Writing at ConservativeHome, Paul Goodman claims that the Quilliam Foundation has had its Home Office funding withdrawn and consequently is “laying off some 80 per cent of its staff”. Shame it’s not 100 per cent is all I can say. Unfortunately, Quilliam are “still receiving some Foreign Office funding”, according to Goodman. Still, looking on the bright side, Goodman does state that the organisation is “effectively closing”.
Category Archives: Analysis & comment
Who told lies about the ‘March for Free Expression’?
In connection with the so-called March for Free Expression back in 2006 (it was in fact a poorly attended static demonstration in Trafalgar Square, the purpose of which was to defend the “freedom” of the right-wing Danish paper Jyllands-Posten to publish racist anti-Muslim cartoons) Harry’s Place informs us that “huge effort was put by the organisers into ensuring that Nazis did not attend”. Consequently, “when it was attacked by Bob Pitt, it was able to squash his lies”.
It would be interesting to know what this “huge effort” the MFE organisers made to deter the far right consisted of. The BNP made it clear in advance that they supported the MFE and intended to send a contingent from their front organisation, Civil Liberty, to the Trafalgar Square event – but, apart from indicating that they didn’t want the BNP joining them, the MFE organisers appear to have made no serious attempts to counter this. The BNP later reported that 40 of its members had participated in the MFE (out of a total attendance of about 300), and having witnessed the protest I can confirm that the fascists were allowed to distribute their literature unhindered in any way by the MFE organisers.
Some MFE supporters saw the presence of the BNP as a welcome sign of the political breadth of the protest. Johann Hari noted approvingly that “communists mingled awkwardly with fascists” in Trafalgar Square. Another MFE supporter wrote to Tribune rejecting the National Assembly Against Racism’s criticism of fascist involvement in the demonstration: “Everyone was welcome to the rally regardless of their political or other allegiance. That is exactly how it should be…. Free speech cannot be abandoned on the basis of demagogic ‘anti-racist’ demands from self-appointed groups.”
However, other MFE supporters adopted the position of denying that the BNP were there at all. Peter Tatchell, who is of course regarded as a bit of a hero over at Harry’s Place, assured Comment is Free readers: “Contrary to the lies and scaremongering of the far left, there was no BNP presence at Saturday’s rally.” Tatchell’s sidekick, Harry’s Place blogger Brett Lock, took the same line. “Fascists don’t believe in freedom of expression,” he wrote, “and thus were explicitly banned from the march.”
If Harry’s Place want to denounce people for telling lies about the March for Free Expression, they would be advised to look a little closer to home.
ENGAGE writes to the JC
ENGAGE has written to the Jewish Chronicle to complain about Martin Bright’s report on ENGAGE’s relations with the All Party Parliamentary Group on Islamophobia. They state:
“It is the machinations of journalists like Martin Bright who have through their disreputable work sought to advance the ‘good (apolitical) Muslim’/’bad (politically active) Muslim’ dichotomy that has created a situation in which Muslims who challenge and demur from the sham discourse on ‘Islamism’ are derisively treated and cast beyond the pale. It will be a long time before we take lessons on democratic engagement and widening the parameters of political participation from individuals like Martin Bright and we will continue to work to empower British Muslims to actively participate in our politics and media.”
The JC‘s enthusiasm for discrediting politically active Muslims is of course not unconnected with the fact that politically active Muslims are almost all supporters of the Palestinian cause. The importance the JC attaches to this issue is demonstrated by the fact that they not only offered Martin Bright a job, but even went so far as to invent the new position of political editor specifically for him. The one qualification for this post that Bright possessed – he had not previously shown any other expertise in reporting issues affecting the Jewish community – was his obsessive hostility towards political Islam.
Incidentally, Bright wrote to us last week to complain about our coverage of his JC report on ENGAGE and the APPG on Islamophobia. “You again describe me as an Islamophobe”, he wrote. “This is highly defamatory and inaccurate. You produce no evidence to back up your claim. I would appreciate if you removed this from your site immediately.”
