The attack on mainstream Muslim organisations this week in the wake of the document prepared for the Conservative party by Pauline Neville-Jones and the speech by David Cameron has been deeply damaging. Cameron’s speech equates the British National party with British Muslim organisations who want to separate Muslims from the mainstream. He did not name any groups directly. But his words and the Tory policy-review document combined have led to a maelstrom aimed at the Muslim Council of Britain, among others. On BBC News on Monday, for instance, Mark Easton reported: “Tonight the author of the report confirmed to me that they are likening the Muslim Council and the British National party.”
Category Archives: Right wing
Pastor who vilified Islam ‘honoured for faithfulness to Scripture’
“Christian leaders from six continents gathered in New York City Jan. 26 to recognize an Australian pastor who became one of the first people indicted under the country’s new ‘religious vilification’ law, which makes public criticism of any religion – including Islam – a hate crime. Daniel Scot, an Assemblies of God minister from Brisbane, received the Kairos Journal Award for his refusal to ‘compromise truth for fear of jail’. The award is given annually to individuals who demonstrate faithfulness to Scripture and pastoral courage. It also honors those who respond to what the journal calls a ‘kairos moment’ – a moment that calls for timely Christian action.”
Flaws in Cameron’s plan
The Conservatives’ proposals for greater social harmony are having the opposite effect: alienating many Muslims who feel they have been singled out, argues Rajnaara Akhtar.
NUS black students officer defends mainstream Muslim organisations
Tory attacks on mainstream Muslim organisations are unfounded. Far from promoting separatism or sharia law, organisations such as the Muslim Council of Britain have worked hard to engage the Muslim community with the British political process.
It is telling that while David Cameron attacked both multiculturalism and immigration as causes of division, he had nothing to say about the rising racism that British Muslims have to confront. In comparing Muslim organisations to the fascist British National Party he risks legitimising an organisation that really is committed to separation and division.
Misrepresenting Muslims in this way will do nothing to promote community cohesion or to tackle the terrorist threat.
Ruqayyah Collector NUS black students officer
Letter in the Guardian, 1 February 2007
See also the letter from Aliyyah Balson.
Madeleine Bunting on sharia
“In the last few days, sharia has been much in the news; David Cameron accused Muslim groups who promote sharia law of being the ‘mirror image’ of the British National party and a poll by the Policy Exchange thinktank, which showed that 40% of young Muslims wanted to live under sharia law, was widely reported.
“Just in case readers weren’t sure what sharia was, the Times gave a summary: ‘Sharia covers topics including marriage (allowing a man to have four wives, and stoning to death for adultery), criminal justice (hand amputation for theft) and religious affairs (death penalty for leaving Islam).’ Stoning, hand chopping: that just about sums up the widely held view of what sharia is all about.
“I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard people refer to sharia in this way – as a barbaric ancient set of laws with horrific punishments. But such a definition would horrify many of the young Muslims who were polled. The problem about David Cameron and many, many others is that they have only a Taliban understanding of sharia.”
‘Secular Muslim’ backs Cameron
Dr Shaaz Mahboob of British Muslims for Secular Democracy writes to the London Evening Standard:
“The alleged Birmingham plot to behead a British Muslim soldier shows that the terrorist threat is greater than ever and that the terrorists, having failed to break the British public’s resolve on 7/7, are prepared to stoop to the lowest levels to impose their ideology upon us.
“Defeating such criminal elements will require the combined strength of the Government and the participation of Muslim communities across Britain. David Cameron’s analogy between far Right organisations and Muslim fundamentalists should have been at the centre of the debate long ago.
“Muslim leaders now need to acknowledge that their short-sightedness, as shown by the complacency of the Muslim Council of Britain over the Dispatches investigation into fundamentalist preaching, has aided extremism, which now seems to be targeting law-abiding Muslims.”
