On Monday I linked approvingly, in a brief coda, to an article by Anthony Browne. Shortly afterwards the Harry's Place post that had drawn my attention to that article was updated with a good deal information about Mr Browne's possible racist links. This brou-ha-ha has now been noted in the Grauniad, which has in turn been abluted by Scott Burgess. Although I am generally speaking in the "open" borders group, I frequently link to peoplewhoaren't because, to put it bluntly, they have make some good points which can't be easily brushed aside and I do not believe that one should necessarily ignore everything someone says just because one disagrees with some of it. This precisely explains why I am quite happy to have linked to Mr Browne's article, I do not think that the article is anything other than good sense and hence I see no reason not link to it, even if he may at some other point have written stuff I furiously disagree with or which is outright racism - though I should note that I don't believe he has in fact done so.
Firstly it is worth pointing out that the same smear by association would work fine on the Grauniad and its diary correspondent who, according to google, appears to have once been the city correspondent of the Torygraph. This means that he must have been in contact with a certain Barbara Amiel who is a well-known Zionist if not worse and hence one might suggest that the same "Nice friends you have there" comment applies too. I have no doubt that other smears could be created with a little more googling.
Secondly, and more importantly, some things are true no matter who says them. The fact that there appear to be clear race and sex based differences amongst humans is no less true because it appears in "White Male Chauvinst Pig weekly" or "Biogenetics quarterly". It is true that the former would have more readership than the latter ad the latter would probably have more equations and statistics in an article about such differences, but the underlying truth would be the same.
It is useful to know what else someone (or some organaisation) has written so that one can put a particular article in context and it is certainly worthwhile noting where an article is reprinted or where it is commented on so that one can see what other people think of it, but there is no need to immediately dismiss an entire author's output based on the fact that he has been adopted by some people that you disagree with. The key difference between Aslam and Browne is that Aslam identifies himself primarily as a member of Hisb ut Tahrir and only secondarily as a Grauniad journalist whereas Browne is primarily a journalist at the Wapping Liar and only secondarily anything to do with the anti-immigration crowd, a crowd who may or may no be racist in any case.
The reason why we should treat Aslam's Grauniad output with suspicion is that he has a long history of association with HuT and its desires to kill Jews and implement an Islamic caliphate, this is far more serious than indirect links at some remove with some kind of white supremacist.