Category Archives: Left Wing

MCB criticises Straw’s veil comments

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Straw’s comments play into the hands of the intolerant

The Muslim Council of Britain is concerned that the comments made yesterday by such a high-profile figure as Jack Straw may play into the hands of those who are intolerant of Muslims and Islam. There may be a difference of opinion on niqab (face-veil), but we have to respect a woman’s right to choose to adopt it. Mr Straw’s comments have the potential of further undermining civil liberties in our country, which appear to be gradually eroding in the aftermath of the terrible atrocities of July last year.

“There can be no doubt that we are already witnessing an increasingly bigoted anti-Muslim climate being fostered in Britain. Recent weeks have witnessed several arson attacks against mosques and assaults on Muslim individuals around the country. Jack Straw’s comments will hardly help,” said Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Britain.

MCB press release, 6 October 2006

Blaming the veil is wrong

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Why oh why can’t we Muslims just take some constructive criticism for a change? We live in ghettos, we can’t accept that terrorism is our fault, our Mosques are recruiting centres for jihadis and now Jack Straw has ‘sensibly’ pointed out that women who cover their faces are a hindrance to social cohesion, we’re up in arms again … ”

Rajnaara Akhtar of Protect-Hijab at the Guardian’s Comment is Free, 6 October 2006

See also Protect-Hijab statement, 5 October 2006

Guardian blogger revolted by veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Jack Straw says that he is made to ‘feel uncomfortable’ by women wearing a full veil. I feel uncomfortable too and have been wondering about the nature of that discomfort and what I should do about it. When I walk down the street in London, or in Bristol where I live, and see a woman covered head to toe, I not only feel uncomfortable; I feel a physical sense of revulsion.”

Sue Blackmore at the Guardian’s Comment is Free, 6 October 2006

Mike Marqusee takes a different line:

“Like Jack Straw, I find it awkward to talk with women who veil their faces. Unlike Jack Straw, I don’t assume that the onus is on them to relieve me of my discomfort, or that this discomfort is inevitable and entrenched, or that it betokens an unbridgeable cultural gap or irreconcilable social difference…. Speaking personally, the people I feel most uncomfortable talking with are perma-tanned politicians in expensive, perfectly pressed suits with a record of shameless mendacity. Jack Straw’s complicity in the lies that led to the invasion and occupation of Iraq makes him responsible for divisions both domestic and foreign of far greater consequence, far greater menace to us all, than any woman walking the streets of Blackburn with her face veiled.”

Comment is Free, 6 October 2006

Jack Straw: Muslim women ‘should discard veils completely’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Take Off Your VeilCabinet Minister Jack Straw today waded further into the row over his call for Muslim women to remove their veils by saying he would like the garments to be discarded altogether.

The former Foreign Secretary sparked controversy when he revealed that he asks female visitors to his constituency surgery to uncover their faces, to improve “community relations”. But asked on the BBC if he would rather the veils be discarded completely, Mr Straw said: “Yes. It needs to be made clear I am not talking about being prescriptive but with all the caveats, yes, I would rather.”

Last night, Muslim leaders in the Commons Leader’s Blackburn constituency said many Muslim women would find his comments, originally made in his local newspaper, “offensive and disturbing” and Respect MP George Galloway demanded his resignation. But Mr Straw said the increasing trend towards covering facial features was “bound to make better, positive relations between the two communities more difficult”.

Associated Press, 6 October 2006

Straw’s Lancashire Telegraph article is reprinted in the Guardian, 6 October 2006

Straw’s veil comments spark anger

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jack_StrawJack Straw, the ex-foreign secretary, has angered Muslim groups by suggesting women who wear veils can make relations between communities more difficult. The Blackburn MP says the veil is a “visible statement of separation and of difference” and he asks women visiting his surgery to consider removing it.

The remarks attracted an angry response from some organisations representing Muslims.

It was “astonishing” that Mr Straw chose to “selectively discriminate on the basis of religion”, said Massoud Shadjareh, chairman of the Islamic Human Rights Commission. Halima Hussain, from civil liberties group the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, asked BBC News 24: “Who is Jack Straw to comment on negative symbols within a religion that is not his own?” Rajnaara Akhtar, who chairs the organisation Protect-Hijab, suggested the “appalling” comments showed “a deep lack of understanding”.

BBC News, 5 October 2006

See also “Straw in plea to Muslim women: Take off your veils”, Lancashire Telegraph, 5 October 2006

And Jack Straw, “I want to unveil my views on an important issue”, Lancashire Telegraph, 5 October 2006

Extremist bullies

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“We will not be browbeaten by bullies,” Home Secretary John Reid told Labour conference, vowing to have the “courage and character to stand shoulder to shoulder” with Britain’s Muslim communities to stand up to “extremist bullies.”

Taking his cue from Tony Blair, he posed new Labour as a kindly knight in shining armour prepared to defend Muslims against the evil in their midst.

