More self-promoting stupidity from Tatchell

OutrageWe have already covered the ludicrous, divisive and objectively pro-Nazi campaign waged by Peter Tatchell and Outrage against the participation of the Muslim Council of Britain and its general secretary Sir Iqbal Sacranie at yesterday’s Unite Against Fascism conference (see here and here). As it turned out, Sacranie had another engagement, and his place was taken by Daud Abdullah, assistant general secretary of the MCB, who addressed the opening session of the conference.

Tatchell, whose capacity to delude himself about his own importance evidently knows no limits, announced that Sacranie’s absence was all down to his campaign. “This climbdown is a victory for humanitarian values over homophobic prejudice,” he pontificated. “We believe the organisers realised they could not secure the acceptance of a homophobe at an anti-fascist conference, so they dumped him.” (Outrage press release, 18 February 2006)

In fact, the demand that Tatchell and Outrage had raised was for the MCB as an organisation to be banned from the conference platform. “Sir Iqbal is leader of the anti-gay Muslim Council of Britain (MCB)”, they declared. “Sir Iqbal’s homophobic views, and the MCB’s opposition to gay equality, echo the prejudice and discrimination of the BNP…. We urge you to withdraw your invitation to Sir Iqbal and the MCB…. The MCB is not a liberal, progressive organisation. It represents only conservative, reactionary opinion. It is not a suitable partner organisation for the movement against fascism.” (Outrage press release, 14 February 2006)

Yet, in the outcome, the invitation was not withdrawn and the UAF conference was addressed by an assistant general secretary of the MCB, rather than by its general secretary. So, a bit of a limited victory there then, eh Peter?

90% of UK Muslims ‘loyal’ to Britain: poll

A sweeping majority of 91 percent of British Muslims are “loyal” to Britain and 80 percent still want to live in and accept Western society, a new poll showed on Sunday, February 19. The ICM survey, which has been conducted for Britain’s Sunday Telegraph on 500 British Muslims, also found that some 80 percent of them want British troops pulled from Iraq immediately.

Nearly two thirds further thought the recent video of British troops beating Iraqi youths was symptomatic of a wider problem in Iraq. Half did not think the soldiers would be “appropriately punished.” A video obtained by Britain’s best-selling Sunday newspaper News of the World showed UK troops dragging four young protesters off a street and into an army compound where they were ruthlessly punched, kicked and hit with batons.

Labour MP Sadiq Khan said the main single issue that respondents objected to was the government’s foreign policy – notably towards Iraq.

The survey found that 99 percent of British Muslims believe the July 7 bombers were “wrong” to carry out the atrocity. A fifth, however, showed sympathy with the “feelings and motives” of the four bombers who attacked London’s underground system last July 7, killing 52 people. Only one percent felt the attacks were “right.”

Islam Online, 19 February 2006


Contrast this with the coverage in the Torygraph itself, where the poll is reported under the headline “Poll reveals 40pc of Muslims want sharia law in UK”.

Sunday Telegraph, 19 February 2006

Full poll results here.

Use of ‘stop and search’ terror law alienating Muslims, warns Yard

The head of Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorist branch yesterday admitted that police use of controversial stop and search powers under the terror laws needs to be much more tightly focused. Peter Clarke told a London conference of security experts there had been difficulties with the use of powers under section 44 of the Terrorism Act after warning that anti-terror measures which alienate the Muslim community were fundamentally misguided.

Guardian, 17 February 2006

Judge’s anger at US torture

A high court judge yesterday delivered a stinging attack on America, saying its idea of what constituted torture was out of step with that of “most civilised nations”. The criticism, directed at the Bush administration’s approach to human rights, was made by Mr Justice Collins during a hearing over the refusal by ministers to request the release of three British residents held at Guantánamo Bay.

The judge said: “America’s idea of what is torture is not the same as ours and does not appear to coincide with that of most civilised nations.” He made his comments, he said, after learning of the UN report that said Guantánamo should be shut down without delay because torture was still being carried out there.

