Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia

Media Muslim coverage scrutinised

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hostile coverage is driving Muslims away from the rest of society says Rageh Omaar, a Muslim journalist and former BBC correspondent now with Al-Jazeera. He blames self-proclaimed “liberals” for the negative media coverage: “I think that how you show that you really are liberal is your stance against what you perceive to be the threat of Islam, which journalists see as this monolithic backward looking, extremist threat to your liberal traditions. And I think it is just a knee-jerk reaction amongst a lot of my friends and colleagues in the media.”

BBC News, 28 December 2006

See Charlie Beckett’s piece at Comment is Free, 29 December 2006

Both of these pieces confuse the issue by portraying Islamophobic bigots like John Ware and Martin Bright as honest reporters (“tough liberals”) who are only eager to get at the truth.

See also Mukul Devichand’s article at Open Democracy, 29 December 2006

The transcript of the Analysis programme is here.

Top Jewish group ‘terror’ apology

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Britain’s top Jewish body has apologised for branding a Muslim charity a “terrorist organisation”. In an out-of-court settlement, the Board of Deputies of British Jews said it should not have described Interpal in these terms.

London-based Interpal, which raises millions for Palestinian causes, had launched a libel action against the Board, due in the High Court next year. The board has now published a retraction and apology on its website.

In the statement, the Board said it had reached a settlement with Interpal in relation to a September 2003 article on its website which referred to “terrorist organisations such as Hamas and Interpal”. “We would like to make it clear that we should not have described Interpal in this way and we regret the upset and distress our item caused,” said the statement.

Interpal is one of the largest Muslim-led charities in Europe and says its funds humanitarian, educational and medical projects in the Palestinian territories. The charity, which spends approximately £5m a year, insists it keeps exhaustive records and audit trails of how its Palestinian partners spend money.

BBC News, 29 December 2005

For the BoD’s retraction, see here.

Clash of civilisations conference in London

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Conference: A World Civilisation or a Clash of Civilisations

20 January 2007, Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, London SW1

The controversial “clash of civilisations” theory is the subject of a special one-day conference organised by the GLA on Saturday 20 January.

The view has been put forward that the world is going into an era of conflict and war driven by a clash of civilisations. The Mayor’s policies are based on the exact opposite idea: that the multicultural city is part of creating a new concept of world civilisation that corresponds to a globalised world.

This conference will debate these contrasting approaches and their implications. The conference will feature a debate between the Mayor and Daniel Pipes, Director of the Middle East Forum, an American think tank that advises US policymakers on the Middle East. He has argued that “there is not so much a clash of civilisations as there is one of civilisations vs. barbarism”.

Other sessions will see scholars and policy-makers discuss the impact of international events on London’s communities and examine issues such as religious tolerance, human rights, diversity and the approach to multiculturalism.

Further details on GLA website here and here.

Increase in race hate crimes casts doubt on ‘One Scotland’ campaign

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Racist crime is growing across Scotland despite a multi-million-pound Executive campaign to tackle the problem, new figures obtained by The Scotsman have revealed. Some 3,387 racially-aggravated crimes and offences were recorded by the country’s eight police forces between April and December this year, compared with 3,192 during the same period last year – a rise of 6 per cent.

The increase has cast doubt on the effectiveness of the Executive’s “One Scotland” campaign launched in 2002 to tackle racism in the country’s streets and classrooms, and sparked calls for Jack McConnell, the First Minister, to put the issue on a platform equal in size to the one given to sectarianism in recent months.

Ethnic community leaders are also accusing politicians of failing to wake up to the “elephant in the room” that is growing Islamophobia, saying thousands of Muslims and members of other minority racial groups are continuing to be victimised following the 11 September and 7 July terrorism attacks.

In 2005-6, 4,294 racially-aggravated crimes were recorded by police – 358 every month and more than ten times the level recorded in 2001-2. Since then, the number has continued to rise according to new figures obtained by The Scotsman, with reported verbal and physical attacks rising to 376 per month.

The biggest increase has been seen in the Lothian and Borders police area, where police recorded 970 assaults and other racially-aggravated offences between April and December this year – up 26 per cent on the 768 crimes recorded for the same period in 2005. Grampian also saw a big rise in reported race hate crimes, from 271 to 312, up 15 per cent.

