Anindya Bhattacharyya analyses Marx’s attitude towards religion: “A careful examination of Marx’s writings on the subject reveals that while he certainly criticised religion, he was equally scathing about liberals who elevated criticism of religion over all other political concerns … he certainly had no time for those who used opposition to religion as an excuse to scapegoat religious minorities, while simultaneously singing the praises of a capitalist system that leads to poverty, racism and war.”
Monthly Archives: March 2006
Clare Short opposes Blair’s HT ban plan
Clare Short calls on Blair to abandon Islamic party ban
Daily Telegraph, 2 March 2006
Clare Short urged Tony Blair to drop plans to ban the Hizb ut-Tahrir after the controversial Islamic party told MPs last night that it condemned the terrorist attacks in the West.
Miss Short, the former International Development Secretary, also defended her much-criticised decision to invite Hizb ut-Tahrir representatives to a meeting at the House of Commons.
The Prime Minister threatened to ban the group, which promotes the spread of Islam across the world, after the July 7 bombing attacks in London last year. The ban has yet to be implemented.
Miss Short, who quit the Cabinet in the wake of the Iraq war and has subsequently been one of Mr Blair’s fiercest critics, invited Hizb ut-Tahrir representatives to meet MPs and peers yesterday. The invitation was strongly condemned by Khalid Mahmood, the Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Bar, as “an affront” to mainstream Muslim opinion.
At the meeting, the labour peer Lord Ahmed said Hizb ut-Tahrir followers has once described Westminster as the “infidel parliament” while Evan Harris, the Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, criticised the party’s “potty” ideas.
Imran Waheed, a media spokesman for Hizb ut-Tahrir, insisted that the group had condemned last July’s atrocities in London and the 9/11 attacks in New York, and opposed “the deliberate targeting of civilians, either by states or organisations”.
Anti racist gay group dismiss Outrage claims
In a letter published in Pink News, the Lesbian and Gay Coalition Against Racism has rejected Outrage’s claim that Sir Iqbal Sacranie of the Muslim Council of Britain was dropped from the Unite Against Fascism conference on 18 February.
Another MEMRI attack on Qaradawi
Yes, another attempt by the Middle East Media Research Institute to stitch up Yusuf al-Qaradawi as an anti-semite.
It’s the usual cut and paste job, with paragraphs and even individual sentences taken out of a much longer speech and amalgamated. At least in this case MEMRI has actually provided ellipses which allow the reader to see how the thing has been chopped up and put back together, which is more than they did on a previous occasion. Even from MEMRI’s butchered version of Qaradawi’s speech it’s quite clear that his remarks – “Our war with the Jews is over land, brothers. We must understand this. If they had not plundered our land, there wouldn’t be a war between us” – are directed against Israelis, not against the world Jewish community. Just over a year ago, at a time when it was under pressure over its misrepresentation of Qaradawi, MEMRI published a much longer transcript of an interview in which he outlined his real views on Jews and Judaism.
Of course, this hasn’t prevented the warmongers at Harry’s Place from uncritically endorsing MEMRI’s latest stitch-up of Dr Q. Yet, only a few weeks ago, when MEMRI published an equally dishonest hatchet job on Tariq Ramadan, David T and his friends ignored this. The reason is rather obvious. Even Harry’s Place readers have posted favourable comments on Professor Ramadan during the Danish cartoons controversy, and a discussion of MEMRI’s distortion of his role would have exposed that organisation as the bunch of lying propagandists that they are, thus making it a bit difficult to present MEMRI as a reliable source of information on Qaradawi’s views.
But what can you expect from Harry’s Place? David T recently launched a witch-hunt against Christian CND treasurer Neil Berry, whom he falsely accused of writing anti-semitic articles. They were in fact written by an entirely different Neil Berry. But, what the heck, it was the same name, and that was good enough for David T. And this from a blog that claims to uphold Enlightenment values. You know, respecting scientific evidence rather than relying on irrational prejudice, that sort of thing.
I note that David Aaronovitch, who repeated David T’s slurs on Neil Berry in an article in the Jewish Chronicle, has also retracted and apologised.
Hizb ut-Tahrir invited to Commons by Clare Short
Under the heading “Militants invited to Commons by Short”, the Daily Mail (1 March) condemns the former minister’s decision to host a meeting with Hizb ut-Tahrir. Predictably, the campaign in the right-wing press is aided and abetted by Peter Tatchell.
Cartoon-krieg: politics as war by other means
“Make no mistake. Jyllands-Posten is not in the business of promoting the freedom of speech. Nor are the European governments that rallied to its defense. What they claim is the license to injure the oppressed and marginalized.”
Lila Rajiva in MRZine, 28 February 2006
US pays Muslim detainee £170,000
An Egyptian arrested after the September 11 attacks, detained for 10 months and then deported, has been awarded £170,000 by the US government. Ehab Elmaghraby, who ran a restaurant in Manhattan, was among dozens of Muslims detained after the outrages in New York and Washington. He sued the government with another former detainee, a Pakistani immigrant, who is still pursuing the action.
Mr Elmaghraby, 38, was held in maximum security conditions in Brooklyn from October 2001 until August 2002. In the lawsuit, filed in 2004, the men said they were shackled, shoved into walls and punched, kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day and denied adequate meals and medical care. Haeyoung Yoon, Mr Elmaghraby’s lawyer, said her client had wanted to continue with the lawsuit but settled because he was ill and faced mounting medical costs.