Category Archives: Secular

Defend Jamaat-e-Islami against ‘secularism’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jamaat Gaza protest
Jamaat-e-Islami demonstration against Israel’s attack on Gaza

Under the heading “Bangladesh set to become again a secular state”, left-wing blogger Andrew Coates has enthusiastically hailed what he claims is a decision by the government of Bangladesh to restore the secular foundations of the country’s constitution.

He bases his post on reports that the Supreme Court in Dhaka has upheld a ruling that the government can reverse amendments made to the constitution in the period following the military coup of 1975. Coates approvingly quotes law minister Shafique Ahmed as saying: “In the light of the verdict, the secular constitution of 1972 already stands to have been revived. Now we don’t have any bar to return to the four state principles of democracy, nationalism, secularism and socialism as had been heralded in the 1972 statute of the state.”

There were indeed amendments made to the 1972 constitution after 1975 that undermined the secular basis of the state. The religious invocation “Bismillah-ar-Rahman-ar-Rahim” (“In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful”) was added to the preamble of the constitution, and Islam was declared to be the official state religion of Bangladesh. To overturn those amendments would of course be entirely legitimate from the standpoint of establishing a secular state, and if the government of Bangladesh were proposing to change the constitution accordingly there would be no objection.

However, the government has shown little enthusiasm for such a change. Following a meeting last month between the ruling Awami League and its coalition partners, one of whom urged that the constitution should be amended along those lines, prime minister Sheikh Hasina stated firmly that the words “Bismillah-ar-Rahman-ar-Rahim” would be left unchanged in the constitution, as would the declaration that Islam is the state religion.

It is not difficult to identify the motive behind this decision. During the 2008 election campaign the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its Islamist ally Jamaat-e-Islami accused the Awami League of hostility towards Islam, and Sheikh Hasina no doubt reasons that if her government were to abolish the religious elements in the constitution this would be exploited by the opposition. So an entirely justifiable change that would restore the secular principle to the constitution has been rejected on pragmatic, not to say opportunistic, political grounds.

What, then, are the “secular foundations” of the 1972 constitution that the Bangladesh government wishes to restore? Well, crucially they want to reinstate a provision, subsequently removed, which declared that “no person shall have the right to form, or be a member or otherwise take part in the activities of, any communal or other association or union which in the name or on the basis of any religion has for its object, or pursues, a political purpose”.

Indeed, following the Supreme Court’s verdict, Shafique Ahmed was quoted as saying that all religion-based parties should “drop the name of Islam from their name and stop using religion during campaigning”, and he went on to announce that religion-based parties are going to be “banned”. In short, what the government of Bangladesh is planning to do is to amend the constitution in order to illegalise Jamaat-e-Islami.

What does this have to do with secularism? Nothing whatsoever. If a secular constitution required the suppression of faith-based political parties, then secularism in Germany would require a ban on the Christian Democrats. And nobody, not even a secularist ultra like Andrew Coates, is calling for that.

You can imagine how different the response would be if a government headed by Jamaat-e-Islami were to propose a ban on secular parties in Bangladesh, on the grounds that they conflicted with the Islamic basis of the constitution. Coates, along with the likes of Harry’s Place and the Spittoon, would be furiously denouncing “totalitarian Islamism” and its contempt for democratic principles. But a secular party proposes to ban an Islamist party and you don’t hear a peep from them.

NPA denounced for standing hijab-wearing candidate

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ilham MoussaidOlivier Besancenot, the postman-turned-revolutionary at the helm of France’s anti-capitalist movement, has been fiercely criticised from all sides of the political spectrum for fielding a headscarf-wearing candidate in forthcoming elections.

Ilham Moussaid, a 21-year-old Muslim woman who describes herself as “feminist, secular and veiled”, is running for the far-left New Anti-Capitalist party (NPA) in the south-eastern region of Avignon. But, despite her insistence that there is no contradiction between her clothing and her political role, Moussaid’s candidacy in the regional vote due in March has angered other feminists and politicians.

In an echo of the controversy raised by recent moves to ban the full, face-covering veil in public places such as schools, hospitals and buses, critics have said that the young activist’s headscarf, which conceals only her hair, goes against values of laïcité – secularism – and women’s rights.

Today, in a sign of how deep concerns are running, a leading feminist group announced it would file an official complaint against the NPA’s list of candidates in the Vaucluse département to protest against what it called an “anti-secular, anti-feminist and anti-republican” stunt.

“In choosing to endorse ‘open’ laïcité, the NPA is perverting the values of the Republic and suggesting we reread them in a manner which conforms with regressive visions of women,” said the Ni Putes Ni Soumises (Neither Whores Nor Submissives) association in a statement.

Others have expressed their shock at Besancenot’s attempt to field a candidate who sees no problem with making an overt statement about her religion in the public sphere, a practice considered taboo.

