Category Archives: Left Wing

The failure of multiculturalism and how to turn the tide – according to Geert Wilders

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Geert Wilders extremistGeert Wilders was invited to deliver the annual lecture at the Magna Carta Foundation in Rome on 25 March. His speech can be found on the PVV website, and has been enthusiastically reproduced at Jihad Watch, Atlas Shrugs, Winds of Jihad and other rabidly Islamophobic blogs. The British National Party in London are fans too, as indeed is the BNP’s former legal adviser Lee Barnes.

Most of the content of Wilders’ speech is predictable. You know the sort of thing. Islam is plotting to conquer Europe (“Islam strives for world domination. The koran commands Muslims to exercise jihad and impose shariah law”) and the left has made a conscious decision to facilitate this takeover through its embrace of multiculturalism. According to Wilders:

“Leftist multiculturalists are cheering for every new shariah bank, for every new islamic school, for every new mosque. Multiculturalists consider Islam as being equal to our own culture. Shariah law or democracy? Islam or freedom? It doesn’t really matter to them. But it does matter to us. The entire leftist elite is guilty of practising cultural relativism. Universities, churches, trade unions, the media, politicians. They are all betraying our hard-won liberties.”

And not just the left. According to Wilders, “the establishment parties of the Right still harbour their belief that Islam is a religion of peace on a par with peaceful religions such as Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and others”. Whereas, in Wilders’ opinion, “the truth is that Islam is evil, and the reality is that Islam is a threat to us”.

Wilders offers his solutions. “First, we will have to defend freedom of speech” (except of course when freedom of speech is used to attack Wilders himself). We must abandon cultural relativism, resist the encroachment of sharia law, “forbid the construction of new mosques” and strengthen the powers of the nation state in order to “stop immigration from Islamic countries”, while existing communities of recent migrant origin “must assimilate and adapt to our values”.

One proposal that hasn’t been heard from Wilders before, so far as we know, is to support and celebrate Muslims who decide to renounce their faith. Wilders states:

“An International Women’s Day is useless in the Arab world if there is no International Leave Islam Day. I propose the introduction of such a day in which we can honor the courageous men and women who want to leave Islam. Perhaps we can pick a symbolic date for such a day and establish an annual prize for an individual who has turned his back on Islam or an organization which helps people to liberate themselves from Islam.”

You might wonder whether this opens up the possibility of co-operation between Wilders and Maryam Namazie, who has played a prominent role in the campaign to encourage Muslims to abandon their faith. At any rate, it looks to me like Namazie and her Council of Ex-Muslims would be worthy recipients of Wilders’ prize. Wilders could also consider approaching Johann Hari, who might well be interested supporting this initiative – particularly if it involves his hero Ehsan Jami, who was expelled from the Dutch Labour Party for co-authoring an anti-Islam article with Wilders and has since joined the PVV.

Sarkozy’s UMP competes with Front National to win anti-Muslim vote, Socialists reject Tariq Ramadan

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Islam has emerged as a central issue in the campaign for French local elections Sunday that President Nicolas Sarkozy’s party hopes to win by taking a tough line on the integration of France’s large Muslim minority.

Sarkozy, who faces an uphill battle for reelection next year, has set the tone by blurring the border between his UMP party and the National Front, the once-shunned anti-immigrant party that recently overtook him in opinion polls.

Interior Minister Claude Gueant, until recently Sarkozy’s chief of staff in the Elysee Palace, has fleshed this out with a series of statements flirting with the anti-Muslim rhetoric that has made National Front leader Marine Le Pen so popular.

“The French don’t feel like they’re at home here anymore,” Gueant said this month in a verbal wink and nod at voters upset by the large numbers of Muslims in the country. “They want France to remain France.” The minister has called the Western-led air strikes against Libya a “crusade,” evoking Christian-Muslim conflict, and suggested that patients in public hospitals must avoid wearing religious symbols – another issue concerning mainly Muslims.

This rhetorical escalation came as France neared a runoff vote Sunday in local council elections. Le Pen’s National Front surged to win 15 percent of votes in the first round on March 20, just two points behind Sarkozy’s UMP party.

Both the centre-right government and Le Pen declare their aim is to defend “laicite” – the aggressive French secularism that strives to keep religion out of the public sector.

But amid debate about offering halal food in school canteens and Muslims praying in the street because their mosques are too small, the term “laicite” is clearly code for the problems France has adjusting to its 5-million strong Muslim minority.

The debate has alienated many Muslims, even such moderate figures as Grand Mosque of Paris Rector Dalil Boubakeur, who announced Wednesday he would not take part in a public debate on secularism that the UMP plans to hold on April 5. He said the debate about Islam “has greatly upset and worried Muslims who feel stigmatised because of their faith.”

The debate has carved deep rifts in the UMP leadership, even pitting Prime Minister Francois Fillon against Sarkozy and the UMP secretary general Jean-Francois Cope.

The debate has also sown confusion on the left because of a petition against the Islam debate launched by Respect Mag, a magazine that aims to promote intercultural understanding. The UMP rounded on opposition Socialist Party leader Martine Aubry and former Socialist Prime Minister Laurent Fabius for supporting the text when it emerged that Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss-born Muslim activist, had also signed it.

Both quickly withdrew their support because of Ramadan, who is vilified here as a covert Islamist out to subvert France. “If these two (parties) had wanted to agree to open the door wide to Marine Le Pen, they would not have done anything differently,” said Ramadan, a professor of Islamic studies at Britain’s Oxford University.

