Category Archives: Secular

Clareification controversy

Posted on by Bob Pitt

We’ve been remiss in not posting on the Clare College controversy, involving the publication of anti-religious caricatures – including one of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons – in the student magazine Clareification.

In a typically stupid open letter to Clare College, Terry Sanderson of the National Secular Society argues that anti-Muslim caricatures can’t be racist because, don’t you see, Muslims are not a race: “We would like to remind all concerned that satirising religion – even if that religion is Islam – is not racism, as this episode has been dubbed. Religion and race have very different characteristics.”

So, according to Sanderson’s warped reasoning, the most vicious Islamophobic propaganda produced by the BNP can’t possibly be racist because it is directed against adherents of a religion – which is, of course, precisely the argument that the fascists themselves use.

See local press coverage here and national coverage here. A correspondent points out that the editor of the magazine is “in hiding without a single threat having being made”.

For a comment on the Clareification controversy, which concedes that the magazine contained “the most vile and unambiguous Islamophobia”, see Constitutional Lore, 13 February 2007

YouTube censors Islam critic?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

WebProNews is outraged that YouTube has prevented an atheist from using its platform to attack Islam:

At YouTube, you can say pretty much whatever You want, as long as it’s not about Islam. If that’s not true, YouTube user Nick Gisburne begs to differ after his account – his entire account – was deleted for its “inappropriate content.” What exactly did he say? Well, nothing really. He let the Koran speak for itself.

Gisburne is a self-described atheist with, at least from the one video, a deep questioning of Muslim claims about the Koran. To express his doubts about Islam being a religion of peace, Gisburne created a 10-minute video, entitled “Islamic Teachings” that was nothing but violent quotations taken from the Koran instructing followers to kill nonbelievers and speed their way to Hell where Allah will torture them forever.

It would seem quoting the holy book in a sort of testament against itself was over the line for someone working at Google-owned YouTube. Not only was the video deleted without any type of warning to the uploader, but the uploader’s account was also deleted with only the explanation (or accusation) of submitting inappropriate content, a category usually reserved for nudity or video violence.

Jihad Watch shares the indignation of WebProNews, which is hardly surprising, given that Robert Spencer employs exactly the same method as Nick Gisburne – using selective quotations from the Qur’an to depict Islam, and by extension its followers, as promoting hatred and violence.

Muslims can learn from this new Jewish group, says Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Yasmin Alibhai-BrownYasmin Alibhai-Brown – one of the initiators of the much-hyped but evidently stillborn New Generation Network – argues that the recently-launched Independent Jewish Voices is a model for organisation within Muslim communities:

“In key ways, this breakout faction is no different from the many Muslim challengers emerging to halt the influence of the monolithic, regressive, self-serving, presumptuous, overweening Muslim Council of Britain, funded for years by the Government without any regard for the hundreds of thousands of British Muslims who have never accepted this informal jurisdiction over our lives and thoughts….

“Rebellious British Muslims have felt the same suffocation experienced by IJV as unelected community and religious leaders found subtle, sometimes rough, ways to discredit opposing views. Religion and race were used – if you voice any disagreements with the ‘official’ line, or point out oppression within, you are charged with betraying the faith and faithful, bringing on the BNP and encouraging Islamophobia. And thus are we blackballed, decent Muslims who are concerned about the crisis we find ourselves in globally.”

Independent, 12 February 2007

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Sarkozy defends Muhammad cartoons

Posted on by Bob Pitt

French interior minister and presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy has defended a weekly sued for printing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Two French Muslim groups are suing Charlie Hebdo magazine for defamation over the cartoons, printed a year ago. Mr Sarkozy noted he was often a target of the magazine but said he would prefer “too many caricatures to an absence of caricature”.

Mr Sarkozy’s letter drew concern from one of the Muslim groups behind the legal action. “He should remain neutral,” Abdullah Zekri of the Paris Grand Mosque was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency. The official French Council of Muslim Faith (CFCM) voiced anger at what it said was government interference and convened an emergency meeting.

Editor Philippe Val told the court the cartoons critiqued “ideas, not men”. Speaking at the opening of the hearing, Mr Val asked: “If we no longer have the right to laugh at terrorists, what arms are citizens left with? How is making fun of those who commit terrorist acts throwing oil on the fire?”

The illustrations originally appeared in the best-selling Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten on 30 September 2005 to accompany an editorial criticising self-censorship in the Danish media. One image shows the Prophet Muhammad carrying a lit bomb in the shape of a turban on his head decorated with the Islamic creed.

Muslim groups said Charlie Hebdo‘s decision to publish the cartoons “was part of a considered plan of provocation aimed against the Islamic community in its most intimate faith”. It was “born out of a simplistic Islamophobia as well as purely commercial interests”.

“This is an attack on Muslims,” UOIF President Lhaj Thami Breze told the court according to Reuters. “It is as if the Prophet taught terrorism to Muslims, and so all Muslims are terrorists.”