Guardian, 11 February 2010

Defending Moazzam Begg and Amnesty International

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Guantanamo Files“Just when it seemed that Republicans in America had a monopoly on Islamophobic hysteria, the Sunday Times prompted a torrent of similar hysteria in the UK by running an article in which an employee of Amnesty International – Gita Sahgal, head of the gender unit at the International Secretariat – criticized the organization that employed her for its association with former Guantánamo prisoner Moazzam Begg.

“Before getting into the substance – or lack of it – in Sahgal’s complaints, it should be noted first of all that her immediate suspension by Amnesty was the least that should have been expected. What other organization would put up with an employee badmouthing them to a national newspaper on a Sunday, and then allow them to return to work as usual on Monday morning?”

Andy Worthington’s blog, 10 February 2010

Sunday Times witch-hunts Moazzam Begg, tries to discredit Amnesty International

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Moazzam_BeggA senior official at Amnesty International has accused the charity of putting the human rights of Al-Qaeda terror suspects above those of their victims.

Gita Sahgal, head of the gender unit at Amnesty’s international secretariat, believes that collaborating with Moazzam Begg, a former British inmate at Guantanamo Bay, “fundamentally damages” the organisation’s reputation.

In an email sent to Amnesty’s top bosses, she suggests the charity has mistakenly allied itself with Begg and his “jihadi” group, Cageprisoners, out of fear of being branded racist and Islamophobic.

Sahgal describes Begg as “Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban”. He has championed the rights of jailed Al-Qaeda members and hate preachers, including Anwar al-Awlaki, the alleged spiritual mentor of the Christmas Day Detroit plane bomber.

Sunday Times, 7 February 2010

Read Amnesty’s response here.

Gita Sahgal is a member of a nutty group called Women Against Fundamentalisms. In a 2006 radio programme she defended the view that by consulting the Muslim Council of Britain the government was encouraging fundamentalism. In the same radio programme she also accused Tariq Ramadan of being a fundamentalist. Had she actually read any of his books, Professor Ramadan politely inquired. It was quite clear that she hadn’t. In fact she was completely unfamiliar with his writings. However, she did know that he was a fundamentalist.

It appears that Sahgal has now been suspended by Amnesty. Their mistake was in ever employing a crank like that in the first place.

Update:  Read Moazzam Begg’s letter to Richard Kerbaj, the author of the Sunday Times report, here.

Further update:  Read Andy Newman’s comments at Socialist Unity.

BNP backs National Secular Society over ‘Sharia threat’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BNP backs NSS

The National Secular Society (NSC) has warned that Britain is “in a race” with France to see who can be the first country to formally incorporate Sharia law into their legal systems.

Although the NSC [sic] did not point out that this headlong flight into Sharia law is caused directly by mass Third World immigration, it did warn that Britain is “rushing into law a set of new regulations that will make the operation of sharia finance easier and facilitate the issuance of corporate sukuk.”

Sukuk are a broad class of financial instruments designed to replicate the economic function of bonds, but with a structure which complies with Islamic principles. The Treasury has laid before Parliament the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, Order 2010 that will clarify the regulatory treatment of corporate sukuk, reducing the legal costs for these types of investments and removing “unnecessary obstacles” to their issuance.

The British National Party is the only political party which has consistently pointed out that if a people are replaced though mass immigration, then the culture which those people created will also be replaced. The spread of Sharia law into the financial sector is only the beginning of this process. Left unchecked, Muslim numbers will soon reach the position where they will be able to demand – and get – full Sharia law implemented in Britain.

BNP news report, 31 January 2010

See also “Sharia makes its first incursion into British law”, NSS website, 29 January 2010

And Stormfront, 30 January 2010

Joan Smith tells Muslim women how to dress

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Joan_Smith“Islam doesn’t demand that men cover their faces before they go out, but its more extreme advocates place special conditions on how women dress outside the home. It’s a typical example of patriarchal practice, based on the notion that women should be under the control of their male relatives at all times, and it’s incompatible with any notion of universal human rights….

“In effect, a woman in a niqab is wearing a mask, signalling her deliberate separation from people unlike herself. It’s hard to think of another form of dress which is so highly politicised – or so rejectionist of mainstream culture. This is the point missed by liberal defenders of the niqab and the burka.”

Joan Smith in the Independent, 19 January 2010

Last week the Independent itself published an article in which Muslim women were given space to explain their own understanding of why they wore hijab (and, in one case, didn’t). But Joan Smith doesn’t bother herself with that sort of nonsense. She thinks she knows more about the motives and meaning of Muslim women’s preferred form of dress than Muslim women themselves do.

You might have thought that an avowed feminist would have some sensitivity to the idea that women could legitimately prefer to cover themselves because they find it demeaning to have men judging them by their physical appearance. Back in the day, there was tendency within the women’s movement, much derided by the anti-feminist political right, who preferred to dress in overalls and boots as a stand against the commodification of women’s bodies. But then, those women were mainly of Western origin and white, so obviously that was different.

