Category Archives: UK

‘Left’ Islamophobes fall out

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Even the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty baulks at some of the alliances formed by their friends in the Worker Communist Party of Iran.

In an open letter to Maryam Namazie, Martin Thomas of the AWL writes: “The organisers of the ‘March For Free Expression’ (against political Islam) planned for 25 March are advertising you as a prominent supporter – alongside the Freedom Association, an extreme right-wing movement best known for its strike-breaking efforts during the Grunwick strike of 1977.”

Martin also takes issue with Namazie’s decision to sign the anti-Islamism manifesto first published in the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten: “The manifesto’s twelve initial signatories include several right-wing figures – not, to be sure, as right-wing as the Freedom Association, but clearly alien to the labour movement.”

AWL website, 5 March 2006

For details of the “march for free expression”, see here.

For our comments on the anti-Islamism manifesto, see here.

‘What are we to do about Islam?’ A right-wing bigot explains

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Social Affairs Unit has reproduced the speech given by Douglas Murray, author of Neoconservatism: Why We Need It, at the Pim Fortuyn Memorial Conference on Europe and Islam in the Netherlands last month. It includes gems such as the following:

Why is it that time and again the liberal West is crumpling before the violence, intimidation and thuggery of Islam? … It is late in the day, but Europe still has time to turn around the demographic time-bomb which will soon see a number of our largest cities fall to Muslim majorities. It has to. All immigration into Europe from Muslim countries must stop…. Conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board: Europe must look like a less attractive proposition. We in Europe owe – after all – no special dues to Islam. We owe them no religious holidays, special rights or privileges. From long before we were first attacked it should have been made plain that people who come into Europe are here under our rules and not theirs. There is not an inch of ground to give on this one.

Social Affairs Unit, 3 March 2006

Mad Mel is impressed: “You have to look hard to find such moral clarity within today’s British Conservative party – or indeed most of the British establishment.”

Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 6 March 2006

Telegraph apologises to Bewleys

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Noble Qur'anRemember the outrageous interview with Patrick Sookhdeo in the Sunday Telegraph a few weeks ago, in which he launched an attack on The Noble Qur’an: A New Rendering of its Meaning into English – a highly-regarded translation by Abdalhaqq and Aisha Bewley? (See here and here.) Well, yesterday’s Telegraph published an apology, acknowledging that “Dr Sookhdeo’s remarks did not refer to The Noble Qur’an, A Rendering of its Meaning in English, but to a completely different translation”, together with a letter from Abdalhaqq Bewley taking the paper to task over its treatment of Islam and Muslims.

Sunday Telegraph, 5 March 2006

The Telegraph also publishes two other letters that it says have “been received since a website wrongly accused Dr Sookhdeo and the Sunday Telegraph of calling for a ban on the Koran”. Presumably this a reference to Islamophobia Watch. In fact our post made no reference to the Telegraph calling for a ban, but only to Sookhdeo, who was quoted as saying: “The Government has done nothing whatever to interfere with the sale of that book. Why not? Government ministers have promised to punish religious hatred, to criminalise the glorification of terrorism, yet they do nothing about this book, which blatantly does both.”

Yusuf Smith comments: “It appears that Sookhdeo was indeed referring to a different translation which had the same English title (the Noble Qur’an, as opposed to Holy Qur’an for example) though not the same sub-title (‘A New Rendering …’). Most likely this was the infamous, ear-jarring, propaganda-laden Khan-Hilali translation…. The problem is that Sookhdeo clearly referred to the subtitle of the translation, which has very little commentary (unlike Khan & Hilali), which does give the impression that it was the content of the Qur’an which Sookhdeo was suggesting was the issue, not commentary alongside the text. So people were justified in fearing that the Qur’an itself was under attack and not one person’s writings.”

Indigo Jo Blogs, 5 March 2006

Guantánamo detainee told Geneva rights ‘irrelevant’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A senior US military officer at Guantánamo Bay told a detainee that he did not care about international law and that the Geneva conventions did not apply to proceedings at the military prison, according to thousands of Pentagon documents released over the weekend by the US government after a court action by the Associated Press news agency.

