There’s quite a decent piece in today’s issue of the freesheet thelondonpaper on the response to Reid’s call on Muslim parents to control their children. After dealing with the disruption of his visit to East London, the article continues:

Despite their differences most Muslims are determined not to let the furore overshadow what they say is the hidden agenda behind Reid’s speech. While they agree that security is an issue, there is a feeling that his speech will serve to feed Islamophobia.

Azad Ali, a 37-year-old Londoner and chairman of the well-respected Muslim Safety Forum is one of those we polled yesterday who believe that Reid’s words were incendiary and naive.

“It is a huge assumption to make that Muslim parents are not concerned about their kids,” said Ali. “Regard less of your religion, what young child does not have a time-keeping issue or make new friends? it is an unfair spotlight on Muslims.

“There was already an atmosphere of unease before Reid’s speech. I just don’t see how these words help to build a cohesive society. They were ill-advised. They will further promote Islamophobia and alienate the Muslim community,” he said.

Massoud Shadjareh, chairman of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, said: “The Government talks about terrorists as though there is a sign you can spot, but they should be appealing to everyone for help, not just one community.” Shadjareh added that Reid’s demands were “unrealistic and not demanded from any other community”….

On Brick Lane yesterday London Muslims gave their reaction to Reid’s speech – and opinion was divided.

Shopkeeper Ali Hussain, 29, said it should come as no surprise that Reid was heckled, even if Izzadeen was a known firebrand. “If you have a dog and keep kicking it, it will eventually bite you. And that’s what is happening over Iran and Afghanistan with British Muslims.”

Abdul Rouf, another Brick Lane shopkeeper, said he believed bad feeling should be seen as a political issue. “It’s world politics that turns British Muslims against Tony Blair and his government, but it’s not a problem between Muslims and other ethnic groups at ground level,” he said.

Fatima Mahmood, 24, said Izzadeen’s tirade was pointless and the frustration felt among Muslims must be expressed another way. “Maybe we are treated unfairly, but making a scene won’t change people’s point of view,” he said.

Other Londoners were also critical of the speech. Londonpaper reader Rebecca Priddle believes Reid should show more respect to the Muslim community. In a sarcastic letter to the paper, she wrote:

“Why doesn’t the government ‘go the whole hog’ and install ‘telescreens’ in Muslim houses? That way, the parents will not have to bear the guilt of having to report their radicalised toddlers themselves, and Mr Blair can ensure that all of the infants are rounded up and put into good, Catholic schools where they will receive a well-rounded, Western upbringing.”

Madeleine Bunting argues that the Pope is a dangerous bigot suffering from “a deep arrogance rooted in a blinkered Catholic triumphalism”. She writes:

“By an uncanny coincidence the legendary Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci died last week…. the Pope had already run into controversy in Italy by inviting the rabid Islamophobe to a private audience just months ago. This is the journalist who published a bestseller in 2001 which amounted to a diatribe of invective against Islam. This is the woman who was only too happy to fling out comments such as ‘Muslims breed like rats’ and ‘the increasing presence of Muslims in Italy and Europe is directly proportional to our loss of freedom’. At the time of her papal audience, Fallaci’s ranting against Islam had landed her in court and there was outrage at the Pope’s insensitive invitation. The Pope refused to backtrack and insisted the meeting was purely ‘pastoral’.

“Put last week’s lecture in Bavaria and the Fallaci audience alongside his vocal opposition to Turkish membership of the EU, and the picture isn’t pretty. On one of the biggest and most volatile issues of our day – the perceived clash between the west and the Muslim world – the Pope seems to have abdicated his papal role of arbitrator, and taken up the arms in a rerun of a medieval fantasy.”

Guardian, 19 September 2006

The Muslim News Tuesday expressed its exasperation at the latest call by Home Secretary John Reid for Muslim parents to spy on the behaviour of their sons as suspected terrorists.

“The Home Secretary is generating a new climate of fear against Muslims, by not only suggesting they are all potential terrorists, but appears to be also trying to divide Muslims families,” The Muslim News Editor Ahmed J Versi said.

“There are times when we must confront them to protect them from harm. So I appeal to you to look for changes in your teenage sons – odd hours, dropping out of school or college, strange new friends. And if you are worried, talk to them before their hatred grows,” he said.

Versi said that the Home Secretary suggested that it was becoming “worse than looking for reds under the bed” and that Reid could be next asking Muslims to empty the pockets of their children every night, check all their emails and log all webpages they visit.

“He is taking to extreme lengths the Government’s false premises about so-called extremism. What is he asking Muslim parents to spy on? To watch when they are ever late and then report suspicions to anti-terrorist police to intervene and have them interrogated for 28 days? It a pure farce,” he said.

“Even more dangerous is the impression the Home Secretary is giving to the rest of society that when parents can’t trust their children not to be terrorist, who can,” the editor warned.

Muslim News press release, 19 September 2006

“The Pope’s response to the anger his statements sparked in the Muslim world was more offensive than the statements themselves. He apologised not for what he said, but for Muslims’ failure to grasp the intended meaning.

“That the Pope should have quoted from a Byzantine text on Islam is hardly surprising. The line of continuity between Emanuel Paleologos’s conception of Islam – quoted in the papal speech – and Benedict’s has never been severed. The massive body of terms, images and narratives on Islam which the church inherited from the middle ages survives intact. There, Islam is depicted as a false creed propagated through violence and promiscuity, with Muhammad as scoundrel, magician, heresiarch, and precursor of the anti-Christ…. The Reformation further developed this literary corpus and ensured its transmission into modern Europe. In a 17th-century Christian text, Muslims are described in the most chilling of terms. They are ‘poison, scabies, venomous snakes … the dogs in the church’.

“Even if this metaphorical language has retreated in favour of the profane language of reason and subjectivity, its structural foundations remain. Islam is still perceived as the other, the embodiment of evil. Only in this context can we make full sense of the Pope’s statements, and indeed of much of what is said today on the subject of Islam. We must defend freedom of expression, but freedom of expression should not be used as a disguise for the incitement of hatred of other races and religions.”

Soumaya Ghannoushi in the Guardian, 19 September 2006