Simon Assaf reports from Paris as days of rioting have engulfed French cities.
Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia
UK policy ‘key factor’ in extremism
British foreign policy is a “key contributory factor” in driving UK Muslims to extremism, official Home Office advisers have concluded.
Working groups set up in the wake of the July 7 atrocities said the Government should learn from the impact of its foreign policies, particularly in the Middle East. The working groups’ final report said “radical impulses” among the Muslim community were often triggered by “perceptions of injustices inherent in western foreign policy”.
The report, compiled by seven committees appointed by the Home Secretary, said: “British foreign policy – especially in the Middle East – cannot be left unconsidered as a factor in the motivations of criminal radical extremists. We believe it is a key contributory factor. The Government should learn from the impact of its foreign policies on its electors.”
The Scotsman, 10 November 2005
What a pity these groups didn’t bother to consult Nick Cohen, that well-known expert on Islam. He could have told them that all Islamists are members of “psychopathic movements that are in the end beyond rational explanation”. See here.
Paris heat not from Muslims
“The riots, described as France’s worst since May 1968, have been linked to the threat of radical Islam. But both descriptions are misleading. The violent unrest is better compared to the riots that burnt down African-American ghettos across the United States in the 1960s. ‘It is nothing to do with radical Islam or even Muslims’, says Olivier Roy, research director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research and one of the world’s leading authorities on political Islam. He says that although many rioters are from Muslim backgrounds, ‘these guys are building a new idea of themselves based on American street culture. It’s a youth riot – they are protesting against the fact that they are supposed to be full French citizens and they are not’.”
James Burton in The Age, 8 November 2005
Scholar warns against putting Islamic spin on French riots
From his current vantage point at Oxford University, Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan cautions against putting an Islamic spin to the unrest that has swept France’s downtrodden surburbs.
In an interview with AFP, Ramadan said the French authorities will need to embrace a more sophisticated approach if they want to respond effectively to the rioting that has run for a dozen nights straight.
“In all that is happening, there are of course groups who are in it for pure vandalism, for wild violence,” said the scholar, named by Time magazine as one of the leading thinkers of the 21st century but barred from the United States.
“But the phenomenon doesn’t stop there,” he added, citing “objective events” involving the relationship between those living in the grim suburban housing projects and French society as a whole.
“People (in the suburbs) have the impression that they count for nothing, that they can be looked down upon and insulted in any way.”
He added: “We’re in the process of losing a footing in the suburbs. Even so-called Muslim associations are more and more disconnected. The fracture is profound… We are seeing an Americanisation in terms of violence.”
“Above all, one must not Islamisize the question of the suburbs,” Ramadan stressed. “The question that France must answer is absolutely not a question of religion.”
Asked where the roots of the malaise lie, Ramadan said the entire political class in France has been “blind” to what has been happening in the suburbs, with their unemployed youth of Arab and African origin and bleak high-rises.
“There’s an obsession about a religious divide, but no one sees the socio-economic divide in France, with places in the process of becoming ghettos with the suburbs on one side, the better-off areas on the other.”
“There must be a struggle against this institutionalised racism. There are second-class citizens in France. That is the reality.”
California synagogue that hosted Islamophobe urged to invite Muslim speaker
The Southern California office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-LA) today urged a Los Angeles synagogue that recently hosted the operator of a virulently anti-Muslim website to invite a Muslim representative who can offer a balancing perspective on Islam.
CAIR-LA has learned that Robert Spencer, who operates the “Jihad Watch” Internet hate site, spoke at Temple Shalom for the Arts during a Yom Kippur event. Spencer’s website is notorious for its depiction of Islam as an inherently violent faith that is a threat to world peace.
‘Why France is burning’ – Melanie Phillips explains
“Nicolas Sarkozy, the tough-minded Interior Minister, has been blamed for inflaming the situation by his uncompromising language. French policy in general has been blamed for herding poor Arabs into suburban ghettoes where they have been left to fester in high unemployment and poverty. The disturbances are thus being portrayed as race riots caused by official discrimination and insensitivity.
“But this is a gross misreading of the situation. It is far more profound and intractable. What we are seeing is, in effect, a French intifada: an uprising by French Muslims against the state….
“M. Sarkozy and the police are determined to take back the streets. The Muslims are equally determined to keep territory they feel they have conquered from the French state…. For more than twenty years France’s Muslim areas have been out of control. Indeed, they only turned into Muslim ghettoes in the first place because Muslim violence and harassment forced everyone else out…. The fact is that French Muslims want to be segregated. The ghettoes are a way of ensuring a separate Islamic existence without having to assimilate into French society….
“This is all bound up with the erosion of national identities across Europe. This has affected even France, once a ferocious proponent of French culture which was imposed through a centralised schools system, a strong police force and national military service…. Banning the hijab (Islamic headscarf) in schools represented a flickering of the old national certainty as France sniffed the danger that had arisen in its midst. But it was too little, and maybe too late.
“Even now Britain, France and the rest of Europe are still in varying stages of denial over Muslim unrest. Reluctant even to admit that religion is central to this phenomenon, they look instead for ways to blame themselves and use the insult of ‘Islamophobia’ to shut down debate. The warning for us from the disturbing events in France could not be clearer. We must end the ruinous doctrine of multiculturalism and reassert British identity….”
Mad Mel rants on.
For a contrary view – which is based on interviews with the youth involved in the disturbances, as distinct from Phillips generating Islamophobic fantasies out of her own head – see Molly Moore’s piece in the Washington Post, 6 November 2005
US faces scrutiny over secret prisons
The International Committee of the Red Cross, the European Union and human rights groups said Thursday they would press the U.S. and European governments for information about the reported existence of secret prisons in Eastern Europe, where the CIA has detained top al Qaeda captives.
Critics condemn UK terror bill
United Press International interviews Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty on the government’s Terror Bill.
The return of the caliphate
There is no reason why the west should set its face against the vision of a reunited Islamic world, Osama Saeed argues.
Over at Harry’s Place the inimitable David T comments: “Another day, another piece of Milne-commissioned advocacy for clerical fascism from his allies in the Muslim Brotherhood.”
Ghettos shackle French Muslims
Rioting by youths in a Paris suburb has highlighted the discontent among sections of France’s immigrant population. The BBC News website’s Henri Astier explores the sense of alienation felt by many French Muslims.
A useful corrective to the claim that French secularism, in contrast to British multiculturalism, counters segregation and treats members of minority communities as equal citizens.