As it happens, in that particular post we didn’t actually accuse Bright of being an Islamophobe. He just didn’t take the time to read the article properly. But Bright does have a sore spot when it comes to accusations of Islamophobia. Last year he threatened ENGAGE with legal action after they published a piece accusing him of being an Islamophobe. In response, I wrote:
“I can remember Bright telling a FOSIS conference at City Hall back in August 2005 that he had no problem being described as an Islamophobe – because, he said, there is a lot in Islam to be afraid of. He got himself booed, as you might expect. Around a hundred people were at the conference, so there is no lack of witnesses who can attest to this.”
I’ve consulted others who were present at that conference and I didn’t get it exactly right. Bright in fact told the FOSIS conference that he couldn’t see anything wrong with Islamophobia – because there is a lot in Islam to be afraid of. As I noted, he was roundly booed and a number of people criticised his remarks. In reply to the discussion, Bright did apologise and said he was in fact a great admirer of Islam.
If Bright thinks that made everything all right, he should perhaps consider what the response would have been if he had told a UJS conference that he saw nothing wrong with antisemitism because it was legitimate to have a fear of Judaism. Would have have been forgiven if he had followed this with an apology and claimed that some of his best friends were Jewish?
One thing is for certain – there’s no way he would have been offered his present cushy job at the Jewish Chronicle.
EDL tells Terry Jones he’s not welcome
The EDL have issued a press release announcing that they have withdrawn their invitation to Pastor Terry Jones to speak at their rally in Luton in February. The EDL state:
“we strongly disapprove of burning the Koran, precisely because we believe in those principles of free speech and free expression. We do not believe the Koran should be burned, but rather read, so that people come to understand its inherent violence, supremacism, and hatred and contempt for non-Muslims. It is essential that people know what the Koran teaches, so they can see how far its teachings are from the free traditions of England that we have pledged our lives to uphold and defend.”
Perhaps they should tell that to their own members, who evidently are far from clear that this is the EDL’s policy. And shouldn’t Nick Griffin be given credit by the EDL, since this argument is lifted directly from the BNP’s website?
The EDL offer the following additional explanation:
“The EDL is extremely proud of its diverse support base including it’s primary base of geographical divisions from all across England encompassing much ethnic diversity. In addition we have specific divisions drawn from groups particularly threatened by encroaching Sharia: a Lesbian Gay Bisexual & Transgender (LGBT) Division; a Jewish Division and recently a Pakistani Christian Division. The EDL also enjoys the active participation and support of many former members of the Armed Forces. In light of our strong commitment to these groups and some of the Pastor’s statements and associations, we feel it inappropriate to offer Pastor Terry Jones an invitation to attend an EDL demonstration.”
Oddly, the press release concludes with a link to a CBS report about the Westboro Baptist Church picketing the funeral of a US serviceman killed in Afghanistan, which would suggest that the EDL have confused Terry Jones with Fred Phelps. Could they really be that stupid? On past experience, yes they certainly could.
If the EDL are worried that association with Jones might tarnish their hard-earned reputation for moderation, they might be advised to deal with some of the hate-filled racists in their own ranks. The first comment that follows the press release on the EDL’s Facebook page reads: “I hate stinkin muslims… Fuck off home.!!!!”
Postscript: Or perhaps, to be charitable, the EDL meant to link to a report about the support given by Jones’s Dove World Outreach Center to a Westboro Baptist Church protest outside a liberal church in Gainesville last April.
EDL spews hatred of Islam in Peterborough
Two men have been arrested on suspicion of assaulting police officers during an English Defence League (EDL) march and counter-protests in Peterborough.
There were other arrests as the EDL marched and rallies were held by the TUC and Unite Against Fascism. Cambridgeshire Police said two people were also arrested for affray during a minor disorder in Wellington Street. And two people were held over possession of an offensive weapon at Peterborough railway station. The force said an estimated 500 protesters were involved.
EDL leader Tommy Robinson said: “Militant Islam is probably at its peak in this country. The problem will get worse and worse unless it’s tackled, and that’s what the English Defence League is trying to do.” Shortly after 1300 GMT he gave a speech via a loudspeaker in Lower Bridge Street. Some supporters chanted “EDL” and “I’m England till I die”.
Unite Against Fascism said it and Peterborough TUC had called for a “march for unity” from Bishops Road car park to show local opposition to the “invasion” by the EDL. “The EDL hope to stir up hatred against the city’s Muslim population and the many migrant agricultural workers who travel from across Europe to work on farms during the harvests,” a spokesman said.