Chief Inspector Doug Forsyth, who is in charge of diversity issues at Lothian and Borders Police, claimed a greater willingness to report incidents lay behind the increase, rather than more crime.

“If people don’t want to go to the police station, they can report crimes with other agencies such as the council and health service who will pass the details to us. I think the rise is mostly due to greater confidence within ethnic communities that the police will take these things seriously and investigate them thoroughly.”

But Osama Saeed, Scottish spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain, disagreed, saying Asians were increasingly being victimised on religious grounds. “The police have not got to grips with the scale of the problem, which is vast. Incidents are not being reported because there isn’t a good link-up between communities and the police.

“People are more likely to be called a terrorist than a Paki. It’s more likely to be religiously-based abuse, particularly directed against Islam. The One Scotland campaign is fine but it isn’t really dealing with the changing face of racism. There’s an elephant in the room at the moment, attacks directed at Islam, which no-one is addressing. One Scotland isn’t hitting those buttons.”

The Scotsman, 26 December 2006

PM shelves HT ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The Prime Minister has been forced to shelve a central plank of his ‘war on terror’ strategy after opposition from senior police officers and the Home Office. Plans to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir, the radical Islamic group, have been dropped in the past few days following intense discussions between Number 10 and legal advisers.

“Counter-terrorism sources said Tony Blair had been warned that banning the group, which campaigns for Britain to become a caliphate – a country subject to Islamic law – would serve only as a recruiting agent if the group appealed against the move.

“The decision is a significant personal blow to Blair, who announced his intention to outlaw it shortly after the London bombings on 7 July, 2005, as part of a 12-point strategy to counter Islamic extremism.”

Observer, 24 December 2006

HT have welcomed the decision, while also pointing out that the organisation “works for the return of the Caliphate in the Muslim world” – which, contrary to the Observer‘s assertion, does not include the UK.

Hizb ut-Tahrir press release, 24 December 2006

Ban veils in public, says bishop

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Nazir Ali 2Muslim women should be banned from wearing the veil, to improve security and cohesion in Britain, the Church of England’s only Asian bishop has said. The Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester, urged the Government to introduce legislation that would force Muslims to remove the veil when they are at work or travelling.

In an outspoken attack on the custom of Muslim women to cover their faces, the Pakistani-born bishop said that the Islamic community needed to make greater efforts to integrate into British society.

His call for new laws to control the wearing of the veil in public comes only days after it was revealed that Mustaf Jama, the Somali suspected of murdering WPc Sharon Beshenivsky, is thought to have fled the country by dressing in the niqab, which covers the whole face except the eyes.

Continue reading →

Veiled meanings

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The reason young Muslim women wear the hijab is not to hide from people’s gaze, but to invite and challenge it, argues Brendan O’Neill of Spiked.

Comment is Free, 21 December 2006

The first comment on O’Neill’s piece nails its arrogance precisely: “Now, now, Mr O’Neill, neither you nor I nor anyone can get away with such sweeping statements. Maybe some muslim women do wear the veil for reasons you have deduced. Maybe not. This is merely what you, a politicised, white male imagines. I will listen with respect to what a woman who wears the hijab produces as her reasons – yours are simply an imposed narrative and interesting as a revelation of your reactions more than anything else.”

Update:  See also Dervish, 23 December 2006

Media: ‘Muslim woman = ruthless gunman’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

WPC Killer“The sharp differences in how the papers reacted to the verdict in the trial of the killers of policewoman Sharon Beshinivsky this week exposed the media’s vicious racism and Islamophobia. After all, it’s tough being a newspaper editor. Should we use page 1 to bash the Muslims, or the asylum seekers? Decisions, decisions…”

Media Workers Against the War examine press coverage of the baseless story about a suspected murderer fleeing the country disguised as a Muslim woman in a veil.

They conclude: “The truth is that the Times, Express, Sun and Guardian seized on the flimsiest of hints of a story in order to fill their pages with anti-Muslim bile.”

MWAW website, 22 December 2006