There’s a pretty dreadful article on Ayaan Hirsi Ali in today’sObserver by Jason Burke, who you’d have thought would know better, and a no less one-sided comment piece by Isabella Thompson. Hirsi Ali is described as a “radical liberal” (!) in the headline to Burke’s article and neither he nor Thompson bothers to address the appalling role she has played in stoking up anti-Muslim hysteria in the Netherlands.
Category Archives: Analysis & comment
‘We call it Islamic terrorism because it is terror inspired by Islam’
Another incoherent anti-Muslim diatribe from Nick Cohen in the Observer. He applauds the editor of Die Welt who re-published the Danish cartoons on the grounds that “it is essential to protect freedom of expression because of all the pain we have invested to keep our liberal, secular society”. Somehow, you can’t imagine Cohen offering similar congratulations to an editor promoting “free speech” by printing anti-semitic caricatures. But publish racist illustrations directed against Muslims and Cohen will acclaim you as a defender of secular liberalism.
Cohen also takes exception to an admirable call by the EU to avoid the term “Islamic terrorism”. He objects that “the EU wishes to deny that political Islam inspires terrorists to blow up everything from mosques in Baghdad to tube trains in London, even when Islamist terrorists say explicitly that it does”. Perhaps Cohen would like us to refer to Bush and Blair as “Christian terrorists”, on the basis that they both make it clear that their politics are inspired by their religious beliefs? But then, I was forgetting – Cohen enthusiastically approves of that sort of terrorism, seeing the invasion and occupation of Iraq as a means of bringing liberal secular values to the benighted Muslim masses.
Mind you, Cohen does have one admirer – Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch, who pays tribute to this “most welcome anti-dhimmitude from Nick Cohen”. Dhimmi Watch, 14 May 2006
Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s lies
Rather untypically, Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch has rallied to the defence of an illegal Muslim migrant: “Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who has spoken up repeatedly and heroically, at immense personal risk and loss, against the Islamic jihad ideology – and particularly its inhumanity to women – is being hounded by dhimmis in the Netherlands.”
It turns out that Hirsi Ali (or Hirsi Magan to give her right name), the one-time collaborator of Theo Van Gogh and MP for the right-wing anti-migrant party the VVD, told a lot of porkies to claim asylum back in 1992.
As one critic put it: “To secure for herself a promising career she besmirched her family and the Islamic background that gave her a good education. She deliberately painted a black picture of Islam that she never experienced as such, only to profit from it. The Dutch party she is an MP for, the VVD, knew she had lied. They used her in their anti-Islamist and anti-left campaign. And Ayaan Hirsi ‘Ali’ presented the world with a fancy story it very much liked to hear.”
Hirsi Ali has now been offered a job in the US with the neocon American Enterprise Institute, starting in September. Muslims in the Netherlands will be glad to see the back of her. Nasr Joemman, secretary of the Contact Organisation for Muslims and Government, said that Hirsi Ali’s attacks on Islam had caused “a lot of damage”. He added: “I celebrate that she is leaving the Netherlands. I hope that by her departure we can move forward with building a harmonious society.”
Yet more self-justifying nonsense from Tatchell
Peter Tatchell has a letter in the latest issue of Tribune, replying to Kirsten Hearn’s criticism of OutRage!’s call for Unite Against Fascism to exclude the Muslim Council of Britain and its general secretary Sir Iqbal Sacranie from the platform of February’s UAF conference. Tatchell says that Hearn’s article “symbolises the political dishonesty and opportunism of the pro-Islamist left”.
Kirsten Hearn wrote, in opposition to OutRage!’s position on the UAF conference: “To suggest we jettison the Muslim community from the anti-fascist movement at a time when the fascists are advancing by attacking Muslims is obscene…. Specifically, the MCB is an umbrella and mainstream body representing more than 450 Muslim organisations and therefore must be central to anti-fascist unity in this country.”
In reply, Tatchell claims that he merely criticised UAF for inviting Sacranie as an individual, on the grounds that he had made homophobic comments: “My objection was to Sir Iqbal Sacranie. I suggested replacing him with a liberal, progressive Muslim speaker. To me, that does not sound like ‘jettisoning’ the Muslim community.”
But the Outrage! press release called for a ban not just on Sacranie but on the MCB as a whole. OutRage! urged UAF to “withdraw your invitation to Sir Iqbal and the MCB”, on the basis that “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”. Tatchell cannot claim that he is unaware of the representative character of the MCB. He himself has described the MCB as “a mainstream organisation … which is the umbrella organisation of all Muslim groups in this country”. Yet this was the organisation that he wanted excluded from the UAF conference platform, to be replaced by one of several suggested individuals none of whom represents any significant force at all among Muslims in Britain. What does that amount to, other than “jettisoning the Muslim community”?
