Category Archives: Secular

Tatchell loses Muslim speaker, Maryam Namazie steps in as replacement

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Advance publicity for the annual Peter Tatchell Human Rights Fund fundraiser, which was held last night, made much of the fact that Sheikh Dr Muhammad Yusuf, Chair of the Council of University Imams, was billed as one of the speakers.

However, Sheikh Yusuf withdrew from the engagement, apparently because of pressure from “senior Muslim figures”. Presumably they made clear to Sheikh Yusuf that Tatchell would use his presence at the event to give credibility to Outrage’s anti-Muslim campaigns.

And how did Tatchell spin the news? In characteristically Islamophobic fashion. It was reported under the headline “Liberal Muslim theologian pulls out of Tatchell lecture after threats: Lecture cancelled after fears for Sheikh’s safety”!

Happily, Maryam Namazie of the Worker Communist Party of Iran stepped in to replace Sheikh Yusuf. Yes, that’s the same Maryam Namazie who described the Islamic headscarf as “comparable to the Star of David pinned on Jews by the Nazis to segregate, control, repress and to commit genocide”. Much more in keeping with the spirit of the event, I’d have thought.

‘Alliance with bigots won’t halt fascists’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Another anti-Muslim diatribe from Peter Tatchell, who resurrects his campaign to get the MCB banned from February’s Unite Against Fascism conference. A phrase involving the words “dog” and “own vomit” immediately springs to mind. For coverage of this issue on our site, see here, here, here, here and here.

While the uncritical support given to Tatchell by Tribune may serve the personal political agenda of the magazine’s deputy editor, it is extremely damaging to the Labour Party’s relations with Muslim communities, which are already under severe strain following the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. Perhaps readers of our site might like to point this out (in appropriately restrained language) to Tribune‘s editor, Chris McLaughlin?

Alliance with bigots won’t halt fascists 

By Peter Tatchell

Tribune, 17 March 2006

Human rights campaigners claiming victory after Sir lqbal Sacranie failed to speak, as advertised, at the recent trade union-sponsored Unite Against Fascism (UAF) conference in London. His no-show followed widespread protests against his participation. Sacranie has condemned gay people as immoral, harmful and diseased.

Supported by London Mayor Ken Livingstone, plus five trade unions and the South East Region of the TUC, the UAF conference theme was “Stop the BNP”. Why did UAF invite a speaker whose views on homosexuality echo the bigotry of the far Right?

Continue reading →

‘Left’ Islamophobes fall out

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Even the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty baulks at some of the alliances formed by their friends in the Worker Communist Party of Iran.

In an open letter to Maryam Namazie, Martin Thomas of the AWL writes: “The organisers of the ‘March For Free Expression’ (against political Islam) planned for 25 March are advertising you as a prominent supporter – alongside the Freedom Association, an extreme right-wing movement best known for its strike-breaking efforts during the Grunwick strike of 1977.”

Martin also takes issue with Namazie’s decision to sign the anti-Islamism manifesto first published in the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten: “The manifesto’s twelve initial signatories include several right-wing figures – not, to be sure, as right-wing as the Freedom Association, but clearly alien to the labour movement.”

AWL website, 5 March 2006

For details of the “march for free expression”, see here.

For our comments on the anti-Islamism manifesto, see here.

Islamophobia Watch helps target Tatchell for murder (really!)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

OutrageLast week the Peter Tatchell Human Rights Fund Campaign Report 2005 was published. Among the list of Peter’s marvellous accomplishments over the course of the year, the report includes the following nugget: “The website, Islamophobia Watch, regularly (but falsely) denounces Peter as anti-Muslim. It is feared this could make him a target for Islamic fundamentalists who monitor the website to compile their hit-lists.”

Peter is of course noted for keeping a low profile – indeed, within a Left not short of inflated egos and narcissists, his self-effacing approach to political activism is one of his most appealing qualities – and without the efforts of Islamophobia Watch we doubt that anyone would have the slightest idea who Peter Tatchell is. Furthermore, were it not for our harsh criticisms of Peter’s attitude towards Islam, we are convinced that the majority of Muslims would long ago have recognised him as the friend and sympathiser that he is.

As for the claim that “Islamic fundamentalists” monitor our site to “compile their hit-lists”, some might suspect that this is a baseless slander on Peter’s part aimed at silencing his critics. However, as anyone familiar with Outrage’s campaign against Yusuf al-Qaradawi can confirm, Peter is the last person in the world to make an accusation against anyone without solid evidence to back it up. We look forward to to Peter providing his own list of the fundamentalists who use our site for the purpose of targeting people like himself for murder.

Sucking up to Islam will never appease the zealots, Wheen warns

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Francis WheenSucking up to Islam will never appease the zealots

By Francis Wheen

Evening Standard, 21 February 2006

I toddled down to Trafalgar Square last Saturday to observe the latest mass rally against Danish cartoonists.

The protesters were on their best behaviour, unlike the demagogues who addressed them. Certain placards – “Don’t they teach you manners in Denmark?”, “Learn to apologise properly” – suggested this whole crisis could have been avoided had the Danes studied Lady Troubridge’s Book of Etiquette more attentively.

The most common placard, however, was a simple equation: “War on terror = War on Islam”. What could be more moderate and well-mannered than that? It’s an article of faith for many secular British liberals, too.

The reasoning behind it is that Britain set out to topple Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim. Yet the victims of Saddam’s regime – Kurds and Shias – were themselves Muslims. Did anyone at the rally claim that Saddam also made war on Islam? Of course not.

