Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia

Lawyer lambasts arrest of actors

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Clive Stafford SmithLawyer lambasts arrest of actors

By Daniel Coysh

Morning Star, 22 February 2006

Human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith said yesterday that the arrest of two actors last week, who portrayed former Guantanamo Bay detainees was “an ugly farce.” The actors, along with the former prisoners that they played in Michael Winterbottom’s The Road to Guantanamo, were held at Luton Airport after returning from the Berlin Film Festival last Thursday.

The story was reported in the Morning Star on Monday after its online exposure by former British ambassador Craig Murray, but mainstream media sources have been reluctant to follow it up.

Human rights group Reprieve insisted yesterday that the four men had been “detained” at the Bedfordshire airport after returning from Germany on an easyJet flight.

Reprieve legal director Clive Stafford Smith said: “This may be a farce, but it is an ugly farce. First, the Special Branch adds insult to injury by harassing innocent men who suffered for two long years in Guantanamo Bay before being released without charge. As if that were not enough, the Special Branch then detains the actors who portray them in a film.”

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SOAS, Nasser Amin and Islamophobia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

SOAS academic John Game writes on the victimisation of Nasser Amin, which he says raises “the question of racism and Islamophobia. We should speak plainly. SOAS is easy to target in this way because a large part of the student body come from the Arab world and a larger part are Muslims. In our society today it is possible to say anything one likes about Muslims (rather like asylum seekers)…. One of our students, the author of the article on political violence, has been subjected to a vicious witch hunt in the pages of the national press and the response of our college has been to force the SU to initiate disciplinary proceedings against him. Islamophobia in the wider society means that SOAS’s ‘reputation’ is under assault. Either one aggressively stands up to such Islamophobia or one decides to sacrifice a few students to it, sending the message that one regards Muslim students as a liability (despite perhaps privately knowing that the whole business is an artificial storm in a tea cup) and promising the relevant authorities that there is no need for them to keep ‘a close eye’ on Muslim students because, you see, we are doing it for them”.

Muslim Weekly, 17-23 February 2006

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Guantanamo film stars were held under terror laws, claims Murray

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Guantanamo film stars were held under terror laws, claims Murray

Morning Star, 20 February 2006

Police arrested the stars of director Michael Winterbottom’s new film The Road to Guantanamo under the Prevention of Terrorism Act when they returned to Britain after winning a major award, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray said yesterday.

Mr Winterbottom had been showing the film at the Berlin Film Festival, where he won the best director award.

Mr Murray claimed that police arrested and interrogated three of the film’s stars on Friday, together with the three ex-Guantanamo detainees on whose story the film is based. They were held by Special Branch and questioned for several hours about where they had been and who they had met. Mr Murray also said that they had been questioned on Mr Winterbottom’s politics.

However, following legal intervention by human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce, the group were eventually released.

The Road to Guantanamo traces the true story of Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Ruhal Ahmed, three Muslim friends from Birmingham who were picked up as aliens in Afghanistan by US forces and ended up in Guantanamo for three years, where they suffered brutal and humiliating treatment.

Mr Murray said that people had been questioning his source for the story and, “particularly, querying why it is not in the mainstream media if it is true. “Well, I was in Mr Winterbottom’s office and heard it first hand, from people who were there when it happened,” he said.

For more details, visit www.craigmurray.co.uk

Anti-racism campaigners vow to battle BNP

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Anti-racism campaigners vow to battle BNP

Morning Star, 20 February 2006

Anti-racism campaigners vowed on Saturday to put out the biggest campaign possible against the far-right British National Party as it fights this year’s local council elections.

The Unite Against Fascism national conference in London heard that the BNP had saved its deposits in 34 constituencies in last year’s general election, compared to only five in 2001. In 2004, the BNP missed getting elected to the London Assembly and European Parliament by a hair’s breadth. It currently has 21 local councillors and will try to use them as a launch pad to gain several more council seats in the 2006 local elections.

Delegates heard that, where the BNP has council seats, incidents of racism and homophobia have risen and, if the party’s support continues to increase, it will be on course to make a national breakthrough.

UAF joint secretary Sabby Dhalu said that the events of the last few weeks have clarified the serious threat that the growing climate of racism in Britain and the rest of Europe poses to us all. “Racism towards Muslims is being presented under the banner of ‘freedom of speech’,” she said.

