Sunny Hundal gives another boost to Martin Bright’s Channel 4 programme.
Pickled Politics, 14 July 2006
For the MCB’s reply to to Bright – “Martin Bright is part of a circle of pernicious Islamophobic commentators that includes Nick Cohen, Michael Gove, John Ware and Melanie Phillips, among others, who have tried to use the 7/7 atrocities as an opportunity to advance their anti-Muslim agenda” – see here.
In his latest contribution to the Guardian‘s Comment is Free, John Lloyd repeats the tired old argument that the basic cause of terrorism by extremist Islamist groups is not Western imperialism but the ideology of Islamism. Citing Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s view that “the driver of Muslim intolerance is Islam itself”, Lloyd writes: “I am with Hirsi Ali on this.”
Lloyd’s profound knowledge of Islamism is revealed in the following passage: “This ideology has been fashioned in the past few decades, by such figures as the Pakistani Abu Ala Mawdudi and the Egyptians Hasan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb, and Ayman al-Zawahiri. The first of these was the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, the next two were executed at different times by the Egyptian authorities…”
Mawdudi was in fact the founder of Jamaat-e-Islami; it was Hasan al-Banna who founded the Muslim Brotherhood. The latter was assassinated, not executed. He died in 1949 and Sayyid Qutb in 1966, so it’s difficult to see how they were able to fashion Islamist ideology “in the past few decades”. But apart, from that, Lloyd’s summary of Islamist history is scrupulously accurate!
Furthermore, anyone who argues for the primacy of religious ideology in determining political action should try explaining the role of Buddhism in Sri Lanka. Formally the most pacifistic of religions, Buddhism has provided the ideology for acts of extreme anti-Tamil violence by Sinhalese chauvinists going back to the 1950s. The reason, as any Marxist would tell you, is that it is material conditions and social relations that are primary and ideologies, religious or otherwise, are adapted to serve the needs of particular social forces. You might have thought that a former supporter of the British and Irish Communist Organisation would know that.
Another plug for Martin Bright’s anti-MCB Channel 4 documentary, this one from Jonathan Freedland.
Sunny Hundal gives a plug to Martin Bright and his forthcoming Channel 4 attack on the MCB and Mockbul Ali. “When asked his thoughts on whispered accusations of him being Islamophobic, he says he finds the idea ‘laughable’.”
Yeah, right. This would be the same Martin Bright who told a FOSIS conference last year that he had no problem describing himself as an Islamophobe because, he explained, there is a lot in Islam to be fearful of.
I note that on Wednesday Bright is addressing a seminar organised by Policy Exchange, the right-wing Tory think tank headed by the appalling Dean Godson. Godson is a notorious opponent of the Peace Process in the north of Ireland, and the purpose of the seminar is evidently to draw a parallel between the the UK government’s supposed capitulation to Irish Republican “terrorists” and its capitulation to Islamism. In both cases, Godson’s line is that the government should reject dialogue and co-operation with organisations that have mass support in the community and instead turn to other individuals with more “acceptable” politics who represent nobody but themselves.
People like … well, Sunny Hundal.
Letters in today’s Independent responding Deborah Orr’s disgraceful article are mainly supportive of her views. For example: “Deborah Orr is ‘offended’ by the sight of veiled women swathed in black in the streets of London. Offended? Walking past women who cover their hair with scarves, their faces with veils, their bodies in shapeless garments for so-called religious reasons does not offend me: it makes my blood boil.” Another correspondent describes the niqab as “the most sinister garment since the IRA balaclava”.
As IslamExpo builds bridges between Muslims and Britain’s other diverse communities, Nick Cohen – with the assistance of Martin Bright – sets about smashing them. While responsible media commentators emphasise that the 7/7 bombers were a tiny unrepresentative minority within Muslim communities in the UK, the message from Cohen and Bright is that the terrorists are part of a general problem of extremism among British Muslims and their organisations.
