Category Archives: Right wing

Islamophobia is a threat to democracy

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The following letter appears in today’s Guardian:

We are concerned by the rise of Islamophobia, the negative coverage of Muslims in the media, the violent street mobilisations of extreme rightwing organisations like the English Defence League, and the rising electoral support for the British National party (The battle for Barking, Weekend, 13 March). Following Channel 4’s recent inflammatory documentary, Britain’s Islamic Republic, which saw concentrated attacks on the East London Mosque, the English Defence League marched through central London with placards including the demand “Close the East London Mosque now”.

The East End of London is not new to having its communities attacked by fascists and the media. The 1930s saw the Battle of Cable Street when Oswald Mosley’s blackshirts attempted to march into the Jewish community in the area. We cannot allow this terrible history to repeat itself. Further, the documentary, and articles since, have attacked the participation in politics by the Muslim community. We cannot stand by and watch this continue without remark or action.

In the runup to the general election, all parts of the population should be actively encouraged to exercise their votes. That is democracy. We welcome the work of organisations who work to this end. We call for solidarity and support for those organisations that work to encourage political participation from all sections of society, including Muslims, and condemn those who seek to undermine it.

Ken Livingstone
Bonnie Greer
Dr Abdul Bari Secretary general, Muslim Council of Britain
Brendan Barber General secretary, TUC
Sir Geoffrey Bindman QC
Dr. Edie Friedman Executive director, Jewish Council for Racial Equality
Diane Abbott MP
Neil Jameson Executive director, London Citizens
Jagtar Singh Sikh Secretariat
Tony Woodley Joint general secretary, Unite the Union
Bruce Kent
Baroness Helena Kennedy QC
Professor Eric Hobsbawm
Louise Christian Christian Khan solicitors
Billy Hayes General secretary, Communication Workers Union
Rabbi Lee Wax
Anas Altikriti Spokesperson, British Muslim Initiative
Caroline Lucas MEP
Professor Avi Shlaim
Lord Nazir Ahmed
Kate Hudson Chair, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Andrew Stunell MP
Ismail Patel Co-ordinator, YouElect
Claude Moraes MEP
Rev. Alan Green Chair, Tower Hamlets Interfaith forum
George Galloway MP
Musleh Faradhi Central president, Islamic Forum Europe
Jean Lambert MEP
Salma Yaqoob Leader, Respect party
Jenny Jones AM
Steve Hart Regional secretary, Unite London Region
Andrew Murray Chair, Stop the War
Bell Ribeiro-Addy NUS black students officer
Sabby Dhalu Joint secretary, Unite Against Fascism

Update:   Response from EDL here.

Sarkozy promises to ban the veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Nicolas_SarkozyFrance is to ban the full Muslim veil to protect the dignity of women, President Sarkozy announced today.

His decision followed months of wavering by politicians of Left and Right and ended a long silence by Mr Sarkozy on what do do about the niqab, burqa and other full face-covering garments.

“The full veil is contrary to the dignity of women,” the President said. “The response is to ban it. The Government will table a draft law prohibiting it.”

He gave no details, but his announcement means that he has come down on the side of members of parliament in his own camp and the opposition who advocate a full ban on the full veil on French territory.

An all-party parliamentary committee recommended lesser measures last month which would require women to expose their faces on public transport and on state-owned premises such as post offices, universities and hospitals.

Until yesterday, Mr Sarkozy had merely said that the full veil symbolised the oppression of women and that it “has no place in France”.

Times, 24 March 2010

How Sarkozy boosted the Front National

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The debate over national identity engineered by Sarkozy’s UMP has seen Islamophobia reach a new pitch – at one point the party spokesperson compared the burka to a ‘Mickey Mouse mask’.

“Yet however shrill the scapegoating of Muslims, it has done nothing to obscure the government’s impotence in the face of serious social and economic problems. Moreover, the realisation that Sarkozy is not an enforcer but a rather insecure figure in thrall to wealth and celebrity, has strengthened the claims of Le Pen to be the real authority figure in French politics.

“Le Pen has therefore been able to pick up support from those disenchanted by Sarkozy, his credentials as an authoritarian alternative bolstered by the government’s legitimisation of the racism that dominated the FN campaign. At a time of economic crisis, with Islamophobia on the rise across Europe, the government has had to learn, like all its predecessors, that the far-right is strengthened, not isolated, when mainstream politicians pander to racism.”

