“In the past few weeks an astonishing reversal of opinion has come from the lips of Labour MPs queuing up to attack the Muslim faith. Those who for years have courted the Muslim vote are now outdoing the BNP in raising awareness of the growing threat of Muslim to national security…. Labour is playing with fire to win back the white working class vote…. It’s a dangerous game the Labour establishment has chosen to play, one which could lead to serious disorder and bloodshed. Do Blair and Straw really want to see a civil war on the streets of West Yorkshire, Birmingham and Oldham?”
Author Archives: Bob Pitt
Sun backs Trevor Phillips
“Prejudice is a worm that thrives in the dark and shrivels in the daylight. So says Trevor Phillips, head of the Commission for Racial Equality.
“What he’s rightly saying is that the only solution to the tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims – and the bloody riots he predicts may come – is an open debate. A debate unfettered by the political correctness that stops people on either side speaking boldly about our differences – how to resolve them or live with them.
“He has a point: A poll reveals nearly three-quarters of Britons won’t speak their minds over veils in case they cause offence. Which is mainly because many Muslims over-react to the slightest criticism of their religion. Such hypersensitivity impedes progress.”
Editorial in the Sun, 23 October 2006
Veil debate ‘has fuelled far right’
Veil debate ‘has fuelled far right’
By Louise Nousratpour
Morning Star, 23 October 2006
Anti-racism campaigners welcomed Labour deputy leadership candidate Jon Cruddas’s warning on Sunday that the debate around the Muslim veil has “emboldened the far right.”
The Dagenham MP said that friends of his who live in the Muslim community felt “hunted” and that hysteria over the issue had reinforced a sense of isolation and insecurity. “I think it has had a terrible effect. It will embolden the far right, no doubt about it, and I know that for a fact locally,” Mr Cruddas warned in an interview with GMTV.
He stressed that the government must go about dealing with community segregation in a “much more systematic way” in terms of public policy about the labour market, housing and health inequalities.
“They should be the terms of debate, rather than a really dangerous bidding war about who can be so muscular around issues of minorities, asylum and immigration, because that just feeds the far right and the centre of gravity just moves off that way,” Mr Cruddas insisted.
A debate about Muslim women wearing full-face veils erupted after Cabinet Minister Jack Straw said that he asked women to remove them when they came to see him in his constituency. The Prime Minister has also branded the veils a “mark of separation.”
In contrast to Mr Cruddas’s comments, Commission for Racial Equality chairman Trevor Phillips defended Mr Straw’s right to air his views about the veil and attacked the Muslim community for turning “the most neutral of comments into yet another act of persecution.”
Authoritarian currents swirl in debate on veil
Authoritarian currents swirl in debate on veil
By Haroon Siddiqui
The controversy over women’s veils is the latest example of Muslim religious/cultural practices being held up to disproportionate scrutiny.
This is a reflection of the fear-driven paranoia about Muslim terrorism and, mistakenly, all Muslims. Or, it is part of a political strategy to divert attention away from the catastrophic failure of the “war on terrorism” in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and the Israeli Occupied Territories.
It’s easier to blame a minority than confronting our complicity in the killing of tens of thousands of civilians abroad and, second, our gnawing panic that rather than curbing terrorism, we are fanning it.
It’s also hard to accept that the niqab — the garment that covers the woman’s body, including the face — is not a Muslim issue alone but rather one central to democracy.
That a majority of Muslim women do not wear the niqab, or even the hijab, the head scarf, does not nullify the right of those who do.
Otherwise, a democracy ends up emulating either tyrants (Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, or the late Shah of Iran and the late Kemal Ataturk of Turkey) who persecute hijabis, or unforgiving clerics (the Taliban, the mullahs of Iran and Saudi Arabia) who persecute non-hijabis.
The only sound democratic approach is to leave the decision to the sovereignty of the individual woman.
Those who argue that Muslim women may be under male pressure to conform are being as patronizing as the men who assume women are incapable of independent judgment even in free and democratic societies.
Some Muslim women might face social and religious pressures but we can’t know that they are subjected to any more of it than women in other religious communities. They may face less, given the lack of a central authority in Islam.
Muslim family shot at in west London
A Muslim family of four were shot at when their car was hit by a bullet while out shopping in west London, The Muslim News reports exclusively in this week’s issue of the paper.
The incident, which is believed to be the first of its kind in the latest wave of Islamophobia attacks in the UK, took place, when the family from Bosnia were loading items in their car at Denham Car Boot Sale, near Uxbridge. The local police described the shooting, which happened on October 14, as a racial and religious hate crime, but were unable to comment further.
The father of the family told The Muslim News that he was in the car at the time but that his wife and two infant children were standing outside. “I was more concerned about the children. We adults might not die from a badly aimed bullet, but the children, it could easily have killed them,” the 45-year-old father said.
The shooting comes amid a series of attacks, mainly against Muslim women, documented in The Muslim News, which have been blamed on House of Commons leader Jack Straw and other ministers making demands on Muslims, including the removal of the face veil.
The Bosnian father also criticised Straw for provoking the shooting, saying that people like him “who incite religious hatred in people are also criminals”. “You can see we are Muslims through our dress, and my wife was wearing the niqab. It is amazing how these people could have such monstrous minds and such hatred within,” he said.
Ignorance behind veil uproar: Ridley
Award-winning British reporter Yvonne Ridley has blamed the ignorance of Western politicians and media for the ongoing debate about the face-veil and other misconceptions about the status of women in Islam.
