Since the disturbances in Bradford almost all commentators, reporters, race and religious experts and politicians have been making remarks, which in any other context, would have been condemned as blatantly racist and Islamophobic.
Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia
Old hatred, new style
“English exams are a red herring. But more worryingly, Cryer’s comments are an illustration of how nakedly some liberals are prepared to exploit mainstream anti-Islamic sentiments, especially at a time when they are converging with those of the far right as it tries to convince the country that it does indeed have a ‘Muslim problem’.
“Not that the far right needs any encouragement. Its rediscovered swagger partly owes itself to a new strategy that is soft on race and hard on Islam. If you missed hearing BNP leader Nick Griffin saying so on BBC’s Newsnight, take a moment to visit the National Front website.
“It was only a matter of time before the far right tapped into the western world’s latent, if largely unfounded, fear of Islam. Its problem with Islam stretches back at least 1,000 years to the time of Pope Urban’s first crusade, finding expression in art, literature, popular culture and, most perniciously today, in the mass media.”
Faisal Bodi in the Guardian, 27 July 2001
Calls to reprimand race row MP
Calls to reprimand race row MP
By Vikram Dodd
Guardian, 14 July 2001
A member of Labour’s ruling body yesterday called for the withdrawal of the whip from an MP who called for a curb on Muslim immigrants who cannot speak English. Shahid Malik accused Ann Cryer of “doing the BNP’s work” after she yesterday repeated remarks that Asian immigrants who could not speak English were “importing poverty”.
Mrs Cryer is Labour MP for Keighley, near Bradford, which was hit by riots last weekend.
Mr Malik, the only ethnic minority member of Labour’s national executive committee, said there was outrage among the Asian community at Mrs Cryer’s demand. His call for her suspension from the parliamentary Labour party was backed by the Muslim Council of Great Britain. Labour’s leadership yesterday refused to be drawn on the controversy.
MP calls for English tests for immigrants
A Labour MP has called on the government to consider introducing restrictions on immigrant brides and grooms who cannot speak English. Ann Cryer, who represents Keighley in West Yorkshire, said many UK Muslims were held back economically and educationally by language difficulties.
But the MP’s views were described as “sinister” by Shahid Malik, who is a senior member of the Commission For Racial Equality and a Labour Party National Executive Committee member.
Islam and the West – bridging the gap
Imam Sajid believes that the media “demonizes Islam”. After the Oklahoma bombing, for instance, the world’s media immediately speculated that a Muslim was responsible, “without checking the facts”. One can understand, therefore, Muslim frustration when tabloid headlines scream about Pakistan’s “Muslim bomb”. Britain’s and America’s nuclear arsenal would hardly be called Judeo-Christian.
But not only the tabloid press are to blame, says Philip Lewis, author of Islamic Britain, who, as advisor to the Bishop of Bradford on interfaith issues, also served on the Runnymede Commission. “We found that it was the quality press who were pumping out bile,” he says.
“Replace the word Muslim with Jew in any story on Muslims and it sounds anti-Semitic. That is Islamophobia,” says Yousif al-Khoei, who runs the al-Khoei educational and religious foundation in London.
Beware the intolerant certainties of European liberals: Islamophobia in Britain
Beware the intolerant certainties of European liberals
By Trevor Phillips
The Independent, 25 October 1997
The problem with European liberals (small “l”) is their intolerance. They will oppose, to the death, any kind of bigotry but their own. Their capacity to know what is best for others is unlimited, riding roughshod over the fact that people may not choose the same values as most Western Europeans. The famous Voltairean assertion of the right to free speech appears to be limited to precisely that – a defence of a man or woman’s right to say what he or she likes, as long as he or she does nothing about it; at that point, tolerance runs out. Such is the liberals’ certainty that their own version of the world is right that they entertain no doubts at all about condemning others’ traditions, even where adherence to those traditions is the free choice of nearly a billion people worldwide.
This week the civilised, “rationalist” version of liberalism swung into action against Islam. Some people, including Polly Toynbee in these pages, clothed it in an assault on all religious practice, but the issue here is the growth of Islam, and the critique is moving rapidly from being a defence of human rights to a disrespect for others’ beliefs that verges on the racist.