Update: See “Celebratory mood in Peterborough as racist EDL seen off”, UAF news report, 11 December 2010
Further update: Here are some quotes from the rambling speech by “Tommy Robinson” (Stephen Lennon) to the EDL rally in Peterborough: “Islam rules this country with fear… For fifteen years we have allowed 10 per cent to dictate to 90 per cent. No fucking more.” “Islam has never been a religion of peace. It never will be a religion of peace.” “Islam is a disease. [Shouts of ‘fucking scum’ from the crowd.] It is a disease. Winston Churchill once said Islam in a man is the same as rabies in a dog.”
So much Lennon’s lying claim that the EDL is opposed only to “militant Islam” or “Islamic extremism”.
Lennon also made his familiar pitch for support from the Sikh and Hindu communities: “The biggest community I wish to thank are the Indian community of this country, the Sikhs and the Hindus of this nation. They are the most British. If ever there is an example of integration it is the Sikh and Hindu communities. These people wear our badge of pride. 88,000 of them died in the world war. It has been left to us to educate the uneducated of this country to the difference between Sikhism, Hinduism and Islam.”
If anyone needs educating it’s Lennon. This idiot talks about the “Indian community” as being made up of Hindus and Sikhs, but is evidently unaware 13.4% of the population of India is Muslim, compared with 1.9% who are Sikhs. But then, this is a man who thinks that Muslims constitute 10% of the population of the UK (the real figure is around 3%). Still, Lennon isn’t quite as thick as his mob of violent racist followers, who fail to make any distinction between Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims, and habitually abuse all British citizens of South Asian origin as “Pakis”.
As for Lennon’s attempt to counter charges of racism and fascism by applauding the readiness of Hindus and Sikhs to “integrate”, while simultaneously spitting bile against Muslims, Nick Griffin has been playing that game for years. But then, we know that Lennon was once a member of the BNP, so he obviously learnt a lot from his former leader.
Particularly risible was Lennon’s pious condemnation of the current student protests: “The demonstrations in London have disgusted us all. We never want to see British police attacked by the people of this country.” This from a man who in 2005 received a 12-month prison sentence for assault after kicking a police officer in the head.
Postscript: And Sky News, disgracefully, has provided Lennon with a platform to repeat his attacks on Muslims. In the course of a televised interview Lennon stated:
“It’s only in our country that our politicians are not talking up for us against the struggle against Islam. We have been sold out and led to believe that Islam is a religion of peace. It’s not. It never has been. It never will be. And it’s time to make a stand against it … twenty years down the line we will be over-run by Islam, because Muslims are breeding at four point four children. That’s what they’re having on average. We’re having one point three.
“Now, they keep saying, we’re a minority, we’re a minority. But their communities are going to quadruple over the next twenty years. And that wouldn’t be a problem if they were integrating. If they weren’t being taught hatred from the age of four against every single one of us in their madrassa schools, it wouldn’t be a problem. But it’s a ticking time bomb. Unless we wake middle England up now to realising what is coming to a town near you, in towns and cities like Luton, where I live, it’s a disaster waiting to happen. So, unless it stops and we wake people up, there’s going to be civil unrest across this whole country.”
Lennon has his own proposals for dealing with this threat: “I’d like to pull any Muslim that doesn’t swear allegiance to Queen and country. Anyone who goes against trying to undermine our country with Shariah law. Get rid of all the Shariah law courts. Stop all Islamic immigration into this country.”
Church cuts bishops where Muslims outnumber Christians by seven to one
Thus the headline in today’s Daily Telegraph. The recommendation by the Church of England’s Dioceses Commission that three dioceses in the Yorkshire area should be merged into one was flagged up well in advance. This issue has already been hammered to death by the Mail on Sunday back in October followed by the Daily Express and the Daily Star (see the response by ENGAGE).
Still, you can never have too many scaremongering articles about the Muslim threat to Christian civilisation, can you?
Elsewhere in the Torygraph, under the heading “A tipping point for religion in Britain?“, the Sunday Telegraph‘s Religious Affairs and Media Correspondent, Jonathan Wynne-Jones, tells us that it is
difficult not to see the merger – or axing depending on which way you’re looking at it – in the context of the rise of Islam in Britain. In Bradford, one of the dioceses that is being subsumed, Muslims make up as much as three-quarters of the population in some parishes.
