Category Archives: Left Wing

Groom at centre of Fitzpatrick wedding row joins Respect

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Groom joins RespectThe groom at the centre of the storm over Muslim weddings, Bodrul Islam, spoke out about his anger at MP Jim Fitzpatrick.

“He likened my wedding to the racial segregation, the apartheid, of the Deep South. I am disgusted at this degenerate politics and these insults,” said Mr Islam. “I am announcing today that I am joining the Respect Party. It is the only party standing up against racism and prejudice. And I am pledging my support for George Galloway as he seeks to replace Jim Fitzpatrick as the MP for Poplar and Limehouse.”

Mr Islam continued, “Neither I nor my wife are particularly traditional in our attitudes but we wanted to show respect to our elders and our parents who expect that men and women should be separated in the wedding ceremony. We did everything we could to accommodate Mr Fitzpatrick when we heard he had left the wedding and we were given to understand he was not upset. Imagine our dismay when days later he issued a condemnatory press release and followed it up with a press conference saying he wanted to outlaw what he likes to call segregation at weddings”.

George Galloway and Councillor Abjol Miah welcomed Mr Islam to the party, George thanked him for his pledge of support and Councillor Miah invited him to put himself forward as a candidate for Respect in the forthcoming council elections.

George Galloway went on to attack Fitzpatrick for dangerously pandering to prejudice. “Fitzpatrick is fanning the flames of hate, as the Advertiser correctly described it. He says he wants to outlaw ‘forced’ segregation. But no-one is forcing anyone to go to a wedding. The law he proposes would in fact make weddings where the sexes are separated illegal and would also probably lead to many other events being made illegal, such as women only swimming. The proposal is both dangerous and absurd.”

Asian Image, 21 October 2009

See also Respect news report, 20 October 2009

Left too soft on Islam, claims Aussie journalist

Posted on by Bob Pitt

James Button“Sitting in his office in Antwerp, Filip Dewinter says he wants to keep religion out of public life, protect free speech, promote democracy and ensure the equality of men and women.

“He talks like a progressive. But as head of the Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest) party, which gets 20 per cent of the votes in the Flemish half of Belgium, he is one of the most far-right politicians in Europe. His adviser hands me a leaflet showing a minaret with a red line through it. ‘Stop Islamising’, the slogan demands. ‘No mosques in our neighbourhood.’ …

“Islam is the greatest challenge to old politics since the fall of communism. It has scrambled categories of right and left. The right steals the left’s language to allege that Muslims do not fit in because they do not respect Western values of pluralism, women’s rights and even gay rights….

“The populist Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn was often labelled right-wing but said, fairly or unfairly, that he was hostile to Islam because he did not want to ‘have to go through the emancipation of women and homosexuals all over again’. He entered politics partly out of rage at young Muslim men smashing the windows of his gay bar.

“Left liberals, meanwhile, are thrown into confusion, or worse. In 2004, the left-wing Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, hosted a visit by Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a Muslim cleric whose fatwas endorse wife-beating and the murder of homosexuals….

“The left rightly points out that most Muslims are not extremist. Yet it is so afraid of appearing racist or asserting Western cultural superiority that it seems unable to acknowledge any problems associated with the Muslim faith at all….

“Responding to both radical and fundamentalist forms of Islam gives the democratic left a chance to rediscover its core beliefs. It should not cede ownership of Western values to the right, values that the left fought for centuries to create.”

James Button in the Sydney Morning Herald, 22 October 2007

Jim Fitzpatrick: don’t call me an Islamophobe

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EastendNewsThe press conference was for Bangladeshi media only, but a small group of politicians were outside anyway. Jim Fitzpatrick, the current farming minister who has represented the borough since 1997, has smelled the rancid whiff of a racial smear swirling around his campaign, and hoped that a press conference would help clear the air.

The Labour incumbent’s problem stems from an incident back in August, in which he raised questions about forced segregation after leaving a Muslim constituent’s wedding at the London Muslim Centre.

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French immigration minister calls for ban on veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Eric BessonFrance’s hardline immigration minister has launched a fresh demand to ban the burkha – decribed by president Nicolas Sarkozy a sign of “subservience and debasement”. Eric Besson said the Islamic full head and body covers were “unacceptable” and not welcome in France.

