Incidents of racial violence and harassment in the eleventh week since the London bombings.
Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia
Imaan on the Qaradawi ‘stoning’ story
The LGBT Muslim organisation Imaan has issued the following statement in response to the false story that Yusuf al-Qaradawi called for the Crown Prince of Qatar to be stoned to death:
“We are concerned about the impact that continued distortion of Dr Yusuf Al-Qaradawi’s views is likely to have. There was another example of this distortion in last week’s Observer (Mandarins in a Mess, 4th September). Nick Cohen quoted an Outrage press release which claimed that Al-Qaradawi had called for the stoning of an Arab if claims he was gay were true. The source was an inaccurate report in Aljazeera magazine (no link to the well known electronic media station), which claimed to have sourced Al-Qaradawi’s view from Islam Online. A careful reading of this website reveals this was the view of Sheikh Al-Munajjid. Both Aljazeera magazine and GALHA have removed articles from their websites following this clarification. Outrage has not. We disagree with Al-Qaradawi’s views on homosexuality, which mirror views of Jewish and Christian leaders, but we believe that singling out Islam as being uniquely reactionary encourages Islamophobia and divides the Muslim and Lesbian and Gay communities. We believe it is correct for institutions such as the Foreign Office to work with all religious leaders on issues for those communities.
“What is not helpful in the fight against homophobia and Islamophobia, oppressions that equally victimise LGBT Muslims, is having the media and groups such as GALHA, Outrage and others continuously misrepresenting Islam. Journalists should ensure their facts are accurate. Consulting with lesbian and gay Muslim representative groups, before publishing articles that could have an adverse effect on these communities, would also be a courtesy.”
21st-century McCarthyism
“Hizb ut-Tahrir does not espouse violence even against dictatorial Arab governments, much less against western states. If Britain bans such an organisation even though it is not supporting terrorism, it will be an echo of what the US government did from the late 1940s amid McCarthyist paranoia. Then Communist party members were named and blacklisted, foreign-born members deported, leaders put on trial for plotting the overthrow of the government – though the US government never banned the Communist party outright.”
Natasha Walter in the Guardian, 21 September 2005
Muslim students’ police distrust
The higher education minister says he is “extremely worried” by a Muslim student survey showing one in 10 would not warn the police of a terror attack. Bill Rammell called for a “mature debate” about the attitudes and grievances expressed by young Muslims. But he welcomed the finding that an “overwhelming majority of students have a distinct affinity to Britain”.
Muslim students spoke of the prejudice and hostility they had experienced since the London terror attacks. And they said the student survey revealed that fears over extremism on campus were “grossly exaggerated” – with 96% of Muslim students unequivocally condemning political violence.
Survey reveals alienation felt by Muslim students
Muslim students feel isolated following the attacks of July 7 and the row over extremism on campus is further alienating them from university life, a survey showed today.
Only 72% of those polled said they would immediately tell the police if they discovered a Muslim friend was planning a terrorist attack. The Federation of Student Islamic Societies (Fosis), which undertook the survey, said that this was testimony to the lack of trust between the Muslim community and the police.
The survey of 466 Muslim students and recent graduates, mostly members of Islamic societies on campuses, was launched this morning at the House of Commons Sir Iqbal Sacranie, the secretary general of the Muslim Council for Britain, Anas Al-Tikriti, from the Muslim Association of Britain and the minister for higher education, Bill Rammell.
Before the July 7 attacks only 5% of those polled recalled feeling uncomfortable being Muslim in Britain, but after the attacks that figure rose to 31%. Of the respondents, 85% condemned the attacks, 4% did not and 11% gave no response. Some 47% reported having experienced Islamophobia.
If they knew of someone planning an attack, 72% of those polled would tell the police straight away; 8% would try to talk them out of it; 10% did not answer; 6% said no but gave no reason; 2% said no, mistrustful; and 2% said no, would never grass on a Muslim.
It reveals that most students believe that changing foreign policy would be the most effective way of reducing the threat of terrorism against Britain. A further 62% believe that British foreign policy played either a complete or major role in causing the London attacks.
The report goes on to recommend that police work harder to ensure they gain the trust of young Muslims to help tackle terrorism, and that Muslims should recognise suspicious activity, and understand it is a religious duty to inform the police.
On recent allegations that extremism is rife on some university campuses, the report said: “The accusation of Islamic extremism being widespread on campus is largely unfounded and thus universities must balance the need for national security with the need for freedom of speech and religious practice.