The outburst by the air force colonel came during a hearing to determine the status of Feroz Abbasi, a Briton held for more than two years without charge or trial, and who was released last year. The officer was presiding over a tribunal convened to decide whether detainees were enemy combatants, as alleged by the Bush administration. Critics dismissed the hearings, called combatant status review tribunals, as kangaroo courts.

Guardian, 6 March 2006

Islamophobia Watch helps target Tatchell for murder (really!)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

OutrageLast week the Peter Tatchell Human Rights Fund Campaign Report 2005 was published. Among the list of Peter’s marvellous accomplishments over the course of the year, the report includes the following nugget: “The website, Islamophobia Watch, regularly (but falsely) denounces Peter as anti-Muslim. It is feared this could make him a target for Islamic fundamentalists who monitor the website to compile their hit-lists.”

Peter is of course noted for keeping a low profile – indeed, within a Left not short of inflated egos and narcissists, his self-effacing approach to political activism is one of his most appealing qualities – and without the efforts of Islamophobia Watch we doubt that anyone would have the slightest idea who Peter Tatchell is. Furthermore, were it not for our harsh criticisms of Peter’s attitude towards Islam, we are convinced that the majority of Muslims would long ago have recognised him as the friend and sympathiser that he is.

As for the claim that “Islamic fundamentalists” monitor our site to “compile their hit-lists”, some might suspect that this is a baseless slander on Peter’s part aimed at silencing his critics. However, as anyone familiar with Outrage’s campaign against Yusuf al-Qaradawi can confirm, Peter is the last person in the world to make an accusation against anyone without solid evidence to back it up. We look forward to to Peter providing his own list of the fundamentalists who use our site for the purpose of targeting people like himself for murder.

Stop the appeasment of Muslim fanatics, Jerusalem Post writer urges

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“…. experience has proven experience has proven that all governmental attempts to appease radical Islamists have not advanced the well-being and security of Western democracies. Rather, such appeasement policies have served to weaken Western, liberal values and threaten the viability of Western societies.

“In Europe, the official reactions to the Muslim cartoon riots exposed this reality. Rather than telling the Muslims who took to the streets and called for the annihilation of Denmark and the waging of global jihad where they could shove it, Europe’s leaders bowed before these violent, intolerant people while expressing contrition and sorrow over the Islamic sensitivities that had been offended.

“In Britain the media refused to publish the pictures of Muhammad – out of sensitivity for Muslim feelings, of course. The newspaper editor who published the pictures in France was fired. In Norway, the editor who published the pictures was forced to publicly apologize to Norway’s Muslim leaders in a humiliating public ceremony. Franco Frattini, the EU’s Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security said it would be useful for the press to ‘self-regulate’ in attempting to find answers to question of ‘How are we to reconcile freedom of expression and respect for each individual’s deepest convictions?’

“And so, the European reaction to the Muslim rampages has involved slouching towards the surrender of their freedom of speech. Not only has Europe’s appeasement of radical Islam not protected its liberal values, it has undermined the democratic freedoms that form the foundations of European culture. From a security perspective, the consequence of the silencing of pubic debate on the challenge of radical Islam is that Europeans are now effectively barred from conducting a public discussion about the chief threat to their political traditions and physical survival.”

Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post, 3 March 2006

For a similar analysis, see the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty website, 2 March 2006

Churches condemn far-right party

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Staffordshire’s church leaders have condemned the British National Party for distributing leaflets depicting a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad. A Diocese of Lichfield spokesman said the 5,000 leaflets also criticised plans for a mosque in Stoke-on-Trent. The BNP had offered the local council £100,000 for the land in Hanley which was earmarked for the Mosque, he added. The Bishop of Stafford said people should “stand against the evil trying to divide us”.

