Category Archives: Left Wing

Answering halal hysteria in Quebec

Posted on by Bob Pitt

As the Parti Quebecois conflates imagined Islamist plots with feigned concerns for animal welfare, I wonder if Chicken Little is on the separatist payroll. The latest act in Quebec’s Chronicles of Xenophobia takes us to the slaughterhouse, where the PQ claims all chickens are slaughtered under Islamic halal practice. The risk is twofold: (i) non-Muslim Quebecers will unwittingly eat halal meat; and (ii) halal slaughter practices are inhumane….

Quebec politicians seem to be ripping pages from France’s playbook lately; first toying with hijab bans and now exposing the lurking threat of halal meat. They justify their actions by claiming that precious values are at stake…. While scapegoating Muslims is de rigueur among right-wingers, it seems that the left-leaning PQ is blazing a new trail by marching lockstep with the likes of Marine Le Pen, Nicolas Sarkozy, the Tea Party and Harper’s Conservatives.

Ziyaad Mia responds to the PQ’s attempt to whip up halal hysteria.

Vancouver Sun, 27 March 2012

Halal hysteria reaches Quebec

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Parti QuebecoisThe Parti Quebecois is sounding the alarm bell over an Islamic food ritual, calling slaughter for halal meat an affront not only to the rights of animals but to the values cherished by Quebecers.

The pro-independence party declared its concerns Wednesday about halal animal-rights standards, and is worried that mainstream companies are selling the meat, without any labelling, to unsuspecting Quebecois customers. The PQ is now demanding a report on the halal situation from the provincial government, by March 23.

Continue reading →

French draft law aims to ban hijab for child minders

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Françoise Laborde

The controversy surrounding the Islamic headscarf in France is making headlines again as the French National Assembly studies a draft law that will ban religious symbols in all facilities catering for children, including nannies and childcare assistants looking after children at home.

The draft law was approved by the French Senate with a large majority on Jan. 17 and it was sent to the National Assembly to be ratified before being signed it into law by the president.

Continue reading →

Nanterre: 350 Muslims pray in street to ask for legalisation of mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Nanterre Muslims praying

On Thursday 9 December around 350 Muslims prayed in the street in front of the City Hall in Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine) to ask the mayor to legalise a place of worship that has been temporarily established near the towers of the La Défense business district.

A big tent that serves as a mosque was set up in early October by the mayor of the neighbouring town of Puteaux, on land he owns but which is located within the territory of Nanterre. “We need a building permit to be granted in order to legalise the erection of the tent and obtain heating. But Patrick Jarry [the Gauche Citoyenne mayor of Nanterre] has refused to do this,” said Hassan Ben M’Barek, head of the Front des Banlieues Indépendant (FBI), explaining the origin of the street prayers.

Continue reading →

Why don’t you join us? EDL responds to Tatchell

Posted on by Bob Pitt

UNISON LGBT banner on Tower Hamlets demo
UNISON LGBT Group banner on Saturday’s United East End/UAF demo

I had originally decided to ignore Peter Tatchell’s predictably divisive and disruptive intervention in Tower Hamlets on Saturday (see here and here), on the grounds that giving prominent coverage to an individual publicity stunt by an attention-seeking narcissist would be a distraction from the impressive show of mass unity against the EDL. However, this made me change my mind:

EDL Tatchell Tower Hamlets

Promoting sharia hysteria down under – Maryam Namazie arrives in Australia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Maryam Namazie with Douglas Murray
Maryam Namazie with Douglas Murray at an OLFA meeting in London in January

In Britain, Maryam Namazie’s campaign against sharia law has earned her plenty of hate mail. But what really bothers her is the silence of parts of the media and the inaction by the British government over what she says are sharia’s attacks on the fundamental rights of Britain’s Muslim citizens.

Her group, One Law for All, has been fighting since 2008 to stop what she describes as the rise of political Islamism in Britain.

She is in Australia for a week-long speaking tour in the hope of helping ensure this country learns from the mistakes of Britain, where sharia tribunals enjoy a form of legal recognition in family law. “You are facing quite a lot of similar issues in Australia. It might not be as entrenched as it is in Britain, but you can see a lot of similarities,” Ms Namazie said.

Ms Namazie, who is an Iranian exile, said any form of legal accommodation with sharia “is like trying to incorporate apartheid into a non-racist system of law – they are simply incompatible”.

Yet she says her message is frequently ignored by some British newspapers and broadcasters. “A lot of the media that is considered liberal does not want to touch it because it is seen to be racist.”

The Australian, 23 August 2011

Maryam Namazie and her allies

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Enemies Not AlliesThis week Maryam Namazie of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran announced the publication of a new book, Enemies Not Allies: The Far-Right. Co-authored by Namazie and Adam Barnett, it is issued under the imprint of One Law For All, an organisation launched by the WPI and its friends to campaign against the supposed threat posed by Sharia law in the UK.

The authors claim that the far right have “attempted to hijack legitimate criticism of Islamism” and the stated aim of their book is to establish the differences between the position of OLFA and that of “racist campaigns and organisations”. So we are given a summary of the ideology and political practice of the British National Party and the English Defence League, and of Stop Islamisation of Europe and its US franchise headed by Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, all of whom the authors roundly denounce.

Now it is certainly true that the WPI have major differences with the BNP, the EDL, SIOE and SIOA. Obviously Maryam Namazie and her comrades do not have a long history of activity on the neo-Nazi right like Nick Griffin, they do not head a violent anti-Muslim street movement like the leaders of the EDL, nor are they rabid ultra-Zionists like Pamela Geller. However, when it comes to Islam, the common ground that exists between the WPI and sections of the Islamophobic right, including some of its most extreme elements, is quite clear. And that is something Enemies Not Allies completely ignores.

Continue reading →

More Sharia hysteria in the Torygraph

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Birmingham Central Mosque sharia councilYes, it’s yet another report on the dangers of “Sharia courts” – this one (“Sharia: a law unto itself?”) in the Sunday Telegraph by Jonathan Wynne-Jones, the paper’s religious affairs correspondent.

Wynne-Jones was given the opportunity to observe the workings of a Sharia council at Birmingham Central Mosque and he interviewed a woman member of the council, Amra Bone. In addition, Sheikh Faiz Siddiqi spoke to Wynne-Jones on the role of Islamic arbitration tribunals in settling commercial disputes. Which you might think would provide the basis for an objective report that would counter the usual anti-Sharia scaremongering. You would of course be wrong. The informed views of two individuals who can provide an insight into the actual operation of “Sharia courts” are predictably outweighed by those of a bunch of ignorant Islamophobes.

So, along with the obligatory reference to the “Sharia controlled zones” publicity stunt by Anjem Choudary’s idiot micro-sect, we are treated to a succession of quotes on the Sharia threat from Michael “no go areas” Nazir-Ali (who opines that the existence of Sharia councils “threatens the fundamental values that underpin our society”); from Geert Wilders fan Baroness Cox (who declares that her objective is to “stop parallel legal, or quasi-legal, systems taking root in our nation”); from right-wing Christian fundamentalist Alan Craig (who complains that “I can no longer walk to my local shops and find anywhere to buy conventional, non-halal meat … The pavements are crowded with women wearing not just the face-veil, but black gloves to hide their hands”); and from that well-known expert on Sharia law, Jim Fitzpatrick MP (who is concerned that Sharia councils “are creating a cultural stranglehold over their communities and leading to the Islamification of our society”).