Category Archives: Far right racists

Did Italian right-winger take inspiration from Maryam Namazie?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Daniela SantancheBritain and Australia are not the only countries where debate is raging over the Islamic veil. In Italy, the issue burst into the news this week after the interior ministry ordered round-the-clock police protection for an MP, believing she had been threatened for expressing her views on the subject.

Daniela Santanche, an MP for the formerly neo-fascist National Alliance, clashed in a TV chat show with the imam of a mosque near Milan. After Ms Santanche insisted that the Qur’an did not call for women to wear a veil, the other guest, Ali Abu Shwaima, angrily replied: “I am an imam and I will not permit those who are ignorant to speak of Islam. You are ignorant of Islam and do not have the right to interpret the Qur’an.”

The ministry said it had been advised that the words used by the imam might amount to a coded death sentence – which the imam has vigorously denied.

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Why Labour should reject Jack Straw’s comments on veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslims under siege

Owen Jones, Poplar & Limehouse Constituency Labour Party, surveys the responses to Jack Straw’s comments on the niqab.

Labour Left Briefing, November 2006

“Ministers caught telling the truth!” announced the BNP on their website on 15th October as they hailed “a series of statements which show that some of our rulers are capable of speaking the truth and acknowledging commonsense after all.” No wonder the BNP feels vindicated. Over the past month, the already besieged Muslim community has faced a barrage of denunciations from the British political establishment.

The increasingly thuggish John Reid fired the opening shots in east London on 20th September by haranguing Muslim parents to spy on their own children “before their hatred grows and you risk losing them forever.” This carefully choreographed political stunt was followed by a further tirade at Labour Party Conference in which he pledged that Islamist terrorism would have “no no-go areas”. David Cameron momentarily forgot his cuddly rhetoric and pledged “break up Muslim ghettos.”

However, it was Jack Straw who opened the floodgates of the current deluge of anti-Muslim hysteria. His description of the niqab – a full body veil worn by a tiny minority of Muslim women – as a “sign of separation and difference” was music to the ears of the right wing media. “Ban the veil!” screeched the Daily Express, revealing that 98% supported such a ban in order to “safeguard racial harmony”.

In The Times, Simon Jenkins suggested that if Muslim women were unable to understand why a “westerner” might be offended by the veil, “it is reasonable to ask why they want to live in Britain.” Jon Gaunt in The Sun offered the nuanced argument that “no group has been such a pain in the burka as some of the Muslims in recent years…” Others took the opportunity to declare open season on the Muslim population. “Muslim cabbie bans guide dog” was the almost farcical Evening Standard headline.

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Fascists applaud result of Danish cartoons court case

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Denmark continues to lead in the way in defending the long cherished European concept of free speech after a court ruled yesterday (26th) that a Danish newspaper did not libel Muslims by printing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that unleashed a storm of protests in the Islamic world. Seven Danish Muslim organisations brought the case against the Jyllands-Posten, saying the paper had libelled the world’s one billion Muslims with the images, which included one depicting the Prophet with a bomb in his turban, by implying Muslims were terrorists.”

BNP news article, 27 October 2006

Fascists warn against irresponsibility of Labour leaders’ anti-Muslim campaign

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“In the past few weeks an astonishing reversal of opinion has come from the lips of Labour MPs queuing up to attack the Muslim faith. Those who for years have courted the Muslim vote are now outdoing the BNP in raising awareness of the growing threat of Muslim to national security…. Labour is playing with fire to win back the white working class vote…. It’s a dangerous game the Labour establishment has chosen to play, one which could lead to serious disorder and bloodshed. Do Blair and Straw really want to see a civil war on the streets of West Yorkshire, Birmingham and Oldham?”

BNP news article 21 October 2006

Veil debate ‘has fuelled far right’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Veil debate ‘has fuelled far right’

By Louise Nousratpour

Morning Star, 23 October 2006

Anti-racism campaigners welcomed Labour deputy leadership candidate Jon Cruddas’s warning on Sunday that the debate around the Muslim veil has “emboldened the far right.”

The Dagenham MP said that friends of his who live in the Muslim community felt “hunted” and that hysteria over the issue had reinforced a sense of isolation and insecurity. “I think it has had a terrible effect. It will embolden the far right, no doubt about it, and I know that for a fact locally,” Mr Cruddas warned in an interview with GMTV.

