Jon Snow gives us a foretaste of this evening’s Dispatches documentary.
For an excellent response by Sunny Hundal (and it’s not often I get to type those words) see Pickled Politics, 6 August 2006
For Osama Saeed’s comments, see Rolled Up Trousers, 6 August 2006
Dramatic new evidence that Cabinet rebel Jack Straw was sacked as Foreign Secretary as a result of pressure from George W. Bush has been revealed. Senior sources close to the US Government told The Mail on Sunday that Mr Straw’s outspoken opposition to America’s policies on the Middle East was discussed by White House aides weeks before his shock dismissal by Tony Blair in May. It follows the disclosure that the Bush Administration feared Mr Straw was in the pocket of Muslims in his Blackburn constituency. And it gives further credence to claims that he was fired because of his refusal to back America’s all-out support for Israel.
“While constantly pointing the finger at Muslims and denying any part in the spread of terrorism, this arrogant rhetoric of neoliberal militantism, which goes hand in hand with military aggression on the ground, is terrorism’s chief recruiter and the greatest threat to Britain’s national security.”
Soumaya Ghannoushi replies to Blair’s “arc of extremism” speech.
“Martin Bright says he feels ‘rather awkward’ about his newfound friends. So he should: anybody who claims to be on the left and finds their arguments being championed by a bunch of warmongering neocons should pause and reflect how they got themselves in that position.”
Salma Yaqoob replies to Martin Bright.
Guardian Comment is Free, 2 August 2006
An assault by a white neighbour on a Muslim woman in London has shown just how difficult it can be for victims of alleged racist attacks to prise open the doors of justice. Laura Smith reports.
The witch-hunt of Mockbul Ali continues.
No doubt a number of people will have noted the irony that Martin Bright’s recent pamphlet When Progressives Treat with Reactionaries, which claims to expose “the British State’s flirtation with radical Islamism”, was published by the right-wing think-tank Policy Exchange. When it comes to treating with reactionaries, Bright can evidently speak from first-hand experience.
In yesterday’s Observer, Bright tried to justify his alliance with the political Right, with whom he finds common ground in Islamophobia. He describes Policy Research as “centre right”, despite the fact that its research director on international issues is the frothing-at-the-mouth reactionary Dean Godson.
But Bright does accept that right-wingers like Peter Dobbie in the Mail on Sunday, Frank Johnson in the Torygraph and Charles Moore in the Spectator have showered him with praise for his stand against the Islamist hordes. Bright writes: “There is no doubt that it has fed into the perception in some circles on the left, encouraged by the MCB, that I am part of some Islamophobic campaign….” Yup, I think that just about summarises it. As one commentator on the Guardian website observes: “Like [Melanie] Phillips who started on the left and is now on the far right, I suspect Bright will end up there as well.”
The deputy chair of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) was racially attacked in a Scottish shopping centre – and she has claimed it was directly linked to the crisis in the Middle East.
Kay Hampton, who is also the Scottish commissioner of the CRE, was verbally assaulted in The Avenue shopping centre in Newton Mearns, East Renfrewshire, last Friday. She believes she was mistaken for a Muslim, and the attack was directly linked with the conflict in Lebanon.
Hampton told the Sunday Herald she was shopping with her daughter when she heard a man call them “pigs”. After she challenged him, the man became loud and aggressive, and followed her into a greengrocer’s. When onlookers and two security guards intervened, her attacker backed off and left the centre.
Hampton, one of the UK’s most senior race relations experts, rarely gives interviews and was initially keen to play down the incident, but she has decided to go public because she fears Scotland could become a racial and religious tinderbox.
“It was my first experience of a racial attack in 15 years of living in Glasgow, ” she said. “I was so distressed. You never know how you will respond to these things until it happens to you personally.
“I had a strong feeling it was international issues impacting on a local community – you saw it after 9/11. I think I was mistaken for a Muslim. I am concerned the crisis in the Middle East is going to have an effect on local areas.”
