Category Archives: Analysis & comment

Harry’s Place and Islamophobia Watch

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Over at Harry’s Place, the eponymous blogger offers a critique of Islamophobia Watch and challenges our characterisation of certain leftists and liberals as Islamophobes. Compared with some of the anti-Muslim rants that have appeared on his site, it’s quite a reasoned piece – but entirely wrong, of course.

In his critique Harry quotes part of the Runnymede Trust’s definition of Islamophobia, which is reproduced on our site: “Islam is seen as a monolithic bloc, static and unresponsive to change.”

He claims that most of the leftists and liberals criticised on our blog would reject that view and therefore cannot be characterised as Islamophobes: “The whole point of supporting liberal progressives, socialists or gay activists in Muslim countries or in the ‘Muslim community’ is that there is the potential for change and that Islam most certainly isn’t a monolothic bloc.”

The problem with this argument is that, if you take the Runnymede Trust definition absolutely literally, then Islamophobia doesn’t exist anywhere in the world. Even fascists are prepared to make a formal distinction between different tendencies within Islam, along the lines Harry proposes.

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‘A vote for intolerance’ – Cohen defends the right to incite religious hatred

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Another diatribe from Nick Cohen against the extension of race relations laws to cover incitement to religious hatred.

He is particularly upset about Mike O’Brien naming Evan Harris as a leading Lib Dem opponent of the new law – on the grounds that the person O’Brien “singled out for attack wasn’t even on the Lib Dem front bench. All that appeared to distinguish him was that he was the only Lib Dem MP to come from a Jewish family”.

Yes, well, apart from the fact that Harris is a militant secularist who’s achieved notoriety among British Muslims, not least because of his enthusiastic support for the French hijab ban. Or hadn’t you noticed that, Nick?

Observer, 13 March 2005

Nick Cohen’s bloc with the right

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In the 20 February issue of the Observer, the paper’s resident Islamophobe Nick Cohen devotes his column to an attack on the dossier produced by the mayor of London in response to the campaign against Yusuf al-Qaradawi (“Ken Has a Lot to Be Sorry For“).

Cohen’s article is merely the latest episode in his long-running – and apparently unending – vendetta against those of us on the left who have retained our old-fashioned sympathies with the victims of imperialism and racism. In Cohen’s view we are all “pseudo-leftists” who have abandoned the gains of the Enlightenment and are “moving to the right, often to the far-right” to form a bloc with “obscurantists, theocrats and fascists”.

It seems to have escaped Cohen’s attention that on this issue he is the one who is in a bloc with the right. It is the extreme right-wingers in the field of Islamic studies such as Daniel Pipes and Robert Spencer with whom Cohen finds common ground over Qaradawi. Those on the liberal, progressive wing of western academia, such as John Esposito, Noah Feldman and Raymond Baker, all recognise Dr al-Qaradawi’s role as a reformer and democrat.

Meanwhile, the excellent Abu Aardvark recounts how Dr al-Qaradawi has been denounced on a jihadist chat room for his corrupting influence in promoting freedom, individual choice and tolerance.

As for the mayor’s dossier, it can be consulted online here, and readers can make up their own minds whether Cohen has answered it effectively.

MCB letter to Charles Kennedy

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Muslim Council of Britain writes to Charles Kennedy raising concerns about his party’s attitude to the proposed law banning religious hatred, and complains that details of an MCB meeting with the Lib Dems were leaked to Nick Cohen for his article in the New Statesman (see here).

Now who was responsible for that leak, we wonder. Couldn’t possibly have been leading National Secular Society member Evan Harris, could it? Of course not, and we would never suggest otherwise.

The MCB also complains that Cohen’s account of the meeting was “shamelessly dishonest” and that he failed to contact the MCB to hear their side of the story. Investigative journalism at its best, eh?

See here.

