Category Archives: Analysis & comment

CRE on Racial and Religious Hatred Bill

Posted on by Bob Pitt

bnp-islam-poster“… in May 2004, following the receipt of complaints from members of the public, the CRE wrote to the West Yorkshire Police Constabulary to ask that it investigate the distribution of a BNP leaflet, ‘The Truth About Islam: Intolerance, Slaughter, Looting, Arson, Molestation of Women’, in Dewsbury where there is a sizeable Pakistani community, locally referred to as ‘the Muslims’.

“We received the following reply from the West Yorkshire branch of the CPS: ‘[T]he leaflet is quite clearly insulting and abusive and arguably, in its talk of war and crusades, threatening too. The stirring up of fear and hatred against Muslims is … a likely result of its publication given the strength of the language used. Muslims are not, however, a racial group … and the hatred stirred up could not therefore be defined as racial hatred … [I]t might be that evidence could be gathered to establish whether or not the term “Muslim” is generally understood to mean “Pakistani” or “Indian”. The difficulty in relation to this particular leaflet … is that [it states] “This problem is not a matter of race. Those Muslims oppressing and murdering infidels and women have included Arabs, Pakistanis, Black Nigerian and White Bosnians”. Given this specific statement it would not be possible to infer incitement to racial hatred’.”

The Commission for Racial Equality explains why it is necessary to extend the present laws against incitement to racial hatred to cover religious hatred.

CRE briefing, 11 October 2005

Perhaps someone might explain this to James Jones and Joan Smith.

Times attacks Racial and Religious Hatred Bill (again)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The level of argument by opponents of the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill is quite unbelievably low. A case in point is the editorial in today’s Times.

The Bill has nothing to do with the blasphemy laws, as the Times implies. And Salman Rushdie would be no more likely find himself prosecuted for publishing The Satanic Verses than the Birmingham Rep was for staging Behzti (Sikhs as a mono-ethnic faith are already protected against incitement to hatred under Part 3 of the 1986 Public Order Act). The idea that people choose their religion but not their race ignores the obvious fact that culture (which includes religious belief) is an integral part of a minority community’s ethnic identity.

Nor is the government “proposing a law that would allow people to ridicule ideas as long as they were not religious ideas”, as the Times quotes Rowan Atkinson as saying. The new law wouldn’t ban ridicule of people on the basis of their religion any more than earlier race relations legislation criminalised ridicule of people on the basis of their ethnicity (if it did, Bernard Manning would have been locked up long ago). In both cases what is made illegal is the incitement of hatred.

The Times is, however, correct to point out that the amendment to the Bill proposed by Lords Lester, Hunt, Carey and Plant would make an “important distinction between laws against racism and those that seek to protect the religious from persecution”. Their lordships aim to introduce a new Part 3A to the Public Order Act, the result of which would be to make it much more difficult to succcessfully prosecute someone for inciting hatred against Muslims or Hindus than it is to prosecute them for inciting hatred against Jews or Sikhs. In other words, it would preserve the injustice, inequality and discrimination embodied in current race relations law which the Bill seeks to rectify.

Postscript:  For another example of the ignorance demonstrated by opponents of the Bill, see Harry’s Place where we are referred to the Times editorial for “a succinct and persuasive argument against the proposed Racial and Religious Hatred legislation”!

‘Bob Pitt Watch’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Former Workers Revolutionary Party member and now editor of What Next, Bob Pitt, is a very industrious bloke. He single-handedly runs a website called ‘Islamophobia Watch’ in which he pours vituperative criticism, mainly on people of a Muslim background who dare to criticise their religion of birth or its cultural practises. The spectacle of a white, middle-aged, middle-class male denouncing Muslims and ex-Muslims (many of them women) who speak out against homophobia and misogyny inside the Muslim community as ‘racists’ is very bizarre.”

Yours truly is denounced in the Alliance for Workers Liberty’s paper Solidarity, 20 October 2005

I don’t in fact run this website single-handedly – it was set up by Eddie Truman, who does all the technical work on it as well as posting. The accusation that our criticisms are concentrated “mainly on people of a Muslim background” is plainly false, as a cursory examination of the site will reveal. The charge against members of the Worker Communist Party of Iran (some, though not all, of whom come from a Muslim background) and against individuals like Irshad Manji is not that they are racists but that their antics play into the hands of the Islamophobic Right, who clearly recognise them as fellow spirits. Hence the enthusiastic endorsement of Maryam Namazie by Jihad Watch, Homa Arjomand by Front Page Magazine and Irshad Manji by Daniel Pipes and Melanie Phillips.

