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Yvonne Ridley

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Yvonne Ridley (born 1959?, Stanley, County Durham) is a British journalist and Respect Party politician best known for her capture by the Taliban and subsequent conversion to Islam.

Biography

Marriage and children

Mother of daughter Daisy (born 1993) whom she had with her first husband, Daoud Zaaroura (alias Abul Hakam), a former military commander of the Palestinian Fatah movement in Lebanon. The couple are now divorced. Her second marriage was with Iraqi-born Ilan Roni Hermosh, with whom she was married until 1999.

Capture by the Taliban

Ridley came to prominence in September 2001 when she was captured by the Taliban in Afghanistan whilst working for the Sunday Express, and held hostage for 11 days. She said she was treated with respect during her captivity, and promised to read the Qur'an after her release, and later did, partly to find out why the Taliban treated women as they do. Despite having been married to a Muslim she claims to have had no more knowledge of Islam "than would fill the back of a postage stamp". Reading the Qur'an she says she found no justification for the Taliban's actions, and converted to Islam in the summer of 2003. BBC News point to a popular suggestion that Ridley "is a victim of Stockholm Syndrome, in which hostages take the side of the hostage-takers." Ridley rejects this however, saying "that at no time did anyone try to brainwash her. She tells me that, at one point, she was visited by a cleric who asked if she wanted to convert to Islam. She refused but said that she would read the Koran if she ever got out." Indeed she says she "was horrible to captors. I spat at them and was rude and refused to eat. It wasn't until I was freed that I became interested in Islam."

Subsequent Career

2003 saw Yvonne Ridley employed by the Qatar based media organization Al Jazeera where, as a senior editor, she helped launch the English language version of their website, but soon after on November 12 2003 she was sacked because Al Jazeera found her "overly-vocal and argumentative style" was incompatible with the station’s programme and after she had formed a local branch of the National Union of Journalists. After her departure from Qatar, she published an article about her experiences there. She won her case for unfair dismissal against the tv station but was asked to return in May 2006 when the station lodged an appeal against the Qatari court decision.

Ridley was placed at the top of the Respect coalition's party list at the 2004 European Elections for the North East England region but was not elected. She stood as the Respect candidate at the Leicester South by-election in 2004. She came in fourth, with 12.7% of the vote. However, when she stood again in the May 2005 general election, her share of the vote dropped to 6.4%. In the local government elections in 2006 she unsucessfully stood for a seat on Westminster council.

Ridley is the author of In the Hands of the Taliban: Her Extraordinary Story soon to be re-published by Islam Channel 2003), detailing the 11 days she was held captive by the Taliban; as well as Ticket to Paradise (Dandelion Books, LLC 2003), a novel with fictional characters based on the real backdrop of 9/11. It was written before she converted to Islam which could explain why it was never published in the UK since its content is described as risque.

She is the presenter of the political and current affairs show The Agenda on the which is a European-wide satellite which can also be downloaded live globally by clicking on to www.islamchannel.tv].. She also writes a regular column for the New York-based Muslims Weekley as well as for other publications.

Criticism

Since her conversion Ridley has taken increasingly controversial stances that have left her open to extensive criticism: in particular surrounding her apparent support for terrorism and suicide bombings, which she calls "martyrdom operations". She says, "I hate the term 'suicide bombers' it's an offensive term which was invented by the West to ridicule what many people regard as 'martyrdom operations' and you have to look at each one in context." On 21 September 2004 she described radical cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri as "quite sweet really", while her former captors, the Taliban, had suffered an "unfair press".

Her vocal support for causes involving Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Chechnya and Uzbekistan have made her a popular speaker in anti-war circles. At a debate at Imperial College London on 16 February 2006 she outlined a viewpoint that is "pretty much in line with that of Hamas." She described Israel as "that disgusting little watchdog of America that is festering in the Middle East" and further that her party the Respect Party "is a Zionist-free party... if there was any Zionism in the Respect Party they would be hunted down and kicked out. We have no time for Zionists" while both the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties are "riddled with Zionists".