See “The Foreign Office ought to be serving Britain, not radical Islam”, Observer, 9 July 2006
“I’ve been more and more troubled lately by the sight of veiled women swathed in heavy black, getting on with their everyday business in Britain. A woman on the bus the other day looked like she was auditioning for an Islamic version of the Blues Brothers, with the only part of her body uncovered by her drapes, hidden behind very black sunglasses….
“Multiculturalism tells us that it is rude and insensitive to be critical of such garb, and that we must tolerate and even celebrate difference. But I’m afraid I find that the sort of difference these women proclaim by getting themselves up in these sinister weeds to be deeply offensive.
“I understand that in a free society they are entitled to dress as they please, just as I am. But I also understand that in a free society I am at liberty to say that the values these outfits imply are repulsive and insulting to me.”
Deborah Orr in the Independent, 8 July 2006
“One year after the London bombings we have good reason to be concerned. The scars left by this atrocity and other terrorist attacks, and the ongoing ‘war against terror’, have combined to portray Islam as a threat to Western societies. Fear, and the emotions that accompany it, has become a part of the public mindset. In this climate, arguments that were previously the sole province of the extreme right have found space within mainstream political discourse. The past is reinterpreted so as to deny Islam any place in the creation of Western identity which is now frequently redefined as purely Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian.
“Meanwhile many politicians have opted for the dangerous rhetoric of defending ‘Western values’ and seek to impose strict limitations on ‘foreigners’, while at the same time putting in place a whole apparatus of new security laws to fight terrorism. Hardly a Western society has been spared its own debate on questions of ‘identity’ or ‘integration’, but the implicit terms of the debate are often reduced to a distinction between two entities: ‘We, Westerners’ and ‘They, the Muslims’.”
Tariq Ramadan in the Independent, 6 July 2006
The Independent still manages to headline this article “Muslims need to stop behaving like victims”.
“Bat Ye’or’s most recent book, Eurabia – The Euro-Arab Axis, which was published in English in 2005, could not have been published at a better time as far as she is concerned, precisely when the question of the Muslim immigrants’ integration into the continent and Europe’s cultural coloration is coming up repeatedly for discussion. The terror attacks in Madrid and London, the Prophet Mohammed cartoons, the murder of the Dutch director Theo Van Gogh and the riots about six months ago in the Paris suburbs have made these questions more critical. Europe, with its pluralist and democratic ethos, has hesitated in its reaction to these phenomena, although today there is a move toward policy changes.
“Europe’s hesitation has helped bolster extremist attitudes toward Muslim immigration in particular. In the political realm, this is seen among the far-right movements. In intellectual circles, this is evinced inter alia by people like the provocative Italian journalist and writer Oriana Fallaci, Dutch member of parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and also Bat Ye’or. Although all of these individuals are opposed to the extreme right and its violence, they are warning that Europe as a secular, enlightened civilization with a Judeo-Christian background is dying. In its stead, says Bat Ye’or, will come a civilization subjugated to Islamic forces and their jihad ideology.”
Nick Cohen, with characteristic disdain for the facts, tells us in connection with last Sunday’s demonstration outside Scotland Yard: “… in the event, only a hundred or so people turned up, many of whom were white Islamists from the Socialist Workers party. Since then, nothing.”
Yusuf Smith replies: “Sorry Nick, but as one who was there I can say that the majority of attendees by far were Muslims. Yes, the usual contingent of Marxists of various hues, or perhaps I should say tones, was in attendance, some of them trying to push bits of paper under our noses (though interestingly, I didn’t see any copies of Socialist Worker), but most of the demonstrators were Muslims who were demonstrating against attacks on Muslims. As for the ‘since then, nothing’ bit, there is another demo planned for today in Plashet Park, which is as it happens very near to Forest Gate. The likely reason why last Sunday’s event was not as well-attended as some might have hoped (though it was a couple of hundred at least, not just 100) was that the local community had decided to make their views known at Plashet Park.”