Category Archives: Left Wing

The roots of terror: Islam or Islamism?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“In national-socialism (Nazism), the story was of a ‘master race’ betrayed and stabbed in the back by an enemy within. Jews had to be eliminated and Europe had to be conquered to usher in the new order where the master race would rule again as it did in Germany’s glorious antiquity. In global Islamism, the villain is the west and it can be eliminated only by a military defeat or else by the conversion of every non-Muslim to Islam. The operating vision of Islam here is not the faith practiced around the world in diverse forms, but Islam as defined by Osama bin Laden: an intolerant, puritanical and fanatical sect holding a monopoly of virtue.”

Meghnad Desai at Open Democracy, 6 February 2007

The fact that Islamism itself comes in “diverse forms” is evidently lost on Desai.

Sarkozy defends Muhammad cartoons

Posted on by Bob Pitt

French interior minister and presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy has defended a weekly sued for printing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Two French Muslim groups are suing Charlie Hebdo magazine for defamation over the cartoons, printed a year ago. Mr Sarkozy noted he was often a target of the magazine but said he would prefer “too many caricatures to an absence of caricature”.

Mr Sarkozy’s letter drew concern from one of the Muslim groups behind the legal action. “He should remain neutral,” Abdullah Zekri of the Paris Grand Mosque was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency. The official French Council of Muslim Faith (CFCM) voiced anger at what it said was government interference and convened an emergency meeting.

Editor Philippe Val told the court the cartoons critiqued “ideas, not men”. Speaking at the opening of the hearing, Mr Val asked: “If we no longer have the right to laugh at terrorists, what arms are citizens left with? How is making fun of those who commit terrorist acts throwing oil on the fire?”

The illustrations originally appeared in the best-selling Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten on 30 September 2005 to accompany an editorial criticising self-censorship in the Danish media. One image shows the Prophet Muhammad carrying a lit bomb in the shape of a turban on his head decorated with the Islamic creed.

Muslim groups said Charlie Hebdo‘s decision to publish the cartoons “was part of a considered plan of provocation aimed against the Islamic community in its most intimate faith”. It was “born out of a simplistic Islamophobia as well as purely commercial interests”.

“This is an attack on Muslims,” UOIF President Lhaj Thami Breze told the court according to Reuters. “It is as if the Prophet taught terrorism to Muslims, and so all Muslims are terrorists.”

BBC News, 7 February 2007

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New South Wales premier calls for ban on HT

Posted on by Bob Pitt

New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma is calling on the Federal Government to ban the group Hizb-ut Tahrir, which is holding a conference in south-west Sydney today.

Hizb-ut Tahrir, which is banned in Europe and parts of the Middle East, focuses on the idea of creating an ideal Islamic state somewhere in the world.

Mr Iemma says the group should be banned from Australia.

“This is an organisation that is basically saying that it wants to declare war on Australia, our values and our people,” he said. “That’s the big difference and that’s why I believe that they are just beyond the pale.

“Enough is enough! And it’s time for the Commonwealth to review this organisation’s status and take the lead from other countries and ban them.”

ABC News, 28 January 2007

Hitch confronts ‘the Islamist menace’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

HitchensIn the Winter 2007 issue of City Journal Christopher Hitchens reviews Mark Steyn’s book America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It, not uncritically. He does take issue with Steyn’s sneers at Martin Amis, pointing out that liberals like Amis share much of Steyn’s hostility towards Islam and Islamism.

Hitchens writes: “Mark Steyn’s book is essentially a challenge to the bien-pensants among us: an insistence that we recognize an extraordinary threat and thus the possible need for extraordinary responses. He need not pose as if he were the only one with the courage to think in this way.” To prove his point Hitchens quotes Amis’s vile anti-Muslim diatribe from last September – which proposes subjecting the Muslim community as a whole to travel bans, racial profiling, strip searches and deportation – while at the same time describing his chum as “profoundly humanistic and open-minded”.