Qaradawi calls for financial aid to Palestinians
Leading Muslim scholars will meet in Doha on May 10-11 to discuss the starving of the Palestinian people after the cut in international aid, and are expected to issue a fatwa obliging Muslims and governments to help. “In view of the financial siege clamped on the Palestinian people, it is the duty of Muslim scholars to meet and make their position known to the nation,” prominent scholar Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi told a press conference on Saturday, May 6. Sheikh Qaradawi slammed “the West’s double standards in rejecting the Palestinian democracy simply because its result did not suit them.” He branded this as “political hypocrisy which we reject.”
Palestine Chronicle, 8 May 2006
And while we’re on the subject, an earlier appeal by Qaradawi for financial support to the Palestinians was attacked by the pseudo-left neocons at Harry’s Place, who used excerpts selected by MEMRI from a Qaradawi sermon to accuse him, yet again, of being an anti-semite. “Gene” wrote:
“Maybe Sullivan, Ken Livingstone, Madeleine Bunting and other leftwing Qaradawi apologists still think that when he says ‘Jews’, he simply means Israelis. (I don’t think they really believe that, but let’s pretend they do.) How, then, will they explain away this passage from Qaradawi’s latest sermon, broadcast April 21 on Qatar TV? ‘The Jews throughout the world – despite their well-known stinginess, miserliness, and selfishness, and despite their worship of gold…. The Jews contributed generously to the Jewish state, before and after its establishment, and they are still contributing to this day. Shouldn’t the Arabs and Muslims contribute for their sacred cause?’ Here, inconveniently, Qaradawi refers unmistakably to stingy, miserly, selfish, gold-worshipping non-Israeli Jews. How will the Islamophobia Watchers spin this? Will they even try?”
I’ve asked an Arabic-speaking contact to check out the video extracts from Qaradawi’s sermon on the MEMRI site and he tells me that – surprise, surprise – the MEMRI translation is unreliable. The relevant passage should read something like this:
“The Palestinian people has sacrificed its blood. It has easily sacrificed its souls, for the sake of its cause, its religion, and its homeland. Should we not give them money? The Jews throughout the world – despite what is said about their stinginess, miserliness, selfishness and worship of gold… The Jews contributed generously to the Jewish state, before and after its establishment, and they are still contributing to this day. Shouldn’t the Arabs and Muslims contribute for their sacred cause?”
In other words, rather than saying that he himself thinks that all Jews are stingy, miserly, selfish etc, Qaradawi is saying that contrary to these supposed characteristics the world Jewish community has in fact been extremely generous in its support for the Israeli state, and that the world Muslim community should seek to emulate this generosity in supporting the Palestinians.
Tatchell ‘defends the Muslim community against Islamophobic discrimination’!
Peter Tatchell continues his campaign against the Muslim Council of Britain. He writes: “I defend the Muslim community against Islamophobic discrimination” and adds: “we still hold out our hands in friendship and solidarity with our Muslim brothers and sisters”. Clearly, Tatchell’s brain is an irony-free zone.
Fascism, racism and ‘Christian Voice’
“For the BNP, Christian is just another word for white, just as Islamic has become another word for Asian. Now that the religious hatred bill has been watered down, groups like the BNP are free to use religious affiliation as code for race, translating illegal incitement to racial hatred into legal incitement to religious hatred…. what is so utterly ridiculous about the BNP’s desire to defend ‘Christian culture’ is that the vast majority of Christians in the world are not white. The average Anglican, for instance is a black woman living in Africa.”
An interesting article by Giles Fraser, vicar of Putney, on the failure of the BNP’s attempts to link up with evangelical Christians.
However, Fraser’s claim that the breakdown of relations between the fascists’ front organisation, the Christian Council of Britain, and the fundamentalist group Christian Voice “demonstrates how deeply resistant Christianity is to all forms of racism” is questionable to say the least. Christian Voice’s position on Islam – “no Muslim has any assurance of salvation, except as a Jihadist, and it is this belief that physical fighting in the cause of Allah is the highest calling that makes Islam so dangerous and implacable” – is in fact a clear illustration of Fraser’s point about how denunciations of a religion are used as a cover for whipping up hostility against minority ethnic communities. If relations between the BNP and Christian Voice have soured, it is for reasons other than the latter’s attitude towards the fascists’ anti-Muslim racism.