A report published by the Church earlier this year discussed the issues facing clergy trying to minister in areas with high numbers of ethnic minorities. It revealed the percentage of Christians is as low as 10 per cent in some parishes.
When Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Bishop of Rochester, warned of “no-go areas” in Britain for non-Muslims, he was widely ridiculed and criticised, but the Church’s report suggests that his critics have their heads in the sand. Bleak and rather extreme it may have been, but statisticians have already predicted that by 2035 there will be more active Muslims in Britain than church-going Christians.
The claim that “Muslims make up as much as three-quarters of the population in some parishes” in Bradford is clearly an exaggeration. There is no parish in Bradford where the Muslim population reaches that figure, and there are just two parishes in which Muslims make up over 70% of the population (see below). With regard to the UK as a whole, to put Wynne-Jones’ claim that “the percentage of Christians is as low as 10 per cent in some parishes” in proportion, the CofE report that he cites, Sharing the Gospel of Salvation, found that there are only 1,000 parishes, out of a total of 13,000, in which more than 10% of people are of non-Christian faiths. Among these 1,000 parishes, the report identified one in Leicester where the Christian population was 10.8% and one in Bradford where the figure was 10.9%. As the tables below illustrate, the two parishes were hardly typical, even of these two cities with their untypically large populations of South Asian origin:
Wynne-Jones writes that “statisticians have already predicted that by 2035 there will be more active Muslims in Britain than church-going Christians”, but the key phrases here are “active Muslims” and “church-going Christians”. Even if you accept the statistical analysis in the 2008 Christian Research Religious Trends report that Wynne-Jones cites (and the CofE dismissed its findings as “flawed and dangerously misleading”), the report stated that there were only 1.6 million Muslims living in Britain today compared with 41 million Christians. By 2035, Christian Reseach predicted, there would be 1.96 million active Muslims in Britain, compared with 1.63 million church-going Christians. So, if the number of active Muslims in the UK were to exceed the number of active Christians, then that would be primarily due to a decline in the number of Christians who practise their faith, rather than because there had been a dramatic increase in the number of Muslims.
As for Nazir-Ali’s disgraceful nonsense about “no-go areas”, he defined them as areas in which “a strict Muslim ideology” prevails and consequently “people of a different race or faith face physical attack”, although it was notable that he failed to specify where these areas were to be found. That was bad enough, but Wynne-Jones’ position is even worse. What he appears to be arguing is that non-Muslims face the threat of violent assault not just in areas supposedly dominated by “a strict Muslim ideology” but in areas where “active Muslims” outnumber church-going Christians. The CofE’s Sharing the Gospel of Salvation report of course suggested nothing of the sort, and its authors would undoubtedly be appalled to have their research misrepresented in this way.
See also the comments by ENGAGE.
More admirers for Andrew Gilligan
“Andrew Gilligan is one of the most lucid journalists out there and therefore he understands incredibly well the threat of Islamic supremacism to free societies.”
Now, who do you think wrote this? Could it be Melanie Phillips? Or perhaps Pamela Geller? No, it’s the English Defence League, whose Wiltshire Division have reproduced Gilligan’s recent attack on ENGAGE on their website.
But then, this is not the first time that Gilligan has proved an inspiration to the far-right boot-boys of the EDL. It was his TV documentary witch-hunting the Islamic Forum Europe, “Britain’s Islamic Republic”, that prompted the EDL to demand that the East London Mosque should be closed down and threaten to stage an intimidatory demonstration in Tower Hamlets.
Review of Faith Matters pamphlet on the EDL
REVIEW
Nigel Copsey, The English Defence League: Challenging Our Country and Our Values of Social Inclusion, Fairness and Equality, Faith Matters 2010
Crossposted from Socialist Unity
I downloaded this pamphlet with high expectations. I’m not exactly a fan of Faith Matters and its director, John Ware admirer Fiyaz Mughal, but Nigel Copsey is the author of Contemporary British Fascism: The British National Party and the Quest for Legitimacy, which is an excellent account of the BNP’s origins and development. So I anticipated that this pamphlet would provide some useful insights into the character of the EDL. It turned out to be a major disappointment.
