Vote-seeking ‘hits terror fight’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Government’s counter-terrorism policy is being damaged by ministers’ vote-seeking and party political interests, a report claimed.

The Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust study said sensible plans to combat terrorism were being “submerged” by the Government’s “electoral motives”. It accused Prime Minister Tony Blair and Home Secretary John Reid of playing to a tabloid agenda and “trying to win over the white working class vote”.

Anti-terror measures which were having a disproportionate effect on Britain’s Muslim community risked alienating people within Islam who could play a vital role in defeating extremism, it added.

The authors urged the Government to abandon talk of a “war on terror” and to review its foreign policy. Mr Blair’s “close and publicly unquestioning stance” alongside the United States was damaging Britain’s influence on global politics, they suggested.

The report said: “The Government’s counter-terrorism campaign is often driven by party political and electoral motives that are ‘submerging’ its own ‘sensible’ counter-terrorism strategy. The actions of ministers, particularly Home Secretary John Reid, could have a ‘boomerang effect’ by alienating the Muslim communities whose trust and co-operation are vital.”

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Religious hatred is no more than a variety of racism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Soumaya Ghannoushi2“After his acquittal on the charge of inciting racial hatred, Nick Griffin was asked whether he was a racist. He replied that he was no longer one, that he is now a ‘religionist’. But should we believe that Griffin has really abandoned the racism that frames his ideology and that of the party he leads? Of course not. All Griffin has done is stretch from one category of racism to another – without breaking with the former: from a discourse founded on racial hatred to one based on religio-racial hatred.

“In the speech for which he and his assistant, Mark Collett, were taken to court, the two shifted effortlessly from referring to Islam as ‘this wicked, vicious faith’ that ‘has expanded from a handful of cranky lunatics about 1,300 years ago’, to speaking of Asian ‘muggers’, ‘rapists’, ‘bastards’, ‘cockroaches’ and ‘ethnics’ who need to be ‘shown the door’.

“We are witnessing the emergence of a new type of hatred, where religion and culture overlap with race and ethnicity. The climate generated by the war on terror – stoked further by the inflammatory speech on Friday of the MI5 director general Eliza Manningham-Buller –  has allowed the far-right to redirect its poison of exclusionism from specific racial minorities to specific religio-racial minorities: from the black and Asian, to the Muslim black and Asian.”

Soumaya Ghannoushi in the Guardian, 13 November 2006

Call to bridge West-Muslim divide

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Khatami2A cross-cultural group of 20 prominent world figures has called for urgent efforts to heal the growing divide between Muslim and Western societies. They say the chief causes of the rift are not religion or history, but recent political developments, notably the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The panel, drawn together by the UN, says a climate of mutual fear and stereotypes is worsening the problem. To combat hostility bred of ignorance, they want education and media projects.

The Alliance of Civilisations, which includes Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami, dismisses the notion that a clash of civilisations is inevitable, but says that swift action is needed. Their findings were presented in a report to the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan at a ceremony in Istanbul on Monday morning.

BBC News, 13 November 2006

Antwerp: schools forbid Muslim veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Only two secondary schools in the municipal educational system of Antwerp allow their students to come to school with a Muslim veil. Most refuse entrance to girls who come with a veil. More and more schools elsewhere in Flanders are also adding a ban on the Muslim veil to their regulations.

Various Flemish immigrant organization think that the government should intervene. They point out that banning the Muslim veil reduces the chances of getting a good education. “Immigrant girls can’t choose freely anymore to which school they go and which subjects they will study there. That undermines their chances on the job market,” says Nadia Babazia from the Support Point for Immigrant Girls and Women that researched the wearing of the Muslim veil in Flemish schools.

Islam in Europe, 13 November 2006

Stop the War Coalition holds conference on Islamophobia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Stop the War logoPeople’s Assembly: Islamophobia and the War on Terror

Saturday 18 November 10.00am – 5.30pm
Camden Centre Judd Street London WC1H

How are the attacks on Muslims linked to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? How can the anti-war movement counter those attacks in its continuing campaign to end the Bush/Blair wars?

