The birth of a global civil society

Soumayya GhannoushiSoumaya Ghannoushi, writing for Al Jazeera, has an extremely astute analysis of the world in the early 21st century. The whole article is worth reading but there is one section that is particularly pertinent to the analysis that Islamophobia Watch has carried of the trajectory of some on the socialist left:

“Some from the Left have deserted their old positions and have moved to the side of power and big business, turning into cheerleaders for wars of aggression and the trampling of the principle of national sovereignty and norms of international law. While speaking the language of liberalism and tolerance, these have recycled rightwing racist clichés about Islam to dismiss the rapprochement with Muslims as an ‘unholy alliance’.”

Al Jazeera, 5 April 2006

Europe and the coming (Islamic) apocalypse

“The only question about Europe is whether it’s going to be (a) catastrophically bad or (b) apocalyptically bad, as in head for the hills, here come the Four Horsemen: Death (the self-extinction of European races too self-absorbed to breed), Famine (the withering of unaffordable social programs), War (civil strife as the disaffected decide to move beyond mere Citroën-torching), and Conquest (the inevitable victory of the Muslim successor population already in place). I’d say option (b) looks the better bet….”

Mark Steyn (again) on how Europe is about to succumb to the Muslim hordes.

Macleans, 5 April 2006

Hijab-clad Muslim TV host sparks Danish furore

Asmaa Abdol-HamidA debate has been heating up among Danish viewers over the appearance of the first hijab-clad talk show presenter on the Danish television.

Asmaa Abdol-Hamid, a 24-year-old Danish Muslim of Palestinian origin, appeared last week on the DR2 network to host an eight-part programme on the fallout of Danish cartoons lampooning Prophet Muhammad. The female Muslim host has been selected to co-present the talk show with Danish reporter Adam Holm, an ardent proponent of press freedom, debating on Danish society’s pressing issues.

The appearance of hijab-wearing Asmaa has drawn mixed reactions from Danish women’s groups. Feminist Forum, a Danish women’s organization, said Abdol-Hamid’s TV presence “strengthens ethnic and gender equality in Denmark”. But another feminist group, the Women for Freedom association, echoed a different stance. “The choice of Asmsa Abdol-Hamid (…) is an insult to both Danish and Muslim women,” claimed Vibeke Manniche, the association’s head. “She sends the signal that an honourable woman cannot go out unless her head is covered.”

But DR2 network defended its decision to allow Asmaa’s TV presence, saying “headscarf-wearing women are part of Danish society and we need to accept this fact”.

Islam Online, 5 April 2006

See also Daily Times, 5 April 2006

Islamophobic? Not us, says UKIP MEP

Nigel FarageUK Independence Party MEP Nigel Farage has threatened to sue over Tory leader David Cameron’s claim that UKIP contains “closet racists”. According to the Guardian, Farage cited the recent expulsion of four Italian Northern League MEPs from UKIP’s grouping in the European parliament after one of the League’s leaders wore a t-shirt printed with cartoons satirising the prophet Muhammad. Farage said: ‘We thought the Italian Northern League were OK. But they have become Islamaphobic to an extent we find unsettling … We adopt a firm line on immigration and asylum. But you haven’t got to be racist to do that’.”

This would be the same Nigel Farage who, according to former UKIP leader Alan Sked, rejected the inclusion of a statement on the party’s membership form opposing discrimination against minorities. “We will never win the nigger vote”, Sked quotes Farage as saying. “The nig-nogs will never vote for us.” As for anti-Muslim bigotry, former UKIP member Aidan Rankin has recounted his disillusionment with the party: “I listened, with increasing loathing, to a repertoire of anti-Muslim barbs from people who knew nothing whatsoever about Islam and were proud of their ignorance…. Islamophobia pervades its internal dialogue.”

Clash fan questioned

An Asian salesman was hauled off a plane as a suspected terrorist because he was listening to The Clash song ‘London Calling’. Harraj Mann, 24, was quizzed for three hours by Special Branch after his taxi driver overheard the lyrics, which include the lines “war is declared and battle come down”.

The mobile phone seller, from Hartlepool, said: “I got a taxi to Teesside Airport and it had one of those things that plugs into your music player. I played Procol Harum, ‘Whiter Shade of Pale’ first, which the taxi man liked. I figured he liked the classics, so I put on Led Zeppelin’s ‘Immigrant Song’. Then, since I was going to London I played The Clash and finished up with ‘Nowhere Man’ by The Beatles. He didn’t like Led Zeppelin or The Clash but I don’t think there was any need to tell the police.”