“Having been on both sides of the veil, I can tell you that most Western male politicians and journalists who lament the oppression of women in the Islamic world have no idea what they are talking about,” Ridley, who reverted to Islam two years after a brief detention by Taliban, wrote in the Washington Post Sunday, October 22.
“It is with disgust and dismay that I watch here in Britain … Straw describes the Muslim niqab as an unwelcome barrier to integration,” said a mocking Ridley. “Even British government ministers Gordon Brown and John Reid have made disparaging remarks about the niqab – and they hail from across the Scottish border, where men wear skirts.”
Hmm … given that George Galloway is reportedly considering standing for Respect in Scotland, I’m not sure he’ll regard that as an entirely helpful comment.
See also Washington Post, 22 October 2006
Man admits firebombing Swindon mosque
Muslim leaders say the town’s Islamic community should still be alert for backlashes stemming from incidents around the world.
The warning comes after racist firebomber Mark Bulman admitted attacking the Broad Street mosque in August following terror alerts at UK airports in the same month. The 22-year-old admitted throwing a petrol bomb through the window of the building and daubing swastikas and anti-Islamic abuse on its walls.
Azim Khan, of the Thamesdown Islamic Association, said: “It is a great relief to the whole community that this man’s actions have been brought to court and dealt with swiftly, and that his actions were his own and not backed by others or an organisation, as that would be very dangerous.
“But we still have to be alert. If anything happens anywhere in the world, we must consider that we could be a target, even though we have no interest in what goes on elsewhere.
“We are part and parcel of the community in Swindon. We are Swindonians and we want everyone to know that we have nothing to do with international incidents or politics. We just want to get on with our busy lives in this country.”
Veiled prejudice
Veiled prejudice
By Jamil Hussain
Morning Star, 23 October 2006
LET’S face it, Muslim-bashing is newsworthy. Politicians now feel that it’s a sure-fire way of getting noticed
In the last month, MPs have pumped out timely and much-publicised polemics about Muslims, packaged as a “new and honest debate” about multiculturalism.
Jack Straw kicked off the latest furore with his veil comments, the timing and subject of which seemed opportune.
He could have talked of other pressing issues, such as the report by the equal opportunities commission which found that Muslim girls have fewer job opportunities, despite overtaking white boys at GCSE level.
Instead, Straw picked on the minuscule number of Muslim women wearing the veil, attacking an iconic Islamic image to gain maximum exposure.
He has reason to distance himself from Muslim opinion, especially if he wants to become the new deputy Labour leader.
Four weeks after Condoleezza Rice’s visit to his Blackburn constituency, which was overshadowed by protests by Muslims against the US Secretary of State, Straw was dismissed as foreign secretary. Rumours suggest that President Bush put pressure on Tony Blair because of Straw’s perceived reliance on Muslim opinion and votes.
Straw’s comments were also backed by other Cabinet colleagues, including Harriet Harman, another candidate vying for the deputy leadership role.
As a feminist, Harman would, presumably, abhor Muslim men dictating what women should wear, but she saw no irony in backing a non-Muslim man doing the same. Had Straw asked a woman to cover up, would Harman have given him the same support?
She voiced regret that women “whose mothers fought against the veil now see their daughters taking it up as a symbol of commitment to their religion.”
Zoo stirs up trouble as it follows Star with ‘Muslim’ spread
Emap’s lads weekly Zoo magazine will this week publish a double-page spread making fun of Muslim law following the Daily Star, which was last week forced to drop a similar idea.
Last week, action by journalists, who threatened a walk out, halted a Daily Star-planned Islamic spoof called Daily Fatwa. The Daily Star idea was overseen by new deputy editor Ben Knowles, who joined the paper from Zoo magazine, and was to have included a “Page 3 Burkha Babes Special”, a reader competition to “burn a flag, win a Corsa”, and a leader column headed “Allah is Great”, entirely blank save for a “censored” stamp. “No news, no goss, no fun” was to be the page’s strapline.
Former colleagues of Knowles liked the idea so much they have imported it to the pages of this week’s Zoo with a spoof headlined “Your all-new veil-friendly Zoo!” As well as throwing itself into the veil debate, other headlines include “Public stonings!”, “Beheadings!” and “Absolutely nobody having any fun whatsoever”. The spread also features a woman in a burqa, covered head to toe with only her eyes showing alongside the headline, “A girl! As you’ve never seen her before!”
It goes on to read: “Maybe shariah law isn’t so controversial after all. Muslims who practise it to the letter are able to divorce their wives (up to four allowed) by text message. Wives are banned from being in a car with a man who is not a blood relative. And – common sense a-go-go – women aren’t allowed to drive cars anyway!”
Thugs in mosque attack
Thugs burst into a mosque and savagely attacked the imam and several others as they prayed. One man was taken to hospital and at least three others were also hurt at the Eccles and Salford Islamic Centre.
The attack happened as members of the mosque were taking part in prayers for Ramadan, the holiest month of the Islamic year. The thugs shouted racist abuse as they lashed out at the congregation – punching and kicking anyone they came across.
Manchester Evening News, 23 October 2006
Mohammed Shafiq, from the Ramadhan Foundation, said: “This is another example of Muslims being attacked and persecuted – and the responsiblity lies with the politicians who have been on a feeding frenzy attacking Muslims and giving ammunition to thugs’ hatred towards us. The responsibility for this lies with the likes of Jack Straw, Phil Woolas and others who believe it’s open season on Muslims.”