He stressed that the government must go about dealing with community segregation in a “much more systematic way” in terms of public policy about the labour market, housing and health inequalities.

“They should be the terms of debate, rather than a really dangerous bidding war about who can be so muscular around issues of minorities, asylum and immigration, because that just feeds the far right and the centre of gravity just moves off that way,” Mr Cruddas insisted.

A debate about Muslim women wearing full-face veils erupted after Cabinet Minister Jack Straw said that he asked women to remove them when they came to see him in his constituency. The Prime Minister has also branded the veils a “mark of separation.”

In contrast to Mr Cruddas’s comments, Commission for Racial Equality chairman Trevor Phillips defended Mr Straw’s right to air his views about the veil and attacked the Muslim community for turning “the most neutral of comments into yet another act of persecution.”

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Muslim staff banned from Paris airport

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Four Muslim baggage handlers are appealing against a decision to bar them from working at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.

They say that the local government’s decision to revoke their security passes is evidence of anti-Muslim discrimination. A local government spokesman says the decision was based on an assessment of the terrorist risk. He denied the move was linked to the men’s religion.

Lawyers acting for the four men say that dozens of other Muslims who work at the airport have also been stripped of their security passes, leaving them unable to work.

The four men, who are of North African origin, say they were summoned by security officials for interviews concerning their employment in August. A few days later they were told that their airport passes, which gave them access to the area near runways, were being withdrawn.

A lawyer acting for the men said the baggage handlers were told they had been barred because they had “not shown that their behaviour was unlikely to violate airport security”.

As well as appealing against the local authority’s decision, the baggage handlers’ lawyers have submitted a criminal complaint for alleged discrimination against the men on the grounds that they are Muslims.

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Standing together against the Islamophobic attacks

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The government’s attacks on Muslims have led to a series of racist attacks across Britain, but there is also resistance and signs of a new fighting unity between Muslims and non-Muslims.

Some 70 people gathered at an hour’s notice last Saturday, in Dudley, West Midlands to oppose the Nazi BNP and defend the right of the local Muslim community to build a new mosque. Around 30 fascist supporters had earlier turned up to use the opportunities created by ministers’ comments to boost their Islamophobic campaigning against the mosque. The mosque contacted Unite Against Fascism and together they held a protest to show their determination to keep the BNP out of Dudley.

A major rally is now planned for Sunday 29 October to stress mutual respect between people of different faiths and ethnic backgrounds, the rights of anyone to practice their religion and the need to stop the fascists.

In Glasgow anti-racists will gather this Saturday for a Unite Against Islamophobia rally called by Glasgow Stop the War Coalition and the Muslim Association of Britain.

Socialist Worker, 21 October 2006

European politics swing right

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Glyn Ford“Europe is in danger of seeing its extreme-right parties move into the mainstream. The message has changed. Anti-Semitism has metamorphosed into ‘Islamophobia’ since 9/11, finding a popular resonance with those bearing the consequences of the war on terror. Islamophobia has become the prejudice of the day, but the threat from the extreme right is real and it is found across the European Union.”

Glyn Ford MEP in the Japan Times, 18 October 2006

Another week, another racist onslaught against Muslims

Posted on by Eddie Truman

Another week, another racist onslaught against Muslims

By Eddie Truman

“Ban The Veil” screamed the Daily Express, in Glasgow Imam Shamsuddin is subject to a violent assault, in Liverpool a Muslim woman has a veil ripped from her face by a man shouting racist abuse, in Falkirk a mosque was deliberately set ablaze.

The cause of this renewed wave of attacks on the Muslim community?

Home Secretary Jack Straw’s political ambitions. Such is the all pervading climate of Islamophobia, it is now regarded as a political badge of honour to outbid your political rivals in being seen to be racist towards Muslims.

So now we have a situation in which Labour Party, yes Labour Party, ministers are falling over themselves to match the rhetoric of the British National Party. Incredibly, Race Relations minister, yes you read that right, Phil Woolas, joined the row over the teaching assistant suspended for wearing a veil by demanding that she be sacked.

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