Category Archives: Left Wing

It’s all French to Livingstone

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Letter in Morning Star, 2 April 2005

I know that Yasmin Qureshi came to Paris on behalf of her boss, the Mayor of London (Morning Star, March 23), but I don’t know why she bothered to cross the Channel.

Convinced, like Mayor Livingstone, that the one-hundred-year-old ban on the wearing of religious clothing or symbols in state schools is a bad thing, she only talked, as far as one can deduce from her article, with those who share the same point of view.

But the law insisting on strict secularity in schools and public agencies has the support of the large majority of French people.

And before this is dismissed as an indication of racism amongst the French, it should be understood that the law is supported by a majority of French Muslims, many of whom, particularly women, are the most fervent supporters of secular education.

It seems clear that Ms Qureshi didn’t find it worth her while to talk to anyone from the French Socialist Party, the trade unions, anti-racist organisations, to teachers, representatives of parent-teacher organisations, or from French women’s organisations, in particular Ni Putes Ni Soumises, all of which overwhelmingly back the law.

If she had, she probably wouldn’t have agreed with them, but she would at least have understood the reasoning of French progressives, and have been able to explain in her article the cultural and historical differences which lead French anti-racists and feminists to regard the stance of those like Ken Livingstone as ignorant and reactionary.

Her visit would also have been more useful to mutual understanding if she had talked not only to those close to Tariq Ramadan, hardly representative of French Muslims, but to the Rector of the Paris Mosque, or from the French Council of Muslims, who, though unhappy with the law, advised students to comply with it.

If so, readers might in future be spared the shrill, confused, but smug article by her boss (Morning Star, March 19) which verges on xenophobia in its regard of the French.

The London approach is neither the only nor necessarily the best way to encourage and celebrate multiculturalism.

Peter Duffy
Choisy le Roi, France

Government is ‘pandering to homophobic Muslims’ – Outrage

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Protection from discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation has been excluded from five key provisions of the government’s new Equality Bill, the gay rights group Outrage! complains. According to Outrage! spokesperson Brett Lock, the government is “pandering to homophobic Muslims by excluding gay rights”.

Outrage! press release, 31 March 2005

So, nothing to do with pandering to anti-gay prejudice in Christianity or any other religion then, Brett – just Muslims?

For the Sunday Times article on which the Outrage! allegations are based, see here.

For Daniel Pipes’ response, see here.

Call for an international moratorium on hudud punishments

Posted on by Bob Pitt

ramadanLast year the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty and their allies on the executive of the National Union of Students called for Tariq Ramadan to be banned from speaking at the European Social Forum in London. (See here.)

One of the arguments used against Professor Ramadan was that he didn’t call for the immediate repudiation of the hudud punishments in the sharia but merely advocated a moratorium pending a full discussion among Muslim scholars.

He explains his position here: Guardian, 30 March 2005

The full text of Tariq Ramadan’s appeal can be found at tariqramadan.com

See also “Tariq Ramadan calls for Hudud freeze”, Islam Online, 30 March 2005

Harry has another go

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Harry has another go at Islamophobia Watch.

Harry’s Place, 26 March 2005

I particularly like Harry’s account of the Algerian civil war: “In Algeria between 1992 and 1998 an estimated 150,000 people were killed as a result of a campaign launched by the Armed Islamic Group….” Of course, this does rather overlook the fact that many of these deaths were caused by the Algerian state forces’ ferocious repression of suspected Islamists, and that the civil war itself was the result of the secularist FLN regime having suppressed the 1992 parliamentary elections on the grounds that the Islamist FIS were about to form a democratically elected government.

Equally impressive is Harry’s staunch defence of oppressed Iraqis against their oppressors. Did he issue a forthright condemnation of the continuing violent occupation of Iraq by foreign armies, I hear you ask. Did his anger boil over at the estimated 100,000 deaths that have resulted from the US invasion? Did he express his fury at the destruction of Fallujah?

