Western writer: Britain continues to mislead and misunderstand the Middle East

David Hurst, editor of the Middle East Eye website, said that Britain has always been misleading through a propaganda war aimed at affecting Muslims, and he adds that Britain has not learned anything from the disasters it created in the Middle East and still misunderstands the nature of the region.

He wrote in an article on the site that in order to change the Middle East, you must understand it first, which Britain has been unable to do since the Suez War in 1956 until the present day.

Hearst cites Britain’s methods of misinformation and misinformation with what Boris Johnson wrote in Spectator in 2005 after the London bombings, saying it was only natural that people would be terrified of Islam.

Among what was mentioned in Johnson's article - who is currently Britain's prime minister - was his description of Islam as treating non-believers with cruelty. He wrote in this regard, saying: "If we judge (Islam) through his holy book (the Noble Qur’an) - not to mention the sermons given in mosques - then he is the most fanatical of all religions in his ferocity towards those who do not believe in him!

Theresa May
After the bombing in Manchester in 2017, then British Prime Minister Theresa May incited world leaders attending the Group of Seven summit in Sicily to do more to fight cyber extremism. She said that the war against the Islamic State "is moving from the battlefield to the Internet."

Hurst also cited what was mentioned in the book "A Secret Relationship: British Collusion with Radical Islam" by Mark Curtis, in which he stated that Britain has a long history in supporting and training Islamic extremist groups from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Kosovo and Libya.

The editor of the Middle East Eye accuses the British government of being one of the largest tools of incitement in the Islamic world, noting that the Information Research Department - a division of the British Foreign Office - was preparing speeches and preaching.

The author of the article stated that official documents that were recently declassified revealed that the Information Research Department had ordered the reproduction and distribution of a series of speeches and sermons throughout the Arab world.

He went on to say that the Information Research Department - which he refers to as a secret unit - was behind the publication of articles in magazines published by Al-Azhar University in Cairo "to ensure that everyone who graduates at the university becomes a stubborn opponent of communism."

Al Azhar university
But why Al-Azhar University in particular? Hurst answers the question by saying that the declassified documents attribute the reason to that to the aforementioned university that executes imams who deliver Friday sermons in all mosques of Egypt, Arabic language teachers in secondary schools and all school teachers in villages, and lawyers who advocate on personal status issues.

Besides exploiting Reuters and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) - which Hurst calls the obedient corporations - the Information Research Department has had its news service represented in the Arab News Agency, one of the many media outlets created by British intelligence during World War II.

Not only did the administration do that, but it also broke into the field of literature, and published romantic and police novels, as they were implicitly containing messages against the Communist ideology.

David Hurst recounted that he accidentally discovered the presence of that secret intelligence unit of the British Intelligence Service (MI6), when in 2018 he had interviewed Adnan Abu Odeh, a Jordanian of Palestinian origin - who later became Minister of Culture and Information of Jordan during the reign of the king Hussain.

Adnan Abu Odeh
He clarified that Adnan Abu Odeh was at that time a Jordanian intelligence officer, and King Hussein sent him to Britain to receive training in media propaganda.

A return to Hearst described how he learned to incorporate fabricated information into real news and make it credible.

In March 1956 - the year in which Egypt was subjected to tripartite aggression or the so-called Suez war - the British Foreign Office ordered the Information Research Department to focus its attention on Egypt rather than communism.

Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser was involved in propaganda campaigns against the British through his media, especially Radio Voice of the Arabs, which was promoting Arab nationalism. Abdel Nasser was the first to use the term "Arab street".

Public opinion
The British Information Research Department at the time believed that Abdel Nasser was a communist, not an Arab nationalist, who was superior to it in the media war, in the words of David Hurst.

Although the Information Research Department was dissolved long ago, its methods and ideas for shaping public opinion in remote locations of Britain are still continuing.

The author of the article pointed out that the US State Department's International Liaison Center was established along the lines of the Information Research Department in 2016 to "combat foreign propaganda and media misinformation pursued by global terrorist organizations and foreign countries."

And US Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Richard Stingel stated at a congressional hearing in July 2016 that the International Liaison Center is working with the Egyptian University of Al-Azhar, requesting its help in promoting that the Islamic State is an anti-Islam group that is a deviation from its teachings.

Hurst concluded that Britain has not learned anything from its catastrophes in the Middle East, and that a new wave of Syrian refugees has the right to head towards Britain and Europe, "because they bear the consequences of all the fateful plots that have been woven."