Nor would they make the accusation against Iran – even though Iranian police arrested 1,200 Sufi Muslims in Qom last week and destroyed their prayer hall. This was an act of straightforward religious persecution, but only Amnesty International has made the slightest fuss.

If Tony Blair really is waging war on Islam, it must be the first struggle in history in which the belligerent continually prostrates himself before the foe he is supposedly attacking. Only last month the Government tried to push through a law criminalising people who criticise religion, a measure introduced purely to placate leading Muslims.

Now we learn from the New Statesman that the Foreign Office wants to establish “working-level contacts” with supporters of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, an extreme Islamist group. In a leaked memo to ministers, an FO official explains that “interacting with ‘political Islam’ is an important element of our Engaging With the Islamic World strategy”.

Our ambassador in Cairo seems unconvinced. In another memo leaked to the New Statesman, he complains of “a tendency for us to be drawn towards engagement for its own sake” and a reluctance to notice “the very real downsides for us in terms of the Islamists’ likely foreign and social policies”.

Just so. Since 9/11 earnest progressives have argued that we must work with militant Islam rather than challenge it. Hence the grotesque pantomime horse known as the Respect Coalition.

Meanwhile Tony Blair has been engaging away like billy-o with the famous “Muslim moderates”, awarding them knighthoods and seats on quangos. He insists religion is the solution rather than the problem, since “Jews, Muslims and Christians are all children of Abraham” – overlooking the fact that Abraham’s example was cited by one of the 9/11 hijackers as his chief inspiration.

So far, however, this ardent wooing seems to be unreciprocated. An ICM poll has found that 40 per cent of British Muslims want sharia law in parts of the country, and one in five sympathises with the “feelings and motives” of bombers who killed 52 people in London last July. Alarming news: but will it prompt a demo in Trafalgar Square? No chance.

More self-promoting stupidity from Tatchell

Posted on by Bob Pitt

OutrageWe have already covered the ludicrous, divisive and objectively pro-Nazi campaign waged by Peter Tatchell and Outrage against the participation of the Muslim Council of Britain and its general secretary Sir Iqbal Sacranie at yesterday’s Unite Against Fascism conference (see here and here). As it turned out, Sacranie had another engagement, and his place was taken by Daud Abdullah, assistant general secretary of the MCB, who addressed the opening session of the conference.

Tatchell, whose capacity to delude himself about his own importance evidently knows no limits, announced that Sacranie’s absence was all down to his campaign. “This climbdown is a victory for humanitarian values over homophobic prejudice,” he pontificated. “We believe the organisers realised they could not secure the acceptance of a homophobe at an anti-fascist conference, so they dumped him.” (Outrage press release, 18 February 2006)

In fact, the demand that Tatchell and Outrage had raised was for the MCB as an organisation to be banned from the conference platform. “Sir Iqbal is leader of the anti-gay Muslim Council of Britain (MCB)”, they declared. “Sir Iqbal’s homophobic views, and the MCB’s opposition to gay equality, echo the prejudice and discrimination of the BNP…. We urge you to withdraw your invitation to Sir Iqbal and the MCB…. The MCB is not a liberal, progressive organisation. It represents only conservative, reactionary opinion. It is not a suitable partner organisation for the movement against fascism.” (Outrage press release, 14 February 2006)

Yet, in the outcome, the invitation was not withdrawn and the UAF conference was addressed by an assistant general secretary of the MCB, rather than by its general secretary. So, a bit of a limited victory there then, eh Peter?

Tatchell calls for UAF ban on MCB

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BNP leaflet 3Under the headline “Muslim leader echoes homophobia of the BNP“, the gay rights group Outrage has condemned the decision to invite Sir Iqbal Sacranie, general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, to speak at the Unite Against Fascism conference on Saturday.

Not that Peter Tatchell is opposed to Muslims speaking at the meeting, of course. He’s prepared to welcome individuals such as “Ziauddin Sardar, Sheikh Dr Muhammad Yusuf or Munira Mirza”, who represent nobody but themselves, while demanding a ban on the MCB, an umbrella body with over 400 affiliates which is the most representative Muslim organisation in Britain. Now there’s a strategy for engaging Muslim communities in the struggle against fascism!

Outrage’s intervention is particularly irresponsible, given that the BNP has announced that it intends to turn its campaign in the May local elections into a “referendum on Islam”. Yet Outrage proposes that UAF should exclude from its conference the main organisation of the Muslim communities who are the direct victims of the BNP’s racism. Some might suspect that Outrage are acting as paid agents of the BNP, trying to disrupt the unity of anti-fascist forces in order to assist the Nazis. But that would be unfair. Outrage in fact provide this service to the BNP for free.

For details of Saturday’s conference, see the UAF website.

Muslims and the West: a culture war?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

John EspositoJohn Esposito writes on the cartoons controversy:

“One of the first questions I have been asked about this conflict by media from Europe, the US, and Latin America has been ‘Is Islam incompatible with Western values?’ Are we seeing a culture war?

“Before jumping to that conclusion, we should ask, whose Western democratic and secular values are we talking about? Is it a Western secularism that privileges no religion in order to provide space for all religions and to protect belief and unbelief alike? Or is it a Western ‘secular fundamentalism’ that is anti-religious and increasingly, post 9/11, anti-Islam?

“What we are witnessing today has little to do with Western democratic values and everything to do with a European media that reflects and plays to an increasingly xenophobic and Islamaphobic society.”

Islam Online, 14 February 2006