Church leaders from several faiths met at the proposed site for the mosque on Wednesday to offer prayers for peace and unity. In a statement they said: “It is wrong and irresponsible that this cartoon has been produced by the BNP with the intention of causing hurt to our Muslim brothers and sisters and to divide a community who are working hard to cement the existing good relations. Right-minded people will see through this blatant and desperate exploitation.”

BBC News, 3 March 2006

Anti-Muslim manifesto

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Another anti-Islam stunt involving a roster of characters, “left”, right and liberal, who have featured regularly on this website. They have signed a manifesto denouncing “the new totalitarianism”. It begins: “After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.” Maryam Namazie of the Worker Communist Party of Iran, who is one of the signatories, has posted the text on her blog, accompanied by the announcement that the manifesto would be “published in Charlie Hebdo, a French leftwing newspaper”.

Maryam Namazie’s blog, 2 March 2006

In fact, the manifesto first appeared in Jyllands-Posten, the right-wing Danish paper responsible for publishing the offensive anti-Muslim cartoons. The manifesto has also been enthusiastically welcomed by the likes of Little Green Footballs, Jihad Watch and Western Resistance.

In his book The Future of Political Islam Graham Fuller defines an Islamist as a person who holds the view that “Islam as a body of faith has something important to say about how politics and society should be ordered in the contemporary Muslim World and who seeks to implement this idea in some fashion”. Islamism is thus a category that includes a huge variety of ideologies and individuals, from Tariq Ramadan to Osama bin Laden.

As Soumaya Ghannoushi pointed out in an article entitled “The many faces of Islamism”, published in the Guardian last October: “Islamism, like socialism, is not a uniform entity. It is a colourful sociopolitical phenomenon with many strategies and discourses. This enormously diverse movement ranges from liberal to conservative, from modern to traditional, from moderate to radical, from democratic to theocratic, and from peaceful to violent. What these trends have in common is that they derive their source of legitimacy from Islam.”

By lumping all these trends together under the heading of “totalitarianism”, the signatories to the manifesto merely demonstrate their own ignorance and bigotry. It is all too reminiscent of Cold War propaganda that depicted all proponents of radical politics, from liberals leftwards, as “commies” who were intent on destroying democracy and imposing a totalitarian political system.

Marx and religion

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Anindya Bhattacharyya analyses Marx’s attitude towards religion: “A careful examination of Marx’s writings on the subject reveals that while he certainly criticised religion, he was equally scathing about liberals who elevated criticism of religion over all other political concerns … he certainly had no time for those who used opposition to religion as an excuse to scapegoat religious minorities, while simultaneously singing the praises of a capitalist system that leads to poverty, racism and war.”

Socialist Worker, 4 March 2006

Clare Short opposes Blair’s HT ban plan

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Clare Short calls on Blair to abandon Islamic party ban

Daily Telegraph, 2 March 2006

Clare Short urged Tony Blair to drop plans to ban the Hizb ut-Tahrir after the controversial Islamic party told MPs last night that it condemned the terrorist attacks in the West.

Miss Short, the former International Development Secretary, also defended her much-criticised decision to invite Hizb ut-Tahrir representatives to a meeting at the House of Commons.

The Prime Minister threatened to ban the group, which promotes the spread of Islam across the world, after the July 7 bombing attacks in London last year. The ban has yet to be implemented.

Miss Short, who quit the Cabinet in the wake of the Iraq war and has subsequently been one of Mr Blair’s fiercest critics, invited Hizb ut-Tahrir representatives to meet MPs and peers yesterday. The invitation was strongly condemned by Khalid Mahmood, the Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Bar, as “an affront” to mainstream Muslim opinion.

At the meeting, the labour peer Lord Ahmed said Hizb ut-Tahrir followers has once described Westminster as the “infidel parliament” while Evan Harris, the Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, criticised the party’s “potty” ideas.

Imran Waheed, a media spokesman for Hizb ut-Tahrir, insisted that the group had condemned last July’s atrocities in London and the 9/11 attacks in New York, and opposed “the deliberate targeting of civilians, either by states or organisations”.