The joy of enemies
A relative of whom I'm inordinately fond said to me recently that, excepting a middle-aged couple by the names of Neil and Christine, he had never before had enemies. This happy state had altered, however, since and to the extent that his association with me had become known. I'm sorry for him but otherwise complacent. I've never been able to see the merit of blessing them that curse me, doing good to them that hate me, and (especially) praying for them that despitefully use me. I'm glad of my enemies, and at this time of year it seems to me particularly important to wish them ill.
How serendipitous, then, is the opportunity yielded by The Guardian's "Comment is Free" site. CIF has launched a (presumably light-hearted) straw poll on readers' choices for the best contributors to that site in 2007. One of the comments is by a reader signing himself Inayat. He makes a nomination in a category unspecified by the editors: "Worst: That warmongering bastard Oliver Kamm (sorry - I added that category myself)."
"Inayat" is Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain, a sinecurist whose talents were neatly encapsulated by Christopher Hitchens in Vanity Fair a few months ago: "A preposterous and sinister individual named Inayat Bunglawala, assistant secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain and a man with a public record of support for Osama bin Laden, was made a convener of Blair's task force on extremism despite his stated belief that the BBC and the rest of the media are 'Zionist controlled.'"
I've met Bunglawala just twice. The first occasion was on a public platform provided involuntarily by London council taxpayers. I was perhaps a little rough with him when he drew a risible analogy between the publication of the Danish cartoons and the Holocaust denial conference in Tehran. The second was at, of all places, the annual awards of the estimable campaigning organisation Index on Censorship. When Bunglawala rolled up, the journalist sitting next to me commented on the commendable latitudinarianism of an organisation that had resolved on inviting a supporter of censorship in addition to us who opposed it. I infer that recollection of the first such meeting stayed longer with Bunglawala than it did with me, in which case I am unfazed. Christopher's charges are so serious that you might suspect he exaggerates. Steel yourself, for he does not: Bunglawala has improvidently left a paper trail. Of such a man and at this season, as Hannah the mother of Samuel declaimed, my mouth is enlarged over mine enemies.
UPDATE: I am mistaken on one point. When Inayat Bunglawala attended the Index on Censorship awards this year, he was the guest not of Index on Censorship but of The Guardian, which was sponsoring a table. My thanks to Padraig Reidy, News Editor of Index on Censorship, for correcting me on this. Doubtless The Guardian was engaged in a more subtle campaign than I'm capable of in introducing Bunglawala to the merits of free speech, and I hope it will bear fruit.
