Yearly Archives: 2007

An injury to one is an injury to all – Bruce Kent defends religious freedom

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Virtually everybody in Britain today accepts that the right to freedom of religion and expression is a fundamental pillar of any democratic society. Yet in practice that freedom is under threat, at least for some of our communities – notably British Muslims. And we all need to understand that, because human freedoms are indivisible, if we allow such rights to be undermined for any one group, they will be undermined for all of us.”

Bruce Kent, chair of the Coalition to Defend Freedom of Religious and Cultural Expression, writes at Comment is Free, 7 June 2007

‘Time to confront the Muslim conspiracists’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Something is seriously wrong. A quarter of British Muslims believe the government and security services were involved in the July 7 suicide bombings in London, according to a poll for Channel 4 News…. Conspiracy theories abound in the Muslim community, many of them piggy-backing on an underlying notion of an American-Israeli bogeyman. In themselves, these ideas might be regarded as mere folly, but they are terrifyingly dangerous because they fertilise the ground in which more hostile projects can take root. Government and establishment rhetoric that continually presents our current difficulties as emanating from a ‘small extremist fringe’ does not help. It only provides cover for pernicious ideas which have very much wider currency, as the polls show.”

Zia Haider Rahman in Daily Telegraph, 6 June 2007

But what can you expect from a writer who describes himself as an opponent of “multiculturalism, the race relations industry and the peculiar culture of celebrating diversity”?

Coalition to defend freedom of religious and cultural expression launched

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Coalition launchPolitical figures, religious leaders, trade unionists and human rights campaigners are amongst the individuals that have signed up to a new coalition aimed at defending freedom of religious and cultural expression.

Speakers at the launch included the Mayor of London; peace campaigner and activist Bruce Kent; writer Ismail Patel from the British Muslim Initiative; Dr Daud Abdullah, Deputy General Secretary, Muslim Council of Britain; Edie Friedman, Director, Jewish Council for Racial Equality; Andrew Stunell MP; and Steve Sinnott, National Union of Teachers.

The coalition is being set up in the light of continuing media and other claims that different communities and faith groups openly expressing their culture or faith threaten community relations in Britain. Such claims have been most recently and strongly directed at the Muslim community, particularly focusing on the right of Muslim women to wear the veil.

A Greater London Authority commissioned report into Islamophobia in the media showed that 90 per cent of reports on Islam were negative. However, the majority of Londoners – 94 per cent – support freedom of thought, conscience, speech and religion.

The coalition will put the case that that multiculturalism, especially in London, enriches society and that division will flow from repression of these rights, not their expression. And that it is necessary for individuals and different communities to come to gether to defend freedom of religious and cultural though that have been established over hundreds of years.

The Mayor of London Ken Livingstone said: “I am proud of London’s reputation as the most diverse city in the world where the contribution all communities is celebrated and people’s freedom of religious expression is respected as it is one of the most essential of our civil liberties. Attacks on the rights of Muslim people to express their faith as they choose are ultimately a threat to everybody’s rights to freedom of religious and cultural expression.”

GLA press release, 6 June 2007

See also British Muslim Initiative website.

Muslim girl’s headscarf airbrushed

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Muslim schoolgirl’s traditional headscarf was airbrushed from a class photograph, a parliamentary inquiry has heard. A state parliamentary inquiry into dress codes and school uniforms yesterday heard several Muslim students had been discriminated against because of their dress.

Islamic Council of Victoria executive committee member Sherene Hassan said the student wore her hijab in a class photograph, but it was airbrushed so it would not stand out. “You can imagine that was quite demoralising,” Ms Hassan said. Ms Hassan also told the inquiry one Victorian student was told she would not be admitted to school if she wore her hijab. “That individual was so keen to attend that school she decided not to wear her headscarf,” she said. While the majority of schools supported students who wore the headgear, some teachers needed more understanding of Islam, she said.

Herald Sun, 5 June 2007

British Muslims and 7/7

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Today’s papers are filled with articles reporting the Channel 4 poll of British Muslims. Typical headlines read “Muslims: MI5 behind 7/7” (Daily Mirror), “25% of Brit Muslims think 7/7 bombers innocent” (The Sun), “7/7 bombs staged by agents say one in four Muslims” (Daily Telegraph) and “24% of Muslims think 7/7 raids were MI5 plot” (Daily Express), while the Daily Mail goes with “59pc of UK Muslims believe there was a cover-up over 7/7”.

The background to the poll – not least the fact that the fraudulent propaganda used to justify the Iraq war has destroyed the government’s credibility among Muslim communities – is of course omitted from most of these reports. The Mail does at least quote Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain, who puts the findings into context:

“Most people who would examine the facts with a level head would realise that this (7/7) is not some conspiracy. But as with the assassination of JFK, regrettably these kind of incidents become a cause celebre for conspiracy theorists. I think that this particular government has also engendered a lot of distrust. Some people will always be determined to believe that Muslims could not have been behind such an act of mass murder and to this end they are vulnerable to conspiracy theorists. The Muslim Council has always asked for a public inquiry into the July 7 bombings and that inquiry would have put this scepticism to bed for good.”

