Category Archives: Liberal

Protest by East End artists at National Theatre

Posted on by Bob Pitt

National Theatre refuses to debate racist play ENGLAND PEOPLE VERY NICE with East End artists

Artists from the East End will be holding a protest outside the National Theatre at 5pm on Friday 27th February in the run up to the platform discussion at 6pm with Richard Bean, the writer of the play. At a meeting on Friday 20th February Nicholas Hytner, the boss of the National, refused to organise a proper joint debate in the next few weeks on a play that is anti-irish, anti-Bangladeshi and Islamophobic, and which the Evening Standard described as cruel and abusive, and intent on attacking immigrants.

Playwright Hussain Ismail, who will be leading the campaign, said: “Hytner is scared of a debate. We are from the East End and we know that it is the most multicultural place in the world. Brick Lane in particular is the centre of the multicultural universe. It’s the coolest place on the earth and that’s why people come from all over the world to hang out there. Bean and Hytner haven’t got a clue about the East End. That’s why the play is bonkers!”

“We want a right of reply ­ a proper debate ­ not a 40 minute platform discussion where the director just asks some bland questions to the writer and we all go home. We want a vigorous and robust debate with Bean and Hytner and us on the same platform with the media and public present on mass.”

Organisers of the protest are asking everybody to come celebrate multicultural London and demand that East End artists have the right to a debate, and challenge misrepresentation of their communities. They are asking protesters to bring whistles and drums to stand up for multiculturalism.

Protest details:
5pm 27th February
National Theatre, Southbank, London SE1 9PX
Embankment and Waterloo tube stations.

For more information contact:
Hussain Ismail
hussain@soulfiretheatre.org.uk

Storm grows over National Theatre play dubbed racist and offensive

Posted on by Bob Pitt

National TheatreIt has incestuous, pig-breeding, drunken Irishmen, snooty Frenchmen, farcical Jewish anarchists and the animated presence of a mad mullah ranting about how women must be subservient to men. It reminded the Daily Telegraph of the Carry On films and the London Evening Standard of “the slick, cruel, abusive style that Bernard Manning perfected ages ago”.

Its director and writer may well have anticipated controversy, but shortly after opening at the National Theatre, England People Very Nice, a new play by the award-winning dramatist Richard Bean about successive waves of immigration to the east end of London, has been labelled racist and offensive by the communities it portrays.

A delegation of writers and community activists from the East End will meet on Friday with Nicholas Hytner, the National’s director who is also directing the play, to protest against what they regard as a caricature of Britain’s racial history.

“The National represents modern Britain, and in particular London, and I don’t see how Muslims can identify with the National Theatre when it puts on this kind of racist work,” Hussain Ismail, a playwright from Bethnal Green who has demanded the meeting with Hytner, told the Guardian. “I have been going to the National for 20 years, but I don’t see how I can identify with a place that stages what I see as a personal attack on me and the community I belong to. I’ve been telling everybody I know to go and see it, so they can see how bad it is, unfortunately, and to see what the level of debate is around multiculturalism at our national theatre.”

Rabina Khan, a novelist from Tower Hamlets who was invited by the National to take part in a panel discussion about the play as a representative of the Bangladeshi community, said she was concerned by the script. She will see the play next week. “I don’t want to rush to judgment, but from reading the script it feels to me that the play belittles people. Of course as a writer this is [Bean’s] interpretation and by all means he is entitled to express himself. But he is having a laugh at my community. This must be his way of being funny, to belittle other communities. I would like to know why Nicholas Hytner wanted to do it. It leaves you with the sense the Irish are all wife-beaters and the Bangladeshi all jihadis.”

In an interview this week, Hytner said: “I get a little suspicious when everybody likes something. I start to think: ‘Are we getting bland?'”

Guardian, 14 February 2009

Well, we haven’t seen the play either, so we can’t offer an opinion on it. However, we would note that Hytner was one of the most vehement, and ignorant, opponents of a law penalising the incitement of religious hatred.

Read press release by EQUAL PLATFORM here.

See also Socialist Worker, 14 February 2009

For Nicholas de Jongh’s review of the play (“I have never had a more uncomfortable or unpleasant experience at the National Theatre than at the premiere of Richard Bean’s England People Very Nice. I hated this gross, cartoon history of English reaction to four centuries of refugees arriving in London’s East End…. I am all for withering satire. I approve of bad taste and comic mischief, but in the sensitive field of immigration, it seems irresponsible to fan the ever-ready flames of prejudice by characterising the broad mass of refugees in Bean’s simplistic manner: the odd Muslims, for example, appear as muggers and drug-dealers, and rejoice that 9/11’s catastrophe has come to pass”) see the Evening Standard, 12 February 2009

More revelations about Hassan Butt

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Hassan Butt is a member of a group you are going to be hearing a lot more from: Muslims who come out of jihadism and find an almost patriotic belief in the best values of Britain. They cajole and they warn. They help steer British Muslims away from violence while teaching wider society that radical Islam is not a rational reaction to Western provocation, but a totalitarian ideology with a life of its own.