(To be fair, Hitchens does baulk at a statement from Sam Harris, who has written: “The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists.” Hitch characterises this as an “irresponsible remark”. You could say.)

The basic problem with a lot of liberals, Hitchens says, is that “they cannot shake their subliminal identification of the Muslim religion with the wretched of the earth: the black- and brown-skinned denizens of what we once called the ‘Third World’.” Furthermore, this inexplicable sympathy with the oppressed has given rise to “the stupid neologism ‘Islamophobia’, which aims to promote criticism of Islam to the gallery of special offenses associated with racism”.

Like Steyn, Hitchens warns against “the Islamist project of a ‘soft’ conquest of host countries”. He tells us that “Europe’s multicultural authorities, many of its welfare agencies, and many of its churches treat the most militant Muslims as the minority’s ‘real’ spokesmen … encouraging the sensation that many in the non-Muslim Establishment have a kind of death wish”. With evident approval, Hitch cites Steyn’s complaint that “most of the Christian churches have collapsed into compromise: choosing to speak of Muslims as another ‘faith community’ … and reserving their real condemnation for American policies in the war against terrorism”.

Overall, despite minor criticisms, Hitchens endorses “Steyn’s salient point that demography and cultural masochism, especially in combination, are handing a bloodless victory to the forces of Islamization”.

MP presses for forced-marriage law change

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ann CryerA Bradford MP has vowed to ignore any allegations of racism and Islamophobia as she takes her campaign to put an end to “evil” forced marriages to Home Secretary John Reid. Keighley MP Ann Cryer tabled an early day motion demanding the Government take action to end the “rape and false imprisonment” of women and girls, and make forced marriage a criminal offence.

This is Bradford, 18 January 2007

Cryer, of course, has never been constrained by the thought that she might be inciting racism or Islamophobia (see, for example, here and here).

For the Muslim Council of Britain’s views on forced marriage, see (pdf) here.

Head scarf ban for Antwerp city counter clerks raises protests

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A head scarf ban for municipal counter clerks in the northern port city of Antwerp has raised protest from Muslims and women activists, officials said Tuesday.

The city council decided late Monday that civil servants dealing directly with the public should not wear visible religious symbols like a Muslim head scarf or a Christian cross. Some 150 mostly Muslim women protested the decision late Monday and the organizers said they were considering further action.

Antwerp has been a stronghold of the far-right Flemish Interest party, but it was defeated in local elections last October by the socialists, who had run a campaign stressing the multicultural makeup of Belgium’s second-largest city.

Opponents of the ban were disappointed that the coalition of socialists, liberals and Christian democrats who run the city council had outlawed head scarves for frontdesk staff. “It was a surprise, especially after a campaign like that,” said Sophie De Graeve of the women’s rights group VOK.

Associated Press, 16 January 2007

Adopt our values or stay away, says Blair

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Tony Blair formally declared Britain’s multicultural experiment over yesterday as he told immigrants they had “a duty” to integrate with the mainstream of society. In a speech that overturned more than three decades of Labour support for the idea, he set out a series of requirements that were now expected from ethnic minority groups if they wished to call themselves British.

These included “equality of respect” – especially better treatment of women by Muslim men – allegiance to the rule of law and a command of English. If outsiders wishing to settle in Britain were not prepared to conform to the virtues of tolerance then they should stay away….

Mr Blair’s volte face – just eight years ago he championed multiculturalism – was the culmination of a long Labour retreat from the cause. In recent weeks, Jack Straw, Ruth Kelly, John Reid and Gordon Brown have all played their part in a concerted revision of the Cabinet’s stand which began in earnest after the July 7 suicide bombings in London last year. Mr Blair, speaking in Downing Street, said the diversity of cultures in Britain should still be celebrated but the tone of his speech was against the ideology that became known as multiculturalism.