Qaradawi and the tsunami

Posted on by Bob Pitt

As part of its mission to discredit Arabs and Muslims, in the aftermath of the tsunami disaster the Middle East Media Research Institute devoted much effort to accumulating quotations from Islamic leaders explaining the disaster as the result of God’s anger with sinners. One of these was Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

MEMRI’s reports were reproduced in the Times, which gave over a whole page to what it called Islamic “tsunami conspiracy theories“.

Of course, Muslims were not alone in offering a “wrath of God” explanation for the disaster. Israel’s Sephardic chief rabbi, Shlomo Amar, declared that the tsunami was an “expression of God’s ire with the world”, while one of his predecessors, Mordechai Eliahu, argued that it was a product of divine resentment at Sharon’s decision to pull out of Gaza. Rabbi Yitzchak Kaduri, considered Israel’s leading Kabbalist rabbi, added that it was “not for naught that this place was hit, where many of our compatriots went to look for this-worldly lusts”.

But can you imagine the Times devoting a whole page to attacking Jewish views of the tsunami as a punishment for humanity’s sins? Obviously not, because this would rightly be construed as anti-semitic. But Muslims are considered fair game by the Murdoch press.

And not only the Murdoch press. Taking his inspiration from the Times piece, Peter Tatchell wrote a press release for Outrage! headed “Qaradawi says tsunami victims deserved to die“. Tatchell attacked Qaradawi as “a reactionary fundamentalist who says 150,000 people deserved to die because some of them were immoral and failed to observe his hardline interpretation of Islam”.

But Abu Aardvark challenged MEMRI’s summary of Qaradawi’s sermon.

He pointed out that, far from arguing that victims all deserved their fate, Qaradawi had stated that the tsunami presented a challenge to the faith of believers because “it took the honest and the wicked, the reverent and the licentious, the believers and the unbelievers alike”. Abu Aardvark concluded that “this does seem to be a case of MEMRI’s selective translation leaving readers with the wrong impression of his meaning”.

Abu Aardvark observed wearily that “rational discussions of Qaradawi seem to be virtually impossible these days. The demonization campaign seems to have worked, and people who really should know better just throw names around, casually equating Qaradawi with bin Laden and putting the most outrageous things in his mouth”.

Peter Tatchell on dialogue with Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The rise of Islamophobia post-9/11, and the need for a united response to the Bush government’s “war on terror”, have increased the importance of the labour movement engaging in dialogue with Muslim communities and co-operating on those issues where there is common ground.

There are, unfortunately, various pseudo-leftists who reject such dialogue and co-operation. The gay rights organisations Outrage!, whose most prominent figure is Peter Tatchell, are a particularly virulent example of this trend. They of course deny accusations of Islamophobia and try to cover themselves by arguing that they are in favour of dialogue and co-operation with progressive, liberal Muslim groups. But they define these terms so as to exclude the overwhelming majority of Muslims in this country, and indeed internationally.

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The Front National and the hijab ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

It was ironic that the French government’s attack on the right of young Muslim women to observe their religion while pursuing their education met with a distinct lack of enthusiasm from the extreme right-wing Front National. FN leader Jean-Marie Le Pen commented at one point that he supported the wearing of the veil … because it meant he didn’t have to look at ugly women: “Le voile musulman: il nous protège des femmes laides” (Le Monde, 22 April 2002). Some on the Left have used the FN’s semi-opposition as an argument in favour of the hijab ban.

However, the following article by FN general secretary Carl Lang, “Vous avez aimé l’immigration? Vous allez adorer l’islamisation” (You liked immigration? You’ll love Islamicisation), from Le Pen’s publication Français D’Abord! (15 December 2003), shows that the main reason the FN failed to throw its weight behind the hijab ban was that the measure failed to deal with what the FN argues is the real problem – the encroaching Islamicisation of French society arising from an influx of Muslim migrants.

It is also worth noting that, as the French press pointed out, the overwhelming majority of FN voters supported the hijab ban. They presumably took a more pragmatic view, reasoning that while the measure fell short of a complete block on Muslim immigration and the extirpation of Islam from France, it was at least a step in the right direction.

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