Category Archives: Analysis & comment

The WPI and Islamophobia Watch

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The latest English language broadcast from the Worker Communist Party of Iran’s television station includes an interview with Bahram Soroush replying to criticisms of the WPI by Islamophobia Watch. (As regular viewers will be aware, an “interview” on WPI TV consists of Maryam Namazie feeding rehearsed questions to fellow members of the party’s central committee and then expressing enthusiastic agreement with everything they say. Jeremy Paxman it ain’t.)

Soroush’s response to accusations of Islamophobia is, essentially – guilty as charged. He declares that the WPI are indeed Islamophobes in the sense of being deeply hostile to Islam, as are many other people, and that this is a healthy reaction to the crimes of Islamism. The “interview” concludes with the bizarre allegation from comrades Namazie and Soroush that by criticising the WPI our site is setting them up for assassination by Islamists.

So the WPI broadcasts a TV programme in which they publicly proclaim their Islamophobia, while at the same time denouncing us for endangering their lives by … exposing their Islamophobia. Go, as they say, figure.

Reaction to Newsweek apology

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Newsweek magazine may have apologized, but to many in the Muslim world, it’s too late and much too little…. Critics called it a strategic move in the face of the overwhelming and violent reaction. The report sparked protests in Afghanistan, where at least 15 were killed and more than 100 injured. Many Muslims believe Newsweek succumbed to pressure from the U.S. government to backtrack.”

ABC News, 16 May 2005

You know, they could just have a point. Furthermore, as already noted, Newsweek‘s backtracking was ambiguous to say the least.

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Nick Cohen: telling lies about Bethnal Green (2)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An entry from Oona King’s campaign diary: “Last week, I was ‘attacked’ at the anniversary of the bombing of Hughes Mansions. The last V2 rocket to fall on London during the Blitz killed 130 people in these flats. Nearly all those who died were Jewish, some of them soldiers home on leave. The eggs and vegetables hurled from the surrounding brick balconies didn’t hit me. They only splattered my jacket, but hit a Jewish war veteran and an elderly Jewish woman. It was disturbing: the kids disrupting the event have no idea that the people they hit are the people who gave us the freedom to be here. After all, neither Bengalis nor black Jews would have lasted long under the Third Reich.”

New Statesman, 16 May 2005

A fair point, and nobody could fail to condemn the behaviour of the young people who disrupted the ceremony. But it’s worth noting that Oona makes no mention of Nick Cohen’s claim that “Muslim youths spat and threw eggs at the mourners and shouted: ‘You fucking Jews’.”

See here.

‘Muslim Brotherhood – of terrorists’ (according to MEMRI)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

MEMRI executive director Steven Stalinsky expresses indignation at reports that the US government has opened channels to the Muslim Brotherhood. He objects that the “pro-jihad terrorist ideology of the Brotherhood” makes it “difficult to understand how anyone in the US would consider a dialogue with the group”.

Front Page Magazine, 10 May 2005

Not so difficult, I’d have thought. In Egypt, under any fair system of election, the Muslim Brotherhood would almost certainly form the largest parliamentary party. Its offshoot Hamas has just polled well in the Palestinian Authority local elections, defeating Fatah in the larger towns. The US State Department has evidently woken up to the fact that it’s a bit counterproductive to call for democracy in the Middle East while at the same time denouncing as jihadists, terrorists and enemies of western civilisation the very forces that democracy will most likely bring to power.

Islamophobia may indeed be a racist tool of western imperialism but, in the form promoted by Steven Stalinsky, Daniel Pipes, Jihad Watch et al, it in fact runs counter to the interests of US foreign policy as understood by its more pragmatic exponents.

Europe, radical Islam and secularism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Joe Katzman at Winds of Change expresses his admiration for Irshad Manji, who is quoted as saying: “I subscribe to Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s point that ‘Islamic terrorism, both in the Netherlands and abroad, is able to thrive because it is embedded in a wider circle of fellow Muslims’. This is a reality that most Western security experts have yet to grasp.”

Winds of Change, 28 April 2005

For the full Aspen Institute interview, see here.

So, in circumstances where right-wingers are claiming that Islamic terrorists are not a small isolated minority but have roots in the wider Muslim community, Manji announces that this view is essentially correct. And at a time when many of her fellow Muslims are campaigning against increased state repression directed at people with no record of supporting terrorism, Manji suggests that the West’s security services have underestimated the true extent of the terrorist threat. Just brilliant.

Hizb ut-Tahrir issues death threats against George Galloway (not)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An article in the new freesheet, the London Line, on Ulil Abshar-Abdalla of the Indonesian organisation Jaringan Islam Liberal, contains a major blooper. Apparently London is “home to Hizb ut-Tahrir, one of Islam’s extreme voices … its members recently issued death threats against Respect candidate George Galloway”.

London Line, 28 April 2005

Don’t they read the papers? Over a week ago the Evening Standard – and Galloway himself – were threatened with legal action when they falsely reported that he had been attacked by members of Hizb ut-Tahrir (see here and here). London Line better hope that their lawyers are more competent than their fact-checkers.