Daily Telegraph, 9 December 2006

See also the Times, 9 December 2006

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Gay Muslims clash with Tatchell

Posted on by Bob Pitt

OutragePeter Tatchell has been caught up in a war of words with British Muslims, who have accused him of “Islamophobia”.

In an article written for Guardian Unlimited, Tatchell argued that Muslims often failed to make the distinction between legitimate criticism of Islam and insults against their faith. He singled out hardline groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir (HuT), which “used to openly call for the killing of gay people” and said that HuT’s agenda was one “for clerical fascism”.

Citing a Channel 4 poll, where two-thirds of British Muslims said they oppose free speech if it offends their faith, Tatchell wrote: “They want to make it a crime to cause them offence they want privileged legal protection against criticism of their beliefs.”

Tatchell’s comments were attacked by the LGBT Muslim group Imaam. Farzana from the group told GT: “We feel that OutRage! doesn’t understand our cultural and religious sensitivities. Often, the way they word and phrase their press releases can and does antagonise Muslims. Much as we’ve invited them to meetings so we can talk about the best way to tackle Muslim LGBT issues, they insist on doing things their way.”

The debate was addressed on a strand on Imaan’s messageboard, titled “Homophobia & Islamophobia”. One posting reads: “Why is it that we, as gay Muslims, are so willing to attack the people that stand up against the homophobic Islamic clerics, who call for our death, by calling them Islamophobic, yet are too afraid to go out there and stand up and be counted?”

Gay Times, December 2006

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Aishah Azmi sacked

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Muslim teaching assistant who was suspended for refusing to remove her veil in the classroom has been sacked.

Aishah Azmi, 24, of Thornhill Lees, Dewsbury, west Yorkshire, was suspended on full pay earlier this year by Kirklees council and has now been sacked, sources said.

Last month, an employment tribunal dismissed three of Mrs Azmi’s claims of discrimination and harassment but found that she was victimised by Headfield Church of England junior school in Dewsbury and awarded her £1,000 for “injury to feelings”.

Mrs Azmi said she was willing to remove her veil in front of children – but not when male colleagues were present. Her case sparked a national debate on multiculturalism in Britain.

The prime minister, Tony Blair, said the veil row was part of a necessary debate about the way the Muslim community integrates into British society and said the veil was a “mark of separation” which makes people of other ethnic backgrounds feel uncomfortable.

The intervention by a series of politicians, which culminated in Mr Blair’s remarks, were criticised both by the tribunal and Muslim community leaders. The tribunal report said it was “most unfortunate” that politicians had made comments on the case which were sub judice.

The debate was sparked by the leader of the House of Commons, Jack Straw, when he said that the wearing of full veils – or niqab – made community relations more difficult.

The government’s race minister, Phil Woolas, demanded Mrs Azmi be sacked, accusing her of “denying the right of children to a full education” because her stand meant she could not “do her job” and insisted that barring men from working with her would amount to “sexual discrimination”.

The shadow home secretary, David Davis, launched a stinging attack on Muslim leaders for risking “voluntary apartheid” in Britain, and allegedly expecting special protection from criticism.

Press Association, 24 November 2006

British MP warns Europe of ‘new anti-Semitism’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“A ‘witches brew’ of Islamic fundamentalists, left-wing intellectuals and neo-Nazis is causing a new resurgence of anti-Semitism to spread across Western Europe and must be tackled, one of the continent’s leading experts on the subject has told The Jerusalem Post in an exclusive interview.

“British Labor MP Dennis MacShane – a close ally of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and co-author of a hard-hitting report on the rise of anti-Semitism across Europe – told the Post in an interview in Berlin on Tuesday that Western Europe was suffering from a ‘new anti-Semitism’ that had to be tackled head-on. Part of this, he claimed, came from some sections of the Islamic communities of Western Europe – both fundamentalists and intellectuals – who were in an unorthodox alliance with left-wingers in propagating anti-Semitic sentiment.”

Jerusalem Post, 22 November 2006