Thus the headline to an article by Gabriel Milland in today’s Daily Express which begins: “The majority of Britons believe that the UK and the West is in a global war with Islam.”
This claim is based on a YouGov poll for the Spectator, which found that three out of four respondents believed that Britain is engaged in a battle “against Islamic terrorists” (emphasis added).
Daniel Pipes questions Bush’s reference to “Islamic fascism” but asserts that a more relevant comparison is to Marxism-Leninism!
Pipes writes: “I applaud the increasing willingness to focus on some form of Islam as the enemy but find the word fascist misleading in this context. Few historic or philosophic connections exist between fascism and radical Islam. Fascism glorifies the state, emphasizes racial ‘purity’, promotes social Darwinism, denigrates reason, exalts the will, and rejects organized religion – all outlooks anathema to Islamists. In contrast, Radical Islam has many more ties, both historic and philosophic, to Marxism-Leninism.”
What term does Pipes prefer? He explains: “While Islamic fascists beats terrorists, let’s hope that a better consensus term soon emerges. My vote is for Islamists.” This of course collapses terrorist micro-groups like Al-Qaida and mass reformist currents like the Muslim Brotherhood into a single category, rather as Cold War ideologues denounced disparate political tendencies – from Stalinists to Trotskyists to left social democrats – as Communists.
A few days ago we posted a link to an article by Julie Burchill from Ha’aretz, in which she described Muslims as “big swarthy men with tea-towels on their heads”. This was taken up at Pickled Politics, where it was suggested that Burchill should join the BNP, who share her predilection for racist slurs of that sort. We have our differences with PP, but at least they can recognise a piece of offensive bigotry when they see it.
Not so the neo-con bloggers at Harry’s Place, which of course claims to be a leading component of the “decent Left”. Burchill’s disgraceful statement has been cited in a comment criticising a post by “Marcus” that depicts Burchill as part of the feminist vanguard in the struggle against Islamo-fascism.
To which “Brownie” replies: “The paragraph in which Burchill writes about ‘big swarthy men with tea-towels on their heads’ doesn’t mention Muslims, only Islamists. Her phraseology is, at worst, a little ignorant, but racist or bigotted it ain’t.”
Yeah, right. I can imagine what the response at Harry’s Place would be if someone posted a comment condemning “hook-nosed Zionists with their ridiculous skull-caps” and then rejected charges of anti-semitism on the grounds that they had referred to Zionists not Jews.
In the interests of transparency, I think it would helpful if Harry’s Place abandoned the pretence that they have anything to do with the Left, or indeed “decency” of any sort, and fessed up to what they really are – a bunch of right-wing racist scum. Perhaps they should consider changing their url to “http://frontpagemag.co.uk”?
Postscript: I see that David Hirsh, not to be outdone by his Euston Manifesto pals at Harry’s Place, has actually reproduced Burchill’s Ha’aretz piece on the Engage website, with evident approval. (Hat tip: JustPeaceUK.) Yes, that’s the same David Hirsh who has indignantly accused the Mayor of London of “low-level racist abuse against a Jewish journalist”.
“British Muslim leaders are entitled, along with everybody else, to raise questions about the conduct and consequences of Mr Blair’s foreign policy. But they have a more immediate responsibility to promote the truth: that Britain is not the aggressor in a war against Islam; that no such war exists; that there is no glory in murder dressed as martyrdom and that terrorism is never excused by bogus accounts of historical victimisation.”
Observer leader, 13 August 2006
This of course ignores the fact that the letter from British Muslim leaders made no claim that the West was at war with Islam. It also explicitly denounced terrorism. As for “bogus accounts of historical victimisation”, this is a reference to what? The incontrovertible truth that majority-Muslim countries have historically been victims of Western imperialism?
No doubt a number of people will have noted the irony that Martin Bright’s recent pamphlet When Progressives Treat with Reactionaries, which claims to expose “the British State’s flirtation with radical Islamism”, was published by the right-wing think-tank Policy Exchange. When it comes to treating with reactionaries, Bright can evidently speak from first-hand experience.