Continue reading →

At last a secularist / humanist voice of reason

Posted on by Eddie Truman

Sir_Bernard_CrickJust when it appeared that the secularist & humanist movement had fallen to the tidal wave of intolerance, racism and Islamophobia (see here and here), Bernard Crick writes in the Guardian:

“To work with those of other beliefs implies, of course, tact and courtesy to mute immediate criticism of what for the time and purpose at hand are irrelevancies. It is historically and psychologically foolish for secularists to believe that criticism of all religious belief is an effective way of combating violent fanaticism.”

Sir Bernard clearly understands that the racist attacks on Muslims by those claiming adherence to humanism and secularism are not acceptable.

This age of fanaticism is no time for non-believers to make enemies

Carey opposes religious hatred bill

Posted on by Bob Pitt

CareyMuslims and members of other religions should get used to being mocked, the former Archbishop of Canterbury said yesterday. Lord Carey of Clifton said he passionately believed it was good for members of a religion to have their faith criticised on certain occasions.

Speaking as a member of an all-party group of peers opposing the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill, Lord Carey said he wanted to live in a society where people were sensitive to the feelings of others. “But in being sensitive, what we mustn’t do is create a society in which certain stories are not told,” Lord Carey told a news conference.

Daily Telegraph, 21 October 2005

Of course, as anyone who’s read the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill will know, it proposes to illegalise actions that incite hatred, not ridicule or criticism. It would extend to Muslims, Hindus and other “multi-ethnic” faith groups the protection presently enjoyed by Jews and Sikhs as adherents of “mono-ethnic” religions. In all consistency, Carey should be calling for the abolition of existing racial hatred laws on the basis that “Jews should get use to being mocked”.

Yesterday Carey and his fellow lords Lester and Hunt, together with Lisa Appignanesi of PEN, issued a statement in support of a wrecking amendment to the bill in the Lords. They observed blandly that “there are no pressing practical problems that require such a broad sweeping measure”. Readers of this website, not to mention the victims of the hatred and bigotry we record, might think otherwise.

WPI ‘liberals’ try to wreck CND meeting

Posted on by Bob Pitt

WPI CNDOver at Harry’s Place, they’ve just cottoned on to the fact that there was a clash at last weekend’s CND conference when our dear friends from the Worker Communist Party of Iran were thrown out for disrupting a session at which the Iranian ambassador was speaking.

There are a couple of points to be made here. The first is that the leaflet distributed by the WPI at the conference (see image, left) featured a picture of the Mashhad hangings accompanied by the statement that “In July this year two gay teenagers – one under 18 at the time of arrest – were publicly hanged in the Iranian city of Mashad for having a sexual relation.” This quotation is reproduced uncritically by David T at Harry’s Place without any indication that this claim has been rejected by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and others (see here).

The other point is that the WPI were allowed into the lunchtime session at which the Iranian ambassador would be answering questions. Jeremy Corbyn, who was chairing the session, took four or five questions from WPI supporters. He answered one himself, explaining that whatever their views on the present government all Iranians would agree that they didn’t want their country bombed by the USA. The problems began when other contributors took a different line from the WPI, who shouted them down along with the ambassador’s replies and refused to allow the meeting to continue. They were then ejected from the room. As they were bundled out, one was heard to shout “Bomb the fascists!”

That same weekend, Nick Cohen devoted his Observer column to a gushing tribute to WPI leader Maryam Namazie (see here). “She ought to be a liberal poster girl”, Cohen declared. It’s a strange form of liberalism that believes it is acceptable to shout down your political opponents and try to wreck democratically organised meetings.

All this gives an indication of the sort of regime the WPI would establish if they ever took power in Iran – one characterised by lying propaganda and the suppression of political dissent. Fortunately, as I’ve pointed out before, there isn’t the slightest prospect of that ever happening.

