THIS week Kevin Bloom, a Daily Maverick associate editor waded into a controversy surrounding ‘Gift of the Givers’ (GOTG). The group faces allegations of channeling funds designated for humanitarian relief to organisations such as Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya (Hamas), who are listed as terrorist groups by a number of countries, including Australia, Canada, European Union, Japan, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States .

To date GOTG has refused to open its books to public scrutiny and vehemently deny any involvement in underhand activities.

Founder Imtiaz Sooliman claims his funding process is ‘fool-proof’ since any transfer of funds to projects overseas is ‘authorised by the Reserve Bank, and local politicians such as Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma’

One would really need to be a fool to believe that since the funds are in Dollars, the process is obviously “Jew-friendly” and not related to any money-laundering involving Gulf States, Hezbollah or Iran? It says so in Sooliman’s self-penned autobiography, trust us?

“Strike terror into the hearts of your enemies and Allah’s enemies” are not exactly the words of a humanitarian, reaching out to reconcile either sides to a conflict? Sooliman’s statement appears to have been made at a Congress of Business and Economics (CBE) gala dinner event in Johannesburg on 23 November.

In a licentious piece, best summarised as: “I’m not that kind of a Jew, but of course, Imtiaz Sooliman is not that kind of Jihadist either”, (or “I’m a Great Journalist, believe me’) , Bloom fails to grapple with any of the central allegations raised by critics . Instead he quotes at length from the ‘Book of Sooliman’, in a process of obsessive, literary myth-making, redolent of a contemporary debate amongst scholars of the Koran. The Medina and Mecca periods in which followers of Muhammad went ‘from being a weak, persecuted minority in Mecca to a powerful force with allies in Medina,” displays two very different versions of the prophet.

You can’t be cancelled if you don’t cancel yourself. pic.twitter.com/5BnkCV7tVP

— The Kiffness (@TheKiffness) December 1, 2024

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I hesitate to even bring up the subject here, because, much like a modern review of Moses and the tabernacles, what one ends with, are two very different versions of events — one depicts a man of peace, the other a man of war, and Hollywood has always failed at presenting us with credible biopics when it comes to religious chronicles. It is a touchy subject, I know.

Which may explain why Bloom feels the needs to regale all and sundry on his conversion to latter-day agnosticism when it comes to the Middle East? I get the gist, the man was once a bible-scholar, escaped Sunday School or life in a Yeshiva and Seminary and lived to tell the tale? Still nothing like forcing those who happen to believe in such fairy-tales as scripture, to view the world, exactly like Bloom, on pain of facing a secular inquisition, in which the very definition of secularism is up for grabs, where you get cancelled if you don’t cough up the correct words? Or worse, a religious inquisition you get your head chopped off for not uttering the correct mantra?

Is Bloom serious when he claims he “wanted to know from [David ‘Kiffness’ Scott] … whether he confirmed or denied that his global hit had contributed to anti-immigrant and/or racist sentiment in the United States and beyond“?

Cherry-picking from an assortment of online tweets involving the meme musician, the Bloom appears to have relegated his target to the arena of matinee club theatrics (a billion fans would tend to disagree), without bothering to consider why those seeking to cancel Scott are in the same league as those wanting to rename Jerusalem and every other Hebrew city, with their former colonial Arabic names? This whilst seeking to persuade all and sundry that if the Jihad is for a just cause, and the money meant for disaster relief ended up funding a religious rally, which just happened to attack a music festival on a Jewish holiday (50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War), we should just look the other way?

Doing this has resulted in over 12 months of absolute bloody mayhem.

SEE: The Kiffness Refuses to be silenced after Sooliman Critique

Tag: Quds