Houriya Ahmed

Houriya Ahmed on TV

Houriya Ahmed was a researcher at the right wing think tank the Centre for Social Cohesion (CSC), editor of The Spittoon blog, and is a member of Sisters Against Violent Extremism (SAVE UK). According to the CSC's website she 'completed her BA in Anthropology and Law at the London School of Economics, and then took an MA in International Studies and Diplomacy at the School of Oriental and African Studies.'

Misrepresentation of sources

In a post on The Spittoon, after quoting at length an interview with the antiwar Afghan parliamentarian Malalai Joya, Ahmed concludes:

The deeply moving story of Malalai Joya highlights that the West should not only be fighting in Afghanistan to protect its citizens, but should help in implementing justice for the Afghan people; justice that they so desperately seek and deserve.

This is a peculiar interpretation of an article in which Joya refers to the Western occupation as an 'enemy', and tells the interviewer,

If she were president of Afghanistan...she would ask all foreign troops to leave immediately. She says that it is wrong to say Afghanistan will simply collapse into civil war if that happens. "What about the civil war now?...The longer the foreign troops stay in Afghanistan doing what they are doing, the worse the eventual civil war will be for the Afghan people."

The Afghan public, she adds, are on her side, pointing to a recent opinion poll showing 60 per cent of Afghans want an immediate Nato withdrawal.

Affiliations

• Centre for Social Cohesion - researcher
• The Spittoon (blog) - editor
• Sisters Against Violent Extremism - member

Publications

Spittoon articles

• Forced into Hijab: a response to Katharine Quarmby, 15 May 2009.
• The Taliban’s perversion of sharia law, 15 May 2009.
• Hizb-ut Tahrir and the ‘butcher of Buner’, 18 May 2009.
• Prabhakaran is dead, 19 May 2009.
• What is and isn’t Islam?, 27 May 2009.
• British hostage killed by al-Qaeda, 3 June 2009.
• Europe’s faith hinges on its secularism, 6 June 2009.
• Men questioned in UK over white supremacist terror plot, 10 June 2009.
• Anjem Choudary’s 1st appearance as UK head of al-Muhajiroun, 15 June 2009.
• Extremist to speak at University of East London, 17 June 2009.
• Tooting Infiltrated, 22 June 2009.
• Remembering the victims of Srebrenica, 12 July 2009.
• Hizb ut-Tahrir’s ‘ugly face’, 13 July 2009.
• “Press TV speaks for itself” – so right!, 14 July 2009.
• The Story of Malalai Joya, 30 July 2009.
• How about jeans and a top?, 3 August 2009.
• Update on ‘Blood & Honour’ neo-Nazi group, 23 September 2009.
• Even veiled ‘modest’ women are sexually harassed…, 8 October 2009.
• With Hannah Stuart, Hello Hizbis, 4 November 2009.
• HT’s Strategy in the UK, 4 November 2009.
• The dangers of terrorism denial, 24 December 2010, cross-post from Prospect.