Category Archives: Secular

Tatchell, OutRage! and the Grand Mufti

Posted on by Bob Pitt

MoscowPride06Last month the notoriously homophobic mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, attended a mayoral summit meeting in London hosted by London’s mayor Ken Livingstone, prompting a protest by Peter Tatchell and the gay rights organisation OutRage! The website Gay.com reported:

“The Mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, has denounced same-sex relationships and gay pride events as ‘satanic’, ‘unnatural’, ‘deviations’, ‘blasphemy’ and ‘deadly moral poison’. In February 2006, Grand Mufti Talgat Tadzhuddin was quoted as saying about Moscow gay pride marchers, ‘If they come out on to the streets anyway they should be flogged. Any normal person would do that – Muslims and Orthodox Christians alike.’ For these reasons Outrage are co-ordinating a protest at London’s City Hall.”

Although the criticism of Luzhkov was right on the button, the reference to the Grand Mufti appeared, on the face of it, inexplicable. It is a well-established fact that, as Gay.com itself reported at the time, the attack on Moscow Pride in May 2006 was carried out by “skinheads and militant Orthodox Christians”. Yet the idea that the leader of Russia’s Muslims was the main instigator of the violent suppression of Moscow Pride has now apparently entered folklore among a section of the LGBT community in the UK.

The mayor of London had his own view on where this myth originated. In a statement issued by his press office in response to the controversy over Luzhkov’s visit, Livingstone condemned attacks on LGBT rights in Russia and Eastern Europe and the role of politicians in legitimising homophobia. But he continued: “The attempt of Mr Tatchell to focus attention on the role of the grand Mufti in Moscow, in the face of numerous attacks on gay rights in Eastern Europe which overwhelmingly come from right wing Christian and secular currents, is a clear example of an Islamaphobic campaign.”

Tatchell and his supporters responded with predictable indignation. Pink News quoted Tatchell as stating: “A year ago we once criticised the grand Mufti after he urged his followers to violently attack gay people in the streets. But the main focus of our criticism during that campaign was on the homophobia of the Chief Rabbi, the Russian Orthodox Church, neo-Nazis and ultra-nationalists. To suggest that this was an Islamophobic campaign was nonsense, despicable and brings the Mayor’s office into disrepute.”

In a post on the neocon website Harry’s Place (to which he is a regular contributor) Brett Lock of OutRage! denounced Livingstone as “a shameless liar” and “a man without principles or integrity”. Lock insisted that “Tatchell didn’t say Russian Muslims were the leading force attacking gay rights”. He also accused the mayor of hypocrisy, on the grounds that in May 2006 Livingstone himself had condemned “support given by the Russian Orthodox Church, the Grand Mufti, and the Chief Rabbi” to the ban on Moscow Pride.

Somewhat contradictorily, George Broadhead of the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association (GALHA) – a group closely associated with OutRage! – weighed in with a further attack on the mayor, accusing him of refusing to criticise Muslim homophobia. “Mr Livingstone is clearly determined to treat Islam with kid gloves no matter how stridently homophobic its adherents are,” Broadhead declared. “The slightest criticism of Islam is immediately branded Islamaphobic.”

What was the actual practice of Tatchell, OutRage! et al during the run-up to Moscow Pride 2006? Is Lock correct in claiming that Tatchell “didn’t say Russian Muslims were the leading force attacking gay rights” in Moscow? Is there any truth to Tatchell’s assertion that they condemned the Grand Mufti only “once”, and that “the main focus of our criticism during that campaign was on the homophobia of the Chief Rabbi, the Russian Orthodox Church, neo-Nazis and ultra-nationalists”? Let us examine the record.

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‘How my eyes were opened to the barbarity of Islam’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The appalling Phyllis Chesler (the US feminist who has compared Tariq Ramadan to Hitler) complains that “Western intellectual-ideologues, including feminists, have demonised me as a reactionary and racist ‘Islamophobe’ for arguing that Islam … is the largest practitioner of both sexual and religious apartheid in the world and that if Westerners do not stand up to this apartheid, morally, economically and militarily, we will not only have the blood of innocents on our hands; we will also be overrun by Sharia in the West.”