Cameron accuses Muslims of ‘cultural separatism’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

David CameronThe Tory Party website has posted David Cameron’s speech to the “Islam and Muslims in the World Today” conference.

Cameron attributes the Channel 4 poll results, which indicate widespread suspicion among Muslims about the official account of 7/7, not to the understandable mistrust of a government that lied about the Iraq war but to the prevalence of “cultural separatism” within Muslim communities. He goes on to blame “the influence of a number of Muslim preachers that actively encourage cultural separatism. One such preacher is Yusuf al’Qaradawi….”

Cameron also complains that the “process of rising Muslim consciousness [which he apparently thinks is by definition a bad thing] has been accelerated by the creed of multiculturalism, which despite intending to allow diversity flourish under a common banner of unity, has instead fostered difference by treating faith communities as monolithic blocks rather than individual citizens”.

He continues: “This rise in Muslim consciousness has been reinforced by a second, parallel, factor at work: the deliberate weakening of our collective identity in Britain. Again, multiculturalism has its part to play. By concentrating on defining the various cultures that have come to call Britain home, we have forgotten to define the most important one: our own.”

As for Muslim disaffection with British foreign policy, Cameron has found a solution: “We have to explain patiently and carefully that in Iraq and Afghanistan we are supporting democratically elected Muslim leaders.”

Universities ‘must improve help for vulnerable Muslim students’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Universities must employ Muslim chaplains or advisers and join forces with Islamic schools to break down widening divisions between British society and its Muslim communities, according to a senior Government adviser.

In a wide-ranging review of Islamic university syllabuses and the support available to Muslim students in England, published today, Ataullah Siddiqui, will tell institutions that their teaching of Islamic studies is “out of date” and for years has been conducted “in isolation and probably in complete ignorance of the [Muslim] community”.

Courses should be more job-related, departments should link up with seminaries and madrassas to reflect Islam in Europe post-9/11, they should have more qualified staff and provide better pastoral support for Muslim students, according to Dr Siddiqui.

Times, 4 June 2007

See also BBC News, 4 June 2007

Posted in UK

Blair in moderate Muslims appeal

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Tony Blair says he wants the “voice of moderation” among Muslims to be heard, as £1m funding was announced to boost Islamic studies at UK universities. Ministers hope the money, announced as a report criticised teaching quality, will help train more imams in the UK. At a conference on Islam, Mr Blair also called for closer links between Islamic schools and mainstream state schools.

Muslim News editor Ahmed Versi was among those at the conference, he told BBC News that overall, the language used by Mr Blair was “quite welcoming”. But he said he did not properly address the most important issue to Muslims – what he called the “double standards” of foreign policy in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. “These are the issues which are radicalising young people and he did not talk about that,” he said.

Labour peer Lord Ahmed of Rotherham, a critic of the government’s foreign policy, told the BBC the conference was “fronted” by Cambridge University, but had been organised by the government which had “deliberately chosen to exclude those Muslims who disagree with government policy.” He accused Mr Blair of using “divide and rule” tactics.

BBC News, 4 June 2007

See also the Independent, which reports that “Islamic studies will be designated ‘strategically important’ to Britain’s national interests, allowing tighter official scrutiny of university courses”.

The Islamic Human Rights Commission has characterised this as “social engineering designed to highlight Islam as a problem rather than a solution to extremism”.

Posted in UK

Blair can no longer deny a link exists between terrorism and foreign policy

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Let us look closely at recent developments in government policy toward Muslims. The British Muslim reaction to the July 7 attacks was exemplary, as Ken Livingstone pointed out, and this was a proof that they were well integrated into society. A policy of constructive engagement would have spared no effort to make the best of these tragic events.

“Instead, the British government has adopted an attitude of double denial, at home and abroad. Obsession with the ‘terrorist threat’ rapidly colonised debate and drove the government headlong into an approach restricted to the ‘fight against radicalisation and extremism’…. Further, this policy was accompanied by a demeaning – and frequently paternalistic – argument on the necessity of ‘integration’. Muslims, so it went, must accept those British values (liberty, tolerance, democracy, etc) that make up the essence of ‘Britishness’….

“The problem today is not one of ‘essential values’, but of the gap between these values and everyday social and political practice. Justice is applied variably depending on whether one is black, Asian or Muslim. Equal opportunity is often a myth. Young citizens from cultural and religious ‘minorities’ run up against the wall of institutionalised racism. Rather than insisting that Muslims yield to a ‘duty to integrate’, society must shoulder its ‘duty of consistency’….

“Tony Blair will make his last gesture toward the Muslims of Britain today at an international conference on Islam and Muslims in the World…. While I have been invited to participate in the conference, not a single representative of the leading British Muslim associations has been invited to speak, not a single sensitive subject has been touched upon. It is as though these associations and their leaders were part of the problem, and could not become an active part of the solution.”

Tariq Ramadan writes in the Guardian, 4 June 2007