At the "Muslimer i Dialog" conference in Copenhagen in September 2005, Yvonne Ridley was asked if she didn't see it as a problem that militant Islamists distribute recruiting videos of Iraqi insurgents killing hostages. She replied that it was necessary for muslims to have these videos at home as an alternative form of news to what she perceived as the propaganda of Western media. At the same meeting she compared British Prime Minister Tony Blair with Pol Pot.

She returned to Copenhagen in May 2006 to take part in a conference on Islamaphobia and was given a standing ovation after urging Muslims not to "kneel before their enemies" or "kiss the hand that slaps them". Along with former Australain PM Bob Hawke and several other speakers including scholars and polticians, the Copenhagen Declaration was formed and signed.

She has defended Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his campaign of violence in Iraq and Jordan, describing the victims of the November 9 2005 Amman bombings in Jordan, which saw 60 persons killed and 115 injured as Iraqi collaborators, Saudi, Indonesian and Chinese intelligence officers and the upper echelons of society. The outpouring of public outrage manifested in spontaneous demonstration she described as staged and the work of "Jordanian troops out of uniform" and "government lackeys" together with "Christian and Muslim Bedouins" who had all been commandeered or paid to demonstrate by the Jordanian government and the CIA. Al-Zarqawi was denounced by his family after the bombings, a move that Ridley thought "cowardly". She said of al-Zarqawi himself that she would "rather put up with a brother like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi any day than have a traitor or sell-out for a father, son or grandfather" - a reference to Jordanian royal family. .

At a meeting of the Respect party on 6 June 2006, following a police raid in Forest Gate, East London, on 2 June 2006, Yvonne Ridley urged all Muslims in Britain to "boycott the police and refuse to co-operate with them in any way, shape or form." This should include "asking the community copper for directions to passing the time of day with a beat officer". Her comments were labelled as "sheer, undiluted madness" by Shadow Home Secretary David Davis, who added that "To not co-operate would be of no benefit to the Muslim community; no benefit to the police; and no benefit to the security of our country." George Galloway, leader of the RESPECT Coalition to which Ridley belongs also distanced himself from her comments, saying "Our policy is not that we should withdraw co-operation from the police."

References

  1. "Yvonne Ridley: From captive to convert", By Hannah Bayman, BBC News (online), 21 September, 2004
  2. "Articles of faith", By Eloise Napier, The Guardian, 24 February, 2004
  3. "Yvonne Ridley: From captive to convert", By Hannah Bayman, BBC News (online), 21 September, 2004
  4. "Yvonne Ridley - in the line of fire", BBC Two (online), March 23, 2004
  5. "Something Rather Repugnant" by Yvonne Ridley, Tajdeed, November 23, 2005 (archived at FreeRepublic.com)
  6. "Taleban kidnap victim, Yvonne Ridley, talks to Alon Or-bach", By Alon Or-bach, Felix (online), 16 February, 2006
  7. "Yvonne Ridley: From captive to convert", By Hannah Bayman, BBC News (online), 21 September, 2004
  8. "Taleban kidnap victim, Yvonne Ridley, talks to Alon Or-bach", By Alon Or-bach, Felix (online), 16 February, 2006
  9. "Place blame everywhere but where it is due", Viking Observer, October 29, 2005. (Translation from Template:Da icon of: "Debat uden dialog" ("Debate without dialogue") by Lars Erslev Andersen, Jyllands-Posten, October 1, 2005.)
  10. "Something Rather Repugnant" by Yvonne Ridley, Tajdeed, November 23, 2005 (archived at FreeRepublic.com)
  11. Call to UK Muslims over police help, BBC News (online), June 7, 2006
  12. Galloway disowns police boycott, BBC News (online), June 8, 2006

External links

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