The Institute of Race Relations has reprinted an interesting interview with A. Sivanandan from Race & Class, conducted by the Norwegian Maoist daily Klassekampen.
In connection with the cartoons crisis, Sivanandan points out that “in our time – after Hitler and the Holocaust, in an era of ethnic cleansing and genocide and Islamophobia – the freedom to life comes before the freedom of speech. You cannot use freedom of speech to endanger other people’s lives by incitement to racial, ethnic or religious hatred”.
He also explains Islamophobia as the ideology of western imperialism:
“Racial superiority is back on the agenda – in the guise this time not of a super-race but a super-civilisation on a mission to take the ideals of freedom and democracy, by force if necessary, to the benighted people of the Third World, especially to those who have got oil in their backyards. ( ‘Post-modern imperialism’ Robert Cooper, one-time adviser to Blair and the EU, calls it.) Conversely, western civilisation and its values should be jealously guarded against the pagan hordes now circulating in Europe’s midst.”