Category Archives: Multiculturalism

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

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.

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Mayor of London condemns French hijab ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A basic right

Morning Star, 19 March 2005

By Ken Livingstone

This month marks the first anniversary of the French law banning students from wearing conspicuous religious symbols in schools.

I have given the fullest support to the campaign against this attack on the rights of minority religious communities in France.

In February last year, just before the French parliament voted overwhelmingly in favour of the ban, I wrote to prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin warning that the new law would be a blow to good community relations throughout Europe, and would inflame tensions between communities and encourage attacks on minorities.

Earlier this month the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination drew attention to the problem of racism in France.

The committee urged the French government to prevent the law against conspicuous religious symbols “from denying any pupil the right to education and to ensure that everyone can always exercise that right”.

But this is precisely the right that the French law does deny many pupils.

According to the French government’s own figures, when the law came into force at the start of the September 2004 school term, over 600 students defied the ban.

Some were forced out of the state system and into private education, while many others were obliged to comply with the law under threat of expulsion.

At least 47 Muslim girls have been excluded from French schools for continuing to wear the hijab (Islamic headscarf), and hundreds more have been compelled to renounce a form of dress that they believe is an important aspect of their religion.

In addition, three Sikh students have been expelled for refusing to remove their turbans and another two have been refused admission to their school.

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Mayor’s human rights adviser meets opponents of hijab ban in Paris

Posted on by Bob Pitt

On the first anniversary of the ban on the wearing of the Muslim headscarf in French schools, Yasmin Qureshi, the Mayor of London’s human rights adviser, is to visit Paris to meet opponents of the ban.

The visit follows a new poll conducted by MORI for the Greater London Authority which found that 53 percent of Londoners disagree with the ban with just 33 per cent supporting it.

In the same poll 63 percent said that children should be allowed to wear clothing or items that are part of their religion, such as the Muslim headscarf, Christian cross, Jewish skullcap and Sikh turban at school. Only 26 per cent disagreed.

Ms Qureshi will be in Paris to meet with faith, community, and human rights organisations as well as French local government representatives campaigning against the ban.  Among the groups she will be visiting are Collectif des Musulmans de France, United Sikhs and Ligue des Droits de l’Homme.

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Labour’s flawed policy on immigration is a time bomb for Britain (Rod Liddle claims)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Back in the Fifties and Sixties, it was expected of immigrants to adopt British customs and values: the terrible concept of multiculturalism hadn’t taken root.

“However, today we welcome people who, for example, bring with them a hostile interpretation of Islam and have no real wish to integrate: in many cases, they despise our way of life. Furthermore, even some members of the indigenous Muslim community have been radicalised over the past 15 years.

“Islam is becoming more conservative and less amenable to assimilation. The West is becoming more liberal. We run the risk of becoming a country with a large (and growing) disaffected minority that shares little of our commitment to freedom of religion, freedom of speech, sexual equality and democracy.”

Rod Liddle in the Daily Express, 10 March 2005

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So Shabina, what’s the point of Britain? (Rod Liddle wants to know)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“It is one thing for a rancid, stone-age clique like Hizb ut-Tahrir to insist upon the metaphoric subjugation of women by dressing young girls from top to toe in sackcloth and ashes. It is another thing entirely for a sort of Allah-lite version to have been institutionalised in state schools and for the rest of us to smile indulgently and pretend that it is evidence of ‘tolerance’ and ‘diversity’….

“What we need now is to inculcate a ‘core of Britishness’…. But a state school which kowtows to the un-British (for want of a better phrase) demands of its black and ethnic minority constituency is far more damaging to this national cohesion business than an insignificant little ginger group such as Hizb ut-Tahrir. We cannot force parents to inculcate that core of Britishness in their homes; but we can ensure that it takes place in our schools. The French seem to have grasped this point; it is about time that we did.”

Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times, 6 March 2005

Do we want the Turkish peasantry here? Torygraph racist thinks not

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“… one of the symptoms of the chronic immigration syndrome is that the intelligentsia of the host-country refuses to discuss, or even permit discussion, of its long-term consequences. Instead there is much witless, liberal maundering about the unassailable virtues of a multicultural, multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-ethos society.

“Well, my little liberal friends, it hasn’t turned out like that. Opinion polls show that 11 per cent of Britain’s two million Muslims approved of the attacks of 9/11, and 40 per cent support Osama Bin Laden. Nearly 1,200 British Muslims have been trained in terror camps in Afghanistan; three British Muslims have become suicide bombers. British police are – finally – investigating 122 possible ‘honour killings’ of women in immigrant communities.”

Kevin Myers in the Sunday Telegraph, 19 December 2004

Muslims and European multiculturalism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“There is an anti-Muslim wind blowing across the European continent. One factor is a perception that Muslims are making politically exceptional, culturally unreasonable or theologically alien demands upon European states. My contention is that the claims Muslims are making in fact parallel comparable arguments about gender or ethnic equality.”

Tariq Modood at Open Democracy, 15 May 2003

Anthony Browne on ‘The folly of mass immigration’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The pro-immigrationists are effectively trying to abolish nationhood, denying a country the right to sustain its own culture.

“British-born white people, the progeny of the generation who survived the Nazi attempt to obliterate Britain as an independent nation state, now account for only 60% of the population of London. England has for more than 1500 years been a Christian country – its flag is a cross, its head of state is head of the national church – but in its second city Birmingham, Islam is now more worshipped than Christianity. In two boroughs of London, whites are already in the minority, and they are expected to become a minority in several cities in the coming decade.

“If current trends continue, the historically indigenous population of Britain will become a minority by around 2100. Islam is the fastest growing religion, and much immigration to Britain comes from Muslims fleeing Muslim lands – around 75% of intercontinental asylum seekers are Muslim. But where are the limits? In an extreme example, would British Christians have a right not to live in an Islamic majority state?”

Anthony Browne at Open Democracy, 1 May 2003