Category Archives: Secular

A difficult question

Posted on by Bob Pitt

toynbee“Race and religion are different – which is why Islamophobia is a nonsense and religious hatred must not be outlawed.” Thus the standfirst to an article in today’s Guardian.

Now, who do you think wrote this article? Was it:

a) a Muslim of South Asian/Middle Eastern/African origin with direct experience of the association between racial and religious hatred, manifested in Islamophobia; or
b) a white secularist who has suffered none of this sort of hatred and never will?

Difficult, I know, so we have provided a picture clue.

Is Turkey going Islamist?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

pipes3“Is Turkey going Islamist?” Daniel Pipes want to know. “Is it on the road to implementing Islamic law, known as the Shari’a?”

New York Sun, 7 June 2005

And what basis is there for supposing that the ultra-moderate AKP might be heading down that road? Well, they tried to reduce (not abolish but reduce) the penalties for teaching the Qur’an without state authorisation!

Mind you, the National Secular Society fully agrees with Pipes on this. Their report is headlined “Turkish secularism to be compromised by new penal code” . See NSS Newsline, 3 June 2005

Even though parliament voted overwhelmingly for a change in the law, Turkey’s president Ahmet Necdet intervened to veto it, on the grounds that it was incompatible with secularist principles. Phew! A welcome victory for civilised, democratic values. See Islam Online, 3 June 2005

Interview with Tariq Ramadan

Posted on by Bob Pitt

SIThere’s an interesting interview with Tariq Ramadan in the current edition of the French journal Socialisme International. Among other issues, Professor Ramadan deals with the media bias against him, the hostility he provokes among a section of the far left, Islamophobia and racism, relations between Muslims and the left, and his views on Malcolm X and Karl Marx.

Socialisme International, Spring 2005

The journal is not available online but subscription details can be obtained from their website or from John Mullen at john.mullen@wanadoo.fr

Because of the prominent role he has played in the European Social Forum, Tariq Ramadan has been a controversial figure on the French left. Catherine Samary mounted a vigorous defence of Ramadan’s participation in the 2003 ESF (see here and here), though her article does not pretend to offer an overall evaluation of Ramadan’s ideas and political engagement.

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Another secularist rant from Nick Cohen

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Oriana FallaciIn today’s Observer, Nick Cohen rallies to the defence of Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, who published a book immediately following the Madrid bombing in which she argued that Muslim immigration is turning Europe into “an Islamic province, an Islamic colony” and that “to believe that a good Islam and a bad Islam exist goes against all reason”. In an earlier book, published after 9/11, she wrote that Muslim immigrants in the West have “multiplied like rats”. (See here.)

Cohen takes a relaxed view of this racist filth. He opposes a decision by the Muslim Union of Italy to take legal action against Fallaci, portraying it as an attempt to suppress free speech. “What she says may not be true”, he concedes (may not be true?!), but he defends her right to say it. “Fallaci is a raging prima donna. Still, since when has it been a criminal offence for prima donnas to sing, however tunelessly?”

Would Cohen take a similarly relaxed view of a book which claimed that Jews are breeding like rats and turning Europe into a Jewish colony? I think not. In any case, under existing race relations legislation, the author of that sort of writing would be open to prosecution in this country. If that happened, I rather doubt that Cohen would write a column for the Observer condemning legal action being taken.

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Quebec squashes idea of Islamic tribunals

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In a pre-emptive strike against what it calls religious fundamentalism, the Quebec National Assembly has voted unanimously to condemn efforts to introduce Islamic tribunals in Quebec and in the rest of Canada.

During the debate yesterday on a motion tabled by the governing Liberals, members from all political parties opposed Muslim groups seeking to apply sharia, or traditional Islamic law, in marriage or other disputes in the Muslim community.

The decision, which drew immediate condemnation from some members of the Islamic community, echoed France’s recent and controversial prohibition of religious symbols in schools.