In yesterday’s Observer, Bright tried to justify his alliance with the political Right, with whom he finds common ground in Islamophobia. He describes Policy Research as “centre right”, despite the fact that its research director on international issues is the frothing-at-the-mouth reactionary Dean Godson.
But Bright does accept that right-wingers like Peter Dobbie in the Mail on Sunday, Frank Johnson in the Torygraph and Charles Moore in the Spectator have showered him with praise for his stand against the Islamist hordes. Bright writes: “There is no doubt that it has fed into the perception in some circles on the left, encouraged by the MCB, that I am part of some Islamophobic campaign….” Yup, I think that just about summarises it. As one commentator on the Guardian website observes: “Like [Melanie] Phillips who started on the left and is now on the far right, I suspect Bright will end up there as well.”
Labour MP Denis MacShane has a rambling piece in the current issue of Tribune, which purports to examine “how Labour should respond to Islamist politics”. The primary purpose of the piece is to offer critical support to the thesis in Melanie Phillips’ paranoid rant Londonistan that Islamism is a threat to Western civilisation. MacShane distances himself from some of the language used, but concludes that “Phillips’ book should be read…. Britain does need to wake up to the problems she discusses”.
The level of ignorance and contempt for facts in MacShane’s article is quite breathtaking. He tells us that the Muslim Council of Britain is “linked to the Muslim Brotherhood”. Presumably he means the Muslim Association of Britain – which is just one of hundreds of MCB affiliates. MacShane refers to a speech he made in 2003 “after a young man had gone to Israel, strapped explosives to his body and sought to kill innocent Jews”. This would appear to be a reference to Wail al-Dhaleai, who was reported to have died in a suicide attack on US troops in Iraq.
In his 2003 speech – which he now claims was uncontentious, even banal – MacShane said: “It is time for the elected and community leaders of the British Muslims to make a choice – the British way, based on political dialogue and non-violent protests, or the way of the terrorists, against which the whole democratic world is uniting.” MacShane claims that the head of the CRE, Trevor Phillips, “wrote a whole page in The Observer denouncing me”. Phillips wrote no such article in the Observer. There was a report in that paper which noted that MacShane’s supposedly uncontroversial speech had “provoked a furious reaction from Muslim leaders, who said that they had condemned terrorism time and again”. Trevor Phillips was quoted in the report as saying:
“It would have been smarter if Denis MacShane had found out what British Muslims have been saying since, before and after September 11 on the issue of terrorism. Had he taken the trouble to do so, he would have known that his criticisms could not possibly apply to the leadership of mainstream Muslim opinion in Britain. This type of language will simply drive Muslims, who believe that once again they are being stereotyped, into the arms of extremists. He could have spoken to David Blunkett and Jack Straw, both of whom know the British Muslim community quite well, neither of whom would have made these remarks.”
Phillips also said that the use of the phrase “the British way” was offensive: “On the face of it, it is a little undiplomatic for a Foreign Office Minister to suggest that the British have a monopoly on rational and civilised behaviour. Anybody who hails from a colony could adduce several centuries of evidence to the contrary.”
According to a Guardian report, MacShane’s constituency party passed a resolution, proposed and seconded by two local Muslim councillors, which expressed no confidence in their MP and called on the party’s national executive committee to discipline him. The motion stated:
“Denis MacShane is inciting racial and religious hatred, by publicly implying in the press that the Muslim community elected members and leaders are in favour of terrorism and being anti-British. We feel these comments are ill-informed, designed to portray us in the media as conspiring against the state. The Nazis in world war two similarly accused the Jews, disputing their patriotism, which was so well executed that it led to what we now know as the Holocaust.”
In short, if the Labour Party is to discuss the issue of Islamism, the last person they should be listening to is Denis MacShane.
