British foreign minister Jeremy Hunt accused Google on Thursday of abandoning its moral values by failing to remove child abuse content while launching a version of its search engine in China that will block some websites.

The British government has repeatedly criticized online platforms such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook for failing to remove abusive material or sexual content posted online even after they were notified.

“Seems extraordinary that Google is considering censoring its content to get into China but won’t cooperate with UK, US … in removing child abuse content,” Hunt said on Twitter. “They used to be so proud of being values-driven.”

Alphabet’s Google plans a search engine in China that will block some search terms and websites, two sources told Reuters earlier this month, in a move that could mark its return to a market it abandoned eight years ago on censorship concerns.

Google said in a statement they agreed with Hunt that child sexual abuse was “abhorrent and must be removed, that’s why we co-operate with governments to fight child sexual abuse online”.

Britain, the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand invited major technology companies to attend a meeting on tackling child abuse and extremism on their websites, but the firms declined to attend, the Daily Mail reported on Thursday.

Google said they did offer to send an executive to the conference.

In January, Prime Minister Theresa May used an address at the World Economic Forum in Davos to say investors should use their financial power to force internet firms into taking more responsibility for stopping militants and paedophiles using their platforms.

Google, which quit China’s search engine market in 2010, has been actively seeking ways to re-enter China where many of its products are blocked by regulators.

Leading human rights groups, including Amnesty International, have urged Google not to bow to censorship demands in China because by doing so, they allege, the company would be complicit in the repression of freedom of speech.

Search terms about human rights, democracy, religion and peaceful protests will be among the words blacklisted in the search engine app, which The Intercept website said had already been demonstrated to the Chinese government.

The project, code-named “Dragonfly”, has been under way since the spring of 2017, the news website said.

Britain’s former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has called Labour opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn an anti-Semite and said comments about Zionists he made five years ago were the most offensive by a senior UK politician in half a century.

Labour has been battling accusations of anti-Semitism for months, and Corbyn has previously apologised for what he has described as “pockets” of anti-Semitism in his party.

Sacks, who was Britain’s Chief Rabbi from 1991 to 2013, accused Corbyn of having “given support to racists, terrorists and dealers of hate who want to kill Jews and remove Israel from the map”.

He said Corbyn had depicted a group of British citizens as “essentially alien” when it was revealed last week he said in 2013 that British Zionists “don’t understand English irony” despite “having lived in this country for a very long time”.

“When he implies that, however long they have lived here, Jews are not fully British, he is using the language of classic pre-war European anti-Semitism,” Sacks told the New Statesman political magazine.

“Now, within living memory of the Holocaust, and while Jews are being murdered elsewhere in Europe for being Jews, we have an anti-Semite as the leader of the Labour party and Her Majesty’s opposition. That is why Jews feel so threatened by Mr Corbyn and those who support him.”

Labour said in a statement there is no place for anti-Semitism in their party and that they are committed to rebuilding trust with the Jewish community.

Some opinion polls put Labour ahead or level with Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservatives, meaning he is a potential British leader, although the next election is not due until 2022.

Sacks compared Corbyn’s comments to the infamous “Rivers of blood” speech by Enoch Powell in 1968 in which the then-Conservative shadow cabinet member warned of the dangers of immigration. His speech is widely regarded as one of the most divisive made by a modern British politician.

Labour dismissed the comparison with Powell as “absurd and offensive”.

Since unexpectedly becoming Labour leader in 2015 after decades spent on the left-wing fringes of the party, Corbyn has repeatedly faced accusations of turning a blind eye to anti-Semitic comments in the party and among groups he supports.

Corbyn has responded to protests by meeting Jewish community leaders, reassuring Jewish people they are welcome in the party.

In his 2013 speech to a meeting convened by the Palestinian Return Centre, Corbyn spoke about the importance of history and of how necessary it was for people to understand the origins of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

He said Zionists had “two problems” – firstly, that they do not study history and, secondly, they do not understand English irony.