BBC News, 7 February 2007

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More irresponsible gibberish from Joan Smith

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Joan Smith displays her ignorance about the meaning of political Islam, and fingers veil-wearing Muslim women as terrorist pawns. Political Islam in all its variants is “an authoritarian political ideology based on a literal reading of the Koran”. What Islamists “want to replace is liberal secular democracy”. In furtherance of that aim, they are “trying to create as much dissension as possible, training young British men in foreign terror camps, facilitating terrorist attacks in the UK and hoping the wider Muslim community feels victimised when the police claim to have uncovered another terror cell. They’ve had some success in persuading Muslim women to adopt the niqab and jilbab…”

Independent on Sunday, 4 February 2007

Anger as papers reprint cartoons of Muhammad

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Newspapers in France, Germany, Spain and Italy yesterday reprinted caricatures of the prophet Muhammad, escalating a row over freedom of expression which has caused protest across the Middle East. France Soir and Germany’s Die Welt published cartoons which first appeared in a Danish newspaper, although the French paper later apologised and apparently sacked its managing editor. The cartoons include one showing a bearded Muhammad with a bomb fizzing out of his turban.

Guardian, 2 February 2006

The Guardian includes an excerpt from an article in France Soir defending the decision to publish the cartoons, on the basis of exercising “freedom of expression in a secular country”. In this connection, the IRR website has an interesting article from the forthcoming issue of Race & Class which demolishes the rosy view of French secularism held by some people on the Left:

“Some of the roots of the recent unrest in France unquestionably lie in the country’s hysterical obsession with secularism and an associated state-sanctioned Islamophobia. The separation of religion and state is one of those valeurs républicaines (Republican values) which everyone has been referring to since ‘les émeutes‘. But secularism in France seems to be going horribly wrong. Indeed, la laïcité (secularism) seems to have become a form of fundamentalism itself which discriminates against the country’s Muslims. Numerous politicians and intellectuals claim that Islam, France’s second religion, is incompatible with les valeurs républicaines.”

The BNP have also published some of the cartoons on their site, assuring their followers that “we certainly will not be grovelling to anyone who cannot tolerate important western democratic values such as freedom of speech, freedom of expression and those who fail to appreciate a sense of humour”. Ah, the famed BNP sense of humour, manifested in waggish remarks about blowing up Bradford’s mosques with a rocket launcher.

BNP website, 2 February 2006

‘Secular Muslim’ backs Cameron

Posted on by Bob Pitt

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.

As a mosque rises, a dispute flares in Berlin

Posted on by Bob Pitt

No Mosque in PankowA squabble over construction of the first mosque in formerly communist East Berlin is becoming the latest flash point between Muslims intent on asserting a strong identity in Europe and Europeans increasingly fearful that their secular societies are threatened by Islamic fundamentalism.

Members of the Muslim congregation hope the soaring minaret of the planned mosque will become a local landmark. “People should not fear us,” Iman Abdul Basit Tariq, the Pakistan-born leader of a flock of 200, said in an interview. “They should open their hearts to the beauty of Islam.”

Instead, the neighborhood has fought the mosque with marches, candlelight vigils, and petitions. Residents have also filed legal complaints that could block construction.

“Ideas of suppressing women and hatred for democratic values will soon be disseminated in the heart of our community,” said Roland Henning, a musician who lives half a block from the planned mosque. “And those of us who ask, ‘Why?’ are the ones being called intolerant and xenophobic. Europe isn’t just surrendering its culture. It’s surrendering any sense of logic.”

“Why should we be giving welcome to a group that hates German values and considers Christianity to be its enemy?” asked Joachim Swietlik, spokesman for the group opposed to the mosque. “Our concern isn’t based on their skin color or their countries [of origin]. It’s based on their contempt for the ideals of our liberal-democratic society.”

Boston Globe, 9 January 2007

[Picture: poster by the far-right Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD) who have been prominent in the campaign against the mosque.]

‘Importing ghastly patriarchal values’ – Joan Smith on the veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Joan SmithJoan Smith complains that “we now have a growing minority of the population demanding the right to go about their everyday business in masks, which is what the word ‘niqab’ means in Arabic. This, I think, is where a lot of people discover the limits of tolerance … rightly perceiving that the face-covering is not so much an obligatory religious requirement as a challenge to the values of our largely secular society….

“Of course it upsets people in an open society where we’re used to seeing each other’s faces; our identity is expressed in facial expressions, which ease everyday transactions by indicating whether someone is happy, sad, pleased to see us or lying – an important issue when so many of our dealing with strangers are based on trust. In that sense, it can’t be read as anything other than an assertion of not belonging, of separation from the majority population, a political position some Muslims have begun to take to absurd lengths….

“It’s the worst sort of identity politics, importing ghastly patriarchal values into a country where we already have enough problems with a male political class which believes it knows what’s best for us….”

Independent, 27 December 2006