Category Archives: Left Wing

The racism behind integration

Posted on by Bob Pitt

IRR report cover“In most European countries, integration is simply a euphemism for assimilation, the report says. The driving force is the notion of a national culture. In Germany this expresses itself through blood-based citizenship and a Leitkultur(dominant culture) and in France through citizenship by birth and earth and by laïcité (secularism). Norway has the idea of likhet (sameness); the Netherlands has verzuiling (religious/cultural blocs).

“One expects the extreme right to embrace such notions, but the report finds centre-left parties also using these racist sentiments to strategise. They may be liberal about immigration but, when it comes to Muslims, they fall prey to an Islamophobia that is ‘nourished by a mixture of feminism and secularism’.”

Ziauddin Sardar reviews Liz Fekete’s Integration, Islamophobia and civil rights in Europe, a new report published by the Institute of Race Relations.

New Statesman, 22 May 2008

Danish government introduces headscarf ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

DF niqabi judge posterJudges in the nation’s courts will be banned from wearing headscarves and other religious apparel under a proposal put forward by the government on Wednesday.

The bill, which also stated that judges in all courts would be required to wear robes, has the support of a vast majority in parliament, including the Social Democrats, the largest opposition party.

The proposal comes after nearly a month of debate unleashed by a Court Administration decision that it had no legal grounds to exclude Muslim women who wore headscarves from becoming judges.

“Judges that make decisions in court cases, probate courts and county courts need to appear fair and neutral. And we are ready to pass legislation to ensure that,” Lene Espersen, the justice minister, said.

In a commentary in Politiken newspaper on Wednesday, Birthe Rønn Hornbeck, who serves as both immigration minister and minister for ecclesiastical affairs, stated her opposition to a ban, suggesting that doing so would put Denmark on the path towards a “dictatorship”. She also criticised “fanatic anti-Muslims” who had launched a misleading advertising campaign warning against permitting judges to wear headscarves.

Copenhagen Post, 15 May 2008

Via Islam in Europe

See also Associated Press, which reports: “The new legislation … was prompted by discussions over a set of dress code guidelines issued last year by the court administration, which noted that Danish law does not bar judges from wearing head scarves. The guidelines went largely unnoticed until the government’s ally, the nationalist Danish People’s Party, decided to politicize the issue last month. The party, known for its anti-Muslim rhetoric, created a poster showing a woman wearing an all-encompassing burqa and holding a judge’s gavel. The party urged the government to introduce legislation ensuring that courts remain ‘neutral instances in the Danish judiciary’.”

Update:  See also BBC News, 19 May 2008

The new generation of renegades

Posted on by Bob Pitt

David Edgar“Commentators Nick Cohen, David Aaronovitch and Andrew Anthony all had left-wing parents, and were involved in political campaigning around race, gender and class in the 1970s…. Although none of them has abandoned the whole progressive package, their main target is a left-liberal intelligentsia, which, as they see it, opposed the overthrow of a fascist dictator, Saddam Hussein, and is now in an unholy Faustian alliance – justified by modish, postmodern cultural relativism – with the far right.

“The far right in question is not the BNP, but political Islamism, represented by those main Muslim umbrella organisations that are seen to have links with Islamists in Muslim countries, particularly those who joined the coalition that organised the demonstration on February 15 2003 against the invasion of Iraq….

“Certainly, the progressive left is in alliance with a group whose traditional views run counter to some central planks of its platform. Twenty-five years on from Maydays, I have written a new play (Testing the Echo), which is partly about the temptation – on these understandable grounds – to reject any kind of religious affiliation, to brand fundamentalist Islam as brown fascism, and (thereby) to abandon an impoverished, beleaguered and demonised community.

“For, let’s be clear, the alliance to which the new defectors object – the alliance enabled by a multiculturalism that sought to give visibility and confidence to entire communities – is not just between a few deluded revolutionaries and the odd crazed Muslim cleric. Martin Amis denies he’s declaring war on the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims, but his ‘thought experiment’ about meting out collective punishment on Muslims (travel restriction, deportation, strip searching) ‘until it hurts the whole community’ makes no distinction between followers of Hizb ut-Tahrir and the man in the Clapham mosque. Cohen is careful to point out that ‘Islamism has Islamic roots’, and, clearly, the group that he dubs the ‘far right’ goes beyond the adherents of Jamaat-e-Islami.”

David Edgar in the Guardian, 19 April 2008

Blears blames Muslims for social divide

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Blears blames minoritiesCommunity Secretary Hazel Blears stood accused of “scapegoating” immigrants and Muslim groups on Thursday for what she called the development of “social apartheid” in Britain.

In a speech to the Fabian Society in Westminster, Ms Blears claimed that community cohesion could only be maintained by preventing one single faith or ethnic group from dominating a neighbourhood to the extent that others feel “alienated, insecure or unsafe.”

However, the minister said that she saw “nothing wrong” with cultural enclaves of “particular groups” such as “Chinatowns and Little Italys.”