Er … no. What he had in mind was the defence of a group of students in Basra whose picnic was reportedly attacked by members of Moqtada al-Sadr’s militia.

And we still haven’t been told who precisely the moderate Muslims are that Harry supports. But apparently to qualify as moderates it is not enough for them to support democracy, human rights and freedom of organisation for other faiths – they also have to support a separation of religion and state along the lines proposed by western secularists. Which of course excludes even the most democratic, reformist tendencies within Islamism.

Harry’s Place and Islamophobia Watch

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Over at Harry’s Place, the eponymous blogger offers a critique of Islamophobia Watch and challenges our characterisation of certain leftists and liberals as Islamophobes. Compared with some of the anti-Muslim rants that have appeared on his site, it’s quite a reasoned piece – but entirely wrong, of course.

In his critique Harry quotes part of the Runnymede Trust’s definition of Islamophobia, which is reproduced on our site: “Islam is seen as a monolithic bloc, static and unresponsive to change.”

He claims that most of the leftists and liberals criticised on our blog would reject that view and therefore cannot be characterised as Islamophobes: “The whole point of supporting liberal progressives, socialists or gay activists in Muslim countries or in the ‘Muslim community’ is that there is the potential for change and that Islam most certainly isn’t a monolothic bloc.”

The problem with this argument is that, if you take the Runnymede Trust definition absolutely literally, then Islamophobia doesn’t exist anywhere in the world. Even fascists are prepared to make a formal distinction between different tendencies within Islam, along the lines Harry proposes.

Continue reading →

Islam and Democracy

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Perhaps the Muslim world has to go through a new Islamist phase as the result of democratic change – whether Washington likes it or not, Lindsey Hilsum argues.

New Statesman, 21 March 2005

This is evidently not a view that finds favour with the NS editor, who has added the sarcastic headline “Lindsey Hilsum predicts good times for Arab clerics”. But it’s what people like John Esposito and Noah Feldman have been saying for years – that if the citizens of majority Muslim countries are allowed a democratic choice, they will often vote for Islamists.

In defence of tyranny

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Outrage! proposes that Iraq should remain under foreign occupation for some time to come, on the grounds that “a hasty withdrawal could pave the way for the seizure of power by Islamic fundamentalists”:

Outrage! press release, 20 March 2005

Daniel Pipes agrees that “a too-quick removal of tyranny unleashes Islamist ideologues and opens their way to power”:

Front Page Magazine, 8 March 2005

Hazel Blears says police will target Muslim community

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslims can expect the police to target them, minister says 

By Richard Ford and Stewart Tendler

The Times, 2 March 2005

BRITAIN’S Counter-Terrorism Minister warned the Muslim community last night that it must face the reality of being targeted by the police because of the threat from an extreme form of Islam.

Hazel Blears provoked anger from Muslim leaders and the National Black Police Association (NPBA) for her “intemperate” comments. They said her statements could only exacerbate feelings among law-abiding Muslims that they were being unfairly targeted by police and intelligence services.

Ms Blears’s comments appear to conflict with the commitment by the police not to target suspects because of their race, a key recommendation of the 1999 inquiry by Sir William Macpherson into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, a black teenager.

She said yesterday that Britain’s 1.5 million Muslims should accept as a reality that people of Islamic appearance are more likely to be stopped and searched.

“At the moment the threat is more likely to come from those associated with a most extreme form of Islam or who are falsely hiding behind Islam,” she told MPs.

“It means that some of our counter-terrorism powers will be disproportionately experienced by people in the Muslim community. There is no getting away from the fact.”

Ms Blears made her comments when she gave evidence to the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry into terrorism and the effects that counter-terrorism measures have on community relations.

She said later that because the current threat came from people masquerading as Islamists, police would have that in mind when using stop-and-search powers. “That is the reality. I do not think it should go unsaid.”

Continue reading →