Evening Standard, 1 February 2007
Muslims for Secular Democracy is applauded in the recent much-publicised Policy Exchange publication Living Apart Together as one of the “secular Muslim organisations which seek to find points of connection with the non-Muslim majority”. It is easy to see why a Tory think-tank would look favourably on Dr Mahboob and his group.
Terror arrests anger community
One day after the nine terror arrests in the Birmingham area, the local communities have been assessing the impact of the police operation. Some claim the arrests and the vast amount of media coverage are likely to cause lasting damage to community relations.
See also Independent, 1 February 2007
And see also the piece by former Guantánamo prisoner Moazzam Begg, who points out that the sensationalist reporting of an alleged terror plot in Birmingham plays on popular prejudice – and puts any possibility of justice at risk.
Canadian town tells migrants: you can’t kill women
Immigrants wishing to live in the small Canadian town of Herouxville, Quebec, must not stone women to death in public, burn them alive or throw acid on them, according to an extraordinary set of rules released by the local council.
The declaration, published on the town’s Web site, has deepened tensions in the predominantly French-speaking province over how tolerant Quebecers should be toward the customs and traditions of immigrants.
“We wish to inform these new arrivals that the way of life which they abandoned when they left their countries of origin cannot be recreated here,” said the declaration. “Therefore we consider it completely outside these norms to … kill women by stoning them in public, burning them alive, burning them with acid, circumcising them etc.”
Salam Elmenyawi, president of the Muslim Council of Montreal, said the declaration had “set the clock back for decades” as far as race relations were concerned. “I was shocked and insulted to see these kinds of false stereotypes and ignorance about Islam and our religion … in a public document written by people in authority who discriminate openly,” he told Reuters.
See also BBC News, 31 January 2007
Cameron fails to understand threat of fascist BNP to British society
Anti-fascist campaigners have criticised David Cameron’s attack on the Muslim community organisations, which he compared to the BNP. Weyman Bennett, Joint Secretary of UAF said:
“The BNP represent the real threat to community cohesion, with their racist, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic and homophobic politics. The BNP whips up racist hatred and division for electoral gain, leading to attacks on all minority communities in areas they target.
“It is deeply offensive to liken the BNP to minority community organisations, particularly to Muslim groups who are the prime target of the BNP’s racism. Muslim communities experience racism and discrimination at all levels of society. They are being vilified and targeted daily.
“Mainstream parties have a responsibility not to provide succour to fascists: today, the BNP welcomes David Cameron’s comments on its website as a ‘propaganda victory’ for them and takes the opportunity to spread further Islamophobic bile against Muslim communities. Attacking multiculturalism is pandering to the BNP.”
Cameron attacks ‘Muslim hardliners’
David Cameron yesterday endorsed a new Conservative report which condemned the “hardline” views of the Muslim Council of Britain and other Islamic groups. The Conservative leader argued that the Government must not bow to the “loudest voices” in the Muslim community when he attended the launch of the report by his national and international security policy group.
The report, Uniting the Country, singled out the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), widely seen as the mainstream voice of Muslims in the UK, for allowing “hardline members… to dominate policy and crowd out more moderate voices.”
The Tory policy group, chaired by Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, the former head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, also challenged the MCB’s approval of extremist clerics like Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who supports the death penalty for gays, as well as its failure to participate in Holocaust Memorial Day.
Mr Cameron said: “Policy makers should stop assuming that the loudest voices and the most organised elements within the Muslim community necessarily represent the Muslim population as a whole. There’s a danger that groups with agendas aimed at separation rather than integration are deferred to when they should be challenged.”
Daily Telegraph, 31 January 2007
In an accompanying editorial, the Telegraph applauds Cameron and the Tories for “laying bare the perils of multiculturalism”.
For a response by the MCB, see the Guardian, 31 January 2007
See also MCB news release, 30 January 2007
As for the fascists of the British National Party, they criticise Cameron’s attack on multiculturalism and Muslim organisations on the grounds that it falls short of “dismantling the structures of the multicultural State and restoring our lost ancestral rights and freedoms”. BNP news article, 30 January 2007