His demand for a total ban comes after 58 French MPs called last June for a public inquiry on whether it should be illegal for women to hide their faces in public. Mr Sazkozy backed the move, saying at the time: “This garment makes women prisoners and deprives them of their identity. I say solemnly that they are not welcome on the territory of the French Republic.” Women’s rights groups and Left-wing MPs went even further, describing the item as a “walking coffin” and and a “mobile prison”.

Earlier this year Mr Besson said he though a law banning burkhas and niqabs would only “create tensions”. But he has now said he wants Islamic garments which cover the face – worn by an estimated 2,000 women in France – outlawed everywhere. He said yesterday: “I recognise that my views have now evolved. The burkha is unacceptable and contrary to the principles of national identity, of sexual equality and of the French Republic.”

Left-wing MP Andre Gerin, who is heading the government commission on burkhas and niqabs, added: “We find it intolerable to see images of these imprisoned women when they come from Iran, Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia. They are totally unacceptable on the territory of the French Republic.”

Daily Mail, 14 September 2009

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From the life of St Peter

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Tatchell No Islamic StateOver at Harry’s Place they’ve been celebrating Peter Tatchell’s success in bullying a small publisher into making a public apology for supposedly libelling him. The issue arose from criticisms of Tatchell made in the chapter “Gay Imperialism: Gender and Sexuality Discourse in the ‘War on Terror'” (pdf here) by Jin Haritaworn, Tamsila Tauqir and Esra Erdem, from the book Out of Place: Interrogating Silences in Queerness/Raciality, published last year.

The publishers’ statement of apology is comprehensive, not to say grovelling. It concedes that the offending chapter “contains serious, defamatory untruths concerning Peter Tatchell”. Tatchell apparently “is not Islamophobic” and “the insinuation that he is anti-Muslim is untrue”. In fact, “Mr Tatchell has never criticised Muslims in general, only Muslim fundamentalists”.

The publishers say they now recognise that “the human rights work of Mr Tatchell and OutRage! is motivated by a sincere support for people struggle against tyranny and injustice, and has involved valuable assistance to many LGBT campaigners in the UK and worldwide…. Peter Tatchell was one of the first LGBT campaigners to reject a western-centred approach to LGBT human rights and, from the early 1970s, to campaign for LGBT human rights universally and internationally.”

Indeed, it would appear that Tatchell bestrides our world like a colossus:

“From the 1960s, he has been active in anti-imperialist solidarity campaigns, supporting the national liberation struggles of the peoples of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Eritrea, Oman, Nicaragua, Palestine, Western Sahara, East Timor and West Papua…. Mr Tatchell continues to campaign for the independence of the Western Sahara, Palestine and West Papua. He supports the struggles for democracy and human rights in Iran, Russia, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Burma, Turkey, Columbia, Somaliland, Baluchistan, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Belarus and elsewhere.”

It is evident that the author of this statement would fully endorse the adulatory description of Tatchell, by David Toube at Harry’s Place, as a “brave and saintly man”. And that is hardly surprising, since the statement was obviously dictated by Tatchell himself. Those of us who regretfully decided long ago that Tatchell had degenerated into a self-promoting narcissistic parody of his former self can only conclude that our judgement was spot on.

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Fitzpatrick calls for ‘crackdown on extremists’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Ban HateBan Hate Meetings Meetings”. That is the front-page headline in this week’s East London Advertiser.

The subheading is “MP urges crackdown on extremists”, and the paper reports that Jim Fitzpatrick has called on Oxford House, a community centre in Bethnal Green, to stop hiring out meeting rooms to a youth group called Young Muslim Cooperation, which he claims is “a front for extremists”.

The report states that Islam for the UK, a successor organisation to al-Muhajiroun, has held a couple of meetings at Oxford House, and the suggestion is that YMC too is an arm of Anjem Choudary’s organisation.

As it happens, this contributor to Islamophobia Watch has a far from libertarian stance when it comes to al-Muhajiroun. I think Ken Livingstone was right to ban them from holding their provocative demonstrations in Trafalgar Square, and in my view their notorious protest against British troops in Luton earlier this year should have been suppressed under the Public Order Act. If Oxford House has indeed allowed Islam for the UK to book meetings there, I think that was a mistake (even though the East London Advertiser comes up with no evidence that any meetings at the centre were in fact used to incite “hate”).

If Fitzpatrick was genuinely interested in constructively addressing this issue, however, then the solution would have been to approach the management at Oxford House and raise his concerns with them privately. Instead he has gone running to the press in search of yet another scaremongering headline.

