“It is absurd that the Pope cannot quote dispassionately from an ancient text about the Prophet Mohammed without the entire Muslim world flying off the handle. Especially when one considers that Islam, just like Christianity, DOES have a violent past. Only those paranoid extremists who see Islamophobia everywhere can really believe that the venerable holy man intended to stir up trouble.”
Editorial in the Sun, 16 September 2006
“Poor old Pope Benedict XVI (not a description I thought I’d ever use) seems to have inflamed some excitable sections of Muslim opinion around the world with his ruminations to scientists at Regensburg University during his trip to Germany this week.
“He’s not the first elderly academic inadvertently to stir up outrage with what he thought were innocent remarks and, in the modern digital age, he certainly won’t be the last, but on this occasion at least I think he’s innocent of the charges of stirring up hatred against Islam being made against him.
“It is difficult to believe that those making the claims, who include the Muslim Brotherhood, the Pakistan parliament, Sheikh Youssef al-Qardawi (a fine one to feel insulted, given what he says about Jews), the Organisation of Islamic Conferences and a senior religious official in Turkey, can possibly have read the remarks in full or in their proper context.”
The Guardian religious affairs correspondent, Stephen Bates, rallies to the defence of il papa.
Comment is Free, 15 September 2006
So does Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, who blames the fuss on whingeing Muslims and implies that they would be better occupied putting their own house in order.
Carey said: “The Pope is a distinguished scholar and one unlikely to say offensive things. If he quoted something said 600 years ago we should not assume that this represents the Pope’s beliefs about Islam today. But Muslims as well as Christians must learn to enter into dialogue without crying foul. We live in perilous times and we must not only separate religion from violence but also not give religious legitimacy to violence in any shape or form.”
The Archbishop of York yesterday urged Muslims to do more to integrate into British society. Dr John Sentamu said Muslims should follow Christian teaching to ‘love thy neighbour’.
The advice came in a lecture in which Dr Sentamu condemned Islamic terrorists as murderers who pervert their faith. But he said that like others who speak out on the subject, he risked being accused of Islamophobia.
Jonathan Freedland spares a moment from attacking the Mayor of London over his relations with Hugo Chávez to take a swipe at Yusuf al-Qaradawi:
“It’s only on foreign policy that the Mayor gets the chance to strike some of the old, Leftist poses. I am sure that the folk at City Hall are sincere in their admiration for Chavez’s social reforms – but they also love that el presidente styles himself as George W Bush’s great Latin nemesis. Standing next to him gives the Livingstone circle a rush of ideological blood.
“The less forgivable example is the relationship with Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Egyptian cleric still hailed by Livingstone as the voice of moderate Islam – yet who recently added to his earlier positions condoning wife-beating and the stoning of homosexuals with a declaration that today’s Jews bear responsibility for the death of Jesus.
“The Mayor likes al-Qaradawi’s tough line on Israel – the sheikh supports suicide bombings against Israeli civilians – so he ends up hugging a man who bends Islamic theology to take on the vilest tropes of Christian anti-Semitism.”
Evening Standard, 14 September 2006
Except that Qaradawi supports neither wife-beating, nor the stoning of homosexuals nor suicide bombings against Israeli civilians. And the story about Jews bearing responsibility for the death of Jesus originates with the Middle East Media Research Institute – an organisation headed by a former colonel in Israeli military intelligence which has a long history of misrepresenting Qaradawi’s views by publishing carefully selected extracts from his speeches and interviews. By these means MEMRI has been able to “prove”, for example, that Qaradawi believed the victims of the tsunami deserved to die and that he argued it was a duty for Muslims to become suicide bombers in Iraq.
You can see why a right-wing rag like the Evening Standard hires a supposedly liberal journalist like Freedland to write for them. His standards of journalistic integrity fit right in with theirs.
“Now, after 7/7, despite the discovery that the suicide bombers were homegrown and wholly British, the thinking in the UK is to embrace the backward and undoubtedly Islamophobic discourse issuing from mainland Europe. Cultural pluralism has gone too far; it threatens our values and our national safety. A line has to be drawn on difference. Ethnic minorities have now, in the domestic context of the war on terror, effectively to subsume their cultural heritage within Britishness.
“Going against the grain of its history, the UK has taken a leaf out of Europe’s monoculturalist book and descended into nativism – conflating multiculturalism with culturalism and ethnicism, assimilation with integration, and extolling British values to the exclusion of all others – foreshadowing a monolithic society and a centralised state.”
A. Sivanandan in the Guardian, 13 September 2006
An interesting article, though some might question his negative view of ’80s multiculturalism. But the last bit hits the nail on the head.