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Gay Palestinians tortured and murdered by PLO and Hamas says Outrage

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Outrage engages in its now annual disruptive stunt at the “Free Palestine” demonstration in London. “The Palestinian administration tolerates the so-called ‘honour’ killing of women who refuse to submit to the strict rules of orthodox Islam”, Tatchell claims.

Outrage press release, 23 May 2005

For a comment on Outrage’s antics last year, see Yoshie Furuhashi’s useful article, “Queering Palestinian solidarity activism”, at Critical Montages.

Or if you have problems with that link try here.

Tatchell crosses the line

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Outrage“A friend of mine told me that Peter Tatchell was again at the Free Palestine demo yesterday. Apparently he was with a group of about thirty people (with a police escort) bearing placards saying ‘Stop the Honour Killings’. The expression ‘honour killings’ is usually used to refer to domestic murders of women deemed unworthy. It’s used by western Orientalists to suggest that there is something worse about this than the two women killed by men every week in the UK. So why is Tatchell using the expression to condemn the killing of gays in Palestine? And why does he see fit to demonstrate against Palestinians at a Free Palestine rally? When he first invade the demo last year he bore a placard with the inane slogan ‘Israel stop persecuting Palestine – Palestine stop persecuting queers’. Now by conflating homophobia in the third world with extreme domestic violence, and putting as orientalist a spin on it as he could think of, he’s crossed the line from seeking to embarrass Palestinian officialdom to full-blown anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia.”

Mark Elf at Jews sans Frontieres, 22 May 2005

The WPI and Islamophobia Watch

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The latest English language broadcast from the Worker Communist Party of Iran’s television station includes an interview with Bahram Soroush replying to criticisms of the WPI by Islamophobia Watch. (As regular viewers will be aware, an “interview” on WPI TV consists of Maryam Namazie feeding rehearsed questions to fellow members of the party’s central committee and then expressing enthusiastic agreement with everything they say. Jeremy Paxman it ain’t.)

Soroush’s response to accusations of Islamophobia is, essentially – guilty as charged. He declares that the WPI are indeed Islamophobes in the sense of being deeply hostile to Islam, as are many other people, and that this is a healthy reaction to the crimes of Islamism. The “interview” concludes with the bizarre allegation from comrades Namazie and Soroush that by criticising the WPI our site is setting them up for assassination by Islamists.

So the WPI broadcasts a TV programme in which they publicly proclaim their Islamophobia, while at the same time denouncing us for endangering their lives by … exposing their Islamophobia. Go, as they say, figure.

Government appeases Muslims scandal

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The National Secular Society has condemned the government’s declared intention to press ahead with its plan to extend race relations legislation to cover Muslims by outlawing incitement to religious hatred.

NSS new release, 16 May 2005

“The principal problem which the legislation seeks to address is white separatist groups inciting hatred on racial grounds, but using religion as a proxy,” Keith Porteous Wood of the NSS reports. “The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats tabled a joint amendment to clarify that the race hatred legislation could be used in such instances, but the government opposed the sensible solution, which carried minimal freedom of expression dangers.”

Yeah, well perhaps that was because the proposed amendment was full of loopholes and marked only a marginal advance on the present legal position.

“There have been widespread serious allegations”, Wood writes, “that the Government has been motivated in pushing through this legislation simply to appease minority religious interests.”

Why not just write “appease Muslims”, Keith?

Muslim school not to become state school

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“A Nottingham school has failed in its bid to become only the fourth Muslim state primary in the country. The independent Islamia School in Hyson Green had applied to become a voluntary-aided state school, which would entitle it to Government funding. But the school’s application has now been turned down by Nottingham’s School Organisation Committee, which is made up of city councillors, governors and church leaders.

“The decision has angered the school’s staff and members of the Muslim community…. Anas Altikriti, of the Muslim Association of Britain, which has supported similar applications, said: ‘The Muslim community in Nottingham have been dealt with unjustly. There will be huge disappointment, not just in the city’.”

Nottingham Evening Post, 13 May 2005

Still, Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch will be pleased. So will Keith Porteous Wood of the National Secular Society who said: “We are relieved.”