Copsey is a capable researcher and if you want a detailed and accurate summary of the origins and structure of the EDL you can find it here. But for some reason Copsey goes out of his way to downplay the far-right character of the organisation he is studying. While we can perhaps agree with Copsey that the EDL is “not an archetypal far-right organisation or movement” and that we should “avoid viewing it simply through the prism of the established far right” (emphasis added), the problem is that Copsey refuses to characterise the EDL as a far-right organisation in any sense at all. Rather, he argues, it is “best understood as an Islamophobic, new social movement, born of a particularly unattractive and intolerant strand of English nationalism”.
Daniel Pipes on ‘Islamist Turkey vs. secular Iran’
Turkish prime minister Recep Erdoğan walks out of the room at the 2009 World Economic Forum in Davos after clashing with Shimon Peres over Israel’s attack on Gaza
Over at the Washington Times, Daniel Pipes offers a bizarre assessment of Turkey and Iran and their future political evolution.
According to Pipes, experience of an Islamic state has caused Iranians to become disillusioned with Islamism, opening up the prospect of the country eventually adopting a secular pro-western form of government. However, “while the Turkish government presents few immediate dangers, its more subtle application of Islamism’s hideous principles makes it loom large as a future threat”.
If the AKP wins the next parliamentary elections, Pipes asserts, “that will likely establish the premise for them to remain enduringly in power, during which they will bend the country to fit their will, instituting Islamic law (the Sharia), and building an Islamic order resembling Khomeini’s idealized polity”.
Pipes concludes: “Long after Khomeini and Osama bin Laden are forgotten, I venture, Mr. Erdogan and his colleagues will be remembered as the inventors of a more lasting and insidious form of Islamism.”
You can’t help suspecting that Pipes’ attempt to transform the Justice and Development Party into an Islamist bogeyman is not unconnected with the fact that under the AKP the Turkish government has emerged as a severe critic of Israel, first over the Gaza war and then over the Gaza flotilla raid.
Massive vote fraud in Egyptian elections – still no word of criticism from Harry’s Place
Members of Egypt’s largest opposition party braced for a bruising defeat in parliamentary elections Sunday amid reports that proxies of the ruling party [National Democratic Party – NDP] committed widespread fraud and prevented election monitors working for rival candidates from monitoring the polls.
Muslim Brotherhood leaders said government security forces and election officials kept their delegates from entering dozens of polling stations and prevented many of their supporters from casting ballots.
“The government has used all the means to prevent people from going to polling stations,” Muslim Brotherhood campaign coordinator Mohammed Mursi said Sunday night as the polls were closing. “It seems the regime does not want to have real opposition in parliament.”
In the weeks leading up to the election, Egyptian security forces detained hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood supporters and disqualified many of its candidates.
Opposition politicians and human rights activists said they recorded dozens of cases of ballot stuffing, vote buying and voter intimidation. Outside several key polling stations, bands of men in civilian clothes beat back voters and supporters of opposition candidates, in some instances working in coordination with police forces, human rights activists and witnesses said.
“It’s a situation in which the ruling party has a relatively free hand to manipulate the results,” said Tom Malinowski, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch, who was among the group’s representatives monitoring the situation outside polling stations Sunday. “The government’s objective seems to be to make voting simultaneously dangerous and futile to discourage everyone other than those mobilized by the ruling party from going to the polls.”
In Alexandria, Egypt’s second-largest city and a Brotherhood stronghold, opposition candidates described overt violations. “The ballot boxes arrived full,” Brotherhood candidate Sobhy Saleh said in an interview Sunday morning. “The will of the people is being stolen.” On Sunday night, an aide said Saleh had been wounded in clashes and was recovering at a hospital.
At the polling station at the Hoda Shaarawy School in Cairo’s upscale Dokki neighborhood, women dressed in head scarves banged on the green gate, pleading to be allowed to cast votes. Election officials held them at bay for most of the day and opened the doors only to allow in voters bused in by NDP activists.
Washington Post, 29 November 2010
We’ve already pointed to the failure of websites like Harry’s Place, who erupted in fury at the attack on democracy in Iran, to express even the slightest criticism of the attack on democracy in Egypt. Apparently it’s cause for outrage if an anti-western Islamist regime suppresses its opponents, but a matter of insignificance if a pro-western regime suppresses an Islamist opposition.
See also Newsweek, 29 November 2010