You might have thought that the TUC/MCB joint statement opposing Islamophobia and encouraging Muslim workers to join trade unions would be welcomed by all anti-racists as a progressive alliance between the labour movement and an oppressed minority community. But apparently not. Over at the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, Janine Booth complains: “the statement was a liberal mush through which the MCB gets itself a new ally and the TUC promotes a religious organisation with an anti-gay stance.”
“As well as neglecting the impact of the Iraq war and delivering a tendentious account of Qutb’s radicalisation, Amis also indulges in a display of casual prejudice: ‘No doubt the impulse towards rational inquiry is by now very weak in the rank and file of the Muslim male’. No doubt.”
Inayat Bunglawala replies to Martin Amis’s piece in last Sunday’s Observer.
Guardian Comment is Free, 12 September 2006
A characteristically thoughtful and informed comment from Richard Littlejohn in today’s Daily Mail:
“With exemplary tact and exquisite timing, the ‘leader’ of Britain’s Muslims chose the eve of the fifth anniversary of 9/11 to warn that we are facing the threat of two million home-grown Islamic terrorists. The preposterous, self-aggrandising ‘secretary-general’ of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), Muhammad Abdul Bari, predicted an angry backlash against what he perceives as widespread ‘Islamophobia’ in this country.
“To be honest, I did wonder whether it was worth even dignifying this garbage with a reaction, especially when it comes from a man who appears to wear a ginger wig with a grey beard. But someone’s got to do it.
“Bari and his sidekicks are regularly wheeled out as the authentic voice of ‘moderate’ Islam. Their victimhood shtick is treated as gospel by broadcasters and they are taken seriously by government ministers and senior police officers. They never miss an opportunity to advance their own agenda. It always the same old song. They utterly condemn terrorism, you understand, but unless we give them exactly what they want, they can’t be held responsible for the actions of the more excitable members of their community.
“Criticise them and you are damned as an ‘Islamophobe’. When I described the MCB as a ‘self-appointed bunch of chancers’ a few weeks ago, Bari’s ridiculous Mr Bean-lookalike press officer Inayat Bunglawala wrote accusing me of being a bigot.”
Now, where could Inayat possibly have got that idea from? As for the “self-appointed” accusation, the MCB has over 400 affiliates and the leadership is of course elected every two years. And the “threat of two million home-grown Islamic terrorists” bit is just based on a misunderstanding of what Dr Bari said. As I understood his remarks, he was saying that there was a risk of treating Britain’s entire Muslim community as though they were terrorists (see here). Not that two million Muslims were about to turn themselves into suicide bombers.
Video: BBC staff in bad-taste Middle East spoof
By Alexa Baracaia
Evening Standard, 11 September 2006
MEMBERS of the BBC London news team have filmed a spoof video making light of the conflict in the Middle East.
The joke film – a skit on Peter Kay’s Is This The Way To Amarillo? – was made to mark the departure of assistant editor Simon Torkington, who is moving to news channel Al-Jazeera International in Qatar with his wife, former ITV news anchor Shiulie Ghosh.
It was shown at a private leaving party for Torkington – nicknamed “Storky” – last week. But a copy was leaked by a BBC insider angry that licence fee payers’ cash was used to make a “tasteless” skit that could cause offence to Muslims and relatives of the victims of 9/11 and the London bombings.
It is particularly embarrassing coming as the world remembers the 2001 terror attacks. BBC London journalists, including transport correspondent Andrew Winstanley and reporter Sarah Harris are seen singing in tea towel head-dresses and fake beards with a video backdrop of news footage of missile launchers, tanks and soldiers in gas masks.
The Blair government is marginalizing the major Muslim organizations in Britain for the sake of unrepresentative bodies and individuals and its domestic and foreign policies risk radicalize more Muslims, which harms the British social harmony and peace, said the Secretary General of the Muslim umbrella group in Britain.
“The government is marginalizing major Muslim organizations, including the MCB, and it seems that new organizations are being brought up in the house of parliament where they don’t have any base,” Muhammad Abdul Bari told IslamOnline.net in an exclusive interview. “It is a perception in the community that they [the government] are trying to divide the community along sectarian lines – that is the perception I have heard in different places.”
He said the government is now reaching out to obscure Islamic organizations and shunning the representative one. “So the government now is talking to something called Sufi Muslim Council founded a month ago,” Abdul Bari said.
The MCB leader, who has a PhD and a PGCE from King’s College London and a management degree from the Open University, said it seems that the government wants to talk to people who “simply listen to them and who do not criticize.”