Law trainee says ‘kuffar who killed our people’ are to blame for Paris terror in online video rant

From the London Evening Standard

A trainee lawyer at one of the world’s biggest law firms has posted a 21-minute online rant in which he blames the Paris attacks on non-Muslim  “kuffar” who “killed our people and raped and pillaged our resources”. 

Aysh Chaudhry, from international law firm Clifford Chance, tried to explain the terrorist atrocities that left 17 people dead and how Muslims should respond. Mr Chaudhry, who works in the firm’s mergers and acquisitions department, criticised moderate Muslims for allowing their minds to be “colonised” and claimed Islam was “superior” to Western ideology. Referring to non-Muslims insultingly as “kuffar”, the 22-year-old claimed the attacks may not have happened had the West not “killed our people and raped and pillaged our resources”.

Addressing “the events in Paris that have taken place over the last few days”, he said Muslims apologising for the attacks were offering a “weak” response.

He said: “Brothers and sisters, we would not be here had it not been for the fact that the kuffar had gone to our lands and killed our people and raped and pillaged our resources. This, brothers and sisters, is what we need to understand. We need to move away from this apologetic tone and have confidence in Islam because we are enslaved otherwise.”

Mr Chaudhry, of Waltham Forest, said Muslims were betraying true Islam by adopting Western concepts of freedom of speech, adding: “The ideal of freedom of speech doesn’t exist in reality. But there seems to be an absolute freedom to insult Muslims.

“The people being held out as Islamic personalities with an Islamic response are not giving a correct Islamic response. You [Muslims] have to accept their [Westerners’] freedom to insult you. That is what freedom of speech means [in the West]… I guess Muslims just need to grow up, is the concept they want to put across.”

He said Muslims had become “infatuated with the civilisation of the kuffar and their beliefs and their values”, adding: “We need to remove this Western cultural lens with which we are viewing and responding to attacks on Islam from our eyes. Stop putting freedom on this pedestal. This is a value stemming from secular, liberal beliefs… We don’t need a value which stems from a bankrupt ideology.”

Chaudhry is understood to have started at Clifford Chance six months ago on a salary of £40,500. His Linked-In page, which has now been removed, said he gained a first-class honours degree in law from London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).

A spokeswoman for Clifford Chance said Chaudhry, who is still employed by the firm, was not facing any disciplinary action. She said: “The views expressed in this video are personal and not those of Clifford Chance.”

I’m amazed at the salary for a trainee solicitor, what in my youth was called the articled clerk. In 1976 an articled clerk with a degree was paid a  sum per week little more than the student grant. It was only a few years since solicitors expected the clerk (or his parents) to pay them for teaching, and we were warned to beware of firms demanding payment of a premium. Now I understand that the minimum salary should be £18,000pa in London and the big firms, of which Clifford Chance is one, pay £40,000.
I don’t begrude somebody who is earning good money, being paid for their experience, hard work etc. but to give you an idea, this not yet qualified boy is already being paid more than a Ward sister and as much as a Hospital Modern matron.  The average starting salary of a graduate Civil Engineer is £23,000. On promotion a Captain in the British Army will start at £38,000 and a Sergeant shoud reach £37,000.