Update on the story of Gay and Lesbian Humanist magazine’s “Sick Face of Islam” issue and the resignation of its editor, Andy Armitage. (For previous coverage see here, here, here, here and here.) Armitage and his supporters have issued a dossier documenting the dispute within the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association, which is available here [update: link to 2nd edition]. We are pleased to see that the role of Islamophobia Watch is given full recognition. (“It seems that nothing, but nothing other than complete abasement to Islam will ever succeed in satisfying this load of extremists.”)
Category Archives: UK
BNP bottom of pile
The British National Party came bottom of the poll in the Essex heartland of Thurrock last night. The neo-Nazi outfit trailed in last place in a council byelection held in the Homestead ward, Thurrock. The BNP had high hopes of winning a seat but were trounced by Labour’s Tony Benson. The party led by Nick Griffin came third in another byelection, in the Grays Riverside ward behind the winner, Labour’s Val Cook, and second-placed Sharon Ponder.
Sabby Dhalu, Unite Against Fascism Joint Secretary, said: “This is a great result particularly after a racist hoax leaflet attempting to stir up Islamophobia was distributed in both of the Thurrock wards. The vast majority of people abhor the BNP – a fascist, racist and homophobic organisation that is full of criminal thugs – and this majority made their voice heard.” BNP activists have been blamed for a hoax leaflet purporting to be from the “London East Islamic Movement”, an invented name.
Top cop criticises mosque closure plan and Hizb ban
Top police officers have criticised plans to allow the shutting down of places of worship such as mosques suspected of inciting extremism. In their response to proposals to give courts the power to close such premises, police warned there were better ways to deal with the problem. Assistant Chief Constable Rob Beckley of the Association of Chief Police Officers said it was a “blunt tool”. “This proposal might be seen as an attack on religion,” he said.
The government is also considering banning the radical Muslim group Hizb ut-Tahrir. ACC Beckley told Today: “They proclaim themselves to be against violence – what we need to do is test that but not just automatically ban them because there are some radicals within their organisation.” He added: “Extremism and radicalism, where it is not an offence – we don’t want to drive that underground.”
Robert Spencer is not happy: “So fair and foul an example of dhimmitude and wrongheadedness I have not seen.”
Ayaan Hirsi Ali gets a boost from the Guardian
“Ayaan Hirsi Ali is much more than just a voice for the voiceless oppressed. In person, she is a thoughtful, calm, clear, almost pedantic spokeswoman for the fundamental liberal values of the Enlightenment: individual rights, free speech, equality before the law.”
Timothy Garton Ash boosts the right-wing Dutch MP, friend of the late racist film-maker Theo van Gogh, a woman who is on record as saying that “immigrants from rural areas, most of them, are at a certain phase of civilization that is far behind that of the host countries, like the Netherlands”.
Garton Ash may regard this as defending Enlightenment values. Others would see it as playing into the hands of the far Right.
An article in the Nation last June featured some harsh words about Ayaan Hirsi Ali from actual representatives of the oppressed.
From The Nation, 27 June 2005:
Hirsi Ali’s many critics contend that far from being a revolutionary, she brings a message that the West is all too willing to hear. They say that in calling for European governments to protect Muslim women from Muslim men, she and her admirers recycle the same Orientalist tropes that the West has used since colonial times as an excuse to control and subjugate Muslims. “White men saving black women from black men – it’s a very old fantasy that is always popular,” Annelies Moors, a University of Amsterdam anthropologist who writes about Islamic gender relations, said dryly. “But I don’t think male violence against women, a phenomenon known to every society in history, can be explained by a few Koranic verses.”…
Karima Belhaj is the director of the largest women’s shelter in Amsterdam. She’s also one of the organizers of the “Stop the Witchhunt!” campaign against what she sees as anti-Muslim hysteria. On the day we talked, she was despondent. Arsonists had set fire for the second time to an Islamic school in the town of Uden. A few days later a regional police unit warned that the rise of right-wing Dutch youth gangs potentially presents a more dangerous threat to the country than Islamist terrorism. “The rise of Islamism is not the problem,” Belhaj said. “The problem is that hatred against Arabs and Muslims is shown in this country without any shame.” With her message that Muslim women must give up their faith and their families if they want to be liberated, Hirsi Ali is actually driving women into the arms of the fundamentalists, said Belhaj: “She attacks their values, so they are wearing more and more veils. It frightens me. I’m losing my country. I’m losing my people.”
If Belhaj was sad, another “Stop the Witchhunt!” organizer was angry. Like Belhaj, Miriyam Aouragh is a second-generation immigrant of Moroccan background. A self-described peace and women’s activist, Aouragh was the first in her family to attend university. She’s now studying for a PhD in anthropology. She scoffs at the idea that Hirsi Ali is a champion of oppressed Muslim women. “She’s nothing but an Uncle Tom,” Aouragh said. “She has never fought for the oppressed. In fact, she’s done the opposite. She uses these problems as a cover to attack Islam. She insults me and she makes my life as a feminist ten times harder because she forces me to be associated with anti-Muslim attacks.”
