Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia

MCB defends open letter

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, replies to Polly Toynbee:

“The open letter to the prime minister – which I signed alongside more than 40 Muslim groups, MPs and peers – has been subject to deliberate misinterpretation, suggesting a willingness among Muslim leaders to excuse violence and promote a simplified view of how extremism takes root. Toynbee’s accusation – that the letter sails ‘perilously close to suggesting the government had it coming’ – may be an unintentional misrepresentation but it is a grave one.

“The letter articulated the need to base foreign policy on principle. It condemned attacks on civilians wherever they take place. It also sought acknowledgement that, though the causes and motivations are complex, British foreign policy contributes to the radicalisation of Muslims here and elsewhere. The welcome debate that followed the letter illustrates that this has been widely accepted.”

Guardian, 17 August 2006

Plane ‘plot’: media targets Tablighi Jamaat

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Media discourses about Islam … typically see acts of terror committed by some Muslims in a vacuum, ignoring the root causes of such terrorism. Such acts cannot be condoned but they must be seen, at least in part, as a response to the oppression that Muslims in many parts of the world today face, and as a protest against continuing Western imperialism and state terrorism. Adopting a purely law-and-order approach to the problem without addressing its root causes is, it must be realized, no solution at all. And targeting the TJ, the world’s largest Islamic movement, as a ‘font of terrorism’ on the basis of the alleged activities of a few individuals in some way associated with it is bound to make matters more complicated, further exacerbating the resentment and sense of persecution that many Muslims today in large parts of the world feel.”

Yoginder Sikand replies to ignorant attempts to associate Tablighi Jamaat with terrorism.

Milli Gazette, 16 August 2009

‘Lefty lexicon’ lands Orange executive in big trouble

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Mobile phone company Orange has suspended its community affairs manager after he posted what he termed a “lefty lexicon” on the blog site ConservativeHome which includes a description of Islamophobics as “anyone who objects to having their transport blown up on the way to work.”

Since Inigo Wilson posted his diatribe on what he sees as the abuse of language by “lefties” and especially the “rights industry”, Orange has received a flood of complaints from customers.

A campaign against him was mounted on the website of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPACUK). Yesterday it emerged that Mr Wilson has been suspended pending an internal Orange investigation. A spokesman for MPACUK said Mr Wilson’s views were extremely unhelpful at a time when British Muslims are increasingly being subjected to bigotry and prejudice, and bordered on racist.

Guardian, 17 August 2006

Over at Harry’s Place, David T “on balance” comes out in defence of Inigo Wilson: “I hope that Mr Wilson does not lose his job … to the extent that free expression is the principle at stake, the content of the speech is largely an irrelevant consideration.” Can you imagine David T taking a similarly “balanced” view if Wilson had been accused of anti-semitism?

Terrorism? Blame Pakistanis, says Stephen Schwartz

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Stephen Schwartz“With the foiling of the alleged conspiracy by radical Islamists to devastate transatlantic air travel – at the height of the US–UK tourist season – Britain has emerged, a little more than a year after the London Tube bombings, as the apparent main target for jihadist terror in Europe.

“This has little to do with British policies, poverty, discrimination or Islamophobia. Simply put, a million or more Sunnis of Pakistani background, who comprise the main element among British Asian Muslims, also include the largest contingent of radical Muslims in Europe. Their jihadist sympathies embody an imported ideology, organised through mosques and other religious institutions, rather than a ‘homegrown’ phenomenon, as the cliché would have it….

“Imported Muslim clerics are the basis of the threat. Islam in the UK is overwhelmingly influenced by imams and other religious officials born in Pakistan and trained in that country or in Saudi Arabia. Pakistani Sunni mosques in Britain are major centres for jihadist preaching, finance, incitement and recruitment.

“… the leaders of British Islam — exemplified by the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) — have assumed a posture of truculence, obstruction and indignation when any suggestion is made that jihadist sympathies infect their ranks…. It may be impossible for General Musharraf to rid his country of jihadist violence. But Britain need not and must not permit Pakistani religious gangsters to continue their control of British Islam.”

Spectator, 16 August 2006

Update:  For Yusuf Smith’s comments, see Indigo Jo Blogs, 20 August 2006

The venomous media voices who think no Muslim is worth talking to

Posted on by Bob Pitt

With the government’s policy of engagement with Muslim community under strain, Madeleine Bunting takes on the “media commentators pouring out a flood of venomous advice on exactly why no Muslim is worth talking to anyway”. She points out that “there are many people in this country who have no interest in listening to any Muslim unless they can chorus their own loathing and suspicion of Islam – the former Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali is the case par excellence”.

Bunting writes: “Some of this armchair advice to government can be pretty briskly dismissed, such as the paranoid fantasies of the rightwing Daily Mail commentator Melanie Phillips in her book Londonistan or those of the Conservative MP Michael Gove in his book Celsius 7/7. Both authors haven’t troubled themselves to get much beyond revived imperial delusions of demented, violent Muslims (check out Britain’s history in India, Sudan or Egypt).