Drink-soaked popinjay may initial Euston Manifesto
Drink-soaked former Trotskyist popinjay (not our description) Christopher Hitchens today teased the 977 lonely hearts the Euston Manifesto has brought together with a suggestion he may consider initialing the document. “So call me a neo-conservative if you must: anything is preferable to the rotten unprincipled alliance between the former fans of the one-party state and the hysterical zealots of the one-god one.” Hitch reveals that he has “been flattered by an invitation to sign it, and I probably will”.
There will be sighs of relief amongst many on the left who were likewise flattered to be asked to sign an attempt to establish a left neo-conservative grouping in the UK but read the manifesto and instantly realised what was going on.
See Christopher Hitchens, “At last our lefties see the light”, Sunday Times, 30 April 2006
Martin Sullivan adds: And now Mad Mel has declared herself “delighted” by the Euston Manifesto – “it’s great to see such a brave statement of decent principles and an open denunciation of the left for being on the wrong side of history. Such a challenge from within its own ranks is essential if the left is ever to stop causing so much lethal damage to the west”.
Meanwhile, online signatories to the Euston Manifesto have been outlining their motives for signing. Harriet Baber explains that “we liberals need to take back the Enlightenment” – which apparently means supporting human rights, “not peace, non-interference in the business of sovereign nations or respect for other cultures”. Neil Denny has signed in protest at a situation in which “to declare a support for Enlightenment values is to seemingly out oneself as an Islamophobe and a racist”. And Aidan Fleming adds: “The curse of democracy is the Qur’an. All supporters of the Euston Manifesto Group should read, The Sword Of The Prophet by Serge Trifovic. It should be declared that ISLAM is not a religion but a non-democratic political organisation.”
Pipes warns against sharia law … in Tennessee!
In the USA the case of Bill Hobbs has become a cause célèbre for the Right.
In February, as part of his defence of Jyllands-Posten’s decision to publish anti-Muslim caricatures, Hobbs invited readers of his weblog to “exercise your right to free expression by drawing pictures of Islam’s Prophet Mohammed”. As his own contribution to this worthy cause, Hobbs posted a stick drawing of the Prophet holding a bomb. The cartoon was entitled “Mohammed Blows”.
In response to a (Christian) critic who accused him of showing “distasteful insensitivity to people of other faiths”, Hobbs wrote: “I am insensitive toward religions that have a large number of adherents who are running around blowing stuff up and threatening to kill non-believers over cartoons. Yes, I plead insensitivity. I would prefer my children not grow up in a world governed by Islamofacists.”
As a result of the furore, Hobbs resigned from his job as an editor and news writer on the marketing and communications staff at Belmont University in Nashville, the assumption being that he jumped before he was pushed. Hobbs was immediately adopted as a hero by right-wing bloggers in the US. And now Daniel Pipes has waded into the fray. According to Pipes, writing at FrontPage Magazine, “this firing in Tennessee amounts to a capitulation to Islamic law. Each surrender means the Shari‘a will move inexorably forward.”
I used to think that Pipes was perhaps marginally less barking than Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch, but these days it’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell them apart.
Muslim students are not being influenced by extremists
“A Guardian Education article sought to attribute the increased participation of Muslim students within the National Union of Students to a rising trend of ‘extremism’ (Adding their voice to the debate, April 4). In the post-7/7 age, it is unfortunate that such accusations are levied at the Muslim community all too easily.
“The allegations stem from the Federation of Student Islamic Societies’ (Fosis) support for the removal of Hizb ut-Tahrir from the NUS’s No-Platform for Racists policy. When the decision to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir was taken in 2004, Muslim students were under-represented in the NUS and there was a lack of proper debate. Many unsubstantiated accusations have been levied against Hizb ut-Tahrir in the past, but in reality the organisation works to advance the Muslim world by engaging in political work. It uses non-violent means and is opposed to terrorism, having condemned the terrorist activities of 9/11 and 7/7. Many Muslims may have disagreements with the organisation, but they unanimously assert that this does not render it extremist; and they defend its right to free speech.”
Wakkas Khan of FOSIS writes in the Guardian, 21 April 2006
No doubt Muslim students’ right to free speech will be high up the agenda when the “March for Free Expression” holds its policy meeting tomorrow in London. Another contribution to this question that the MFE might like to consider is the paper presented last month to the All Party Parliamentary University Group by Abdurrahman Jafar of the MCB (see here and here). Such issues as the disciplining of Nasser Amin for expressing his views on the Palestine-Israel conflict in a SOAS student magazine will of course be of particular concern to these doughty defenders of free speech.