Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia

Muslim leaders back Livingstone as mayor

Posted on by Bob Pitt

MayorProminent Muslim organisations and individuals have pledged to back Ken Livingstone as mayor of London, saying it is in the “best interest” of Muslims to vote for him in this year’s elections on May 1.

A statement, published today in full on the Guardian’s website, praises Livingstone for his continued support of a multicultural society and for protecting Muslim communities against racism and Islamophobia. The 63 signatories include Mohammed Ali, the chief executive of the Islam Channel, which claims to have an audience of millions, Professor Tariq Ramadan and Dilwar Hussain from the London Muslim Centre, part of the East London Mosque.

His rival, Conservative candidate Boris Johnson, said he was “not remotely worried” by the statement of support and warned against “divide and rule” politics. “When anything is signed by so-called community leaders I take it with a big pinch of salt,” he said. “My grandfather was a Muslim and so was my great-grandfather. I am proud of my Muslim ancestry.”

Guardian, 3 January 2008

This would be the same Boris Johnson who described Islam as “the most viciously sectarian of all religions in its heartlessness towards unbelievers” and asserted that “to any non-Muslim reader of the Koran, Islamophobia – fear of Islam – seems a natural reaction”. Opposing the illegalisation of incitement to religious hatred Johnson stated that such a law “makes no sense unless it involves a ban on the Koran itself”.

When he was editor of the Spectator Johnson regularly published appalling examples of anti-Muslim bigotry by the likes of Rod Liddle and Anthony Browne, while the magazine’s front cover featured headlines such as “Eurabian Nightmare” and “The Muslims are Coming“.

Update:  See also the discussion on the Stormfront fascist forum. Sample comments: “Another reason why Ken must go at all costs. Vote BNP if you don’t want the whole of London and Britain, turning into the ape and reptile enclosures of London Zoo!” “People have got to wake up when muslims, the most unwestern group of people imaginable are fully supporting Livingstone.” “Boris will get my 2nd preference vote. I think Boris will get a hugh [sic] anti-Ken Livingstone vote.”

Read the official BNP response here.

Further update:  Scroll down to the bottom of the comments on the Guardian website and you’ll find the following statement by Comment is Free editor Georgina Henry:

“Sorry, but we’re closing this thread due to the continual breaches of the talk policy. Our moderators have had to take down almost 40 offensive comments, and banned 16 people. It’s incredibly depressing that so many pieces on this site written by or about Muslims degenerate into racist/sectarian abuse.”

Giuliani on Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“If you’ve been listening to the war-mongering coming out of Rudy Giuliani since the start of his deteriorating presidential campaign, you’d think the United States isn’t fighting just jihadists but the entire Muslim ummah.”

Matthew Harwood examines the aspiring Republican candidate’s campaign ad which refers to Muslims as “a people perverted”.

Guardian Unlimited, 3 January 2008

See also Josh Marshall at TCM, 2 January 2008

Select committee chair says there is a particular problem with Muslim schools

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Commons children, schools and families select committee will grill the schools secretary, Ed Balls, at a meeting on January 9 about the government’s plans to allow local authorities to open as many faith schools as they want. Members are concerned the plans will damage social cohesion and widen existing divisions.

The committee’s chairman, Barry Sheerman, said: “I am getting reports from people in local government who find it difficult to know what is going on in some faith schools – particularly Muslim schools.”

But Chris Keates, general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, warned that the debate over Muslim faith schools risked fuelling Islamophobia. “They need to be very careful how they handle this sensitive issue,” she said.

Guardian, 2 January 2008

See also “MPs’ fears on cash for Muslim schools” in the Daily Express, 2 January 2008.

Dutch opinion leaders plead for tolerance

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Dutch opinion leaders published a page-size advertisment in the daily Trouw on Wednesday calling for tolerance and a softer tone in the debate about migration and Islam. In their statement, the 717 signatories, including prominent politicians, artists, authors, relgious leaders and academics, called on the Dutch to “break the downward cycle of intolerance and indifference” in the Netherlands.

Dutch nationals can support the statement by signing it on the website www.benoemenenbouwen.nl.

The statement was initiated by Christian Democrat Doekle Terpstra, who called upon Dutch society to counter the “wilderization,” a sarcastic reference to Dutch liberal-right politician Geert Wilders, one of the Netherlands’ most outspoken Islam critics. Responding to the publication in Trouw, Geert Wilders called the signatories “silly and naive fools.”

Earthtimes, 2 January 2008

See also Dutch News, Expatica and Radio Netherlands.

‘Mamma li Turchi!!’, Italy and the Saladin Syndrome

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Today in Italy, the traditional fascist hatred of the Jew is increasingly substituted by a hatred of Muslims, all of them, children, women and men. Today Muslims in Italy are not so differently represented as their Semitic brothers were during the time of the Fascio and the Eia Eia alala.”

Gabriele Marranci examines the rise of Islamophobia in Italy.

Islam, Muslims, and an Anthropologist, 25 December 2007

Giuliani is the guy to chase ‘the Muslims’ back ‘to their caves’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

John Deady“The Guardian of London is conducting video documentaries up in New Hampshire. And they did a segment on Rudy in which they got a very off-kilter quote about Muslims from a Rudy campaign official in the state.