Reuters, 25 March 2011

Are Muslims responsible for a huge rise in homophobic attacks in East London?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Johann Hari has written an article for the gay magazine Attitude that he has posted on his blog, entitled “Can we talk about Muslim homophobia now?“, in which he states:

“East London has seen the highest increase in homophobic attacks anywhere in Britain. Everybody knows why, and nobody wants to say it. It is because East London has the highest Muslim population in Britain, and we have allowed a fanatically intolerant attitude towards gay people to incubate there, in the name of ‘tolerance’.”

Patrick Lilley has written to Johann Hari pointing out that figures released by the Metropolitan Police do not bear out the inflammatory claim that there has been such a huge increase in homophobic violence in “Muslim” areas of East London. Patrick has kindly allowed us to publish his letter here.

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Thurrock, Essex: Labour councillor suspended following racist email allegation

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Thurrock Labour councillor has been suspended by her party for passing on allegedly racist comments in an email.

The suspension was announced four days after it was revealed that Belhus councillor Sue Gray had forwarded an email to people on her mailbox which purported to be an official email detailing Bedfordshire Police’s protocol guide for dealing with terrorism suspects who may be Muslims.

At the end of the email a comment was posted saying: “This is unbelievable. It’s now predicted that Britain will become an Islamic state by 2070. (Time to think about your children/grandchildren). Please forward this e-mail asap so that 40 per cent of British voters who didn’t vote last time might get the message.”

The email forwarded by Cllr Gray was passed to a police officer, who reported it and Essex police have confirmed an investigation to establish whether the crime of inciting racial hatred has taken place.

Cllr Gray issued an immediate apology when the story entered the public domain, saying she had inadvertently forwarded the email, one of many she receives, without reading it fully. She distanced herself from the comments within it, but the Labour party have announced her suspension pending an investigation.

Essex Enquirer, 14 February 2011

Via ENGAGE

Islamophobia: does Labour measure up?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Labour Briefing masthead

Does Labour measure up?

By Bob Pitt

Labour Briefing, February 2011

“The Islamophobia Myth” – that was the title of an influential article by Kenan Malik published in the February 2005 issue of Prospect magazine. It argued that violence, hatred and discrimination against Muslims were at a very low level and that the threat of Islamophobia had been invented or at least greatly exaggerated, mainly by religious leaders hoping to suppress legitimate criticisms of their beliefs and to enhance their own status as community representatives. Malik’s thesis was welcomed in some quarters at the time, including among sections of the left.

Six years on, far fewer people would buy that argument. Hostility towards Muslims and their faith has reached such a pitch that to deny this represents a major threat is simply untenable. When the racist hooligans of the English Defence League take to the streets in towns and cities across the UK brandishing placards with slogans such as “We will never submit to Islam”, chanting “Burn a mosque down” and on occasion breaking through police lines to rampage through Muslim areas smashing shop windows and assaulting passers-by, who could seriously claim that Islamophobia is a myth?

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‘Socialists’ oppose broad alliance to democratise Tunisia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

On Tuesday the Guardian pubished an excellent article by Soumaya Ghannouchi on the Tunisian revolution in which she outlined two alternative roads out of the current political crisis:

The first involves a recycling of the old regime with a few cosmetic amendments. That is the strategy of the so-called “unity government”, announced by Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi today, a man who had served for years under the fallen dictator. It excludes the real forces on the ground, which genuinely reflect the Tunisian political landscape: independent socialists, Islamists and liberals. The unity government seems intent on turning the clock back, behaving as if the revolution had never been, reinstalling the loathed ruling party, the Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD), with all the same faces – bar Ben Ali’s, of course – and the same security machine. That is why protests have erupted again in many cities, with “Ben Ali out” changed to “RCD out”.

The alternative strategy – and the task now facing the Tunisian people – is to build a wide coalition of the forces that can dismantle the legacy of the despotic post-colonial state and bring about the change their people have been yearning for decades. This has been the driving force for the alliance being forged between the Communist Workers’ Party, led by Hamma al-Hammami, the charismatic Moncef al-Marzouqi’s Congress Party for the Republic, and Ennahda, led by my father Rachid Ghannouchi, along with trade unionists, and civil society activists.

You might have thought that support for a broad alliance of those forces campaigning for the democratisation of Tunisia would be welcomed by anyone outside of the ranks of the ruling RCD. But you’d be wrong. Yesterday’s Guardian featured two two letters denouncing Soumaya Ghannouchi’s article, both of which were written by supporters of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, a far-left sect notorious for its obsessive hostility towards political Islam.

You’ll note that Soumaya’s AWL critics don’t make the slightest effort to analyse the actual political character of Ennahda. Indeed, an article in the latest issue of the AWL paper Solidarity entitled “Islamist threat in Tunisia?” begins: “We don’t know how strong the Islamist threat is in Tunisia.” In fact the AWL doesn’t know anything about Islamism in Tunisia full stop. But ignorance is no obstacle to such sectarian dogmatists. Mark Osborn and Sacha Ismail don’t need to acquire any actual knowledge of the Ennahda party, its history, its principles or its programme. Why should they? For the AWL, the idea of an alliance between the left and an Islamist party is excluded as a matter of principle, whether its purpose is to mobilise public opinion against imperialist war or to displace a corrupt one-party dictatorship. We can at least take consolation in the fact that there is not the remotest prospect of the AWL influencing political developments in Tunisia – or anywhere else for that matter.

Protest against Paris ‘Islamization’ conference

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Unis face a l'islamophobieAbout 150 people protested Saturday outside the site of a conference in Paris organized to criticize the “Islamization” of Europe.

Protesters held banners reading “United Against Islamophobia” and “Fascists, get out of our neighborhoods.” Socialist Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe had asked police to ban the conference, but police allowed it to go forward under surveillance.

The conference was organized by several French groups, including nationalist political group Bloc Identitaire, that frequently complain about what they see as Islam’s growing influence over traditional French values. Several hundred people attended the conference, which also was broadcast over the Internet.

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