The Press Complaints Commission has upheld a complaint by Samir El-Atar, managing director of Dar Al-Taqwa bookshop, about an article headlined “Terror and hatred for sale just yards from Baker Street”, published in the Evening Standard on 28 July. As a result of the article, which falsely accused the bookshop of stocking literature advocating terrorism, “abuse and threats of violence had been made against staff and it had been necessary to invoke police protection”.
Category Archives: UK
Me – Islamophobic? Tatchell responds to critics
“We have only once staged a protest against a muslim leader”, Peter Tatchell states. “That was against the rightwing, misogynist, anti-semitic and homophobic cleric, Dr Yusuf Qaradawi.” So that’s alright, then. Tatchell and his friends in Outrage mount a hysterical, lying campaign against one of the world’s leading Muslim scholars, but it doesn’t means they’re Islamophobes.
Weekly Worker, 24 November 2005
Tatchell also informs us that “most of the Muslims that the SWP-Respect ally with are homophobes, but the vast majority of Muslim people in this country seem to be prepared to live and let live”.
Now here’s a thing. On Tatchell’s website you can find this article which warns that “homophobic Muslim voters may be able to influence the outcome of elections in 20 or more marginal constituencies. Their voting strength could potentially be used to block pro-gay candidates or to pressure electorally vulnerable MPs to vote against gay rights legislation (and other liberal measures)”. Has Tatchell changed his mind about this, then? In which case, why is the article still on his website?
It would also be interesting to hear from Tatchell about current relations between Outrage and the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association, given that the two organisations have long enjoyed a close alliance and some overlap in membership.
GALHA secretary George Broadhead’s Islamophobic remark – “What does a moderate Muslim do, other than excuse the real nutters by adhering to this barmy doctrine?” – was quoted in a speech at the Respect conference. Earlier this year, in reponse to reports that Dr al-Qaradawi was about to visit Britain, Broadhead stated (see here and here) that Qaradawi should not be allowed into the UK at any time, “let alone at a time when the country is reeling from the kind of extreme violence that is spawned by his religion”.
Given the historically close association between Outrage and GALHA, one might have thought that, as a staunch opponent of Islamophobia, Tatchell would be the first to condemn such remarks. But, so far, not a peep.
‘The first step to Britishness is your poppy’
Carol Gould claims she got into an altercation with “a young Arab man” on London’s Edgware Road because she was wearing a Remembrance Day poppy. Fortunately help was at hand, in the form of a BNP-sympathising taxi driver:
“I hailed a taxi and, thankfully, my pursuer, who was by this time shouting, did not get into the taxi. The driver was enormously sympathetic but told me that I had been ‘asking for it’ by walking in what he called ‘Little Beirut’. He then told me that we were in World War III. His white, working class anger at what he perceived as ‘the Islamic takeover’ of Britain was palpable. He was not the first London cabbie who has told me he would gladly join the far-right British National Party if pushed.
“(It is worth noting in this context that London Mayor Ken Livingstone is trying to institute an initiative to bring ethnic minorities into the taxi fleet, to tackle its almost exclusively white domain. Keeping in mind that Washington D.C. has one of the worst taxi systems in the world, in part because most drivers can barely speak English and do not know the meaning of the words ‘cordial’ or ‘polite’, especially where female passengers are concerned, one prays the Livingstone initiative will be approached with caution.)
“The driver dropped me at Marble Arch. I decided to walk back slowly should my scary have made his way in my direction. As I walked, I realized that not one of the hundreds of Middle Eastern and British-born Muslims who run all of the establishments along Edgware Road was wearing a poppy.”
Why are people so obsessed with women in veils?
“The Observer had a story on the front page of its review section last Sunday on niqab, the face veil worn by some Muslim women. ‘The Big Cover-Up’ fails to ask the obvious question of why people can’t mind their own business – after all, given what some women (and some men) don’t wear, one might ask why it matters why some women choose to cover their faces as well. The thing nobody seems to mention is that of all the problems some Muslims cause, none of them seem to come from women, and none of them are the result of women covering their heads or faces, so why is anyone bothered? … Why are people so obsessed with women in veils?”
A succinct reply to Andrew Anthony from Yusuf Smith.
Tatchell and pink-veiled Islamophobia
“Tatchell is disturbingly fixated on men with dark skin. How else can you explain why, when invited to comment on the murder of Jody Dobrowski, he rapidly started telling his radio audience about the homophobia of a well known Muslim cleric? I doubt the two white men charged with the crime place much store by the words of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi.”