After the emergence of footage, Labour asserted that Corbyn had been referring to a “group of pro-Israel activists” and had not been singling out Jewish people as a whole.

We are increasingly concerned about the lack of due diligence by some faith leaders in the UK in meeting with preachers coming from Pakistan. In particular, there is a growing Islamist movement in Pakistan which supports violent extremism against ‘blasphemers’, Ahmadi Muslims, Shias, Christians and other minorities. These groups are not just the ones involved in direct terrorism in Pakistan, they are groups who also provide social services and who are able to rally tens of thousands of people on the basis of continuing the marginalisation of minorities. 

Here in the UK, we are concerned as to the legitimisation of such groups and preachers who have previously supported murderers such as Mumtaz Qadri, who murdered the Punjab governor Salman Taseer. There is evidence that a handful of these preachers who are on video praising the extremist, have been met with and promoted as ‘moderates’ by Imams in the UK. Pictures and social media posts of Imams in the UK standing next to such individuals, do nothing to delineate Islam and Muslims from the extremist messaging that such preachers pour out when they lionise people like Qadri, for murdering someone whose views they disagreed with. Frankly, Muslims deserve better and especially when Muslim communities are so under the spotlight at the moment and when headlines in some media sources do nothing but further marginalise them in the eyes of the wider public.

We will keep a watching brief on this situation and urge faith leaders in the UK to conduct checks and some due diligence on the groups and individuals they meet with and who visit the UK. 

Lassana Bathily saved many lives on that fateful day on January the 9th 2015. Unbeknown to him as he carried out his shop duties in the Paris Kosher supermarket, the establishment was about to be targeted by a young man who believed that his ‘Jihad’ was to target Jews as they shopped for Shabbath.

Amedy Coulibaly targeted the Paris Kosher supermarket for one reason and one reason alone. He wanted to kill Jews on behalf of the toxic narrative of Daesh or the so-called Islamic State. He was also friends with the two Charlie Hebdo killers and brothers, Said and Cherife Kouachi. The Kouachi brothers had wrought havoc to the streets of Paris through their murderous campaign which targeted satirists within Charlie Hebdo. They had also murdered Paris policeman, Ahmed Merabet.

The Paris Kosher supermarket was targeted after the Charlie Hebdo murders in the heart of Paris that so shocked the nation and which lead to a lockdown in the City. However, on the 9th of January, Amedy Coulibaly, who claimed that he was working on behalf of the so-called Islamic State or Daesh, entered the supermarket. Coulibaly rounded up some of the shoppers and ordered a cashier to bring up others onto the next floor where he had taken the hostages to. Some of those downstairs agreed to go up whilst Bathily advised others to use the goods elevator to escape.

However, the shoppers below did not want to risk an escape as they heard Coulibaly firing his weapon at those shoppers that he had rounded up. At this point, Bathily guided some of the shoppers into a refrigeration room and closed the lights so as to make it look as if there was no-one in there.

The Escape

Having made his escape through the elevator and a nearby fire escape, police held Bathily for over an hour, thinking that he was one of the terrorists. He was finally released and helped police map out the internal design of the Paris Kosher supermarket. This information was vital in saving lives and led to the end of the siege with Coulibaly being shot dead.

Four people died in the supermarket attack and Bathily also lost a close friend in the terrorist attack. Yohan Cohen died on that fateful day as he tried to save the lives of others and wrestled with the gunman, Amedi Coulibaly. He was murdered in cold blood for his efforts.

Bizarely, Coulibaly was Malian by heritage and Bathily is also of Malian heritage. Two people from the same country, one who sought to take lives because they were Jewish and the other trying to save lives because they were his friends and colleagues. One individual acted in the name of the Islamic State, whilst the other, (Bathily), says that his belief in Islam means that every life is precious. He desperately tried to save lives in the melee of the terrorist attack.

