, by Hajj Abdalhaqq Bewley and Hajj Amal Abdalhakim Douglas
- Review of Islam – Its Basic Practices and Beliefs by Hajj Abdalhaqq Bewley
Further reading
- Biography of Ahmad Thomson
- Russia: Communism and Zionism excerpts from The Next World Order by Ahmad Thomson
- The Controversy of Zion by Douglas Reed quoted in The Next World Order by Ahmad Thomson
- The Thirteenth Tribe by Arthur Koestler quoted in The Next World Order by Ahmad Thomson
- Dajjal excerpts from Dajjal, the AntiChrist by Ahmad Thomson