“Student unions and university authorities work with Islamic societies to remove suspicion and misconceptions about extremism on campuses.”
Student union to defy ban on Islamist debate
Student leaders at Middlesex University last night vowed to go ahead and host a debate with the controversial Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir despite their university’s ban on the meeting.
The Middlesex vice-chancellor, Michael Driscoll, yesterday ordered the union to cancel the question and answer session – scheduled to take place later this month – following a call from the education secretary last week for a crackdown on extremism on campus.
Today the student union said it would continue with the debate, but move it from a university building to its own student union.
My fight for justice for Guantánamo prisoners
My fight for justice for Guantánamo prisoners
By John Higginson
Metro, 20 September 2005
“The most important thing going on right now is the hunger strike in Guantánamo”, says lawyer Clive Stafford-Smith. “There are ten British nationals all of them to my knowledge going into their sixth week of starving themselves to death. These people are going to die in the next few weeks and the military are trying to keep all that a secret.”
Stafford-Smith, 46, is the legal director of Reprieve, a British charity protecting the human rights of people facing the death penalty.
One of the worst alleged miscarriages of justice in Guantánamo Bay is that of Omar Deghayes, a Libyan who spent 15 years in London. The 35-year-old completed a degree here and went to Afghanistan to carry out humanitarian law work. He moved to Pakistan and was seized by US forces in 2002.
According to his supporters, he was picked up by bounty hunters and sold to US troops. He has not been charged with any offence. The only evidence against him is a video which the US claims links him to terrorism – but facial recognition experts say he is not the man in the video.
“Omar was one of America’s 50 top terrorists based on a video they had of a terrorist in Chechnya”, Mr Stafford-Smith said. “When Omar finally found out why he was being held, he told me he had never been to Chechnya. The video is not Omar. The man is a Chechnyan terrorist, who is believed to have died in April 2004. So Omar has been held for three-and-a-half years on a total misidentification.
“He has been pretty savagely treated in Guantánamo and blinded in his right eye. He told me, ‘I may as well take my life into my own hands rather than waiting for them to take it’. He is firm in his belief to take his life.”
Holocaust Memorial Day is too exclusive
We must honour all victims of genocide equally, says Iqbal Sacranie.
Cf. Cathy Young’s claim that the MCB’s position on Holocaust Memorial Day proves that: “The infection of anti-Jewish bigotry is alarmingly widespread in the Muslim community today, not only in predominantly Muslim and Arab countries … but in Western democracies as well.”
Demonising Muslims will not reduce terror
“The London bombings pose stark dilemmas for those on the left and British Muslims in particular. The vast majority of us believe in allowing people to express their differences and practice their culture and religion, without being pushed into one set of homogenous thoughts. Should those freedoms be surrendered by supporting some of the measures being proposed by Tony Blair? Is it really credible to suppose that we should forget the international policy issues bound up in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, and Kashmir?
“The media (left and right) seem to think that what happened on July 7th is all to do with Islam and that Muslims want to impose their way of life in the west, destroy our liberal democracies and want to oppress women, and they think that the Hijab is a sign of that. That is just plain wrong. The lessons of history highlight the perils of targeting a religious group through propaganda.”
Yasmin Qureshi in Chartist, September/October 2005
Anti-terror law a threat to free speech
“Muslim extremists should not be allowed to use the force of religious authority to propel their followers into committing acts of violence. Helping organise terrorist cells should also be illegal, even if the person involved doesn’t actually detonate the bomb or procure the explosive. I don’t have any problem with that. But the idea that people can be prosecuted for simply expressing views about terrorism takes us into very disturbing territory. Like the proposed legislation on religious hatred, it constitutes a threat to freedom of speech.
Take George Galloway, who was in his usual robust form last week in New York debating Iraq with the journalist Christopher Hitchens. Two months ago, Galloway gave an interview to Al Jazeera in which he praised Iraqi militants in the most glowing terms. ‘These poor Iraqis,” said the former Labour MP, “ragged people with their sandals, with their Kalashnikovs, with the lightest and most basic of weapons … are writing the names of their cities and towns in the stars. With 145 military operations every day, they have made the country ungovernable by the people who occupy it.’
“Now, any way you look at that it is exalting and celebrating terrorism. Should George Galloway be imprisoned for seven years for making these remarks? Of course not, the very idea is an offence against freedom.”
Ian Macwhirter in the Sunday Herald, 18 September 2005
Not sure the folks at Harry’s Place would agree with that last point.