“‘How we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy,’ Butt recalled in an outburst that stuck in my mind. ‘By blaming the government for our actions, those who pushed the “Blair’s bombs” line did our propaganda work for us. More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamist theology.’ … Needless to add, he has been stabbed by his (and our) sworn enemies and lives with the knowledge that there are people out there who want him dead.”

Nick Cohen in the Observer, 23 March 2008

A British man who fooled the media into believing he was an al-Qaida insider has admitted in court that he made up the claims. Hassan Butt received significant media attention for his claims to have helped send scores of Britons to terrorist training camps overseas and to have met Mohammad Sidique Khan, the ringleader of the 7 July 2005 attacks on London.

However at a trial of another man accused of terrorist offences, Butt said he had told journalists stories “the media wanted to hear”, admitting that he was “a professional liar”. He also admitted faking his own injuries to make it appear that he had been attacked by extremist Muslims.

Guardian, 9 February 2009

See also ENGAGE, 9 February 2009

‘Muslim courts are here already’ shock

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Sharia law is operating in secret in many British towns and cities, the Daily Express can reveal. Muslim communities are being ruled with a rod of iron in clear defiance of the British legal system. Panels of Islamic scholars sit in mosques, converted living rooms and even a former pub to issue fatwas, or rulings.

“The revelation that they have decided thousands of cases over the last 25 years comes after the Archbishop of Canterbury provoked condemnation by calling for an ‘accommodation’ with the Islamic legal code. Dr Rowan Williams said parts of civil law could be dealt with under the sharia system – but some communities have already gone much further. The Daily Express has uncovered a catalogue of evidence that sharia courts are acting independently of British law.”

Daily Express, 9 February 2008

And over at the Daily Mail Amanda Platell writes: ” So has old Wispy Beard finally lost his marbles? Adopt Sharia law that so vilely oppresses women, subverting, in the process, hundreds of years of British justice? Yes, it’s nonsense. And dangerous nonsense, too. But by highlighting this issue, Dr Rowan Williams may have done us all a service by jolting us into realising just how far Britain has already gone towards integrating Sharia law. Did you realise, before his speech on Thursday, that Sharia courts already exist in this country to decide issues as fundamental to our society as divorce? … I certainly didn’t. So, ironically, perhaps Dr Williams should be applauded for highlighting this creeping Islamisation of parts of Britain.”

Update:  At the Independent on Sunday, Joan Smith weighs in with “British women are already suffering from Islamic law“.

‘Decents’ on the Muslim threat

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Why is this man regarded any more favourably than Pat Robertson or Stephen Green’s Christian Voice?”

The question is posed by one Max Dunbar in the current issue of Democratiya, house journal of the “decent left”, and the man in question is Tariq Ramadan.

This sort of thing does our job for us. As we’ve remarked in the past, those who promote the view that Professor Ramadan represents some sort of fundamentalist threat to Western society discredit themselves more effectively than we ever could.

Continue reading →

What is Nick Cohen playing at?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sunny Hundal poses the question, in response to Cohen’s Evening Standard article applauding Anthony Browne, recently appointed to a senior position in London mayor Boris Johnson’s administration, for having “stood up for free speech and against liberal alliances with radical Islam, and exposed the civil servants who were pretending that a rise in HIV was due to poor sex education rather than immigration from African countries”.

Pickled Politics, 25 July 2008

So what is this threat Martin? Do tell us

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Martin Bright 2Martin Bright responds to Soumaya Ghannoushi. According to Mart, the UK media have generally been very fair in their coverage of Muslims, which will certainly come as news to the overwhelming majority of Muslims.

He concludes: “It is true that not all Islamists are violent. Nor should al-Qaida be put in the same category as the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian parent organisation of Hamas. There are important distinctions to be made here. But the Islamist ideology promoted by the British manifestations of the Brotherhood, such as the Federation of Student Islamic Societies, the British Muslim Initiative, the Muslim Association of Britain and IslamExpo itself brings its own dangers. These do not threaten British democracy but they do have a pernicious effect, especially on young Muslims in this country who fall under their influence. This is where the danger lies and the threat is very real.”