Jim Wolfreys at Comment is Free, 24 March 2010

The JC and Osama Saeed

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Scotland UnitedIn this week’s edition of the Jewish Chronicle, under the headline “Hunting the SNP’s Islamist”, Martin Bright complains that Osama Saeed, SNP parliamentary candidate for Glasgow Central, is unenthusiastic about being interviewed by Bright for the JC. Now, why do you suppose that might be?

I was intending to report this under the heading “Muslim declines interview with Islamophobe shock”. However, Bright’s article can’t be found on the online edition of the JC, which instead carries … yes, an interview with Osama Saeed.

In what is clearly a swipe at the hypocrisy of attacks on himself as an Islamist, Osama points out that sitting Glasgow Central MP Mohammed Sarwar, father of his Labour opponent Anas Sarwar, is on the management committee of the Finsbury Park Mosque alongside a supporter of Hamas (presumably a reference to Mohammed Sawalha). And how does the JC report this? Under the headline “SNP candidate attacks opponent’s Hamas ‘support’“!

Given that the JC is edited by Stephen Pollard, and has Bright as its political editor, it would seem wise for any politically active Muslim to avoid talking to the JC in future, or at least until there is a change in editorial line, as at present there is clearly no possibility of being reported fairly or accurately by that paper.

‘Pawn of Islamists’ – now Gilligan witch-hunts a Tory parliamentary candidate

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Andrew Gilligan 2Witchfinder General Andrew Gilligan shifts his attention to Tim Archer, Tory PPC for Poplar and Limehouse, who is speaking at an IFE meeting “Confronting Anti-Muslim Hatred in Contemporary Britain” on 30 March at the London Muslim Centre.

According to Gilligan, this demonstrates that “Mr Archer is perfectly willing to allow himself to be used as a pawn by Islamists if he thinks there might be a few votes in it”.

In fact, if you read the leaflet advertising the IFE meeting, you’ll see that the Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Respect candidates for Poplar and Limehouse have all agreed to speak there. The only candidate who has not accepted his invitation is Jim Fitzpatrick, the Labour candidate.

What this would seem to indicate is that, with the obvious exception of Fitzpatrick, none of the main candidates in that parliamentary constituency has bought into Gilligan’s campaign of smears against the East London Mosque.

This is not the first time that Tories have been condemned by right-wing Islamophobes over their links with the mosque. London mayor Boris Johnson has been attacked by Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens of the Centre for Social Cohesion on this issue, as has London Assembly member Andrew Boff.

We hesitate to give advice to our opponents, but if Gilligan or Meleagrou-Hitchens possessed a grain of tactical sense they’d see how counterproductive this is from their own witch-hunting standpoint.

Denunciations of Ken Livingstone or George Galloway as pawns of Islamism might find traction in some quarters. But Boris Johnson, Andrew Boff, Tim Archer? In attacking these individuals Gilligan and Meleagrou-Hitchens destroy any shred of credibility they might have left.

‘Muslim police club nets £10,000 public cash’, Express reports

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An exclusive association for Muslim police officers, backed with £10,000 from the SNP Government, was extended across Scotland’s eight police forces yesterday. Despite having only 46 members, with just another 90 Muslims among more than 17,000 officers in the country, the association could get more taxpayers’ cash.

Black and ethnic minority officers already have their own organisation, Semper Scotland, which has around 130 members – many of them Muslims – and receives £51,000 a year from the taxpayer. But the Scottish Police Muslim Association (SPMA), launched at the police training college at Tulliallan, Fife, is the only faith-based police group to get Government funding.

Harry Pearson, Strathclyde Police branch leader of the Scottish Christian Police Association, which has around 200 members, said: “There is a clear disparity between the way we are treated compared to Muslim colleagues. It would be nice if the Scottish Government treated us even-handedly. We have to manage on donations from our members.”

Laura Midgley of the Campaign Against Political Correctness said: “I don’t see why separate groups are needed. The police should be there to catch criminals, as simple as that. Setting up groups such as these simply creates tensions and division. Equality should mean equality. It flies in the face of everything politicians lecture us about.”