The People’s Assembly will bring together peace and anti-war groups, trade unions, faith groups and organisations, community groups, political parties and any other representative organisations wishing to discuss these important issues. Individuals are also welcome as observers.

More details on Stop the War Coalition website.

Another defence of the right to incite religious hatred

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“If it is left to the Nick Griffins among us to acknowledge what is clearly quite widespread concern about Islam, we will never be able to have the serious, substantial debate that we need about the role of Muslim practice in Britain. How is a liberal democracy to deal with an illiberal orthodoxy in its midst? How can a faith whose own laws often contravene those of its host society make its peace with the secular state? These are questions that need urgently to be addressed. They cannot be fudged by banning ‘religious hatred’, or by insisting that anyone who alludes to them (or who resents the problems that they raise for our society) is a bigot fit only to be fodder for the neo-fascist fringe.”

Janet Daley in the Daily Telegraph, 13 November 2006

Inciting hatred against Muslims is OK by Mad Mel

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Melanie Phillips joins the chorus of condemnation provoked by Gordon Brown’s suggestion that the racial hatred laws need tightening up to prevent the fascist BNP inciting hatred against Muslim communities:

“… racial hatred is entirely different from being offensive about a religion. Unlike racial hatred, which targets people, religious hatred is directed at an idea. And in a free society, there should be no place for criminalising the clash of ideas, however much upset this may cause…. Mr Brown is doubtless keen to burnish his credentials as a Prime Minister-in-waiting by displaying his toughness against all extremism…. But he doesn’t seem to realise that outlawing hatred of religion would undermine this fight, by shutting down crucial debate about Islam and its role in global terror…. Mr Brown’s view plays directly into the hands of those Muslims who try to stifle debate about Islamic terrorism on the grounds of ‘Islamophobia’….

“What makes people vulnerable to the BNP is the enormous gulf between ministerial rhetoric and action. It is staggering, for example, that in deprived Newham, the Government is allowing the largest mosque in Europe to be built on the site of the Olympic village – a piece of Islamist triumphalism to be funded by the Tablighi Jamaat, a group described by intelligence sources as an ‘ante-chamber’ to al Qaeda…. The BNP is exploiting a deep weakness in our culture. Only if British society and its values are defended with the utmost vigour and their attackers given no quarter will the poisonous boil of the BNP finally be lanced, and bigotry of every kind shown the door.”

Daily Mail, 13 November 2006

If we need help in “showing bigotry the door” Melanie Phillips will of course be the first person we turn to.

‘Instead of confronting extremism, Muslim leaders bleat about Islamophobia’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The widespread refusal to face up to the reality of Muslim extremism is one of the most dispiriting and dangerous traits of modern Britain…. Instead of confronting extremism, the majority of Muslim leaders prefer to bleat about so-called Islamophobia, parading their grievances over everything from the veil to British foreign policy. Any reference to the terror threat is airily dismissed as the work of a tiny criminal element divorced from the moderate mainstream. But this will not wash, for there is mounting evidence that a singifican number of Britain’s 1.7 million Muslims are sympathetic to violent jihadism.”

Leo McKinstry in the Daily Express, 13 November 2006

Muslim women shouldn’t wear veils in public, says Archbishop

Posted on by Bob Pitt

One of the Church of England’s most senior figures today risks a row with the Muslim community by suggesting that Islamic women should not wear veils in public.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Daily Mail, Dr John Sentamu warns that “no minority” should impose its beliefs on the rest of society and that the veil causes Muslim women to “stick out”.

The Archbishop of York – who ranks second in the Church’s hierarchy – also says the BBC is biased against Christians because Anglicans don’t threaten to “bomb” the corporation.

Daily Mail, 13 November 2006

See also “Archbishop questions role of veil”, Evening Standard, 13 November 2006