A reply to Outrage’s press release about the Respect conference resolution on LGBT rights.
Lockdown at Imperial College
Kian Sing Low, student union campaigns officer at Imperial College, writes about the ban on the Islamic veil and other clothing deemed a threat to security.
Socialist Worker, 26 November 2005
See also Daily Mail, 24 November 2005
Respect conference reports
Respect rejects call to oppose Racial and Religious Hatred Bill
An amendment calling for opposition to the Bill was defeated. Ifhat Shaheen from Hackney, east London, spoke against the amendment. She said, “As a Muslim woman I face racial abuse every day – but I can’t even call it racial abuse, because as a Muslim I’m not covered by the Race Relations Act. Sikhs and Jewish people are already covered – if they suffer abuse because of their religion, they are protected under the law. So why, when a bill is put forward that will give Muslims the same protection, does it suddenly become an issue of limiting people’s free speech?”
Socialist Worker, 26 November 2005
Respect conference reaffirms commitment to opposing homophobia
While there was one speech arguing that the organisation had not sufficiently highlighted the issue at the general election, there were three others detailing how clear arguments for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality were put and won.
Dave Goodfield from Coventry said, “We have just seen the recent appalling murder of a young man, Jody Dobrowski, on Clapham Common.” Dave called for a clear stand against bigotry, wherever it comes from, and rejected the idea that black and Muslim communities are in some way the main source of such attacks.
Delegates were shocked when he read out a quote – “what does a moderate Muslim do, other than excuse the real nutters by adhering to this barmy doctrine?” – and revealed it came not from the far right, but from a gay publication. He told delegates this was an extreme reflection of a “disproportionate focus” by a small number of activists against homophobia on African Caribbeans and Muslims.
Coventry’s amendment was passed unanimously. The overwhelming feeling among delegates was both to campaign against homophobia and also not to allow the issue of lesbian and gay rights to be cynically used as a cover for Islamophobia.
Imperial College bans veil on campus
Imperial College in London has emulated that reactionary little town in Belgium that banned the Islamic veil on the grounds of security – a policy also advocated in the Netherlands by right-wing politician Rita Verdonk. And the logic of Imperial College’s policy is of course to impose a general public ban. If Muslim women covering their faces are a threat to security on campus, are they not equally a threat in wider society?
See Polly Curtis’s report in the Guardian, 23 November 2005
Sky censured for ‘Muslim wrestler’ show
Sky Sports has been censured by a media watchdog for resurrecting a character from the larger than life world of American wrestling who had been “killed off” after being accused of inciting anti-Muslim sentiment among fans.
World Wrestling Entertainment, the successor to the World Wrestling Federation franchise that became popular in the UK during the 1990s, was forced to axe the character of Muhammad Hassan from the ring after complaints in the wake of the July 7 London bombings.
But Sky Sports was yesterday censured by the media regulator Ofcom after the digital channel included the character in a programme which went out just over two weeks later on July 25.
The Great American Bash, a highlight of the WWE calender, brought together characters from its Raw and Smackdown strands of programming.
The character, played by an American, Mark Copani, entered the ring wearing an Arab headdress and surrounded by a phalanx of masked men in combat clothes who were described by the commentators as his “sympathisers”.
There was also use of emotive language, including the words “martyr”, “sacrifice” and “infidel” and footage of a previous clash between him and another wrestler was set to music that sounded like the Muslim call to prayer.
After the programme, Sky approached WWE to ensure the character would be withdrawn, and it ended his contract.
Mad Mel finds a co-thinker …
… and no, we’re not talking about Nick Griffin. Mel has found an interview with French intellectual Alain Finkielkraut in the Israeli paper Ha’aretz that she claims supports her own view that it was Islam, not poverty, discrimination and alienation, that was behind the unrest in France.
Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 21 November 2005
In reality, Finkielkraut’s take on the riots, bad though it is, still falls some way short of Phillips’s unhinged Islamophobia: “I have not spoken about an ‘intifada’ of the suburbs, and I don’t think this lexicon ought to be used.”
Finkielkraut’s main concern is to “wage war on the ‘war on racism'”. You can understand why he might not be happy about anti-racist campaigns. On the subject of football, he offers the following insight:
“People say the French national team is admired by all because it is black-blanc-beur [black-white-Arab]. Actually, the national team today is black-black-black, which arouses ridicule throughout Europe.”