Update:  See also ENGAGE, 19 January 2009

Who supports the ban on Islam4UK?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BMSD protest

Well, not the Muslim Council of Britain, who have issued a well-reasoned statement, “Ban groups if they break the law, not on the basis of media hysteria“. But support for the government’s stupid move comes from the Quilliam Foundation, the British Muslim Forum and the Muslim Women’s Network – all of whom are in receipt of state funding.

Backing for the ban also comes from Shaaz Mahboob of British Muslims for Secular Democracy. Remind me, weren’t BMSD the organisation that protested against Islam4UK last October brandishing placards reading “Free speech will dominate the world: All may speak their minds”? All except those who BMSD decides are not entitled to free speech, it would appear. The BMSD demonstrators urged us to “laugh at those who insult freedom”. However, their response to the ridiculous Anjem Choudary isn’t to draw attention to his comic potential but to support a state ban on his group.

France moves to outlaw the veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The parliamentary leader of the ruling French party is to put forward a draft law within two weeks to ban the full-body veil from French streets and all other public places.

The announcement by Jean-François Copé, cutting short an anguished six-month debate on the burka and its Arab equivalent, the niqab, will divide both right and left and is likely to anger President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Mr Copé, in an interview with Le Figaro to be published tomorrow, said that he would bring forward a law which would impose fines of up to €750 (£675) on anyone appearing in public “with their face entirely masked”.

Independent, 8 January 2010

See also the Daily Star which reports, under the headline “Women to be fined for wearing Burkas”, that “Strict new laws are being considered in France to tackle Islamic extremism. And campaigners want the same tough penalties in the UK.” Who exactly are these campaigners, you may ask. Well, the Star has found two.

One is right-wing Christian extremist Stephen Green who tells the Star: “We ought to assert our Christian heritage as strongly as France does its secular heritage. There’s no doubt the burka is culturally divisive. Measures like fines would send out a great signal. If we don’t take action against Islam now we are going to see terrible problems in this country in 30 years’ time.”

Bizarrely, the Star informs its readers that “many leading Muslim groups believe the burka should be outlawed in Britain”. But the only example they offer is Diana Nammi of the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation, not hitherto known as a leading Muslim group, who is quoted as saying: “We support bans anywhere in the world.”

Looks like Damian Thompson’s proposal for an alliance between secularists and right-wing Christians on the basis of a common hatred of Islam is already being implemented.

Season’s greetings from the National Secular Society … as long as you’re not an immigrant

Posted on by Bob Pitt

National Secular Society president Terry Sanderson delivers his “seasonal message”:

While we know that the traditional places of worship – the Church of England and the Catholic Churches – are declining rapidly, further evidence has emerged this month showing that immigrants are importing their own brands of religion into Britain. They generally take their faith more seriously than the “I’m spiritual but not religious” brigade that makes up the majority of the population in Britain (or the “fuzzy faithful” as they’ve been called).

Muslims from Pakistan and India, Catholics from Poland and evangelical Protestants from Africa and the Caribbean are bringing with them unpleasantly conservative religious beliefs that sometimes shock and repel the majority. They often seem primitive, hysterical, fanatical and alien, full of hatred and intolerance and crazy, senseless rules. Honour killings, violent, sometimes fatal, exorcisms, denial of medical treatment to children on the assumption that prayer will be sufficient, the treatment of women as chattels and the spouting of unvarnished hatred of non-believers, gays and Jews from the pulpits of mosques.

NSS website, 17 December 2009

Vote to ban minarets wasn’t necessarily Islamophobic (it says here)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

SVP anti-minaret posterJoan Smith offers her profound thoughts on the result of the Swiss referendum:

“I don’t doubt that some people voted for the ban for racist reasons, but damning them all as ‘Islamophobes’ is an attempt to suppress entirely reasonable arguments about the role of religion in secular modern societies. Tariq Ramadan doesn’t use the word in his polemic but he does claim without qualification that ‘voters were drawn to the cause by a manipulative appeal to popular fears and emotions’.

“Corralling a wide range of people, many of whom disagree profoundly with each other, under one great Islamophobic umbrella is a familiar tactic but it’s not conducive to civilised discussion. If the debate about the powers demanded and enjoyed by religion – all of them, not just Islam – pops up in distorted forms in European countries, it is as much the responsibility of religious apologists such as Ramadan as it is the racist right….

“Any notion of universal human rights recognises the right of individuals to practise their religion, but that isn’t incompatible with believing that religion is divisive and seeks to exercise unelected power…. If you take that position, it’s perfectly reasonable to believe that public displays of religious symbols should be kept to a minimum, whether they take the form of crucifixes or hijabs. As Ian Traynor reports in today’s Guardian, the proposed ban on minarets in Switzerland received ‘substantial support on the left and among secularists worried about the status of women in Islamic cultures’.”

Comment is Free, 30 November 2009

Cf. Sholto Byrne’s comments on his New Statesman God Blog. He too notes left-wing and secularist support for the minaret ban, and observes that “it is part of the paradox of Western liberalism that its pluralism only extends so far, and that it is essentially intolerant of anything that does not stem from its own ‘definitive’ culture”.