She added: “The face of racism is changing – it is not about black and white any more, it is much more complex than that. We assume racism happens in poor areas and is associated with young people, but this was a man in his 50s with his wife, in an affluent shopping centre. If it happened to me it can happen to anyone.”
She said she decided not to report the attack to police because she considered it more important to use the incident to raise public awareness of the pressure building on local race relations.
Hyped media reporting on terrorism increases Islamophobia, according to a new study by social psychologists at Royal Holloway, University of London.
The study, the first of its kind in Britain, analysed the psychological reasons behind the reported rise in Islamophobia and how this is linked with a perceived threat to national identity. The research, which follows a similar one undertaken in the US post 2001 attacks, drew the same conclusion. It concluded increased perception of national threat increased support for draconian strategies and immigration policies, including policies, which would reduce the civil liberties enjoyed by British Muslims.
The research, carried out before the July 7 attacks on London, highlights the key role the media play in reporting acts of terrorism. The study shows how media articles portraying the idea that “Islamic terrorism” constitutes a significant threat can lead to increases in Islamophobic prejudice, targeted not just at the terrorists, but all Muslims, especially those living in the UK.
Labour MP Denis MacShane has a rambling piece in the current issue of Tribune, which purports to examine “how Labour should respond to Islamist politics”. The primary purpose of the piece is to offer critical support to the thesis in Melanie Phillips’ paranoid rant Londonistan that Islamism is a threat to Western civilisation. MacShane distances himself from some of the language used, but concludes that “Phillips’ book should be read…. Britain does need to wake up to the problems she discusses”.
The level of ignorance and contempt for facts in MacShane’s article is quite breathtaking. He tells us that the Muslim Council of Britain is “linked to the Muslim Brotherhood”. Presumably he means the Muslim Association of Britain – which is just one of hundreds of MCB affiliates. MacShane refers to a speech he made in 2003 “after a young man had gone to Israel, strapped explosives to his body and sought to kill innocent Jews”. This would appear to be a reference to Wail al-Dhaleai, who was reported to have died in a suicide attack on US troops in Iraq.
In his 2003 speech – which he now claims was uncontentious, even banal – MacShane said: “It is time for the elected and community leaders of the British Muslims to make a choice – the British way, based on political dialogue and non-violent protests, or the way of the terrorists, against which the whole democratic world is uniting.” MacShane claims that the head of the CRE, Trevor Phillips, “wrote a whole page in The Observer denouncing me”. Phillips wrote no such article in the Observer. There was a report in that paper which noted that MacShane’s supposedly uncontroversial speech had “provoked a furious reaction from Muslim leaders, who said that they had condemned terrorism time and again”. Trevor Phillips was quoted in the report as saying:
“It would have been smarter if Denis MacShane had found out what British Muslims have been saying since, before and after September 11 on the issue of terrorism. Had he taken the trouble to do so, he would have known that his criticisms could not possibly apply to the leadership of mainstream Muslim opinion in Britain. This type of language will simply drive Muslims, who believe that once again they are being stereotyped, into the arms of extremists. He could have spoken to David Blunkett and Jack Straw, both of whom know the British Muslim community quite well, neither of whom would have made these remarks.”
Phillips also said that the use of the phrase “the British way” was offensive: “On the face of it, it is a little undiplomatic for a Foreign Office Minister to suggest that the British have a monopoly on rational and civilised behaviour. Anybody who hails from a colony could adduce several centuries of evidence to the contrary.”
According to a Guardian report, MacShane’s constituency party passed a resolution, proposed and seconded by two local Muslim councillors, which expressed no confidence in their MP and called on the party’s national executive committee to discipline him. The motion stated:
“Denis MacShane is inciting racial and religious hatred, by publicly implying in the press that the Muslim community elected members and leaders are in favour of terrorism and being anti-British. We feel these comments are ill-informed, designed to portray us in the media as conspiring against the state. The Nazis in world war two similarly accused the Jews, disputing their patriotism, which was so well executed that it led to what we now know as the Holocaust.”
In short, if the Labour Party is to discuss the issue of Islamism, the last person they should be listening to is Denis MacShane.