Her comments follow Church of England Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali’s recent attack on the Muslim communities for supposedly creating “no-go zones” for whites in parts of Britain.

Furious left campaigners and politicians dismissed Ms Blears’s seeming concern as “beyond satire” when “no-one has done more” than new Labour to create poor and ethnic minority ghettos through its big-business policies and anti-terror laws.

Morning Star, 4 April 2008

See also the Daily Mirror, Daily Express and Daily Mail.

BBC is too scared to allow jokes about Islam, says Ben Elton

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Comedian Ben Elton has said the BBC is too “scared” to poke fun at Islam. He accused the broadcasting company of allowing programmes to run jokes about Christianity and vicars. However, he claimed bosses were too politically correct and worried about a negative backlash to do the same about imams. In an interview, Mr Elton, 48, who admits he has little religious faith, said: “I believe part of that is due to the genuine fear that the authorities and the community have about provoking the radical elements of Islam.” Mr Elton’s comments appeared in Third Way, a Christian culture magazine.

Daily Mail, 2 April 2008

Update:  Elton has received the endorsement of the BNP – and also of an extreme right-wing blogger rejoicing in the entirely appropriate name of Fulham Reactionary.

Britain targets Muslim women to fight extremists

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In a school in south London, women in headscarves are learning English, childcare skills and citizenship, to smooth their integration into British life. The courses are encouraged under a new government policy to “empower” Muslim women, ultimately to combat the threat from Islamist violence, a threat made brutally clear when four homegrown suicide bombers killed 52 people in London in 2005.

The policy’s backers say the main goal is for Britain’s estimated 800,000 Muslim women to become more influential in their communities, which might stem the threat from disaffected young Muslim men. “Muslim women have a unique role to play in tackling the spread of violent extremism,” Communities Secretary Hazel Blears said as she unveiled the plan, backed by Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

In a document published in January, Blears highlighted figures showing almost two-thirds of Muslim women in Britain are “economically inactive” – as opposed to about a quarter of all women. Her plan would see tens of millions of pounds spent through local communities to raise their involvement. But despite visible backing for the scheme from Brown, some Muslim community leaders are alienated by the way it has been presented.

“Why is it that anything that has to do with Muslims, has to do with terrorism?” said Reefat Drabu, Chair of the Social and Family Affairs Committee of the Muslim Council of Britain. While in favour of female empowerment, she said linking it with reducing the threat of terrorism was ludicrous. “If they want to combat terrorism, they really need to get out of their denial and realise that they need to look at the policies, as far as foreign policies, policies at home, domestic policies to win the hearts and minds of people,” she said.

The Muslim Public Affairs Committee said Blears’ initiative was missing the larger point – discrimination. “What Blears seems to fail to recognise is that women are unequivocally recognised by Islam as the moral authority in their homes,” the organisation commented on its Web site. “They do not need condescending advice on how they can better fulfil their roles in this sphere.”

Reuters, 26 March 2008

Swiss minister sparks veil outcry

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Micheline Calmy-ReySwiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey has been widely criticised for donning a white headscarf to meet Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Well-known for her stand on women’s rights, she has provoked headlines such as “Just like a submissive woman”.

Socialist MP Maria Roth-Bernasconi said it was irritating that she had angered feminists in Iran. Ms Calmy-Rey said she was observing protocol. “When you are a guest you respect local customs,” she said.

Social Democrat MP Liliane Maury Pasquier accepted that customs had to be observed. But she was quoted by one newspaper complaining that the minister should have shown solidarity with “the women who fight against wearing the headscarf”.

Swiss daily Le Matin said on Wednesday it was shocked that Switzerland’s “icon of a liberated woman” had been transformed into an image of one who was oppressed.

BBC News, 20 March 2008

More merde from MacShane

Posted on by Bob Pitt

denis_macshaneOn the principle of “we read this reactionary crap so you don’t have to”, Islamophobia Watch has invested in a copy of Brother Tariq, the English language edition of Caroline Fourest’s attack on Tariq Ramadan, recently published by the right-wing Tory think-tank the Social Affairs Unit.

The book’s jacket features accolades from Peter Tatchell and Joan Smith. Tatchell poses the rhetorical question: “Is Tariq Ramadan an Islamic liberal or a clever Islamist strategist who uses the language of liberalism to disguise a fundamentalist agenda?” Fourest’s book, of course, comes down firmly in favour of the latter, and in recommending it Tatchell clearly does too. Smith, for her part, tells us that “political Islam, catalogued in this book in forensic detail, loathes the modern world” and recommends Fourest’s anti-Ramadan polemic as “an essential guide to decoding Islamist rhetoric, exposing the political project which lies behind contrived controversies such as the veil”.

As we have pointed out before, attacks on Professor Ramadan as a dangerous extremist are a sure sign that Islamophobia has reached the point where it has waved goodbye to any semblance of rational thought. So it is hardly surprising that Tatchell and Smith have joined the anti-Ramadan campaign.

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