GALHA issues statement

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The GALHA committee has issued a statement regarding comments in the Autumn 2005 issue of the Gay and Lesbian Humanist magazine.

GALHA press release, 16 October 2005

This statement can only be welcomed. On the other hand, the contact given is GALHA secretary George Broadhead, who is himself the author of an article in the same issue of G&LH magazine which includes the following passage:

“There are two terms that, increasingly, annoy us: Islamophobia and moderate Muslims. What we’d like to know is, first, what’s wrong with being fearful of Islam (there’s a lot to fear); and, second, what does a moderate Muslim do, other than excuse the real nutters by adhering to this barmy doctrine?”

Broadhead’s assertion – in the aftermath of 9/11 and 7/7 – that there are no such people as “moderate Muslims”, and that all adherents of Islam are implicated in the actions of a minority of extremists, strikes me as only marginally less poisonous than the material in G&LH magazine from which the GALHA committee now seeks to dissociate itself.

Incidentally, the GALHA website contains the following information about the author of the most blatantly Islamophobic article in G&LH magazine: “Diesel Balaam works in the television industry. He was co-author with Sukie de la Croix of the satirical column Emerald City News which appeared weekly in London’s Capital Gay from 1987 to 1992. Their book of short stories Black Confetti: New Fairy Tales for an Old Country was reviewed in the Spring 1996 issue of Gay and Lesbian Humanist.”

So GALHA members who deny any knowledge of who Balaam is are perhaps being a trifle disingenuous.

Nick Cohen boosts Maryam Namazie

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Namazie“A week ago, at a reception in one of London’s dowdier hotels, Maryam Namazie received a cheque and a certificate stating that she was Secularist of the Year 2005. The audience from the National Secular Society cheered, but no one else noticed.”

Nick Cohen in the Observer, 16 October 2005

Oh, I don’t know. Islamophobia Watch picked up on it. Cohen observes that “Maryam Namazie’s obscurity remains baffling. She ought to be a liberal poster girl” (sic). Perhaps Namazie’s obscurity is not unconnected with the fact that she’s a member of the central and political committees of a barking far-left sect, the Worker Communist Party of Iran (WPI), whose hysterical Islamophobia, while it obviously appeals to a fellow bigot like Cohen, would repel any principled liberal.

As for the so-called “Sharia courts” in Canada to which Cohen’s article refers, details can be found in the Canada section of this site. What was in fact proposed was to allow Muslims the same right to faith-based civil arbitration that had been available to Catholics and Jews in Ontario since 1991. The WPI’s response to the proposal was:

“The struggle to establish Islamic tribunals in Canada, like similar efforts to enforce the hijab in public institutions and schools in France, is not merely a cultural effort to pursue cultural rights. Both the aims of and the forces behind these efforts are political. These attempts are part and parcel of one of the most reactionary global phenomena in recent history, i.e. the movement of political Islam.”

The Ontario proposal provoked a racist backlash throughout Canada against Muslims and their supposed barbaric religious practices, which it was claimed had no place in a civilised Western society. And it was another WPI central committee member, Homa Arjomand, who played a leading role in encouraging this upsurge of Islamophobia. For her trouble, she became the “poster girl” of the most hardline right-wingers, receiving plaudits from the likes of Front Page Magazine.

It can’t be long before Cohen and the WPI go the whole hog and join their friends in GALHA – with whom they have co-operated closely in the anti-Qaradawi campaign – in promoting an anti-Muslim agenda that is indistinguishable from the vile propaganda of the racist Right.

Joan Smith defends modernity against Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Joan Smith“I haven’t opposed religious reactionaries all my life to suddenly go soft on people who argue that calling for a ban on ‘adulteresses’ being stoned to death is a bit too radical for Islam at the moment (yes, I do mean Tariq Ramadan).” Joan Smith takes up the refrain we hear endlessly from Nick Cohen, Harry’s Place et al that the Left have abandoned their principles by allying with Muslims in opposition to US imperialism. “It’s time they took an honest look at where they may be heading and I don’t just mean the restoration of the Caliphate.”

Tribune, 14 October 2005

Personally, I think the Islamophobic self-styled defenders of secularism and rationalism should take an honest look at where they are heading – and I do mean (cf. Gay and Lesbian Humanist) into a de facto racist bloc with the likes of the BNP.