In a letter published in Pink News, the Lesbian and Gay Coalition Against Racism has rejected Outrage’s claim that Sir Iqbal Sacranie of the Muslim Council of Britain was dropped from the Unite Against Fascism conference on 18 February.
Category Archives: Far right racists
Ilan Halimi’s family boycotts protest
Ha’aretz reports that the family of French murder victim, Ilan Halimi, are refusing to attend a demonstration against the murder because of the participation of the racist right. According to Ha’aretz:
“The rally – which is due to be attended by over 100,000 people and numerous public figures, including government ministers – has become controversial due to the planned participation of representatives of two right-wing political movements, the National Front and the Movement for France (known by its French initials MPF).
“On Friday, the anti-racism organization MARP announced that it would refuse to attend the rally for this reason, charging that both movements were using Halimi’s murder to whip up anti-Muslim sentiment and thereby encouraging racism. The National Front, for instance, described the murder as ‘the result of 40 years of uncontrolled immigration’, while the MPF denounced ‘the Islamization of France’.”
Open season on Islam – Salma Yaqoob
“The reverberations from Muslim protests offended at the cartoons depicting Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) continue to resound. Despite peaceful protests in London by Muslim Association of Britain and Muslim Council of Britain, the organisers still found themselves subject to an attack in the Sunday Express (February 12) for failing to do enough to tackle extremism. On the same theme, the British National Party, fresh from their acquittal of inciting racial hatred, have announced plans to turn the May local elections into a ‘referendum’ on Islam. Other far right groups have made threats of book-burning sessions of the Qur’an. For Muslims, past echoes of Nazi demonisation of the Jews don’t seem so far away.”
Salma Yaqoob in the Muslim News, 24 February 2006
BNP to use Prophet cartoon in campaign
The British National Party is seeking to exploit controversies involving Muslims in its campaign for local authority elections in May.
The extreme right-wing party, which hopes to field 1,000 candidates in England, will include in its campaign material one of the cartoons which sparked outrage among Muslims across the world, showing the Prophet Mohamed with a bomb in his turban.
One leaflet asks voters: “Are you concerned about the growth of Islam in Britain? Make Thursday 4 May Referendum Day.” It adds: “We owe it to our children to defend our Christian culture.”
Labour MPs condemned the BNP’s attack on Muslims while also urging their party’s leaders to take more seriously the threat from the BNP in its working-class heartlands.
Mainstream parties say the BNP’s campaigning has become more sophisticated. The party is using telephone canvassing for the first time and playing down its hostility to blacks and Asians in order to focus on Muslims. Other campaign literature contrasts the jailing of the Muslim cleric Abu Hamza for inciting murder and racial hatred with the partial acquittal of Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, who faces a retrial on unresolved racial hatred charges on 15 May.
The BNP, which now has 19 councillors, is expected to focus efforts in areas where it has performed strongly in the past such as parts of Lancashire, Yorkshire, the West Midlands and east London, where it won 35 per cent of the vote in recent by-elections in Barking. Its share of the vote rose from 1 per cent at the 1992 general election to 4.2 per cent last year.
Labour MPs are worried that the BNP could capture more council seats by exploiting the disenchantment with the Government among traditional Labour supporters and stoking fears about the Muslim community. The MPs fear that Tony Blair’s determination to retain the support of Middle England could leave Labour vulnerable to a BNP advance in working-class areas.
Jon Cruddas, the Labour MP for Dagenham, said: “The BNP’s pitch is to be more Labour than New Labour with a virulently anti-Muslim agenda.” He said Labour’s strategy of targeting swing voters in marginal seats was “diametrically at odds” with the need to reassure traditional supporters about the Government’s record.
See also BBC News, 22 February 2006
Anti-racism campaigners vow to battle BNP
Anti-racism campaigners vow to battle BNP
Morning Star, 20 February 2006
Anti-racism campaigners vowed on Saturday to put out the biggest campaign possible against the far-right British National Party as it fights this year’s local council elections.
