There is a continuum between the toxic bigotry of the mainstream media, EDL slogans and Breivik’s outpourings, Seumas Milne argues.
Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia
Thom Hartmann on how right-wing Islamophobes inspire violence
Lutfur Rahman joins calls to Home Secretary to ban EDL march
The Mayor of Tower Hamlets has tonight formally called on the Home Secretary to ban a proposed march through London’s East End by the English Defence League.
Lutfur Rahman has written to Theresa May urging police to use their powers to stop the EDL coming to Whitechapel on September 3, adding yet more weight to calls for a ban from MPs, councillors, London Assembly figures and church leaders.
“The EDL has a history of provocative marches in areas with large Muslim populations,” he said in a Town Hall statement. “They relish the opportunity to reap division on one of the most diverse communities in Britain and turning residents against one another.”
Mr Rahman claimed efforts to keep the EDL out “have not been helped by a handful of politicians and bloggers stoking the flames, seeking to paint Tower Hamlets as an ‘Islamic republic’ and its mayor as a ‘fundamentalist sympathiser’.”
He is speaking at a rally tomorrow evening at the London Muslim Centre in Whitechapel, calling for the EDL march to be stopped.
The mayor is joined on the platform by politicians of all parties and church leaders including the new Bishop of Stepney in his first public role since his inauguration last Friday. Anti-fascist campaigners from Norway are also flying to London to speak at the rally.
East End Advertiser, 28 July 2011
Update: See also “EDL’s online links with Norway killer fuel calls to ban London march”, Guardian, 29 July 2011
Dutch debate Wilders’ responsibility for Norway terrorist attacks
Discussion has started in the Netherlands about the influence Geert Wilders had on the Norwegian bomber Anders Beyring Breivik, since he praises the Dutch anti-Islam politician 30 times in his manifesto. Whether it’s fear of polarisation or political correctness, Dutch political parties seem to be inclined to protect Wilders.
Democrat MP Boris van der Ham called it an “idiotic reflex” to link Wilders with the massacre, while Socialist Party leader Emile Roemer said it was unwise to point the finger at Wilders. “If a murderer quotes me tomorrow does that make me responsible too?” he asked.
Historian Dirk-Jan van Baar has an answer to that: “I would say Wilders is not legally guilty. But as a politician he must be perfectly aware that there is such a thing as political responsibility. And he would undoubtedly have pointed that out if the killer had been a Muslim.”
Freedom Party leader Wilders can hardly be said to have kept a low profile in recent years when it comes to, say, hate-preaching imams and their effect on Muslim terrorists. He has also had harsh words to say about the Norwegian Labour Party, which was the target of the attacks. In a speech he gave in Rome in March this year, Wilders accused left-wing multiculturalists of cheering at every new sharia court or mosque. He claimed Europe would fall if it was stupid enough to believe that all cultures were equally valid and there was no reason to fight for its own culture.
On 1 May – Labour Day – he sent a tweet directed at Dutch Labour Party leader Job Cohen: “Congratulations, Job, on the 65th anniversary of the Arab Party. You gave the Netherlands mass immigration and imported countless no-hopers and criminals.”
On Tuesday Geert Wilders announced that he was “repulsed” by Breivik and that the violent actions of a psychopath were “a slap in the face for the worldwide anti-Islam movement”. Job Cohen welcomed Wilders’ statement but also had a comment:
“Wilders has now distanced himself, but I think it’s good to realise that your words do have an effect – and that goes for all politicians including Wilders. They can influence people and play a role in all kinds of ways. There is no way Wilders can be held responsible for this in any sense, but he [Breivik] uses the same rhetoric as Wilders does.”
Wilders rejects all attempts to link his ideology and that of Breivik. He claims the left is trying to make political capital out of the tragedy. However, speaking in parliament, he has himself linked remarks by his political opponents with potential terrorist attacks.
Green Left MP Tofik Dibi has now requested a parliamentary debate with Prime Minister Mark Rutte about xenophobia in the Netherlands. He believes the Freedom Party is largely responsible for channelling resentments in the Netherlands and he wants to discuss the similarities between Breivik’s ideas and attitudes which are prevalent in the Netherlands, for instance in Freedom Party circles.
‘Counter-jihadism’ and terrorist violence
In the wake of the attacks, Fjordman, Geller, and other prominent counter-jihadists have condemned Breivik’s actions and argued that they have never condoned violence. However, their dystopian fantasy world – in which the white Christian martyrs of Eurabia are constantly subjected to rape and murder at the hands of bloodthirsty Muslims – clearly provided what former CIA officer Marc Sageman has described in The New York Times as “the infrastructure from which Breivik emerged”.
Øyvind Strømmen analyses Anders Breivik’s roots in the “counter-jihad” movement.
Advice to the Norwegian government following the Oslo terrorist attacks
Richard Jackson, professor of International Politics at Aberystwyth University and an expert on terrorism and political violence, offers some advice to the prime minister of Norway.
Your security forces should start by immediately profiling young, white Christian men, especially if they have blonde hair (the Oslo bomber, Anders Behring Breivik, was blond; it could be a factor). Call them in to their local police stations for in-depth questioning, and stop them randomly at airports and train stations. They should be quizzed on how often they go to church, what websites they visit, what books they read, whether they are members of nationalist groups, and what beliefs they hold. They should be carefully monitored for signs of increasing religiosity and any and all political involvement in demonstrations, protests or letter writing. They should also be made to state their religion before boarding an international flight.
In some cases, where there is insufficient evidence to prosecute, it may be necessary to indefinitely detain individual Christians who are deemed to pose a threat to national security, until such a time as they can be safely released back into the community. Control orders may then be necessary to keep tabs on their activities.
