Socialist Worker asks the question, Ghayasuddin Siddiqui and Inayat Bunglawala offer opposing answers. Looks like the SWP is hedging its bets. The fact that these two writers are given equal billing is itself a bit of a cop-out. Inayat Bunglawala is media secretary for the Muslim Council of Britain, to which over 300 British Muslim organisations are affiliated, whereas the Muslim Parliament is, how shall we put this, somewhat less of a mass movement.
Category Archives: UK
Racial and Religious Hatred Bill
The transcript of the first sitting of the House of Commons standing committee on the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill is now online. Leyton & Wanstead MP Harry Cohen states:
“Islamophobia is deep and serious. It is of great concern to many of my Muslim constituents. I suspect that Members with Muslim constituents know that very well. Where it is overt, the law must stand up against it and declare it illegal and unacceptable.”
‘Please don’t jail me for seven years’, terrified theatre director pleads
“The extremist end of Islam – the fanatics who wanted Salman Rushdie killed, and who … want their beliefs to be immune from criticism of any sort – will not be appeased by it. They will simply see it as a staging post for a more extreme law: one which will extend blasphemy legislation to cover all religions.”
Another silly article on the religious hatred bill, this time by theatre director Nicholas Hytner.
Spencer drones on and on and on …
“Ever since I began doing this work publicly my point has been simple and consistent: that the jihad terrorists are working from mainstream traditions and numerous Qur’anic exhortations, and that by means of these traditions and teachings they are able to gain recruits among Muslims worldwide, and hold the sympathy of others whom they do not recruit. This explains why there has been no widespread, sustained, or sincere Muslim outcry against the jihad terrorist enterprise in general. The mainstream media, both liberal and conservative, does not want to face these facts.”
Robert Spencer does his imitation of a stuck record.
Nazis and the religious hatred bill
“British people are also aware of the mayhem caused in parts of the world by Islam and the use of violence by Muslims to spread their cause – 9/11 being a particularly horrific example. If law abiding people are concerned about the increasing spread of Islam in Britain, should not a decent government take their worries on board by at least conducting a true, open and honest debate on all sides of the argument? Yes. But ‘our’ government does no such thing and instead seeks to criminalise such sensible debate on the matter and call it ‘hate’ and ‘incitement to religious hatred’.”
A fascist assesses the Commons debate on the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill.
‘Ha, ha! This bill has incited luvvies to hate Labour’, Torygraph writer sneers
Another jaw-droppingly ignorant attack on the religious hatred bill, by Jasper Gerard in the Sunday Times.
Still, we’re helpfully provided with Stephen Fry’s penetrating insights into the issue: “It’s now common to hear people say, ‘I’m rather offended by that,’ as if that gives them certain rights. It’s no more than a whine. ‘I’m offended by that.’ Well, so fucking what?”
Ah, the wonders of an Oxbridge education.
Also worth noting that Fry’s description of the bill as “a sop to Muslims” has been approvingly quoted by the BNP. See here.
Gags and the hijab
Letters in response to Will Hutton’s article last week (see here) on the new anti-incitement bill.
Why watered down religious hatred legislation won’t work
Why watered down religious hatred legislation won’t work
By Ken Livingstone
Morning Star, 25 June 2005
The government’s new Bill proposing a ban on incitement to religious hatred, which last week passed its second reading in the Commons by 303 votes to 247, has been the subject of much controversy.
As mayor of the most diverse city in the world, I strongly support this Bill, and welcome the fact that the overwhelming majority of Londoners do so too.
Our polls show that 72 per cent of Londoners support a ban on inciting hatred against people on grounds of their religion, while only 15 per cent oppose it.
Unfortunately, this mass public support for the Bill has been ignored by the media, who have concentrated on publicising the vocal objections of the Tory party and a few well-known celebrities, who have tended to portray the Bill as a form of blasphemy law.
The position under existing race relations laws is discriminatory and clearly unacceptable.
Some faith groups such as Jews and Sikhs are currently protected from incitement to hatred, whereas members of other faiths such as Hindus and Muslims are not.
This has left a dangerous loophole in the law which is being exploited by the extreme right.
The British National Party has been energetically propagating its racist filth by whipping up Islamophobia, playing on post-9/11 stereotypes of Muslims as terrorists.
In defence of the religious hatred bill
George Carty emails us to ask: “How can you brand opponents of the [religious hatred] bill in general as Islamophobes, given that Amir Butler (very sympathetic to the Islamist cause) opposed similar laws in Australia?” (For Butler’s views see here.)
I suppose there are several answers to this.
First, there are also Muslims who oppose the religious hatred bill in Britain – Dr Siddiqui of the Muslim Parliament is one, and I believe the Islamic Human Rights Commission takes a similar position.
But these are hardly mass organisations. The Muslim Council of Britain is the umbrella body for the majority of Muslim organisations in the UK, with over 300 affiliates, and it is solidly behind the bill. I suspect that you will find that Amir Butler’s views are those of only a minority of Australian Muslims.
Also, the arguments used by the likes of Amir Butler, Dr Siddiqui and the IHRC are essentially pragmatic – that the legislation will act to the detriment of Muslims – which is rather different from the arguments put forward by non-Muslim opponents of the bill.
Labour left fails to stand up for right to incite anti-Muslim hatred, AWL complains
“Outlawing incitement to hatred on the basis of religious belief, as opposed to ethnicity, is a major attack on freedom of speech. It means extending the blasphemy laws which still, at least in theory, protect Anglican Christianity from rational public debate, to shield all religions with authoritarian impartiality.
“The bill is partly a cynical pitch to win back Muslim voters outraged by Blair’s warmongering and erosion of civil liberties (like the expansion of state funding for faith schools, and defence of the hijab) and partly the brainchild of a Prime Minister with a lot of respect for religious superstition and very little for human rights.
“So why did the left of the Parliamentary Labour Party, whose leaders have boasted that they will be ‘setting the agenda’ for this Parliament, fail to rebel?
“Unfortunately, on this issue as on many others, these MPs are highly representative of a left which is increasingly losing its political bearings. The ‘religious hatred’ law has elicited not a squeak of protest from the trade union movement; meanwhile the National Union of Students, on the initiative of the SWP and their Stalinist friends Socialist Action, has positively endorsed new Labour’s assault on respect for rational thinking and free speech.”
Sacha Ismael of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty and Houzan Mahmoud of the Worker Communist Party of Iraq provide us with a good illustration of which section of the left has really lost its bearings. The section of the left that supports the right to incite hatred against Muslims and sneers at the defence of the right to wear the hijab.