Daily Express, 18 March 2010

Sarkozy’s pandering to Islamophobia gives boost to Le Pen

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Le_PenFar-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, playing on fears over the spread of Islam, has regained the political initiative in France with a strong result in regional elections that poses a problem for President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Bouncing back from a string of recent reversals, Le Pen’s National Front won a surprise 11.74 percent of the national vote in Sunday’s first round ballot and will dilute support for Sarkozy’s conservative block in crucial run-offs on March 21.

Aged 81, Le Pen himself enjoyed a remarkable personal triumph, winning 20.29 percent backing in the southern French Provence-Cote d’Azur region, which has absorbed hundreds of thousands of mainly North African immigrants in recent decades.

His daughter Marine Le Pen also scored well, securing 18.31 percent support in the far north of France, where worries over industrial decline helped her cause amongst the working class.

Sarkozy himself believed he had managed to neutralise the National Front in 2007 by offering tough solutions of his own to its two main obsessions – immigration and security.

However, a government move in 2009 to organise a broad debate on national identity rekindled interest in the far right by reviving controversies over how to deal with immigrants and Islam in a country that has Europe’s largest Muslim population.

“The debate on national identity brought back to the fore themes that were favourable to the National Front … and proved counter productive for the ruling party,” said Henri Rey, head of research at the Sciences Po political science institute.

Le Pen, who has said the regional vote will be his last election campaign, proved astute at leveraging concerns over radical Islam, plastering billboards with a poster showing France covered by an Algerian flag, a veiled woman and minarets. “No to Islamism,” read the slogan.

Reuters, 15 March 2010

See also “Green shoots in France as race card backfires”, Morning Star, 16 March 2010

Ken Livingstone replies to Andrew Gilligan

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL Close East London Mosque

In last week’s Spectator Andrew Gilligan has a typically hysterical piece entitled “Why does the BBC air Islamist propaganda?” in which he denounces the decision to hold the 5 March edition of Radio 4’s Any Questions at the London Muslim Centre, which is attached to the East London Mosque. What particularly outrages Gilligan is that a questioner was allowed to raise the issue of Islamophobia in the media, which led to criticism of Gilligan’s recent television “documentary” witch-hunting the East London Mosque. Gilligan writes:

“Listeners to Any Questions would have heard a man named Musleh Faradhi accuse the media of ‘developing hatred against Muslims’, with particular reference to a Channel 4 Dispatches investigation – also broadcast last week – into an organisation called the Islamic Forum of Europe, the IFE. One of the panellists, the former London mayor Ken Livingstone, compared the Dispatches programme to Enoch Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’ speech, accused it of being an attack on all Islam and said it incited racist violence against Muslims. With the activist audience baying and hollering their approval, the civilised Radio 4 debate turned into just another East London Mosque hate rally.”

The full programme is available online here, but will soon be deleted. So, for the record, here is Ken Livingstone’s contribution to the discussion:

“There was a hour-long programme depicting this mosque, the East London Mosque, as a centre for fundamentalism trying to gain total control of the area and impose Islam on people who don’t want it.

“If you walk through these doors you’ll see that this mosque chose to be built next to a synagogue so they all work together. In eight years as mayor I came here again and again. This is an outward-looking East London community who happen to be Muslims.

“That programme was a disgrace. And by amazing coincidence the man who made it, Andrew Gilligan, phoned me just before I came to this programme saying ‘Did you give any grants?’ I suspect we did, I honestly can’t remember. And I said, ‘Did you see what happened today in Parliament Square? Three hundred fascists and racists marched through there with banners saying “Ban the hijab” and “Close the East London Mosque”.’ He said, ‘Oh, that’s nothing to do with me.’ And I said, ‘It is. Because your paper and you pander to racism and Islamophobia.’

“And there’s nothing new about this. A hundred and four years ago the Daily Mail had a headline saying ‘Jews bring crime and disease to Britain’. And they meant down here, in Brick Lane. And then it was the blacks, and the Irish. For some reactionary elements there’s got to be a threat, there’s got to be a victim.

“When I’m in a mosque in this city, like when I’m in a Hindu temple, I close my eyes and I hear London accents and I hear Londoners facing the same problems everybody else does.

“This is something we’ve got to defeat, because it will divide us. Just like when Enoch Powell did his ‘rivers of blood’, black bus conductors were beaten up in this city. And because of Andrew Gilligan’s programme Muslims will be harassed and spat at, and perhaps some will be beaten, and Andrew Gilligan should be ashamed of himself.”