‘Why the veil is a feminist issue’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“We are on the wrong track if we believe that veils are a religious issue. They’re not. Like fat, they’re a feminist issue. The clothes that women wear, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, are a powerful political statement about where they’re at; about the amount of freedom, self-esteem or independence they possess.

“The veil which covers the face, the niqab, is an enormously potent symbol of subjugation to a (male-controlled) religion. It is what Muslim men want. It is about control of women; about forced chastity. The veil sends out a very clear message that the woman behind it abides by the conventions of the Muslim faith; that she places the approval of men above her own self-expression.”

Melanie Reid in the Herald, 10 October 2006

Christian evangelist Franklin Graham blasts Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Franklin_GrahamThe Rev. Franklin Graham, a Christian evangelist whose criticism of Islam has frequently outraged Muslims, said Islam teaches its followers to “persecute” others until they convert, with the aim being “total domination.”

In the wake of the 2001 attacks on the United States, Graham outraged Muslims when he said that Islam “is a very evil and wicked religion.” In an interview last March, he told ABC News’ “Nightline” that he had not changed his mind about the faith.

In his latest salvo, Graham told The News & Observer: “It’s the teaching of Islam that is not tolerant of any other faith.”

“It’s world domination. When they dominate an area, they’ll let other belief systems exist, but they’ll persecute them so that (people) convert to Islam and there’s total domination. Once you’re in Islam you can’t get out of it. If you leave Islam you have to be killed,” said Graham.

Associated Press, 9 October 2006

Race attack on Muslim after July 7 ceremony

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A white Muslim convert was spat on and racially abused in front of her young children as they travelled home after attending a commemoration of the victims of the July 7 terror bombings.

Michelle Idrees, dressed in a traditional burkha, was targeted by a father and his two sons as she travelled on a Thameslink train travelling out of London. She was returning to her home in Luton, Bedfordshire, when Charles Adams called her a “Muslim bitch” before spitting on her face.

Charles Adams, 23, admitted religiously aggravated common assault and affray when he appeared alongside his brother Mark Edward Adams, 26, and father Mark Raymond Adams, 50, at Middlesex Guildhall Crown Court yesterday. The three men, all from Colindale, northwest London, will be sentenced in November.

Times, 10 October 2006

See also “Father and sons spat at Muslim”, BBC News, 9 October 2006

Update:  See “Man jailed for 7/7 racial attack”, BBC News, 23 November 2006

And “We’re leaving the country after racists abused and spat at me”, Evening Standard, 24 November 2006

Rushdie says ‘the veil sucks’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Rushdie and VeilMuslims turned on Salman Rushdie today for saying that veils “suck”. It came after the author stoked up the debate started by Jack Straw when the Commons leader said he asked constituents to remove their veils which he saw as a barrier to race relations.

Rushdie said: “He wasn’t doing anything compulsory. He was expressing an important opinion, which is that veils suck, which they do. I think the veil is a way of taking power away from women.”

Rushdie’s comments came in an interview with Radio 4’s Today programme about his new joint exhibition with sculptor Anish Kapoor.

Rushdie said: “Speaking as somebody with three sisters and a very largely female Muslim family, there’s not a single woman I know in my family or in their friends who would have accepted wearing the veil. I think the battle against the veil has been a long and continuing battle against the limitation of women, so in that sense I’m completely on [Straw’s] side.”

Sir Iqbal Sacranie, former chairman of the Muslim Council of Britain who has clashed with the author over the Satanic Verses, said Rushdie had “no credibility whatsoever” within the Muslim community. “You can only have a debate with open minds, not closed minds. Islamophobes are currently doing all they can to attack Islam and it doesn’t surprise me if he is now jumping on the bandwagon,” he said.

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Matgamna gets it (partly) right

Posted on by Bob Pitt

This site has had some harsh words to say about the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty in the past, but happily we’ve found an article, by Sean Matgamna on the veil controversy, at least some of which we can agree with. Of course, you have to put up with the usual denunciations of “Muslim bigots, and their kitsch-left and invertebrate-liberal toadies”, but the core of Matgamna’s article is correct:

“To do what Straw has just done, in the atmosphere in Britain right now, is to light a match in a gas-filled room. It is to pour petrol on a fire. Inevitably Straw has given the green light to people who want to have a go at Muslims, who are not at all concerned to have a reasonable discussion about Muslim women, or with Muslims….

“Dark-skinned Muslim people are victims in this society. They are easy targets. Straw has shown just how easy a target they are. Shamelessly racist newspapers, like the Express – one of a number of similar headlines: ‘Muslims pledge to ruin Straw’! – have weighed-in to turn his words into denunciation, blame-mongering, thinly disguised hate-mongering against identifiable Muslims.”

Workers’ Liberty, 9 October 2006

However, it’s difficult to square this argument with other positions taken by the AWL. Only a couple of weeks ago Matgamna came out in support of the pope – a stance that won him the admiration of Melanie Phillips – and earlier this year the AWL reproduced the Jyllands-Posten cartoons on their website on the basis of defending freedom of expression.

