Here’s one we missed – an interesting and informative interview with Farzana of Imaan (though the author can’t resist commenting that Imaan “have acquired a somewhat precarious reputation among the gay community – most notably baffling gay parade-goers in 2005 when they appeared on a London Pride float, hiding their identities”).
Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia
Dead writer’s words fan flames of Islamophobia
Dead writer’s words fan flames of Islamophobia
By Alfio Bernabei
Searchlight, February 2007
A RACIST CALL to blow up a mosque made by Italy’s best selling writer Oriana Fallaci seems to be achieving some of its intended effect, with a little help from rightwing parties.
In that famed part of Tuscany nicknamed Chiantishire, Islamophobia, fanned by Fallaci’s incendiary remarks, reached a peak in December with a second demonstration against the building of a mosque in Colle Val d’Elsa, a town of 14,000 inhabitants near Siena.
While the majority of the protesters recited the Lord’s Prayer, neo-fascists acted as Fallaci’s foot soldiers. The building site came under attack, not for the first time. Metal barriers were torn down and metal poles, which were part of the foundations, uprooted. Among the attackers police identified Forza Nuova militants who had vowed to launch a crusade “to protect our traditions”.
In a separate incident a few days earlier, the severed head of a pig was thrown at the entrance to the building site. Around 1,000 Muslims live in the area, working in farming.
Such protests are nothing new – they have occurred in Genova, Lodi and Padova, among other places, over the past few years. Rightwing political parties, such as the xenophobic Northern League, the neo-fascist National Alliance and Forza Italia, can count on hundreds of their members to take to the streets when demonstrations are called against the erection of mosques. The nazi-fascists always rush to the scene, eager to be seen at the forefront of such protests. Forza Nuova has issued leaflets linking all mosques and Muslims with terrorism, saying: “There is no such thing as a moderate Islam, no mosques to be allowed in our land”.
The current incidents at Colle Val d’Elsa have acquired special significance because of the ghost of a celebrity hovering in the background and questions about the role that certain media can play in fanning the flames of racism, whether through editorial misjudgement or, as some have suggested, by design, wanting to espouse the doctrine of a clash of civilisations.
Fallaci, who died last September, had a house in the area. Interviewed in June 2006 by The New Yorker she said that rather than see a mosque intruding in her beloved environment, she would obtain explosives and blow up the building. “I will go to my friends in Carrara, you know, where there is the marble. They are all anarchists. With them, I take the explosives. I make you juuump [sic] in the air. I blow it up! I do not want to see this mosque – it’s very near my house in Tuscany. I do not want to see a 24-metre minaret in the landscape of Giotto … So I BLOW IT UP!”
A green light to shoot the innocent
The families caught up in the Forest Gate terror raids attacked an Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) report as a “whitewash” on Tuesday after it said that officers would not be disciplined.
The police watchdog criticised Scotland Yard’s handling of the raids in east London last June and urged the Met to apologise publicly for its “very aggressive” tactics. But the IPCC claimed that the police had been justified in carrying out the raids and that officers would not be disciplined.
The families, in a statement issued through their lawyers, said that they had been the victims of a “crime of the utmost seriousness” and had been denied justice because of the failure to investigate that crime.
Mohammed Abdul Kahar, one of two brothers arrested in the raids, attacked the report as a “whitewash.” Mr Kahar, who was shot during the raids, said that the report gave a “green light” to police to conduct anti-terror operations the way that they wanted.
The abuse of research
As political parties set out their stalls of new ideas in preparation for a general election, the increasing influence of privately funded research on political discussion will demand closer scrutiny. Private thinktanks are increasingly shaping national debates in the media, something made possible through the private funds required for high-profile launches, websites and email campaigns.
A striking example of this symbiotic relationship is Policy Exchange’s report Living Apart Together, on Muslim social attitudes, which is officially launched today. It was released to the press two weeks ago to provide research cover for David Cameron’s speech attacking multiculturalism and prominent Muslim organisations. The report included claims that a significant minority of Muslims were “living apart” from British society, claims that were widely reported in the media and appeared to legitimise Conservative party rhetoric.
Yet few reports made clear that Policy Exchange has an explicit political agenda. Michael Gove, the Conservative MP and author of the book Celsius 7/7 – How the West’s Policy of Appeasement Has Provoked Fundamentalist Terror and What Has to Be Done Now, is a founding chairman of Policy Exchange. And he has made it clear that thinktanks are crucial for the next general election campaign, stating that “a precursor to electoral victory is victory in the battle of ideas and the battle for the agenda”.
The politicisation of research can lead to serious distortions in debates on policy issues. Debates about multiculturalism, security and British Muslims are bound to have a central place in the next election.
Marie Smyth and Jeroen Gunning report in the Guardian, 13 February 2007
Bruce Bawer and Islamophobia
“So what are Mr. Bawer’s views? He calls himself a ‘liberal’ cultural critic but his views are anything but liberal, and he is much in vogue with the ultraconservative National Review types as well as the ethno-nationalist ‘intellectuals’ in Europe where he lives….
“Bawer has his own solution to the ‘immigrant question’. He tells us his views are unfairly attacked by people who call him names ‘instead of trying to respond to irrefutable facts and arguments’. If Mr. Bawer’s arguments are indeed ‘irrefutable’ what would be the point of trying to respond to them? People who believe their opinions and arguments are ‘irrefutable’ are manifesting that very same fundamentalist mentality they claim to be opposing.