The Unite Against Fascism national conference in London heard that the BNP had saved its deposits in 34 constituencies in last year’s general election, compared to only five in 2001. In 2004, the BNP missed getting elected to the London Assembly and European Parliament by a hair’s breadth. It currently has 21 local councillors and will try to use them as a launch pad to gain several more council seats in the 2006 local elections.
Delegates heard that, where the BNP has council seats, incidents of racism and homophobia have risen and, if the party’s support continues to increase, it will be on course to make a national breakthrough.
UAF joint secretary Sabby Dhalu said that the events of the last few weeks have clarified the serious threat that the growing climate of racism in Britain and the rest of Europe poses to us all. “Racism towards Muslims is being presented under the banner of ‘freedom of speech’,” she said.
“All these events indicate a legitimisation and deepening climate of racism. In 1930s Germany, the nazis systematically used such so-called cartoons depicting Jewish people in the most dehumanising manner for the sole purpose of creating caricatures that justified their programme of mass extermination of the Jewish people. It is incumbent on all anti-racists and anti-fascists to condemn unreservedly the publication of these racist images, for exactly the same reasons,” Ms Dhalu said.
The UAF is organising three national days of action against the BNP on February 25, March 25 and April 29.
If you want to get involved in activities in your local area on these days, please contact the UAF office on (020) 7833-4916 or (020) 7837-4522.
More self-promoting stupidity from Tatchell
We have already covered the ludicrous, divisive and objectively pro-Nazi campaign waged by Peter Tatchell and Outrage against the participation of the Muslim Council of Britain and its general secretary Sir Iqbal Sacranie at yesterday’s Unite Against Fascism conference (see here and here). As it turned out, Sacranie had another engagement, and his place was taken by Daud Abdullah, assistant general secretary of the MCB, who addressed the opening session of the conference.
Tatchell, whose capacity to delude himself about his own importance evidently knows no limits, announced that Sacranie’s absence was all down to his campaign. “This climbdown is a victory for humanitarian values over homophobic prejudice,” he pontificated. “We believe the organisers realised they could not secure the acceptance of a homophobe at an anti-fascist conference, so they dumped him.” (Outrage press release, 18 February 2006)
In fact, the demand that Tatchell and Outrage had raised was for the MCB as an organisation to be banned from the conference platform. “Sir Iqbal is leader of the anti-gay Muslim Council of Britain (MCB)”, they declared. “Sir Iqbal’s homophobic views, and the MCB’s opposition to gay equality, echo the prejudice and discrimination of the BNP…. We urge you to withdraw your invitation to Sir Iqbal and the MCB…. The MCB is not a liberal, progressive organisation. It represents only conservative, reactionary opinion. It is not a suitable partner organisation for the movement against fascism.” (Outrage press release, 14 February 2006)
Yet, in the outcome, the invitation was not withdrawn and the UAF conference was addressed by an assistant general secretary of the MCB, rather than by its general secretary. So, a bit of a limited victory there then, eh Peter?
Another racist provocation from the fascists
The nazis of the BNP continue to take advantage of parliament’s decision to sabotage the religious hatred bill, and the acquittal of führer Nick Griffin and his sidekick at Leeds Crown Court.
They have produced a new anti-Muslim leaflet, featuring the most offensive of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons, in which the Prophet is shown wearing a turban shaped as a bomb. “Only the BNP had the backbone to publish the cartoons”, the fascists boast (which is a little unfair on the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty). “Now we go one step further in releasing a brand new leaflet for download and distribution featuring the turban as time-bomb cartoon.”