You should also put churches under surveillance and monitor the sermons preached and the views expressed by parishioners, as well as any nationalist political parties or groups like the so-called Viking swimmers (they clearly have nationalist tendencies and the ice-swimming may be a kind of paramilitary training). Universities should be encouraged to report the expression of any extreme nationalist or Christian viewpoints, and should discourage Christian fundamentalist speakers from visiting their campuses. Right-wing and Christian fundamentalist websites should be blocked, and new laws should be passed which ban glorifying or promoting extreme nationalism and Christian fundamentalism.
It is also clear that you will need to set up a government-funded counter-radicalisation programme with moderate nationalists and liberal Christian leaders to try and deflect young white men in the Christian and nationalist communities from turning to extremism. Preachers should be encouraged to speak out against fundamentalism and nationalism, and to demonstrate their loyalty to Western values. It is clear that nationalism and Christianity are the conveyor belts of violent extremism; non-violent Christian fundamentalism leads directly to violent fundamentalism and terrorism.
After Oslo, right-wing group accuses thousands of American Muslims of being a part of a ‘fifth column’ that has ‘infiltrated’ the US
Days after a Norwegian terrorist allegedly motivated by a fear of Muslim infiltration killed 76 people, a Florida group took to Capitol Hill to accuse thousands of American Muslims of being a “fifth column”. Its presentation, a link analysis compiled from “open source” material, is collected into a database and brought to Washington by an influential Congressman.
An obscure nonprofit called Citizens for National Security compiled a “database” of “almost 6000 individuals and almost 200 organizations” in the United States linked in some way to the Muslim Brotherhood, the influential 80-year old Egyptian Islamic group.
These individuals and organizations “form a fifth column movement, a subversive movement intended to help undermine the United States as a secular government, as a Judeo-Christian society”, said Peter Leitner, one of the founders of Citizens for National Security. Leitner identified himself as a retired federal employee who used to perform “counterterrorism-type analysis”.
Citizens for National Security would not name any individual listed in the database, which it maintains is compiled exclusively from “open-source” material. Asked by Danger Room who would have access to it, Leitner said it would be available to “someone in the government [or] law enforcement”. U.S. intelligence and Homeland Security agencies have recently warned about the rising threat of “lone-wolf” homegrown terrorists, which al-Qaida is trying to inspire.
But U.S. citizens don’t need to have been charged with any crime to be mentioned in the database, he said, only “connected” to the Muslim Brotherhood, which is not a banned organization inside the United States.
To release the database to private citizens would be “irresponsible”, Leitner said, but he aggressively rejected any association between his research and the rampage allegedly committed by Anders Behring Breivik in Norway on Friday. In a sprawling online manifesto, Breivik accused European elites of acquiescing to a campaign of Muslim infiltration that threatened European civilization.
Breivik believed that “there was a certain type of threat” and might have been “correct”, Leitner said, but Breivik was a mere “lunatic”. “Having situational awareness of your condition,” Leitner said, “is in no ways inimical to national survival.”
Citizens for National Security released its accusation in the basement of the Cannon House Office Building on Capitol Hill, thanks to the patronage of Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), who blessed the group’s work. West, an Army officer whose career ended after he fired a gun at the head of an Iraqi detainee, said the group’s research “is about the protection of each and every American citizen”.
See also Matt Gertz, “Fox doesn’t even know who they’re using to smear Muslims”, Media Matters for America, 25 July 2011
UN human rights expert criticises media for linking Norway attacks to Islamist terrrorism
Media reports that initially linked the killing spree in Norway to possible Islamist terrorism were “revealing” and “embarrassing” examples of prejudice, a UN human rights expert said Tuesday.
“The way in which some public commentators immediately associated the horrifying mass murder in Norway last Friday with Islamist terrorism is revealing and indeed an embarrassing example of the powerful impact of prejudices and their capacity to enshrine stereotypes,” said Heiner Bielefeldt, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief.
“Proper respect for the victims and their families should have precluded the drawing of conclusions based on pure conjecture,” said Bielefeldt, who is an independent and non-paid rapporteur based in Geneva.
Nationalists pose bigger threat than al-Qaeda
Al Jazeera has a piece by Bob Lambert analysing the terrorist attacks in Norway, placing them in the context of “a violent extremist nationalist milieu in Europe and the US, and its dramatic shift towards anti-Muslim and Islamophobic thought since 9/11”.
And see Ibrahim Hewitt’s article “Norway, Islam and the threat of the West”, also at Al Jazeera.
London’s East End unites against EDL: rally Friday 29 July
United East End, a coalition of activists, trade unionists and community groups in Tower Hamlets, is organising an event on Saturday 3 September to celebrate the East End’s diversity and express its opposition to the racist English Defence League, which has announced plans to march on the borough that day.
UAF is supporting the United East End coalition and is calling on anti-fascists from across the country to come to Tower Hamlets that day and show solidarity with local people opposing the EDL.
United East End and UAF are also organising a public rally onFriday 29 July, 7pm, at the London Muslim Centre on Whitechapel Road, London E1 1JQ.
Speakers will include the Right Reverend Adrian Newman, the new Bishop of Stepney, in his first public engagement in the borough.
Last week Tower Hamlets council unanimously agreed to support a United East End petition signed by representatives from a host of local organisations including East London NUT, the London Muslim Centre, Neighbours in Poplar, Rainbow Hamlets LGBT community forum, Tower Hamlets Inter-Faith Forum, Tower Hamlets Tenants Federation and Tower Hamlets Unison.
We will be publishing more information on the Tower Hamlets demonstration shortly, including leaflets, petitions and details of organisations backing the anti-EDL event. In the meanwhile, click here to download a PDF of the press release issued by United East End and backed by UAF, Tower Hamlets Inter-Faith Forum and the borough’s No Place For Hate campaign.