Aouragh accuses Hirsi Ali and her political allies of deliberately fostering the hostility that has led to the attacks on Islamic institutions and to police brutality against young Muslim men. “I’m surprised the Arab-Muslim community isn’t more angry with her,” Aouragh said. “When she talks about Muslims as violent people, and Muslim men as rapists, this is very insulting. She calls the Prophet a pedophile. Theo van Gogh called the Prophet a pimp, a goat-fucker. Well, no, we don’t accept that.”
Although the press has focused on the threats against critics of Islam like Hirsi Ali and Geert Wilders, Aouragh says that there have been many more attacks on Dutch Muslims than on non-Muslims. She suspects that what the Dutch really fear is not Islamic fundamentalism but the prospect of having to deal with a new generation of highly educated young Muslims who demand a fair hearing for their values. “We are telling them, ‘We have rights, too. You have to change your idea about freedom or face the consequences.'”
Sun exposes yet another attempt to appease Muslim fanatics
Another “Baa Baa Black Sheep ban” story: “Meddling cricket chiefs could ban the anthem Jerusalem from England’s home Test series against Pakistan next year in case it offends Muslims. The English and Wales Cricket Board are worried about the words building the holy city ‘in England’s green and pleasant land’.”
Islamophobia Watch endorses statement by Mark Steyn
Mark Steyn offers his views on the plan to build a new mosque as part of the Olympics redevelopment in London. “I may be a notorious Islamophobic hatemonger…”, he writes. For the first and possibly the last time, we have found a statement by Steyn that we can agree with.
‘Muslim food – last straw for angry parents’ say fascists
“Outraged parents in the West Midlands have called it the ‘last straw’, an insult to Christians and evidence that our country has ‘sold out’ to an alien religion. Several hundred pupils of the George Salter High School in West Bromwich were recently given a letter to take home to parents advising pupils and parents alike that Halal products would be on offer in the school canteen.”
‘Giant mosque planned by extremists for London Olympics site’
The Sunday Times report that the Muslim proselytising organisation Tablighi Jamaat is hoping to raise finance for the construction of a new mosque as part of the Olympics redevelopment in London doesn’t find favour with the extreme Right. One website quotes that reliable source the Middle East Quarterly (founder: Daniel Pipes) to the effect that Tablighi Jamaat provides the ideological inspiration for al-Qaeda. “No wonder they want to erect a giant mosque and Islamic complex at the Olympic Games 2012. And the multiculturalist appeasers in Newham council, assisted by the appeasing fools in Blair’s government, will probably be jumping for joy to prove that Britain is tolerant of Islam by encouraging the construction of this proposed temple of terrorist ideology.”
Ian Paisley ‘meek and mild’ – shock revelation
We shouldn’t rewrite the classics to appease religious belief but changing texts is not always wrong.” Stephanie Merritt on the (apparently false) story that the Bristol Old Vic production of Marlowe’s “Tamburlaine the Great” changed the text in order to avoid offending Muslims.
While the article is quite balanced in its treatment of that particular issue, you can’t but be struck by the casually bigoted attitude towards the religious beliefs of minority communities. Thus we are told, yet again, that the extension of the racial hatred laws to cover incitement to religious hatred should be opposed because “belief is a choice, ethnicity is not”. Yeah sure – Muslims don’t need protection against the hate-propaganda of the BNP because they can avoid it by the simple expedient of changing their religion or embracing atheism.
And then we are warned that “an increasing number of religious groups – even meek and mild Christians – now include rogue elements who feel their freely chosen beliefs are not robust enough to withstand criticism or mockery and must be defended by threatening or violent means”.
So, unlike the aggressive religions of minority communities, Christianity is the province of the “meek and mild”. This would be the faith that features George W. Bush and Ian Paisley among its adherents, would it?
Editor quits in gay row
The editor and deputy editor of a gay magazine have resigned after they were accused of printing racist articles.
The Lesbian and Gay Coalition Against Racism led a group of mostly ethnic minority protesters who slammed the Lesbian and Gay Humanist magazine – accusing it of having “demonised immigrants”. The last edition of the magazine carried a picture of two gay teens being hanged in Iran on the cover and, inside, raised questions about Islam. In another article it referred to “foreign settlers” as “often poor, ill-educated and culturally estranged Third Worlders” also claiming many of them are “criminals of the worst kind”. A statement criticising the magazine was signed by the gay Muslim group Imaan, the Black Gay Men’s Advisory Group and representatives of the Met Police and the Society of Black Lawyers.
Now editor Andy Armitage has quit, because he claims his publishers didn’t back him up. He denies the material was racist. He said: “I wouldn’t say it demonised them [immigrants]. It was robust and very analytical and it touched a few raw nerves. There are too many people of the political correctness brigade who conflate any criticism of religion with racism”. Armitage said he recognised that there are many moderate Muslims but he said the religion represents a “growing threat” to gays and women. The Pink Triangle Trust which publishes the magazine is meeting this Saturday to decide its future.
Pink Paper, 24 November 2005