Category Archives: Left Wing

Minister backs school hijab appeal

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary, is to back the appeal of a school found guilty of discriminating against a student for wearing strict Islamic dress.

Shabina Begum, 16, claimed a victory for all Muslims in March when she won a landmark Court of Appeal ruling that Denbigh High School in Luton had unlawfully excluded her for flouting its uniform policy by wearing a jilbab, which leaves only the hands and face exposed.

Miss Begum said at the time of the ruling that the schools decision had been caused by an atmosphere in which Islam was a target for vilification in the name of the War on Terror.

The Court of Appeal said that Miss Begums human rights had been infringed because she had been denied the right to education and to manifest her religious beliefs.

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‘When will you Brits wake up?’ French journalist asks

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“In the ten years I have lived in London, I often wondered when it would happen. I don’t mean when British-born suicide bombers would blow themselves up, killing dozens of their fellow citizens – I would never have thought that possible – but rather, when British multiculturalism would finally show its inherent weaknesses.

“France and Britain have always had opposite views and policies about foreigners and their integration into society. British people often fail to understand the underlying principles of the French approach, prefering to brand it as intolerance, or even blatant racism – as, for example in the recent headscarf ban.”

Agnes Poirier of the French “leftist” newspaper Libération – who goes on to argue that “The message to Muslims has been, in effect, that it is all right for them to be a separate country-within-a-country” – joins the right-wing campaign to blame the London bombings on multiculturalism.

Evening Standard, 29 July 2005

Tribune publishes Islamophobic rant by Maryam Namazie

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Maryam NamazieThis week’s Tribune features an article by Maryam Namazie of the Worker Communist Party of Iran attacking “political Islam” – and indeed Islam of any sort. Namazie pours scorn on what she calls “the futile and ongoing support for a ‘moderate’ Islam”. Now, that’s exactly the sort of responsible message a progressive labour movement publication should be putting out in the present circumstances, isn’t it?

I particularly liked the quote from the WPI’s glorious founder-leader Mansoor Hekmat (now deceased) which concludes Namazie’s article. This urges us to recognise that “Islam and religion do not have a progressive, supportable faction”. According that logic, the left should be demanding the expulsion of Bruce Kent from CND.

The article is in fact based on a speech given by Namazie to a conference in Paris on earlier this month (see here). Predictably, that speech was greeted enthusiastically by Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch – although he found it a tad extreme (“I disagree with the recommendations about driving religion out of society”!).

Norman Geras – apologist for imperialist war

Posted on by Bob Pitt

normblogNorman Geras, the neocons’ favourite “Marxist”, holds forth in the Guardian today, condemning those who have sought to relate the London bombings to the anger aroused in the Muslim world by Western imperialism and the Iraq war in particular.

Beneath the cloud of pseudo-moral indignation, it is not difficult to fathom the motives for Geras’s article. As one of the leading “left” cheerleaders for the invasion of Iraq, he himself obviously bears a small part of the responsibility for the London atrocities.

Geras writes: “It needs to be seen and said clearly: there are, among us, apologists for what the killers do…. There are apologists among us, and they have to be fought intellectually and politically. They do not help to strengthen the democratic culture and institutions whose benefits we all share.”

There could hardly be a better description of Geras himself, an apologist for imperialist warmongering who enthusiastically backed an invasion that caused the death of some 100,000 Iraqis, and who now lashes out in fury at anyone who tries to open a democratic debate about the wider political context of the London bombings.

Still, Norm does have his admirers. Mad Mel joins the US Right in paying tribute to the good professor.

Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 21 July 2005

For a reply to Geras by Yusuf Smith, see here.

‘Political Islam is the problem! Stop appeasing it!’ – WPI

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“… we are constantly told this terrorist attack has nothing to do with Islam by ‘mainstream’ Islamic groups in Britain such as the Muslim Council of Britain and the Islamic Human Rights Commission. The political Islamic movement is so vile that even some of its brethren – at least in public and in Europe – aim to disassociate themselves from it – but no matter how hard they try, they cannot succeed. Britain’s ‘top Muslim scholars’, for example, are to issue a fatwa effectively ex-communicating the ‘bombers’ – something they are not really allowed to do but good PR nonetheless.

“And they say they are not part of the same movement and that this has nothing to do with Islam. In fact, terrorism is justified and encouraged in Islam. In an interview with BBC’s Newsnight last year, Yusef al-Qaradawi, Ken Livingstone’s ‘moderate Islamic scholar’, said Islam justified suicide bombings. He said: ‘This is not suicide. It is martyrdom in the name of God.’ The Koran is full of verses supporting terrorism…”

Yeah, I know, difficult to distinguish this from the sort of stuff you find on the BNP website, isn’t it? But the author is in fact Maryam Namazie of the Worker Communist Party of Iran.

WPI Briefing No.185, 18 July 2005

Guardian journalist ‘revealed as hardline Islamist’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The Guardian newspaper is refusing to sack one of its staff reporters despite confirming that he is a member of one of Britain’s most extreme Islamist groups. Dilpazier Aslam, who has been allowed to report on the London bombings from Leeds and was also given space to write a column in last Wednesday’s edition of The Guardian, is a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a radical world organisation which seeks to form a global Islamic state regulated by sharia law.”

Independent on Sunday, 17 July 2005

Shiv Malik takes up the witch-hunt against Dilpazier Aslam initiated by the Daily Ablution and Harry’s Place blogs.

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Multiculturalism has fanned the flames of Islamic extremism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“It has been only over the past decade that radical Islam has found a hearing in Britain. Why? Partly because, in this post-ideological age, the idea that we can change society through politics has taken a battering. And partly because the idea that we should aspire to a common identity and a set of values has been eroded in the name of multiculturalism.”

Former Revolutionary Communist Party supporter Kenan Malik joins with the racist Right in blaming multiculturalism for the London bombings.

Times, 16 July 2005

AWL blames ‘political Islam’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An Alliance for Workers’ Liberty statement on the London bombings blames “political Islam”. It adds:

“Political Islam is a political current; and the mass of people of Muslim religion or background are its prime victims and opponents. It is ‘anti-imperialist’ only in a reactionary sense. Its hatred of US imperialism is no more progressive than fascists’ hatred of Jewish finance-capitalists.”

AWL website, 7 July 2005

Given that the AWL includes organisations like MAB under that heading, the irresponsibility of this accusation is really quite disgraceful.

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WPI blames ‘the Islamic movement’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Such attacks are part of the wretched and cruel track record of the Islamic movement against innocent people, which places bombs in public places, carries out assassinations, killings, torture, execution and repression.” Thus the Worker Communist Party of Iran on the London bombings.

Note the use of the term “the Islamic movement” – which conveniently blurs the distinctions between Islam, political Islamism in all its shades, and Islamist terrorist groups.

WPI press release, 8 July 2005

For an alternative assessment, which analyses the terrorist acts of violent jihadist groups in terms of the contradictions and conflicts within Islam and Islamism, read Marc Lynch. He argues that the London attacks arise in part from an attempt at reassertion by the terrorist tendency within Islamism, who had been increasingly marginalised by reformists such as Qaradawi and Huwaydi:

“The London attack can be seen as an attempt by al-Qaeda to impose itself on this internal argument among Islamists and Muslims in the way it knows best: a spectacular, violent attack. A throw of the dice – an attempt to turn the debate back to clashes of civilizations, of an inevitable conflict between the West and Islam, of war and mistrust and fear. To shut down any rapprochement between the West and moderate Islamism – the kind of rapprochement which threatens al-Qaeda and the radicals where it counts, among the Muslim umma.”

Abu Aardvark blog, 7 July 2005