But, surely, the same argument applied in those cases. If freedom of expression is exercised in such a way that it incites bigotry and hatred against a minority community, in circumstances where that community is already under siege – by associating Islam with “things only evil and inhuman”, or by portraying the Prophet Mohammed as a terrorist bomber – then anyone with any progressive principles should condemn this. Time for the AWL to have a rethink, perhaps.

Veiled women are all victims of male oppression, Joan Smith claims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Joan Smith“… the hijab, niqab, jilbab, chador and burqa. I can’t think of a more dramatic visual symbol of oppression, the inescapable fact being that the vast majority of women who cover their hair, faces and bodies do so because they have no choice…. Muslim women in this country may [sic] be telling the truth when they say they are covering their hair and faces out of choice, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t been influenced by relatives and male clerics….

“The veil in its various forms signals that women have conditional access to public space, allowed to participate in the world outside the home only if they follow certain rules…. when women cover themselves, they are demonstrating their acceptance of an ideology that gives them fewer rights than men and an inferior place in society….

“Far from being a protection for women – it hasn’t prevented alarming levels of rape in Afghanistan and Iraq – the veil protects men from casual arousal. It also establishes women as the sexual property of individual men – fathers, husbands and sons – who are the only people allowed to see them uncovered.

“In that sense Mr Straw’s interventions, while useful in kicking off an overlong debate, do not go nearly far enough. The practice of covering women is a human rights issue in two senses, not just as a symbol of inequality, but because accusations of racism, cultural insensitivity and Islamophobia are commonly used to silence its critics. But if I loathe the niqab and the burqa when I see women wearing them in Iraq and Afghanistan, it would be hypocritical to pretend I don’t find them equally offensive on my local high street.”

Joan Smith, Independent on Sunday, 8 October 2006

‘Muslims demand respect for the veil, but won’t tolerate Western values’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Leo McKinstry writes about the experience of undergoing a search at a London airport:

“I reflected on the irony that I was being forced into this tiresome and humiliating ritual because of the murderous actions of Islamic terrorists. Yet, at the same time, Muslim community leaders were fulminating at Jack Straw for daring to suggest, in the mildest terms, that women should remove their veils when visiting his Blackburn constituency surgery.

“There could not be a more glaring example of Muslim hypocrisy and over-sensitivity. Millions of airline passengers are now being subjected to the grossest inconvenience, delays and physical intrusion as a result of the global jihad being waged in the name of Allah.

“But instead of issuing an apology for this mayhem or standing up to their violent co-religionists, Muslim representatives continually bleat about their rights, endlessly parading their grievances, justifying terrorism and demanding special treatment.

“The crisis has exposed the deepening crisis over Muslims’ reluctance to integrate properly into our modern, democratic society…. Muslims constantly demand respect for all their attitudes, no matter how repulsive, barbaric, prejudiced or superstitious, but few show any willingness to embrace the tolerant values of Western democracy.”

Daily Express, 9 October 2006

Well, of course, if we ever need a demonstration of “the tolerant values of Western democracy”, Leo McKinstry will be our first port of call.

Amis accuses British Muslims of sheltering ‘miserable bastards’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

martin amisMartin Amis has launched an attack on “miserable bastards” in the British Muslim community, accusing them of trying to destroy multicultural society by failing to “fit in” with other faiths.

Young men in late adolescence were being targeted and brainwashed by extremists into joining the “death cult” that was behind last year’s London bombings, he said.

The comments, to an audience at the Cheltenham Festival of Literature, came after Amis, 57, son of the writer Kingsley, was asked to describe his recent return to London, after two and a half years living in Uruguay, where his wife, the writer Isabel Fonseca, has family.

“When I come back to Britain I see a pretty good multicultural society,” he said. “The only element that is not fitting in is Islam. Who else isn’t fitting in?”

Independent, 9 October 2006

‘A growing number use the veil to provoke us’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The burka and the full veil go unremarked in their countries of origin. But in Britain they sharply define one section of society and deliberately exclude the rest. And what were once masks imposed by men are increasingly adopted by some women as a silent gesture towards the host nation…. Meanwhile young men are being recruited across the country at secret meetings addressed by charismatic preachers of hate…. We are well down the road towards a divided nation where some predict Palestine-style conflict between one section and another.

“Too gloomy? A world statesman alarmed by Hezbollah’s sophisticated missile attacks on Israel from Lebanon thinks not. ‘In ten years, we may see rockets like these being fired from the suburbs of Paris’, he told me. And in London? In this context, the growing tendency to adopt the veil ceases to be a fuss about nothing. Islamic extremism thrives on grievances.

“For some women the veil is a genuine expression of faith. For most, it is a form of passive aggression. It is provocative. So, when someone stupidly – but predictably – reacts by ripping off a woman’s veil, a useful grievance is up and running. By the time anyone tries to restore order, that grievance is halfway round the Muslim world, with plenty more where it came from. And it feeds the case for those preaching jihad.”

Trevor Kavanagh in The Sun, 9 October 2006