Category Archives: Analysis & comment

Nick Cohen: telling lies about Bethnal Green

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Last week, [Oona] King and a group of mainly Jewish pensioners gathered for a 60th anniversary memorial service for the 132 people who died in the last V2 rocket attack on London in 1945. Muslim youths spat and threw eggs at the mourners and shouted: ‘You fucking Jews’.”

So Nick Cohen claims in the Observer, 17 April

Dead Men Left points out that “Jonathan Freedland was at the memorial service Cohen refers to. He witnessed the horrid egging incident, and recorded his account in the Observer‘s sister paper, the Guardian. He is quite clear that no slogans or chants were heard. Cohen, not present at the event, and providing no source, claims that racist abuse was hurled. This gives every appearance of being pure invention.”

Dead Men Left, 18 April 2005

Freedland later returned to the estate where the egging incident occurred, and his findings concerning the motives for the attack are far from clear-cut.

Guardian, 16 April 2005

Mail on Sunday continues in its demonisation of British Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The Mail on Sunday has once again proved that old habits die hard. As if it were not enough to witch hunt asylum seekers, or tarnish the reputation of many Muslim leaders, the Mail has again surpassed itself by bizarrely claiming that FOSIS and the Mayor’s office ‘plotted to nail Euan’s girlfriend’.”

FOSIS press release, 18 April 2005

For a response by FOSIS to allegations of anti-semitism in the NUS see FOSIS press release, 13 April 2005

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Met chief issues fresh terror warning

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Britain’s most senior policeman has issued a new warning about the threat of al Qaeda terrorists targeting the UK. Sir Ian Blair is calling for new laws to tackle terrorist conspiracies and has asked for the introduction of ID cards to be given further consideration. His comments came in an interview broadcast on the Breakfast with Frost programme. And they follow the jailing of Kamel Bourgass for murdering a policeman and conspiring to cause a public nuisance after police unravelled an al Qaeda ricin poison plot.”

Sky News, 17 April 2005

Ian Blair did go on to say that Bourgass is “one individual, not the whole Muslim community” and that “99.9% of Muslims … are law-abiding people and we’ve got to support them in that and understand the difference”. He raised the question: “What is it that drives a tiny number of young men and women into extreme violence?”

This talk of extremists comprising a tiny minority of Muslims is the sort of wishy-washy liberalism that really irritates Robert Spencer: “99.9%? What was it, then, that made Al-Muhajiroun, a group that openly supported Al-Qaeda and spoke freely of wanting to see ‘the black flag of Islam’, that is, the flag of jihad, ‘flying over #10 Downing Street’, Britain’s largest Muslim group?”

Jihad Watch, 17 April 2005

Anyone who’s loopy enough to believe that the minuscule and marginal Al-Muhajiroun sect (which formally dissolved itself last year) is “Britain’s largest Muslim group” isn’t going to be taken too seriously, though. A bigger threat comes from those who make reference to Islamist extremists being a tiny minority and then use an almost certainly non-existent terrorist plot in order to call for repressive legislation that will impact on all Muslims.

For a response by civil rights organisation Liberty see BBC News, 17 April 2005

SWP: A pro-fascist party (say Jim Denham and David T)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

David T at Harry’s Place has discovered (with the assistance of Jim Denham of the AWL) that “the SWP has become a pro-fascist party” – on the grounds that it “has chosen to ally itself with bigots with slightly brown skins”. (No doubt these bigots also cook strange foods and fail to observe Germanic standards of hygiene.) David T explains: “allying itself with organisations – like the MAB – which are essentially theoconservative, if not theocratic, is pro-fascism”.

Bear in mind that Harry’s Place recently featured in a Tribune list of left-wing blogs. And I suppose in a sense that’s an accurate categorisation, because the views expressed there do represent a section of what passes for the left. Just as the pressure of the Cold War stampeded some socialists into a bloc with right-wing anti-communists, the present rise in anti-Muslim hysteria has resulted in certain self-styled leftists losing their bearings and embracing the ideas and arguments of the Islamophobic right.

Harry’s Place, 15 April 2005

How Muslim spies and subversives have penetrated Washington

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Infiltration“Washington hasn’t leveled with us about the full scope and depth of the Islamic threat not only inside America but inside the government, just as it hasn’t leveled with us about the true nature of Islam. We’ve been lulled into a false sense of security, and we’re just inviting another 9/11. So I wrote this book to expose the elaborate fraud that’s been orchestrated by our leaders in the Washington establishment and the leaders in the Muslim establishment, who are playing us all for suckers.”

Paul Sperry promotes his book Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives have Penetrated Washington at Front Page Magazine, 12 April 2005

Robert Spencer is impressed: Jihad Watch, 13 April 2005

The parallels between present-day Islamophobia and the anti-Soviet hysteria of the ’50s are quite striking. Just as McCarthy got so carried away by his witch-hunting that he began denouncing establishment right-wingers as crypto-Communists, the most extreme of today’s anti-Muslim witch-hunters appear to have turned on the Bush administration, condemning it for going soft on Islam. It is at least reassuring to see the Islamophobic right tearing itself apart in this way.

Reformation and Enlightenment

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Over at Harry’s Place, David T has discovered a Muslim he’s prepared to do business with. It’s Abdel Nour Brado, Secretary of the Islamic Commission of Spain, who wants to open a discussion among Muslims about the possibility of recognising same-sex marriages. Brado and his co-thinkers are the sort of “religious political progressives within Islam” to whom the left can relate, David T argues.