Anyone who was inclined to take the charitable view that Fitzpatrick’s recent much-publicised walk-out from a gender-segregated wedding at the London Muslim Centre was just an example of clodhopping cultural insensitivity was obviously wrong. It now seems clear that Fitzpatrick has consciously launched a campaign aimed at whipping up a moral panic over Islamism in the East End.

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Fitzpatrick calls for ban on gender-segregated meetings

Posted on by Bob Pitt

London Muslim CentreGovernment Minister Jim Fitzpatrick has called for segregation to be outlawed in Britain. The controversial East London Labour MP, who hit the headlines last week after walking out of a Muslim wedding for being asked to sit apart from his wife, insists segregation of men and women outside places of worship should be against the law.

Mr Fitzpatrick, the MP for Poplar and Canning Town, told the BBC that he does not oppose segregation in mosques, but believes separating men and women in halls such as the London Muslim Centre and other public buildings was “unacceptable.”

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‘It’s time to end the cultural appeasement’ says Paul Richards

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Paul RichardsAt Progress Online the dreadful Paul Richards, former advisor to the no less appalling Hazel Blears, offers his take on the Jim Fitzpatrick affair.

No surprises here – Richards hails the “courage” of the MP for Poplar & Canning Town who walked out of his constituents’ wedding. Those of us who condemned Fitzpatrick’s boorish behaviour are, as you might expect, guilty of “cultural relativism”.

Equally predictably, Richards takes an ignorant swipe at Iqbal Sacranie: “He has served on this board and that, advised our Labour government, was secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), and has been knighted by the Queen. But looking at the CV, you are hard-pressed to find any evidence of having been elected by anyone to anything.”

And how does Richards suppose that Iqbal Sacranie got to be secretary-general of the MCB – through a military coup?

Richards claims to see a parallel between Fitzpatrick and, of all people, George Lansbury. He notes that in 1912 Lansbury resigned his East London seat to fight a by-election in support of women’s rights: “He lost the seat, but placed himself on the right side of decency, progress and equality for women, just like the Fitzpatricks when they walked away from the London Muslim Centre last weekend.”

The only parallel I can see here is that Fitzpatrick looks likely to lose his seat too.

Still, Richards sees hope for the future: “It is entirely reasonable, based on the evidence, that those sections of Britain’s Muslim communities … whose culture is tainted by medieval prejudice and abuse of power, will change.”

Update:  Read ENGAGE’s response to Richards here.

Update 2:  See “Sir Iqbal Sacranie: Correction and Apology”, Progress Online, 21 October 2009

Danish Conservatives call for burqa ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jyllands Posten Khader“We don’t want to see burqas in Denmark. We simply can’t accept that some of our citizens walk around with their faces covered,” Naser Khader, a Danish member of parliament of Syrian-Palestinian extraction who was recently appointed spokesman for integration issues for the Conservative Party, told the newspaper Jyllands-Posten.

In comments published on Sunday, Khader said the burqa is un-Danish and oppressive towards women and should be completely banned. He and his party say that what people do in their own homes is their business, but as soon as they walk into the public domain, one should be able to see their faces.

The Danish People’s Party and the Social Democratic Party have welcomed the proposal, while the Liberal Party, which is the senior partner in Denmark’s coalition government, rejects the idea of legislating about citizens’ clothing, provided they are not employed in a public function.

“It’s going too far if we start legislating on what sort of clothes people can and cannot wear. The burqa and covered faces should not be allowed if you work with people in the public sector — but that is where we draw the line,” says Liberal Party political spokesman Peter Christensen, who adds that it is important that politicians know where to draw the line in introducing policy.

Khader, however, says a ban is the only solution. “My view is that (the burqa) is not Islamic at all,” Khader says. “The modern burqa was introduced by the Taliban when the movement came to power. So I associate the burqa with the Taliban.”

The burqa ban is part of an integration initiative that the Conservatives’ parliamentary group approved on Friday, although the party has not decided what punishment should be meted out to those who break the ban.

“Initially we’re sending out a signal by saying that it should be banned. Then it’s up to the lawyers to find out what sanctions should be introduced,” Khader told the Jyllands-Posten.

Denmark is not the only European country where politicians have proposed a ban on burqas. French President Nicolas Sarkozy recently said that the burqa was “not welcome” in France, while France’s urban regeneration minister, Fadela Amara, told the Saturday edition of the Financial Times that she was in favor of the burqa “not existing in my country.” The Netherlands has also considered a ban on burqas.

Spiegel, 18 August 2009