Visit to the UK Facilitated by Faith Matters in Partnership with the Jewish News

Lassana Bathily will be coming to the UK from May 27th to the 1st of June 2016. His visit is being organised and co-ordinated by Faith Matters in partnership with the Jewish News and if you are interested in arranging an event, or a dinner or a working lunch, do get in touch with the Director of Faith Matters, Fiyaz Mughal OBE.

Let us honour this hero and make clear that the actions of murderers and terrorists will not shake our belief that collectively, we can and should protect our freedoms. Only by acting collectively can we stop those groups like IS from trying to drive a wedge between communities. Finally, and more importantly, let us honour those lives lost in the Paris Kosher supermarket on that fateful day. Their memory lives on.

You can e-mail Faith Matters on info@faith-matters.co.uk. Correspondence should be marked for Jane Smith.

Faith Matters was founded in 2006 by Fiyaz Mughal OBE on the basis of working with faith communities and to support better understanding, friendships and working relationships between both faith groups. It has undertaken interfaith, conflict resolution and historical projects in order to facilitate and nurture stronger relations between faith communities such as Jewish and Muslim communities. 

Faith Matters warmly welcomes the release of Shaker Aamer after 14 long years. Many of them were spent in the legal black hole that is Guantanamo and it is clear that the long periods of solitary confinement have also had an impact on his mental and physical health.

Yet, it should never have come to this given that Aamer was cleared for release in 2007. It has taken a further 7 years for his actual release and now that he is back in the UK, no doubt questions will again be raised as to the possible complicity of UK intelligence services in the torture of Aamer. Only time will tell whether these allegations are true or not.

Guantanamo Bay should have been shut down a long time ago and President Obama’s political assertions that he would close the site down, have come to nothing. The site still continues to operate albeit in a scaled down manner when compared to the Bush period in office. However, what cannot be denied is that many see Guantanamo as a relic of the past, a period of time when the ‘War on Terror’ was in full swing.

According to Dick Cheney, the former Vice President in the Bush administration, ‘the worst of the worst‘ were being held in Guantanamo. That view is not accepted by some today and the example of Aamer counters this view given that he was not charged and that he has sat in legal limbo for over a decade. The incarceration of individuals in Guantanamo without any charges being laid against them has been unacceptable and due process should have been carried out many years ago. Instead, many individuals like Aamer were forgotten and left incarcerated in the hole of Guantanamo.

We hope over time, we can close the dark chapter that is Guantanamo . The last decade has been a difficult one for many communities and we hope that the future provides hope and peace and stability for us all.

Faith Matters UK tour (This tour has now been completed)

Faith Matters invited a convert Hispanic ‘gangsta’ rapper for a series of talks with communities in the UK to counter gun and knife crime and the pull of extremism towards some young people in the UK. This programme covered 8 major cities including London, Manchester, Birmingham, Bradford, Leeds and other such cities and reached out to over 1,300 young people through Hamza Perez who was once in a gang in the US. Hamza turned his life around through his religious beliefs and this programme did not promote religion but promoted the need for discipline and structure within the lives of young people

Click here to download PDF Flyer

Tour Dates:

DERBY: Multi-faith Centre, University of Derby, Thursday 18th March -18:00
Kedleston Road, Derbyshire, DE22 1GB

BRADFORD: Bradford Film Festival, Friday 19th March – 14:45
National Media Museum, Pictureville, Bradford, BD1 1NG

BIRMINGHAM: The Drum, Saturday 20th March – 18:00
144 Potters Lane, Aston, Birmingham, B6 4UU

MANCHESTER: St Peter’s House, Sunday 21st March – 18:00
Precinct Centre, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9GH

GLASGOW: Centre for Contemporary Arts, Monday 22nd March – all day event
350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, G2 3JD

LONDON: SOAS, University of London, Tuesday 23rd March – 19:00
Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London, WC1H 0XG