Unfortunately, by this definition progressives probably amount to somewhat less that 1% of the Muslim world. The remaining 99% who would reject same-sex marriages are all categorised by David T as “religious and political conservatives”, and no distinctions are made between them.

Thus the reformist moderate Yusuf al-Qaradawi is described by David T as a “Qutbist”, i.e. a supporter of the Egyptian Islamist Sayyid Qutb who was executed by Nasser in 1966. Qutb’s denunciation of the entire Muslim world as “jahiliyya” (pagan ignorance and barbarism), his call for armed struggle against every existing regime in the Islamic world and his condemnation of all those Muslims who decline to participate in this struggle as apostates have nothing in common with Qaradawi’s views whatsoever. Indeed, Qaradawi has accused Qutb of promoting an extremist ideology “which justified the takfir (excommunication) of (whole) societies … and the announcement of a destructive jihad against the whole of mankind”. Some Qutbist!

But this is the method adopted by “left” Islamophobes like those at Harry’s Place. They issue a formal declaration that Islam is not a monolithic bloc and proclaim their support for liberal, progressive Muslims – but they define this category so narrowly that only a minuscule minority of actually existing Muslims qualify, and they then dismiss the remainder as one reactionary, undifferentiated mass.

Reformation and Enlightenment

Posted on by Bob Pitt

David T over at Harry’s Place has discovered a Muslim he’s prepared to do business with. It’s Abdel Nour Brado, Secretary of the Islamic Commission of Spain, who wants to open a discussion among Muslims about the possibility of recognising same-sex marriages. Brado and his co-thinkers are the sort of “religious political progressives within Islam” to whom the left can relate, David T argues.

Harry’s Place, 7 April 2005

Unfortunately, by this definition progressives probably amount to somewhat less than 1% of the Muslim world. The remaining 99% who would reject same-sex marriages are all categorised by David T as “religious and political conservatives”, and no distinctions are made between them.

Thus the reformist Yusuf al-Qaradawi is described by David T as a “qutbist”, i.e. a supporter of the Egyptian Islamist Sayyid Qutb who was executed by Nasser in 1966. Qutb’s denunciation of the entire Muslim world as “jahiliyya” (pagan ignorance and barbarism), his call for armed struggle against every existing regime in the Islamic world and his condemnation of all those Muslims who decline to participate in this struggle as apostates have nothing in common with Qaradawi’s views whatsoever. Indeed, Qaradawi has accused Qutb of promoting an extremist ideology “which justified the takfir (excommunication) of (whole) societies … and the announcement of a destructive jihad against the whole of mankind”. Some Qutbist!

But this is the method adopted by “left” Islamophobes like those at Harry’s Place. They issue a formal declaration that Islam is not a monolithic bloc and proclaim their support for progressive, reformist Muslims – but they define this category so narrowly that only a minuscule minority of actually existing Muslims qualify, and they then dismiss the remainder as one reactionary, undifferentiated mass.

Tatchell hails religious opposition to oppression

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In a statement that surprised those of us who know him as a secularist opposed to the intrusion of religion into politics, Peter Tatchell of Outrage! said yesterday: “While I normally have little sympathy for Islam, the Muslim Association of Britain has taken a courageous, defiant stand against the invasion and occupation of Iraq.”

Outrage! press release, 31 March 2005

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Call for an international moratorium on hudud punishments

Posted on by Bob Pitt

ramadanLast year the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty and their allies on the executive of the National Union of Students called for Tariq Ramadan to be banned from speaking at the European Social Forum in London. (See here.)

One of the arguments used against Professor Ramadan was that he didn’t call for the immediate repudiation of the hudud punishments in the sharia but merely advocated a moratorium pending a full discussion among Muslim scholars.

He explains his position here: Guardian, 30 March 2005

The full text of Tariq Ramadan’s appeal can be found at tariqramadan.com

See also “Tariq Ramadan calls for Hudud freeze”, Islam Online, 30 March 2005

Harry has another go

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Harry has another go at Islamophobia Watch.

Harry’s Place, 26 March 2005

I particularly like Harry’s account of the Algerian civil war: “In Algeria between 1992 and 1998 an estimated 150,000 people were killed as a result of a campaign launched by the Armed Islamic Group….” Of course, this does rather overlook the fact that many of these deaths were caused by the Algerian state forces’ ferocious repression of suspected Islamists, and that the civil war itself was the result of the secularist FLN regime having suppressed the 1992 parliamentary elections on the grounds that the Islamist FIS were about to form a democratically elected government.

Equally impressive is Harry’s staunch defence of oppressed Iraqis against their oppressors. Did he issue a forthright condemnation of the continuing violent occupation of Iraq by foreign armies, I hear you ask. Did his anger boil over at the estimated 100,000 deaths that have resulted from the US invasion? Did he express his fury at the destruction of Fallujah?

Er … no. What he had in mind was the defence of a group of students in Basra whose picnic was reportedly attacked by members of Moqtada al-Sadr’s militia.

And we still haven’t been told who precisely the moderate Muslims are that Harry supports. But apparently to qualify as moderates it is not enough for them to support democracy, human rights and freedom of organisation for other faiths – they also have to support a separation of religion and state along the lines proposed by western secularists. Which of course excludes even the most democratic, reformist tendencies within Islamism.