“Here is Bawer’s solution. ‘European officials’, he writes, ‘have a clear route out of this nightmare. They have armies. They have police. They have prisons. They’re in a position to deport planeloads of people everyday. They could start rescuing Europe tomorrow.’ Clearly, when you are calling out the army and advocating deportation of planeloads of people daily, there is more to it than a crackdown on violent militant Islamists. This looks like a call to a general assault on Muslim immigrants in general.
“This may also explain his sympathetic defense of the Sweden Democrats in an opinion piece he wrote for the December 8, 2006 New York Sun. This article, ‘While Sweden Slept‘ is an incontinent attack on Swedish Social Democracy. The Sweden Democrats he champions in this article are a small radical right-wing party of ethno-nationalists. It grew out of the racist ‘Keep Sweden Swedish’ movement of the 1980s. Their basic ideology is the ein Volk, ein Reich variety. One of their own leaders resigned saying the party was infested with neo-Nazis, racists and holocaust deniers. The party is opposed to immigration and if it ever got into power would no doubt take Bawer’s views on how to ‘rescue Europe’ (or at least Sweden) seriously.”
Thomas Riggins in Political Affairs, 13 February 2007
The hypocrisy of Richard Littlejohn
Livingstone damns Daily Mail as foolish and irresponsible
Morning Star, 12 February 2007
London Mayor Ken Livingstone attacked the Daily Mail newspaper on Sunday after a columnist appeared to endorse letter bombing offices connected with the congestion charge.
Populist ranter Richard Littlejohn wrote in Friday’s edition of the newspaper: “Be honest, until you heard that a woman had been injured, how many of you suppressed a cheer at the news that someone had sent a letter bomb to the company which runs London’s congestion charge?
“Even after we learnt that two men were treated for blast injuries, I’ll bet that there were still plenty of motorists who thought: ‘Serves the bastards right’.”
Police are probing seven mail bomb attacks on businesses since January 18 – three of which took place last week.
Although Mr Littlejohn insisted that protests that harm others can never be justified, Mr Livingstone branded the Daily Mail “foolish and irresponsible” for printing the column.
“He has sought to legitimise the idea that it was normal to cheer the bombing of the offices of a company managing the congestion charge. His whole column is dangerous and stupid,” said the mayor. “The Daily Mail give Richard Littlejohn a big cheque for writing his column, but they shouldn’t give him a blank one.”
Green London Assembly member Jenny Jones added: “If a Muslim publication had printed similar inflammatory remarks about an international issue, there would be a huge outcry. Littlejohn’s hypocrisy is stunning.”
Worldwide protests greet Guantánamo anniversary
Five years of torture: worldwide protests greet Guantánamo anniversary
By Tom Mellen
Morning Star, 12 January 2007
HUMAN rights activists gathered outside the US embassy in London on Thursday as part of an international day of protest marking the fifth anniversary of the opening of the notorious Guantanamo Bay concentration camp.
Under the fluttering stars and stripes, the imperial eagle and a couple of machine-gun toting police officers, more than 500 protesters, including jumpsuited Amnesty International campaigners muzzled with masks and earmuffs, filled Grosvenor Square, graphically hammering home the daily brutality taking place in the legal black hole.
Amnesty spokesman Neil Durkin said that, “if we allow Guantanamo to continue unopposed, human rights standards all over the world will be eroded.” Calling for everyone to show solidarity with those who remain languishing in the camp five years on, Mr Durkin warned that “everyone is at risk of Guantanamo-style treatment.”
In Scotland, over 40 Amnesty supporters braved driving wind and rain to protest outside the US consulate in Edinburgh, where they chained themselves together to highlight the suffering of the Guantanamo detainees.
Rallies also took place in New York, Tokyo, Rome, Madrid and Israel, while international peace activists including US “peace mum” Cindy Sheehan and the brother of British citizen Omar Deghayes marched to the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay to demand its closure.
The “icon of lawlessness” has drawn criticism from lawyers and rights activists ever since the first 20 prisoners were transported there from Afghanistan in 2002.
US President George Bush was dealt a blow by the US Supreme Court in June last year, when judges ruled that the military tribunal system at the base was illegal, breaching both the Geneva conventions and US law.
In total, some 775 men have been detained, with just under half – 379 – released. Just 10 detainees have been charged, but none has gone to trial.
We don’t teach hate
The Sunday Times has a fairly balanced article (compared with previous media coverage) on the King Fahad Academy controversy which at least allows the director, Sumaya Alyusuf, to put her side of the story.
Critic of Islam finds new home in US
Yet another article about the appalling Ayaan Hirsi Ali, though this one is a bit more balanced than the eulogies that have appeared in the British press (even if it does fudge this issue of why Hirsi Ali left the Netherlands).
Ibrahim Hooper of CAIR is quoted as saying: “We believe that she will bring an increase to the level of anti-Muslim bias in this country that we saw her bring to the situation in Europe. Unfortunately her message is one of bigotry, not one of mutual understanding.”
Hooper is reported as accusing Hirsi Ali of exaggerating her attacks on Islam in order to further her own agenda. “She is just one more Muslim-basher on the lecture circuit.”
Failing Islamic school says closure is unfair
The founder of an Islamic school shut down yesterday by the government has claimed he is a victim of demonisation of the Muslim community in the media.
Bilal Patel told the Guardian that unsubstantiated claims that Jameah Islameah had links with notorious extremists such as Abu Hamza so debilitated the institution that it struggled to attract staff and pupils. The school was also the subject of a high-profile raid last September.