Mad Mel takes issue with a Radio 4 programme claiming that the Community Security Trust (whose leading light is Mike Whine) has exaggerated the current level of anti-semitism in Britain: “Anyone who talks to the police will know that the Jewish community in Britain has to be guarded against the very real threat of attack from both Muslims and neo-Nazis.” She is particularly outraged that Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain was among those interviewed on the programme.
Category Archives: UK
Maryam Namazie – ‘secularist of the year’
Maryam Namazie of the Worker Communist Party of Iran has been awarded the National Secular Society’s Irwin Prize for “Secularist of the Year”. The £5,000 annual prize was presented by Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee at a lunch at the Montcalm Hotel in London. Introducing Namazie, Keith Porteous Wood of the NSS explained that “she has been roundly criticised by Islamists, the Islamic Republic of Iran and even Ken Livingstone after his invitation to this country of Yusuf Al Qaradawi. So she must be doing something right.”
In her speech, comrade Namazie stated: “And don’t get me started on Islamophobia. It is now even deemed racist to criticise beliefs and ideas and movements associated with them. And – silly me – all along I thought racism was aimed at individuals and groups of people not beliefs and political movements.”
Butterflies and Wheels, 9 October 2005
This would be the same Mayam Namazie who offered the following thoughtful comment on the issue of the hijab: “I suppose if it were to be compared with anyone’s clothing it would be comparable to the Star of David pinned on Jews by the Nazis to segregate, control, repress and to commit genocide.” So perhaps it’s just as well they didn’t get her started on Islamophobia.
For a succinct demolition of Namazie’s hysterical line on Islam (“The innocence with which Namazie claims not to know what Islamophobia is recalls the neo-Nazi party official who, challenged on TV, declares: ‘Racist? Me?'”) see Peyvand Khorsandi in The Iranian, 4 February 2003
Don’t blame the US for ‘global jihad’ – Robert Spencer
Robert Spencer explains that terrorism has absolutely nothing to do with US foreign policy and is the product solely of “jihadist expansionism and violence”.
Front Page Magazine, 10 October 2005
In fact, an identical argument to that put forward in yesterday’s Observer by Nick Cohen.
Ministers ban 15 ‘terror groups’
Fifteen international groups believed to be terrorist organisations are set to be banned, the Home Office has said.
These are on top of 25 international organisations already proscribed under the Terrorism Act 2000, and a further 14 already banned in Northern Ireland. They include groups with links to Iraq, Uzbekistan, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Morocco.
The government is also planning to change the law so that it can ban groups which glorify terrorism. Being a member of a proscribed organisation under the Terrorism Act 2000 can be punished by a 10-year prison term.
Islamism – two views
“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, just as Latin American anarchist guerrillas, communists, social democrats and third-way Blairites base theirs on socialism. To view such a broad canvas through the lens of Bin Laden or Zarqawi is absurd.”
Soumaya Ghannoushi in the Guardian, 5 October 2005
“… who will get the blame if the rucksacks start exploding at the Gare du Nord? Will the liberal world look Islamism in the face and see a cult of slaughter and self-slaughter powered by messianic faith, the Jewish conspiracy theory of European fascism, imperialist dreams of world domination and a loathing of democracy, pluralism, religious tolerance and the emancipation of women?”
Nick Cohen in the Observer, 9 October 2005
It’s also worth comparing Soumaya Ghannoushi’s understanding of the causes of Islamist terrorism (see here) with Cohen’s. She offers a nuanced analysis which places ideology in its social context, whereas Cohen – the self-styled upholder of Enlightenment values and secular rationalism – produces only an ignorant, bigoted rant which denies that terrorism has any material basis at all.
More right-wing applause for Trevor Phillips
“The equality watchdog Trevor Phillips used to irritate the hell out of me. To be frank, I never felt he properly engaged with the real issues affecting modern multi-racial Britain. He always seemed to pussyfoot around the edges, indulging himself in the soft option of political correctness. Either I was plumb wrong … or the guy has just awoken from a kind of intellectual torpor and emerged, virtually overnight, as a clear-sighted, acerbic and fearless crusader against the long-held dogmas and obsessions of our traditionally self-serving race-relations industry.
“Phillips has transformed the office of Head of the Commission for Racial Equality into an abattoir for the slaughter of sacred cows. This week he took a series of cherished beliefs held dear for decades and put them to the sword. Some of the principal pillars of multi-culturalism – one of the most pernicious, wrong-headed creeds of modern times – were shaken to their foundations as he actually dared to ask questions that have been long proscribed. Such as, why it is necessarily wrong to describe people as coloured; why town halls should print forms in a variety of different ethnic languages; why Muslim pupils should be excused from wearing full school uniform.
“Another shibboleth to be chucked overboard was the traditional condemnation of the British Empire. Phillips actually praised it for mixing people of different races and religions, and exhumed the long-buried truism that the British people are not, by nature, bigots. ‘We created something called the Empire where we mixed and mingled with people very different from those of these islands,’ he said. This is terrific stuff….”
Richard Madeley (of Richard & Judy) in the Daily Express, 8 October 2005
Racial violence after 7 July – week 13
Islamophobia Watch cruel to Panorama
Yes, it’s true – we were really, really horrible to poor John Ware, the reporter who headed the Panorama witch-hunt of the Muslim Council of Britain (see here). Still, Ware has his admirers. Anthony “The Muslims are coming” Browne is a supporter, and so is Brett Lock of Outrage.
And Lock also finds himself in a bloc with Mad Mel. See Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 3 October 2005
Alliances with Islamophobic right-wingers are par for the course with Mr Lock. See, for example, here.
The world’s top 100 intellectuals
Prospect magazine publishes its list of the world’s top 100 intellectuals. Among others, it includes Tariq Ramadan and Yusuf al-Qaradawi. You even get to vote.
Torygraph attacks Muslim cultural takeover of Britain
“They’re changing guard at Buckingham Palace/ Her Majesty’s Law is replaced by Allah’s.” Mark Steyn takes issue with “the United Kingdom’s descent into dhimmitude”, which stems from “the progressive liberal’s urge to self-abase and Western Muslims’ ever greater boldness in flexing their political muscle”.