“All these events indicate a legitimisation and deepening climate of racism. In 1930s Germany, the nazis systematically used such so-called cartoons depicting Jewish people in the most dehumanising manner for the sole purpose of creating caricatures that justified their programme of mass extermination of the Jewish people. It is incumbent on all anti-racists and anti-fascists to condemn unreservedly the publication of these racist images, for exactly the same reasons,” Ms Dhalu said.

The UAF is organising three national days of action against the BNP on February 25, March 25 and April 29.

If you want to get involved in activities in your local area on these days, please contact the UAF office on (020) 7833-4916 or (020) 7837-4522.

LGBT organisations support UAF, oppose Tatchell

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgendered Community supports maximum unity in the fight against the far right

LGBT organisations who are participating in and supporting the Unite Against Fascism campaign and its conference on Saturday 18th February have issued the following statement:

Unite Against Fascism – an alliance with all those who face the threat of the far right

As Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgendered (LGBT) organisations and individuals we support the principle that unity against fascism can only be effective by working with all those who face the threat of the far right.

The British National Party (BNP)’s politics of hatred includes attacking Muslims, the denial of the Holocaust, the aim of an “all-white Britain”, which could only be achieved through violent means, and campaigns of homophobia: They have run a gay pub landlord out of business in Burnley, liken gay men to paedophiles and have recently promoted a campaign attacking LGBT history month, describing it as an “atrocity”. They stand in the tradition of the Nazis, whose rise to power resulted in the deaths of millions of Jewish people, lesbians and gay men, disabled people, black people and trade unionists as well as others.

We cannot afford to underestimate the mortal threat that growing fascism poses to all of our communities or to be divided in the struggle against it. This means bringing together all those who are threatened by and opposed to fascism within a united anti-fascist framework. Muslim communities are a major target of BNP hate campaigning.

It is a regrettable reality that leading figures of most major religions have reactionary attitudes to homosexuality. We obviously disagree with these views. However we believe all those who oppose the BNP must be engaged with and that in turn can open a dialogue in which we seek to change such views.

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The BNP is riding the wave of racism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The BNP is riding the wave of racism

By Sabby Dhalu

Morning Star, 16 February 2006

The events of the last few weeks have clarified the serious threat that the growing climate of racism in Britain and the rest of Europe poses to us all.

The BNP has announced its intention to make the forthcoming local elections a “referendum on Islam,” riding on a wave of Islamophobia and rising racism.

BNP leader Nick Griffin and party activist Mark Collett were acquitted recently on half of the charges for incitement to racial hatred. The publication and republication of the so-called Danish cartoons have led to protests across the world.

Racism towards Muslims is being presented under the banner of “freedom of speech.”

All these events indicate a legitimisation and deepening climate of racism.

The use of cartoons to create or strengthen grotesque racist stereotypes of entire peoples is nothing new.

In 1930s Germany, the nazis systematically used such so-called cartoons depicting Jewish people in the most dehumanising manner for the sole purpose of creating caricatures that justified their programme of mass extermination of the Jewish people.

Black people have also been subject to such caricatures and depiction by racists and white supremacists in many parts of Europe and north America.

If published, any such images today rightly receive widespread condemnation.

It is incumbent on all anti-racists and anti-fascists to condemn unreservedly the publication of these racist images, for exactly the same reasons as the cartoons in the 1930s needed to condemned.

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The anger at racist cartoons continues

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Trafalgar Square rally (3)From London’s Trafalgar Square to Ramallah in Palestine, from Lebanon to Austria, the caricatures of the prophet Mohammed, first printed in a Danish paper, have sparked rage.

Some 20,000 protesters filled Trafalgar Square in London on Saturday of last week for a rally against Islamophobia and incitement. The event was called at short notice by the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) and others in the wake of the cartoons row.

The protest was also supported by the Stop the War Coalition and CND. Lindsey German, convenor of Stop the War, was warmly received by the crowd when she spoke at the rally. She noted that it wasn’t only Muslims who find the cartoons offensive: “They offend me because they offend my politics – they are racist provocations from a racist newspaper.”

Socialist Worker, 18 February 2006

See also the editorial comment, “Cartoon row: standing firmly united“, in the same paper.

Islamophobia in New Zealand

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The election of Aysser Aljanabi, a young Muslim woman, as head girl of St Mary’s College, a Catholic high school in Wellington, has provoked a hostile response in some quarters. “Given what’s going on internationally I can understand some people’s reaction”, Catholic Education Office chief executive Pat Lynch was quoted as saying.

To Patiently Explain, 15 February 2006