Like the Prime Minister – but unlike the security services in the US and Britain – he makes no link between the danger of domestic terrorism and the blood-soaked state terrorism launched by Washington and London against Iraq and Afghanistan.

Both Mr Blair and George W Bush claim that incidences of terrorism across the globe break out because “these people hate our way of life.”

This is childish nonsense. Even the most extreme expressions of Islamist terror justify their acts as a response to military attacks on and occupations of Muslim lands, which long predate September 11 2001.

But US Republican and new Labour neoconservatives cannot accept that global insecurity is a direct result of their own propensity for war and subjugation.

That’s why Mr Reid resorts to pompous claptrap that blames Britain’s Muslim communities for the small groups of misguided people who seek to combat state terrorism with individual terrorism.

For him and his boss, everyone who condemns imperialism’s crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine or who identifies the link between those crimes and the bombs in Britain and elsewhere is dabbling in an extremism that provides a milieu within which terrorists can thrive.

How dare they try to blame others for the mess that their policies have created?

New Labour’s belief that it has a right to define Muslims as either “moderate” or “extremist” on the basis of whether they back the government’s criminal policies is a disgrace.

It is also a confirmation that, when it comes to bullying the poor and powerless, government ministers are past masters.

Morning Star editorial, 29 September 2006

Confront Muslim extremists – Reid

Posted on by Bob Pitt

John ReidExtremist Muslim “bullies” must be faced down so there is space for rational debate, Home Secretary John Reid has told the Labour conference.

Mr Reid was recently heckled when he urged Muslim parents to guard against their children being radicalised. But he signalled he and other ministers would go out to urge communities to root out extremism. “We will not be brow beaten by bullies, that’s what it means to be British,” he told Labour delegates.

And he said his controversial visit to Waltham Forest in east London last week may have been his first visit but it would not be his last. “Because if we in this movement are going to ask the decent, silent majority of Muslim men – and women – to have the encourage to face down the extremist bullies, then we need to have the courage and character to stand shoulder to shoulder with them doing it.”

He said there would be no “no go” areas: “We will go where we please , we will discuss what we like.”

BBC News, 28 September 2006

The neocons’ lexicon

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Salim Muwakkil analyses the origins and meaning of the term “Islamofascism”:

“Many pundits trace the neologism to historian Malise Ruthven, who used it in a September 1990 article in the London Independent. But Ruthven used it to describe authoritarian Muslim states like Morocco, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Stephen Schwartz, the neocon author of Two Faces of Islam, insists that he is the first Westerner to use the term in the contemporary context.

“But the term gained its greatest currency in the lexicon of pro-war progressives Christopher Hitchens, Paul Berman and Ron Rosenbaum, to name three. They argued that the totalitarian aspirations of theocratic groups like al-Qaeda threatened the libertarian freedoms that are the legacy of the Enlightenment.

“These polemicists were less concerned (at least, originally) with the geo-strategic issues that preoccupied the administration’s neocon warmongers, so their arguments had some resonance on the secular left. After all, how could progressives oppose the theocratic agenda of the religious right within the United States and not reject similar developments elsewhere?

“In Hitchens’ last column for The Nation, he wrote ‘the theocratic and absolutist side in this war hopes to win it by exporting it here, which in turn means that we have no expectation of staying out of the war, and no right to be neutral in it’.

“By framing the war on terror as a struggle between the liberal soldiers of the Enlightenment and the dark forces of theocracy, these progressives gave cover to warmongers with rationales much less lofty. In fact, one of the major ironies is that their support has aligned them with right wing religious groups with their own theocratic agendas.”

In These Times, 21 September 2006

Families of bombers to blame for 7/7 – Paul Routledge

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Paul Routledge“John Reid, the Iraq war boaster, may not have been the right man to say it and an East London Islamic centre may not have been the right place to say it. But it still had to be said – even at the risk of upsetting Muslims. There is a threat to the public from home-grown Islamic fundamentalists and British Muslims have a duty to monitor their own community for signs of incipient terrorists.

“They know better than anyone if young Ali is going off the rails, or has come under the ideological spell of a fundamentalist cleric. They see the signs better than a whole station full of coppers. They have a responsibility to take whatever action seems right, including informing the authorities, if someone they know seems to be on the brink of violent jihadism against fellow Britons. That includes parents, siblings, friends, clerics, youth workers and elders of the Muslim community.

“I’m sorry, but as Dr Reid admitted, there is no easy way of saying this. Silence, however, would be more culpable than speaking out. Just imagine if this habit of mind had been the norm before July 7 last year: the young Muslim bombers might have been apprehended before they set out on their deadly mission to London.”

Paul Routledge in the Daily Mirror, 22 September 2006

So, according to Routledge, it would appear that the families of the 7/7 bombers knew, or at least suspected, that the young men were “on the brink of violent jihadism against fellow Britons” but they kept quiet about it.

There is no easy way of saying this, but it still has to be said, even at the risk of upsetting Paul Routledge – he’s an ignorant, bigoted idiot.