Durham police said: “By the time it was established the man did not pose a security risk, the plane had taken off.”

Daily Mirror, 5 April 2006

See also BBC Tees, 5 April 2006

The Noble Qur’an and the Telegraph

We recently gave coverage to the controversy over Patrick Sookhdeo’s interview with the Telegraph, and his reported claim that a well-known translation of the Qur’an by Abdalhaqq and Aisha Bewley calls for “the killing of Jews and Christians, and … sets out a strategy for killing the infidels and for warfare against them”. The Telegraph eventually apologised to the Bewleys. (See here, here, here and here.)

However, the paper failed to print a letter by Ahmad Thomson or his review of the Bewleys’ translation that he asked to be published as a corrective to the Sookhdeo accusation. Ahmad kindly sent us a copy of the letter and review along with an introduction outlining the dispute between the Bewleys and the Telegraph. You can read it here.

Phyllis Chesler interview in Guardian

phyllis chesler 2John Sutherland interviews US feminist Phyllis Chesler. “Chesler’s critics say the vehemence of her language points to Islamophobia. A piece she wrote last month for the controversial webzine Frontpagemag.com suggested that ‘a small but organised number of Muslim-Americans and Muslim immigrants … are currently seeking to begin the Islamisation of America’. It went on to compare the Muslim academic Tariq Ramadan to Hitler. The blog Islamophobia Watch suggested that this signalled ‘the point of total dementia’.”

Guardian, 4 April 2006

For our original post, see here.

For another recent piece on Chesler, see here.

Gay Muslim claims Islamophobia denied him post as student leader

Pav AkhtarThus the headline to a Pink News article analysing the narrow defeat of Pav Akhtar in the elections for National Union of Students president last week.

Over at Harry’s Place, the inimitable David T has suggested that homophobia on the part of the Federation of Student Islamic Societies was to blame: “FOSIS refused to back Akhtar. It isn’t clear exactly why that was, although the rumour is that the ‘sinister reason’ was his sexuality.” (Needless to say, David also implies that Pav is a member of a left group called Socialist Action. But then, it seems there are very few of us on the left who David doesn’t think are members of Socialist Action.)

As for the reasons for Pav’s defeat, Pink News quotes him as saying that both Islamophobia and homophobia might each have played a minor part but that the result had more to do with “factional politics”, with FOSIS failing to back him as part of “a deal to get their preferred candidate elected as secretary”. Does David T ever get any of his facts right?

Islamophobia – Deepa Kumar replies to critics

Deepa KumarIn February, in response to the Danish cartoons crisis, Deepa Kumar published an excellent critique of the way in which a section of left and liberal opinion in the US had “accepted and internalized right-wing arguments like Samuel Huntington’s ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis which sees the West as a force for enlightenment and the East as barbaric”.

MRZine, 21 February 2006

She has just published “Fighting Islamophobia: A Response to Critics” in which she writes:

“I have received dozens of emails supportive of my argument that racism has no place on the left. Additionally, comments on the article posted on MRZine show that there are people willing to stand up against anti-Muslim bigotry. However, what is deeply troubling is that the majority of comments, presumably from progressives, are hostile to Islam and to Muslims.

“In what follows, I respond to these comments for reasons that should be obvious to any person of conscience: the wholesale demonization of Arabs and Muslims is racist and unacceptable, it serves to bolster US foreign policy goals in the Middle East, and giving even an inch to Islamophobia divides us and weakens our ability to build an effective opposition to the war in Iraq and the potential war on Iran.”

MRZine, 3 April 2006

Man jailed for racist slurs

A man who shouted racist insults at Muslim worshippers outside a Cumbria mosque has been jailed for six months. Bryan Cork shouted slurs including “proud to be British” and “go back to where you came from” outside Carlisle’s Brook Street mosque. He pleaded guilty to racially aggravated harassment on 30 November at the city’s Crown Court on Tuesday. Judge Paul Batty, QC, told Cork, of Thompson Street, Carlisle, that racism in any form would not be tolerated.

BBC News, 4 April 2006

See also “Racist who shouted at Muslims is jailed”, News & Star, 4 April 2006

Yet another innocent British citizen whose freedom of speech has been suppressed in the interests of political correctness, as I’m sure many of the participants in the “March for Free Expression” would be the first to point out.

Posted in UK