Category Archives: Liberal

Nick Cohen: telling lies about Bethnal Green

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Last week, [Oona] King and a group of mainly Jewish pensioners gathered for a 60th anniversary memorial service for the 132 people who died in the last V2 rocket attack on London in 1945. Muslim youths spat and threw eggs at the mourners and shouted: ‘You fucking Jews’.”

So Nick Cohen claims in the Observer, 17 April

Dead Men Left points out that “Jonathan Freedland was at the memorial service Cohen refers to. He witnessed the horrid egging incident, and recorded his account in the Observer‘s sister paper, the Guardian. He is quite clear that no slogans or chants were heard. Cohen, not present at the event, and providing no source, claims that racist abuse was hurled. This gives every appearance of being pure invention.”

Dead Men Left, 18 April 2005

Freedland later returned to the estate where the egging incident occurred, and his findings concerning the motives for the attack are far from clear-cut.

Guardian, 16 April 2005

‘Are you Islamophobic? Web witch-hunt in full swing’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“A new website has been set up solely to monitor the rather vague concept of ‘Islamophobia’. Considering upstanding New Humanist contributors and allies such as Nick Cohen, Polly Toynbee and Peter Tatchell have already fallen foul of these self-appointed watchers, chances are you, as an NH reader, are probably on the verge of being accused of being an Islamophobe. Any. Minute. Now.”

Panic breaks out among liberal secularists:

New Humanist, 29 March 2005

And we’ve attracted the attention of Jihad Watch, too. One contributor who couldn’t get the link to Islamophobia Watch to work asks: “Is it possible it has been shut down as a jihadist hate site already?” Sorry, ‘fraid not.

Jihad Watch, 27 March 2005

He’s just wild about Harry

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A US blogger applauds Harry’s Place for its “magisterial dismembering” of Islamophobia Watch. (Must have missed that one.) Apparently we’re suffering from “reflexive Islamophilia”, defined as “the tendency of some Western Leftists to offer an intellectual free pass to Islam and Muslims because it is non-Western”. (I’m afraid grammar is not one of this blogger’s strong points.)

Our basic mistake is to suppose that Islamophobia is a form of racism: “It is not – Islam is a religion, an ideological choice.” Really? How come there are so few Muslims among white inhabitants of the United States, then? And rather more among people of colour in the Middle East? Well, obviously, they just made different individual choices.

Pearsall’s Books, 26 March 2005

Update:  For Pearsall Helms’ reply – which fails to address the point I was trying to make, namely that religion is not primarily an individual choice but rather part of a community’s collective culture – see here.

Intolerant ban dressed up as secular ruling

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Intolerant ban dressed up as secular ruling

By Yasmin Qureshi

Morning Star, 23 March 2005

It has now been just over one year since the introduction of a new law in France forbidding the wearing of conspicuous religious symbols in French state schools.

This law has been of considerable concern to London’s Asian communities in particular.

Sikh and Muslim groups in Britain asked the mayor of London to take the issue up and look into the impact on community relations across Europe of the so-called “headscarf ban.”

I visited Paris last week on the mayor’s behalf, meeting, among others, representatives of Muslim organisation le Collectif des Musulmans de France, as well as the French civil rights group the Ligue des droits de l’Homme and representatives of the Sikh community – including the two Sikh boys who have been excluded from their school as a direct result of the law .

There is a widely held view among those opposed to the ban that it came at a time when the French government needed to divert from the country’s economic problems.

As an attempt to divert attention from high unemployment and budget cuts it was very successful, tapping into long-held French secular political traditions.

The overwhelming focus of the debate about the new law – which is why it has become known as the “headscarf ban” – was the Muslim community.

Continue reading →

Rushdie resists religious hatred law

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“In Europe, the bombing of a railway station in Madrid and the murder of the Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh are being seen as warnings that the secular principles that underlie any humanist democracy need to be defended and reinforced. Even before these atrocities occurred, the French decision to ban religious attire such as Islamic headscarves from state schools had the support of the entire political spectrum….

“The exception to European secularism can be found in Britain, or at least in the government of the devoutly Christian and increasingly authoritarian Tony Blair, which is presently trying to steamroller parliament into passing a law against ‘incitement to religious hatred’, in a cynical vote-getting attempt to placate British Muslim spokesmen, in whose eyes just about any critique of Islam is offensive.”

Salman Rushdie in the Guardian, 14 March 2005

‘A vote for intolerance’ – Cohen defends the right to incite religious hatred

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Another diatribe from Nick Cohen against the extension of race relations laws to cover incitement to religious hatred.

He is particularly upset about Mike O’Brien naming Evan Harris as a leading Lib Dem opponent of the new law – on the grounds that the person O’Brien “singled out for attack wasn’t even on the Lib Dem front bench. All that appeared to distinguish him was that he was the only Lib Dem MP to come from a Jewish family”.

Yes, well, apart from the fact that Harris is a militant secularist who’s achieved notoriety among British Muslims, not least because of his enthusiastic support for the French hijab ban. Or hadn’t you noticed that, Nick?

Observer, 13 March 2005

‘Disproportionate influence’ – of Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The religious bigots are at it again, and this time it’s closer to home. Iqbal Sacranie, leader of the Muslim Council of Britain, recently wrote to Charles Kennedy threatening to withdraw Muslim votes from the Liberal Democrats unless the party drops its opposition to the incitement to religious hatred law…. I sincerely hope that Charles Kennedy continues to back Evan Harris and that he has the balls to tell Mr. Sacranie where he can shove his Muslim votes.”

The Liberal Dissenter, 26 February 2005

The Lib Dems and the Muslim Council of Britain

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Lord Lester writes to the New Statesman (7 February 2005):

“Nick Cohen purports to describe a meeting in my chambers. The meeting, held at the request of the Muslim Council of Great Britain [sic], was to discuss the government’s proposed offence of incitement to religious hatred. The views attributed to me are not what I said.”

For Cohen’s article see here.

But it seems that the only other Lib Dem present at the meeting was leading National Secular Society member Evan Harris (see the MCB’s letter to Charles Kennedy). So who could have provided Cohen with his distorted account of the proceedings? You, as they say, do the maths.