BNP news release, 17 February 2006
In an accompanying article, Griffin asserts that Muslims “do not have the right … to march in our streets demanding that we change our laws to suit their own religious sensibilities. Why do they not have that right? Because to grant them that right is to accept that, sooner or later, freedom of speech – the cornerstone of our democracy – will be curtailed, cut-down and in the end abolished as the values of Islam come to predominate over ours…. on the streets of London over the Saturdays of February, the Clash of Civilisations is precisely that – an argument over which culture’s highest value is to prevail. Will it be Islam’s uncompromising Eastern stand for the dignity of its Prophet, or what used to be our uncompromising Western stand for intellectual freedom and freedom of expression?”
The BNP is riding the wave of racism
The BNP is riding the wave of racism
By Sabby Dhalu
Morning Star, 16 February 2006
The events of the last few weeks have clarified the serious threat that the growing climate of racism in Britain and the rest of Europe poses to us all.
The BNP has announced its intention to make the forthcoming local elections a “referendum on Islam,” riding on a wave of Islamophobia and rising racism.
BNP leader Nick Griffin and party activist Mark Collett were acquitted recently on half of the charges for incitement to racial hatred. The publication and republication of the so-called Danish cartoons have led to protests across the world.
Racism towards Muslims is being presented under the banner of “freedom of speech.”
All these events indicate a legitimisation and deepening climate of racism.
The use of cartoons to create or strengthen grotesque racist stereotypes of entire peoples is nothing new.
In 1930s Germany, the nazis systematically used such so-called cartoons depicting Jewish people in the most dehumanising manner for the sole purpose of creating caricatures that justified their programme of mass extermination of the Jewish people.
Black people have also been subject to such caricatures and depiction by racists and white supremacists in many parts of Europe and north America.
If published, any such images today rightly receive widespread condemnation.
It is incumbent on all anti-racists and anti-fascists to condemn unreservedly the publication of these racist images, for exactly the same reasons as the cartoons in the 1930s needed to condemned.
Tatchell calls for UAF ban on MCB
Under the headline “Muslim leader echoes homophobia of the BNP“, the gay rights group Outrage has condemned the decision to invite Sir Iqbal Sacranie, general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, to speak at the Unite Against Fascism conference on Saturday.
Not that Peter Tatchell is opposed to Muslims speaking at the meeting, of course. He’s prepared to welcome individuals such as “Ziauddin Sardar, Sheikh Dr Muhammad Yusuf or Munira Mirza”, who represent nobody but themselves, while demanding a ban on the MCB, an umbrella body with over 400 affiliates which is the most representative Muslim organisation in Britain. Now there’s a strategy for engaging Muslim communities in the struggle against fascism!
Outrage’s intervention is particularly irresponsible, given that the BNP has announced that it intends to turn its campaign in the May local elections into a “referendum on Islam”. Yet Outrage proposes that UAF should exclude from its conference the main organisation of the Muslim communities who are the direct victims of the BNP’s racism. Some might suspect that Outrage are acting as paid agents of the BNP, trying to disrupt the unity of anti-fascist forces in order to assist the Nazis. But that would be unfair. Outrage in fact provide this service to the BNP for free.
For details of Saturday’s conference, see the UAF website.
Italy minister stirs cartoon row
An Italian government minister says he is distributing T-shirts displaying controversial cartoons satirising the Prophet Muhammad. Roberto Calderoli, a member of the anti-immigrant Northern League party, is minister without portfolio for institutional reform and devolution.
Mr Calderoli’s comments were made in an interview with the leading Italian news agency, Ansa. The minister is quoted as saying: “I’ve had T-shirts made with the cartoons that have upset Islam and I shall start wearing them today.” He added that it was “time to put an end to this story that we need to dialogue with these people”, and asked: “What have we become, the civilisation of melted butter?”
Italy’s Northern League, of which Mr Calderoli is a leading member, is expected to get about 6% of the vote in the forthcoming general election. Their anti-immigrant election platform has gained them support in the industrial north of the country where the League accuses immigrants of stealing jobs from Italians and being responsible for growing crime rates.
This is the same Roberto Calderoni who last year called for “Islam to be declared illegal“.