“More insidious is the comprehensive attack on Whitehall’s policy towards the Muslim community over the last decade by the New Statesman‘s political editor, Martin Bright. He argues that the government should have no truck with any Muslim organisation in the UK that has had any involvement with any person who has ever been influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood, the political Islamist organisation.

“That rules out the Muslim Council of Britain, the Federation of Student Islamic Societies and other mainstays of the government’s ‘engagement’ policy of the last 10 years. It would even include intellectuals such as Professor Tariq Ramadan (grandson, no less, of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood), who was a member of the government taskforce set up to tackle Islamist extremism last year, and a star turn on its travelling roadshow for young Muslims.

“We are talking sweeping here. In fact, implement Bright’s advice and you’ve got a pretty small tea party for your next round of engagement.”

Guardian, 16 August 2006

In response, right-wing blogger Scott Burgess rallies to the defence of “Martin Bright’s groundbreaking work” and denounces Bunting as one of the Muslim Brotherhood’s “British fifth columnists “.

Daily Ablution, 16 August 2006

Contempt for democracy

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Anas Altikriti“The weekend response of the Foreign Office minister Kim Howells to a letter from British Muslim leaders that says the prime minister’s policies share the blame for the threat and reality of violence may have sounded clever to him, but the letter is a reflection of the anger and frustration spreading in the community. Among the signatories were those who had previously argued that there was no link between domestic terrorism and foreign policy.

“John Reid also attacked the letter, arguing that it is for the democratic process to decide our foreign policy, not terrorists. He is right, but most people in Britain, and the government’s own security services, believe that policies of war and occupation in the Middle East and wider Muslim world are fuelling the threat we are facing.

“Anyone in the Muslim community attracted to violence as a way of changing those policies needs be persuaded of the necessity of engaging in democratic politics – as most British Muslims have been doing. But the prospects of bringing them on board are not helped by the contempt for democracy and for the people’s views that the Blair government has demonstrated. In the interests of us all, the government must listen and change course now.”

Anas Altikriti in the Guardian, 15 August 2006

Muslims warn over being singled out at airport gates

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A leading British Muslim group last night warned the government to think “very carefully” following reports that the Department for Transport was in talks with the aviation industry to introduce a method of passenger profiling which could be used to single out Muslims for security checks.

The Muslim Council of Britain said the procedure, which includes “behavioural pattern recognition”, would inevitably lead to discrimination. Inayat Bunglawala, its spokesman, said the government risked alienating “the community whose help it needs in combating the terrorist threat”. He said: “Before some kind of religious profiling is introduced, a case has to be made; and we are certainly not convinced by the arguments for this kind of profiling. First of all, Muslims are not an ethnicity, as was shown by the arrests in last week’s raids; there are many white converts to Islam.”

Mr Bunglawala said that many Muslims already felt “unfairly targeted” because of their appearance, and that some form of profiling was already in effect. “This kind of thing must be intelligence-led, not appearance-led … I hope the government has thought very carefully about this.”

His remarks were echoed by one of Britain’s most senior Muslim police officers. Chief Superintendent Ali Desai of the Metropolitan police told BBC2’s Newsnight that profiling would create a new offence of “travelling whilst Asian”. He added: “That’s unpalatable to everyone … What we don’t want to do is actually alienate the very communities who are going to help us catch terrorists.”

Guardian, 15 August 2006

Imperialist platitudes

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“No comments better encapsulate British government refusal to either comprehend or take seriously the letter sent by Muslim organisations and politicians to the Prime Minister than John Reid’s pompous utterances. Mr Reid did his best to stress the ‘alien’ nature of the government critics by lecturing them that it is ‘not the British way’ to change policy under threat. Of course it isn’t. It normally takes a discreet phone call from the White House, in the face of which our entire foreign policy is open to rewrite.

“‘No government worth its salt would stay in power, in my view, and no government worth its salt would be supported by the British people if our foreign policy or any other aspect of policy was being dictated by terrorists’, he continued, as though the critics had suggested that any policy should be dictated by terrorists.

“Only a wilfully obtuse reading of the letter could inspire such an interpretation. The Muslim representatives were simply spelling out what Britain’s security services have already told the government – namely, that there is a link between this country’s pro-US foreign policy and the escalating terrorist threat…. Lecturing Muslim leaders to do more to combat the virus of extremism in their communities is a slimy substitute for the government facing up to its own responsibility for mass murder and opting to change its ways by adopting an ethical foreign policy.”

Morning Star editorial, 15 August 2006

‘Islamic fascists’ and ‘terror-prone Muslims’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Whenever Europeans get together to come up with ways to combat extremism and counter terrorism … they find themselves being the ones prescribed with making all the adjustments – as opposed to the terror-prone Muslims”.

Julia Gorin defends George Bush’s use of the term “Islamic fascists” and warns against accepting European notions of political correctness.

Front Page Magazine, 15 August 2006

For a more balanced view, see Lisa Miller’s article in Newsweek, 12 August 2006