Tariq Modood, author of Multicultural Politics: Racism, Ethnicity and Muslims in Britain, defends multiculturalism.
Category Archives: UK
Religious hatred bill: ‘censorship by stealth’
Condemning the religious hatred bill, Mike McNair claims that “the chilling effect of the new act will be considerable. Behzti and Jerry Springer, the Opera would not be staged; Monty Python’s Life of Brian might be filmed in the US, since the first amendment is robust, but would not be shown by British cinemas, and a great deal of the television series would not be broadcast; Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses might well be de facto banned by English law”.
Weekly Worker, 29 September 2005
This is not only hysterical nonsense, it’s also unbelievably ignorant. The staging of Behzti was already covered by the provisions in the 1986 Public Order Act dealing with incitement to racial hatred, as Sikhs are held (on the basis of case law) to be members of a mono-ethnic faith. The extension of those provisions to cover religious hatred, as is proposed in the present bill, would make zero difference to whether or not Behzti could be prosecuted for inciting hatred. The effect of the bill is simply to extend to other faiths (notably Muslims) the defence already available to Sikhs and Jews under existing law.
In another article in the same issue Jack Conrad approvingly quotes Labour MP Bob Marshall-Andrews: “… there is a profound difference between hatred based on race, sex or age – all of which are thrust upon us; we have no choice – and on religion, which is not thrust upon us. Religion is a matter of choice.”
This argument was demolished by Sadiq Khan MP in the same House of Commons debate: “The idea that one cannot choose one’s race but can choose one’s religion so that the former but not the latter should get protection is absurd. Some people talk about religion as a lifestyle choice, but what is being suggested – that Britain’s 1.6 million Muslims should convert to Christianity or become atheists?”
NUS response to ‘When Students Turn to Terror’
Commenting on the Glees report into extremist groups operating on university campuses, When Students Turn to Terror, NUS National President Kat Fletcher and NUS Black Students’ Officer Pav Akhtar said:
“The paper offers nothing to the serious debate about how to address terrorism in society.
“No evidence is presented to support the view that campus life contributes to students becoming involved in terrorism, other than that some individuals who have been, or are alleged to have been, involved in terrorist activity also attended a UK college at some point.
“The report proposes imposing quotas on the number of ethnic minority students attending any individual university; abolishing the ‘clearing’ system that allows students to find an alternative university if they have not achieved the grades needed for their first choice; forcing all student societies to include dons on their committees; and restricting academic discussion on certain topics.
“NUS fears that the report’s unsubstantiated claims have the potential to endanger Muslim students by inflaming a climate of racism, fear and hostility, and place a cloud over perfectly legitimate student Islamic societies.
“NUS is calling on its members to work together to engage all students and defend the rights of faith and cultural groups to self-organise as societies. Unions are encouraged to support minority student groups including the Islamic society, against any backlash or exclusion. We encourage student officers to meet with their Black and minority ethnic groups on campus at the beginning of term to ensure access to welfare and support provisions is clear and that students report any incidents of hate crime.”
Posted on educationet, 28 September 2005
Mad Mel discovers the barbarism of the slave trade
“From the early seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, thousands of British men women and children were kidnapped by Arab corsairs and sold into slavery in Morocco where they were kept in conditions of unspeakable barbarism.” Melanie Phillips discovers “a seaborne Islamic jihad against Britain which lasted for no less than two centuries”.
Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 27 September 2005
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought that around that time Christian Britain was itself not immune to the barbaric practice of trading slaves. But then, I was forgetting, that was entirely different – the victims were not white people.
Britain ‘agreed in secret’ to expel Saudis during £40bn arms talks
An insight into one of the motives behind the crackdown on civil liberties.
Demand Keith Shilson’s reinstatement
The Muslim Public Affairs Committee calls for the reinstatement of Keith Shilson, the Middlesex University students union president who was suspended and thrown off campus for refusing to cancel an invite to a Hizb ut-Tahrir representative to participate in a “Question Time” session.
Fears over Christians attending Muslim schools
Two senior Church leaders have risked reigniting the controversy over faith schools by voicing their reservations about Christian children going to Muslim faith schools.
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, welcomed that fact that Jewish and Muslim parents sent their children to Catholic schools because they like the “ethos”. But he said that he would not want large numbers of Catholic children attending Muslim schools because he would not want them to be brought up “in that atmosphere”.
The Cardinal added that, while he welcomed dialogue between the faiths, “fundamentally the creed of Islam is totally diverse from the creed of Christianity.”
His remarks were echoed by the Rt Rev Tom Butler, the Church of England Bishop of Southwark, who said he would not have sent his children to a Muslim school. “Although religion is taken seriously in a Muslim school, I think the particular insight of Islam is… is not mine,” he said.
Both clerics were speaking on the BBC2 programme God and the Politicians, due to be broadcast tomorrow night.
The comments of the Churchmen was greeted with disappointment by Sir Iqbal Sacranie, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, who said that he had received his secondary education in a Catholic school.
Reacting to remarks by his fellow faith leaders, he told the programme: “I think this is the difficulty which we have – that what is good for myself and my children should also be seen to be good for others as well. And as much as we are all professing that we have to have that understanding of each other, it is important this should be also put into practice.”
Muslims = Nazis, Front Page Magazine claims
“Muslims can’t stand the thought of Holocaust commemorations, because, with certain honorable exceptions, Islam’s attitudes toward the Jews frequently mirror those of the Nazi killers.” Don Feder offers his insights into the MCB’s proposal that Holocaust Memorial Day should be broadened out into a Genocide Day.
Front Page Magazine, 27 September 2005
In fact, Holocaust Memorial Day is often observed as a more general commemoration of the victims of genocide. The event I attended this year included a gay men’s choir and a speaker on the mass killings in Rwanda as well as a Jewish survivor of the Nazi extermination camps.
It’s also worth remembering that when the idea of a Holocaust Memorial Day was flagged up in the late 1990s, it proved controversial not only among Muslims but also within the Jewish community in Britain. Left-wing Jews criticised it on the basis that it ignored or at least downplayed the existence of non-Jewish victims of genocide. Right-wingers opposed it because they claimed that the history of Jewish suffering under the Nazis was being harnessed to Labour’s “equalities agenda”. And ultra-orthodox Jews rejected it because they argued that the Holocaust was divine retribution on the Jewish people for their sins and that condemning it was to question God’s judgement.
Students meet to defend banned union leader
Students are today holding a meeting at Middlesex University in support of its student union president who was suspended for refusing to cancel a debate with the controversial Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. Keith Shilson was escorted from the campus last week by university security after he refused to cancel the question and answer session with the group, which the prime minister is considering proscribing as part of the government’s crackdown on extremism. The move by the university’s vice-chancellor Michael Driscoll to ban the debate came days after the education secretary, Ruth Kelly, told vice-chancellors they would have to play a part to tackle extremism on campus.
Glazov, Palazzi and Front Page Magazine
Yusuf Smith takes on Jamie Glazov of Front Page Magazine, and Massimo Palazzi.