Of course, Bright doesn’t feel under any obligation to spell out precisely what that danger and threat might be. As Inayat Bunglawala observes in the comments:

“The Muslim Brotherhood have good and bad points but I am curious to know what you identify here as their negative influence on UK Muslims. Whenever I have spoken with their members they always seem to encourage British Muslims to play an active role in British society and also to learn more about their own faith. Please do expand on your own views.”

Answer came there none.

Update:  Over at Harry’s Place, in an attack on Demos for agreeing to participate at IslamExpo, the inimitable Nick Cohen helpfully provides an explanation of the threat posed by the Muslim Brotherhood. It is “a far right movement”, according to Cohen, “which was founded by the admirers of European fascism, which propagates the theories of Adolf Hitler, and wishes to suppress the women, murder the Jews, homosexuals, socialists and apostates and establish an inquisitorial dictatorship”. So, thanks to Nick, next time you meet a member of the British Muslim Initiative or FOSIS you’ll know what their objectives really are.

TV ignores Muslim extremism (it says here)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Our TV controllers have a tendency to make like the three wise monkeys when it comes to Muslim extremism: hear no evil, see no evil, broadcast no evil. During this year’s 7/7 anniversary it was the great unmentionable. Over the weekend we had a feature-length documentary that invited us to view 9/11 from the point of view of conspiracy theorists. Then, on the day itself, there was a Dispatches special on Islamophobia in the UK, entitled It Shouldn’t Happen to a Muslim, though ‘It Shouldn’t Happen to a Commuter’ might have been more appropriate.”

Hermione Eyre in the Independent on Sunday, 13 July 2008

Letters from today’s press

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In the Independent, responding to Peter Oborne’s excellent article, Kate Francis condemns violence against Muslims but goes on to oppose the “blanket application of the pejorative term ‘Islamophobic’ to anyone who has voiced concerns about the long-term capacity of Islam to coexist successfully in a secular state where the rights of women are protected by law. As a feminist, I have deep concerns about this, as I do about any group (religious or otherwise) that appears to enshrine misogyny in its cultural values…. it’s no wonder that writers are prefacing their comments with ‘I am an Islamophobe’ and ‘Count me in’.”

Another correspondent, one Dominic Kirkham, writes: “The remark of Shahid Malik that British Muslims now felt like ‘aliens in their own country’ (4 July) is problematic…. In seemingly every area of cultural contact, however open and welcoming, Muslims choose to distance themselves from the generality on the basis of ‘their religion’. Unless they themselves are prepared to question the arcane prejudices that lie at the root of ‘their religion’ they will continue to feel like aliens in normal society by their own choice.”

And here’s Shaaz Mahboob, of British Muslims for Secular Democracy, in the Daily Telegraph:

“The assumption by Lord Phillips (report, July 3) that interpretations of Sharia could become an alternative form of conflict resolution for British Muslim communities will merely result in further alienation and segregation. Only hardline groups, such as the Muslim Council of Britain and the Sharia Council, have been demanding the introduction of Sharia as a parallel justice system. In a democratic society, paying heed to, and endorsing the views of, minority but vocal pro-segregation Muslim groups is nonsensical, and could be disastrous for a cohesive society.”

The enemy within? Fear of Islam: Britain’s new disease

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Islamophobia – defined in 1997 by the landmark report from the Runnymede Trust as ‘an outlook or world-view involving an unfounded dread and dislike of Muslims, which results in practices of exclusion and discrimination’ – can be encountered in the best circles: among our most famous novelists, among newspaper columnists, and in the Church of England.

“Its appeal is wide-ranging. ‘I am an Islamophobe’, the Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee wrote in The Independent nearly 10 years ago. ‘Islamophobia?’ the Sunday Times columnist Rod Liddle asks rhetorically in the title of a recent speech, ‘Count me in’. Imagine Liddle declaring: ‘Anti-Semitism? Count me in’, or Toynbee claiming she was ‘an anti-Semite and proud of it’.

“Anti-Semitism is recognised as an evil, noxious creed, and its adherents are barred from mainstream society and respectable organs of opinion. Not so Islamophobia.”

Peter Oborne in the Independent, 4 July 2008

See also “Muslims feel like ‘Jews of Europe’“, also in today’s Independent.

And “Is post-war Britain anti-Muslim?” by Peter Oborne in the Daily Mail, 4 July 2008

Peter Oborne’s documentary “It Shouldn’t Happen to a Muslim” will be shown next Monday in Channel’s Dispatches slot – which, ironically, has in the past made a signficant contribution to the rise of Islamophobia in the UK.

The pamphlet Muslims Under Siege: Alienating Vulnerable Communities, by Peter Oborne and James Jones, be downloaded (pdf) here.

The study by the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Images of Islam in the UK: The Representation of British Muslims in the National Print News Media 2000-2008, can be downloaded (pdf) here.