USA and political Islam are two sides of one coin (says crazed sectarian)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Another classic of left Islamophobia from Maryam Namazie of the Worker Communist Party of Iran:

“It is political Islam that hangs the likes of sweet 16-year-old Atefeh Rajabi for ‘acts incompatible with chastity’ in city centres, stones Maryam Ayoubi for adultery, throws acid in the faces of those who refuse to veil, beheads prostitutes, and legally permits sexual apartheid and misogyny.

“All of you will have become uncomfortably familiar with this right-wing reactionary political movement from September 11 onwards when it went about its business as usual but this time outside its zone of influence and power. Political Islam and its ruling class would also turn this world into another Iraq if it could.

“This vile movement may make many claims as the USA does in order to legitimise its barbarity – from people’s liberation to democracy to rights – but they are only claims to dupe and legitimise. It cares as much for the liberation of the people of Palestine and Iraq as the USA does – not more, not less.

“Both will indiscriminately maim and slaughter the very people they claim to defend. One will behead Westerners feigning defence of women prisoners in Iraq with one hand whilst killing Iraqi women who refuse to veil with another. The other will feign a defence of rights through indiscriminate bombings whilst its soldiers’ boots are trampling over tortured naked bodies.”

Iranian.com, 26 April 2005

As usual, no distinctions are made between different tendencies within the broad category of “political Islam”, some of which are of course democratic-reformist in character, and an equals sign is placed between the world’s major imperialist power and the likes of Al-Qaida. I think most of us know which is the main threat to world peace. Evidently the WPI doesn’t.

‘Washington finally gets it on radical Islam’ – Pipes is pleased

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Does the Bush administration really believe, as its leadership has kept repeating since right after 9/11, that Islam is a ‘religion of peace’ not connected to the problem of terrorism?” Daniel Pipes asks.

Front Page Magazine, 25 April 2005

Pipes takes comfort in the news that “America’s highest officials widely agree that the country’s ‘greatest ideological foe is a highly politicized form of radical Islam and that Washington and its allies cannot afford to stand by’ as it gains in strength. To fight this ideology, the U.S. government now promotes a non-radical interpretation of Islam.”

But Pipes is still not entirely convinced: “Working to change how Muslims understand their religion, of course, raises some difficult implications. It is one thing to want to help moderate Muslims and quite another to locate them.”

All the same, this marks a bit of a retreat from Pipes’ recent denunciations of the Bush administration for going soft on Islam. Is he perhaps angling for a reappointment to the USIP board?

Islamophobes fall out

Posted on by Bob Pitt

When it comes to rabid anti-Muslim propaganda, you might imagine it couldn’t get much worse than Jihad Watch. But you’d be wrong. There’s a website where Robert Spencer and his chums are regarded as whingeing liberals who have succumbed to Islamophilia.

The site is at FaithFreedom.org and recently one of its main contributors, Ali Sina, submitted an article to Jihad Watch which argued: “In the 1300s, the most deadly plague, dubbed as Black Death swept through Europe killing more than 25 million people – one-forth [sic] of the continent’s population…. Today we are facing a not very different situation. Islam is like bubonic plague.” (See here)

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Faith invaders

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“As Britain’s culture wars grow in intensity, and abortion and artistic freedom become hot issues, Cristina Odone reveals that Saudi and US funds are behind the devout religious groups that lead the offensive.”

New Statesman, 18 April 2005

The gist of Cristina Odone’s article is that “foreign spiritual empires are moving in on Britain. Increasingly, foreign-inspired and foreign-financed religious conservatives are influencing the UK political agenda, forming what amounts to a spiritual fifth column”. It is notable that the Roman Catholic church escapes her strictures. Opus Dei doesn’t rate a mention.

Odone draws a parallel between US-backed right-wing Protestant evangelism and Islam. Unsurprisingly, she cites Peter Tatchell’s claim that “an insidious alliance has sprung up between ultra-orthodox Christians and Muslims”.

She warns that “the poorly educated imams of Bradford and Tower Hamlets, ministering to believers who are barely a generation away from the village Islam of south Asia, lack the financial, theological and intellectual firepower to stand up to the missionaries for Saudi-style Islam”. Condescending, or what?

Odone makes much of the fact that some Muslim institutions receive Saudi funding. She sees this as an attempt to introduce Wahhabism into Britain, and blames Saudi influence for the fact that some young British Muslims “lap up a rigid, censorious form of Islam, which includes the strict observance of prayer times, learning the Koran by rote, and a wholesale rejection of the habits, attitudes and values of mainstream society”.

This strikes me as largely fantasy. The Saudis certainly stepped up their financial aid to Muslim organisations worldwide after 1979, in order to counter the appeal of radical Shia Islam inspired by the Iranian revolution. However, while their funding is directed to conservative rather than to liberal Muslims, the Saudis don’t have a record of exporting pure Wahhabism.

In any case, I rather doubt that the scale of funding they provide to Islam in Britain is capable of exerting the influence Odone claims. If some young Muslims are drawn towards fundamentalist varieties of their faith, this is surely to be explained by social factors – not by what the Saudi monarchy does with its oil revenues.

Though you might suspect the article is a conscious attempt by the author to whip up Islamophobia while covering her tracks by criticising Protestant fundamentalism as well, I don’t think that’s actually her intention. However, in the present circumstances – with Islam and Muslims (unlike Christian evangelicals) being consistently portrayed as a threat to liberal values, the gains of the Enlightenment and western civilisation in general – that is in fact the practical impact of her arguments.