Two UK-based Islamist groups are to become the first to be banned under laws outlawing the glorification of terrorism, the home secretary has said. John Reid said he was taking action against Al-Ghurabaa and the Saved Sect. Under an order put down in Parliament, it will be an offence to belong to the groups, encourage support for them or wear clothes suggesting support. Mr Reid said the move sent a signal that the UK would not tolerate people who supported terrorism. The groups are both thought to be offshoots of Al Muhajiroun, which was founded by controversial cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed.
Quite what will be accomplished by banning the few dozen idiots who make up the membership of these groups is difficult to see. And an offence of “wearing clothes suggesting support” sounds open to abuse to say the least. However, it looks as though press reports that Hizb ut-Tahrir would be illegalised were inaccurate – for now. Asked about Hizb, a Home Office spokesman said: “This does remain a group about which we have real concerns and we are keeping the situation under review.”
For Inayat Bunglawala’s comments, see Islam Online, 18 July 2006
In his latest contribution to the Guardian‘s Comment is Free, John Lloyd repeats the tired old argument that the basic cause of terrorism by extremist Islamist groups is not Western imperialism but the ideology of Islamism. Citing Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s view that “the driver of Muslim intolerance is Islam itself”, Lloyd writes: “I am with Hirsi Ali on this.”
Lloyd’s profound knowledge of Islamism is revealed in the following passage: “This ideology has been fashioned in the past few decades, by such figures as the Pakistani Abu Ala Mawdudi and the Egyptians Hasan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb, and Ayman al-Zawahiri. The first of these was the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, the next two were executed at different times by the Egyptian authorities…”
Mawdudi was in fact the founder of Jamaat-e-Islami; it was Hasan al-Banna who founded the Muslim Brotherhood. The latter was assassinated, not executed. He died in 1949 and Sayyid Qutb in 1966, so it’s difficult to see how they were able to fashion Islamist ideology “in the past few decades”. But apart, from that, Lloyd’s summary of Islamist history is scrupulously accurate!
Furthermore, anyone who argues for the primacy of religious ideology in determining political action should try explaining the role of Buddhism in Sri Lanka. Formally the most pacifistic of religions, Buddhism has provided the ideology for acts of extreme anti-Tamil violence by Sinhalese chauvinists going back to the 1950s. The reason, as any Marxist would tell you, is that it is material conditions and social relations that are primary and ideologies, religious or otherwise, are adapted to serve the needs of particular social forces. You might have thought that a former supporter of the British and Irish Communist Organisation would know that.
Sunny Hundal gives a plug to Martin Bright and his forthcoming Channel 4 attack on the MCB and Mockbul Ali. “When asked his thoughts on whispered accusations of him being Islamophobic, he says he finds the idea ‘laughable’.”
Yeah, right. This would be the same Martin Bright who told a FOSIS conference last year that he had no problem describing himself as an Islamophobe because, he explained, there is a lot in Islam to be fearful of.
I note that on Wednesday Bright is addressing a seminar organised by Policy Exchange, the right-wing Tory think tank headed by the appalling Dean Godson. Godson is a notorious opponent of the Peace Process in the north of Ireland, and the purpose of the seminar is evidently to draw a parallel between the the UK government’s supposed capitulation to Irish Republican “terrorists” and its capitulation to Islamism. In both cases, Godson’s line is that the government should reject dialogue and co-operation with organisations that have mass support in the community and instead turn to other individuals with more “acceptable” politics who represent nobody but themselves.
People like … well, Sunny Hundal.
As IslamExpo builds bridges between Muslims and Britain’s other diverse communities, Nick Cohen – with the assistance of Martin Bright – sets about smashing them. While responsible media commentators emphasise that the 7/7 bombers were a tiny unrepresentative minority within Muslim communities in the UK, the message from Cohen and Bright is that the terrorists are part of a general problem of extremism among British Muslims and their organisations.
See “The Foreign Office ought to be serving Britain, not radical Islam”, Observer, 9 July 2006