Times, 7 March 2007

The so-called “landmark Islamic Summit Conference in Florida” that Chesler is so enthusiastic about is also boosted by the likes of Family Security Matters and Front Page Magazine.

GALHA continues to incite anti-Muslim bigotry

Posted on by Bob Pitt

GHQ-Winter0607-web.cdr“The word ‘appeasement’ is rarely used except in the context of Neville Chamberlain’s deal with Hitler in 1938, but what about the present appeasement of Muslims in Britain? … We are told that Islam itself cannot be blamed for the terrorist attacks on New York, Madrid, and London, followed by widespread carnage in retaliation for the publication of a few innocuous drawings. That is like saying that the horrors of the Inquisition had nothing to do with Christianity….

“Islam has failed to moderate its cruel practices to the extent that mainstream Christianity has done in the past couple of centuries. The Taliban, Al-Qa’eda, and the Badr Corps are certainly extremist, but they are orthodox, deriving logically from the Koran, which denigrates women and tells believers to wage jihad against heretics and infidels.”

Barbara Smoker, the former long-time president of the National Secular Society, writes in the latest issue of (pdf) Gay Humanist Quarterly.

GHQ is edited by Brett Lock of OutRage! by the way.

Readers of Islamophobia Watch will no doubt also be aware that the publishers of GHQ, the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association, underwent an acrimonious split in 2005 over the publication of racist anti-Muslim material in their then magazine Gay and Lesbian Humanist. (See here, here, here, here, here and here.) GHQ is published by the faction within GALHA who supposedly rejected Islamophobic bigotry! Perhaps the two sides should consider getting back together.

It might be noted that in addition to Barbara Smoker GALHA’s vice-presidents include Labour MEP Michael Cashman, Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris and London Assembly member Darren Johnson of the Green Party. It might be an idea to draw their attention to the contents of GALHA’s current magazine.

Update:  For Yusuf Smith’s comments, see Indigo Jo Blogs, 7 March 2007

On the absolute right to satire

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Over at the Guardian‘s Comment is Free, Sue Blackmore defends the publication of Islamophobic material in the Clare College student magazine Clareification on the grounds that “it’s offensive, and funny, and that’s what satire is all about”.

Comment is Free, 5 March 2007

In the interests of defending the absolute right to engage in satire, and in order to provide some historical background to this principle, perhaps Sue Blackmore could do a follow-up post defending the right of Der Stürmer to publish anti-semitic caricatures. She could entitle it: “Julius Streicher – what a laugh”.

Do you realise Europe is in the throes of civil war?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The “civil war” is between secularism and Christianity, and Larry Siedentop is worried about it. He blames both sides for ignoring “the moral symmetry between secularism, with its civil liberty, and Christianity”.

After all, European secularism “rests on the firm belief that to be human means being a rational and moral agent, a free chooser with responsibility for one’s actions. It puts a premium on conscience rather than the blind following of rules. It joins rights with duties to others. This is also the central, egalitarian moral insight of Christianity. It can be seen in St Paul’s contrast between ‘Christian liberty’ and observance of the Jewish law. Enforced belief was, for Paul, a contradiction in terms. Strikingly, in its first centuries Christianity spread by persuasion, not by force of arms – a contrast to the early spread of Islam.”

Siedentop outlines his central concern: “What will happen to this ‘civil war’ now that Europe is faced with the challenge of Islam? Will Europeans come to understand better the moral logic that joins Christianity and civil liberty? It is important that they do so….”

So, cutting through the waffle, the basic message is that secularists and Christians should bury the hatchet in order to resist the Muslims.