“The Guardian identifies him as John Deady, the co-chair of state Veterans for Rudy. Deady – and the key here is that he is a Rudy campaign official – says that Rudy should be our President because he has what it takes to tackle one of our ‘most difficult problems’, which he identifies as the ‘rise of the Muslims’. Deady adds that we need to ‘chase them back to their caves’ or otherwise ‘get rid of them’.”

TPM Election Central, 28 December 2007

Watch the Guardian video report here.

See also the follow-up article at TPM in which Deady defends his comments and goes on to state: “We’re not dealing with a rational mindset here. We’re dealing with madmen.” Asked if this is a reference to all Muslims, he replies: “I am talking about Muslims in general.” Asked to elaborate on his call to “get rid” of Muslims, Deady explained: “When I say get rid of them, I wasn’t necessarily [sic – emphasis added] referring to genocide.”

Update:  Deady has now resigned, according to Fox News. See also Ali Eteraz on the GOP’s Muslim problem.

Whose liberation?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“One of the most elusive tasks I have faced at conferences has been a definition of ‘Muslim women’ from which I could lay out the terms of their suffering and, in a true pompous academic fashion, advance some proposals for their liberation. The moment the term ‘Muslim women’ is deconstructed, my argument reaches an impasse. On the other hand, incorporating it into any diatribe against misogyny, oppression and persecution threatens to reduce my argument to one where Islam is the sole culprit. More importantly, the conflation between women and Islam inadvertently lumps together close to 1 billion women from around the globe, a homogenising equation which overlooks many other contextual variables that have shaped the plight of these women.”

Salam Al-Mahadin at Comment is Free, 26 December 2007

Study of Islam in West driven by fear, scholar says

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Tariq Ramadan 5OTTAWA – A pervasive bias exists in the way Islam is studied in the West, says a prominent Muslim thinker, who is calling for sweeping changes to the way Islamic studies are taught in universities.

Tariq Ramadan, a visiting professor at Oxford University and one of Europe’s leading intellectuals on Islam, argues that despite a growing interest in the field, the scholarly pursuit of Islam is driven not by an interest in theology, but by fear and an obsession with the struggle against terrorism.

In the latest issue of the Canadian journal Academic Matters, Ramadan chastises universities for their “carefully orchestrated infatuation” with Islamic studies. He says the current academic focus on terrorism reduces the richness of Islamic theology into political ideology.

“The study of religious thought proper (of the theology, of its premises, its internal complexities and its development) has been relegated to a subsidiary position,” he writes. “Universities in the West must seek the kind of knowledge of other civilizations and cultures – particularly that of Islam – that is driven neither by ideological agendas nor collective fears.” What’s “cruelly lacking,” Ramadan argues, is an objective study of Islamic law, legal scholars and philosophers as well as a “historical and critical approach to Islamic history and thought.”

He goes on to criticize western scholars for ignoring the body of “fresh, compelling, audacious critical thought” emerging from contemporary Muslim societies, which are often eclipsed by controversies surrounding sharia law or the role of women. “There is a deep-down, deliberate process of evolution under way in every Islamic society in the world,” writes Ramadan. “Far from rushing to conclusions, far from populist, ideological speech, the academic world must take this process seriously, study it, and present its outlines and implications.”

Ottawa Citizen, 22 December 2007

Climate of suspicion

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Perhaps it’s not surprising that someone who describes himself as phobic about the concept of Islamophobia and thinks that the invasion of Iraq is a ‘subject of purely historical interest’ might struggle to grasp why the relentless campaign of hostile media stories about the Muslim community is toxic and dangerous – or recognise that it is driven by a neoconservative agenda about terror and war.”

Seumas Milne replies to Andrew Anthony.

Comment is Free, 24 December 2007

School brainwashing kids into Islam with vocabulary exercises, angry Florida woman says in viral video

Posted on by Bob Pitt

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10203566777422544

 

Farmville Central High School in North Carolina is coming under fire for what conservatives believe is an attempt to indoctrinate children into the Muslim faith using Common Core vocabulary exercises.

Fox News commentator Todd Starnes attacked the school on behalf of anonymous parents he spoke to. “What if right after Pearl Harbor our educational system was talking about how great the Japanese emperor was?” one such parent asked. “What if during the Cold War our educational system was telling students how wonderful Russia was?”

The exercises in question are designed to broaden students’ vocabulary while also teaching them about the Islamic faith. For example, the word “mosque” is defined in one sentence, and students are later asked to use the word in a fill-in-the-blank exercise.

In a statement, the Pitt County School District stated that “[t]he course is designed to accompany the world literature text, which emphasizes culture in literature.”

But that was not enough for one friend of a mother of a student at Farmville High, Floridian Dianne Lynn Savage, who posted a video about the assignment on Facebook that went viral over the weekend.

“Can you see my rage?” Savage asked as she read from the vocabulary building exercise. “This is not made up, this isn’t paranoia, this isn’t Islamophobia – this is just fact.”

“You all understand what they’re doing?” she asked. “Bringing in this type of worksheet and this particular lesson, it’s very subliminal. And the fact that you’re using words like, ‘exciting’ and ‘imaginary,’ and that you’re trying to look like it’s a wonderful thing. They’re infiltrating our children’s minds!”

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