Times, 27 February 2007

NSS condemns the never-ending demands of Muslim theocrats

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Terry Sanderson (2)In an editorial comment, Terry Sanderson of the National Secular Society denounces the Muslim Council of Britain’s report (pdf) Meeting the needs of Muslim pupils in state schools (you know, the one that has been welcomed by the National Association of Head Teachers). Sanderson characterises the report as the work of “theocrats” whose “demands are never-ending” and who “want to turn our schools into religious minefields where Islamic sensibilities are waiting to trip you up around every corner”. He writes:

“It starts with the MCB’s favourite definition of ‘Islamophobia’ – a definition that brands anyone who has doubts or fears about the ideology of Islam as a racist. ‘Islamophobia’, says the report, ‘is the term currently being used to denote an extreme and abnormal fear and/or aversion to Islam in general and Muslims in particular.’ Neat, isn’t it? If you don’t like Islam you don’t like Muslims, ergo – you’re a racist. The worst excesses of Islam are therefore beyond criticism by anyone who doesn’t want to be branded as racist.”

Well, it’s understandable that Terry Sanderson should be sensitive about accusations of racism. For earlier examples of Sanderson and the NSS lining up with the likes of Robert Kilroy-Silk and Will Cummins in condemning Arab “limb amputators” and “Muslim foreigners”, see here and here. And this admiration is reciprocated by racists. For a recent example of the fascist BNP approvingly quoting Sanderson, see here.

Sanderson continues: “Not all Muslims are as attached to their religion as the MCB document would have us believe. A graph at the beginning of the document claims that 85% of children from Muslim backgrounds regard their religion as ‘extremely important to them’. There is no indication where this figure came from, though.” In fact the MCB document states quite clearly (p.18) that the graph in question – which shows that 99% of Pakistani and Bangladeshi pupils say that religion is important to them – was taken from the 2006 DfES report Ethnicity and Education (pdf here – see p.23).

Like many secular self-styled defenders of the Enlightenment, Sanderson in fact embraces a method that has more in common with pre-Enlightenment values, ignoring and rejecting any objective evidence that doesn’t fit in with his own dogmas.

See also “Was Muslim guidance reasonable?” BBC News, 26 February 2007

MCB advocates ‘Taliban-style conditions’ in state schools, claims Express

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Express Muslims Tell Us How to Run Our Schools“Demands for a ban on ‘un-Islamic’ activities in schools will be set out by the Muslim Council of Britain today.

“Targets include playground games, swimming lessons, school plays, parents’ evenings and even vaccinations. And the calls for all children to be taught in Taliban-style conditions will be launched with the help of a senior Government education adviser….

“Terry Sanderson of the National Secular Society said the report was a ‘recipe for disaster’…. ‘The MCB shouldn’t try to force its religious agenda on children who may not want it. The Government needs to send the MCB packing’.”

Daily Express, 21 February 2007

For the MCB’s actual position, see here.

For the inspiration this sort of irresponsible press coverage provides for the far right, see here.

For a demolition of the Express‘s lies, see Five Chinese Crackers, 21 February 2007

Hitch condemns Muslim masochism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hitchens“We are supposed to watch what we say about Islam, lest by any chance we be considered ‘offensive’. A fair number of authors and academics in the West now have to live under police protection or endure prosecution in the courts for not observing this taboo with sufficient care.

“A stupid term – Islamophobia –  has been put into circulation to try and suggest that a foul prejudice lurks behind any misgivings about Islam’s infallible ‘message’. Well, this idiotic masochism has to be dropped.

“There may have been a handful of ugly incidents, provoked by lumpen elements, after certain episodes of Muslim terrorism. But no true secularist or even Christian has been involved in anything like the torching of a mosque….

“But where are the denunciations from centers of Sunni and Shiite authority of the daily murder and torture of Islamic co-religionists? Of the regular desecration of holy sites and holy books? Of the paranoid insults thrown so carelessly and callously by one Muslim group at another? [Er … here, here and here, for example? – ed.] This mounting ghastliness is a bit more worthy of condemnation, surely, than a few Danish cartoons or a false rumor about a profaned copy of the Quran in Guantanamo.

“The civilized world – yes I do mean to say that – should find its own voice and state firmly to Muslim leaders and citizens that respect is something to be earned and not demanded with menace. A short way of phrasing this would be to say, ‘See how the Muslims respect each other!'”

That well-known representative of the civilised world, Christopher Hitchens, lectures Muslims on the meaning of respect.

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