Guardian, 17 February 2006

Another racist provocation from the fascists

BNP turban cartoon (3)The nazis of the BNP continue to take advantage of parliament’s decision to sabotage the religious hatred bill, and the acquittal of führer Nick Griffin and his sidekick at Leeds Crown Court.

They have produced a new anti-Muslim leaflet, featuring the most offensive of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons, in which the Prophet is shown wearing a turban shaped as a bomb. “Only the BNP had the backbone to publish the cartoons”, the fascists boast (which is a little unfair on the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty). “Now we go one step further in releasing a brand new leaflet for download and distribution featuring the turban as time-bomb cartoon.”

BNP news release, 17 February 2006

In an accompanying article, Griffin asserts that Muslims “do not have the right … to march in our streets demanding that we change our laws to suit their own religious sensibilities. Why do they not have that right? Because to grant them that right is to accept that, sooner or later, freedom of speech – the cornerstone of our democracy – will be curtailed, cut-down and in the end abolished as the values of Islam come to predominate over ours…. on the streets of London over the Saturdays of February, the Clash of Civilisations is precisely that – an argument over which culture’s highest value is to prevail. Will it be Islam’s uncompromising Eastern stand for the dignity of its Prophet, or what used to be our uncompromising Western stand for intellectual freedom and freedom of expression?”

LGBT organisations support UAF, oppose Tatchell

Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgendered Community supports maximum unity in the fight against the far right

LGBT organisations who are participating in and supporting the Unite Against Fascism campaign and its conference on Saturday 18th February have issued the following statement:

Unite Against Fascism – an alliance with all those who face the threat of the far right

As Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgendered (LGBT) organisations and individuals we support the principle that unity against fascism can only be effective by working with all those who face the threat of the far right.

The British National Party (BNP)’s politics of hatred includes attacking Muslims, the denial of the Holocaust, the aim of an “all-white Britain”, which could only be achieved through violent means, and campaigns of homophobia: They have run a gay pub landlord out of business in Burnley, liken gay men to paedophiles and have recently promoted a campaign attacking LGBT history month, describing it as an “atrocity”. They stand in the tradition of the Nazis, whose rise to power resulted in the deaths of millions of Jewish people, lesbians and gay men, disabled people, black people and trade unionists as well as others.

We cannot afford to underestimate the mortal threat that growing fascism poses to all of our communities or to be divided in the struggle against it. This means bringing together all those who are threatened by and opposed to fascism within a united anti-fascist framework. Muslim communities are a major target of BNP hate campaigning.

It is a regrettable reality that leading figures of most major religions have reactionary attitudes to homosexuality. We obviously disagree with these views. However we believe all those who oppose the BNP must be engaged with and that in turn can open a dialogue in which we seek to change such views.

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‘Extremist’ Muslim groups to be banned

HizbExtremist Muslim groups who “glorify” terrorism are likely to be banned in Britain as early as this summer after Tony Blair yesterday overcame his second backbench rebellion this week to impose new laws designed to clamp down on the celebration of terrorism in speech, placards or on the internet.

MPs voted by 327 to 279, a majority of 38, to reinstate the laws banning the glorification of terrorism, a phrase untried in the legal battle against terrorism in Europe or the US. Only 17 Labour backbenchers rebelled yesterday, 10 fewer than the last time MPs debated the issue in November. Two of the prominent groups likely to be banned are Hizb ut-Tahrir and Omar Bakri’s al-Muhajiroun, groups already named by Tony Blair.

Guardian, 16 February 2006

‘Muslim nation’ remark provokes anger in Australia

Australian politicians and a Muslim leader condemned on Tuesday comments by a government lawmaker who suggested that allowing an abortion drug could lead to a disproportionate growth of the Muslim population.
Australia’s main opposition Labor described the comments by former veterans affairs minister Danna Vale as “dopey”, ignorant, offensive and “seriously weird”.

Vale was accused of fueling racist, anti-Muslim sentiments after she said she was concerned about the ramifications abortion would have for the future make-up of Australia, where Muslims currently comprises 1.5 percent of the population of 20 million.

Vale said she had read in a Sydney newspaper a comment by an Muslim imam that Australia would be a Muslim nation in 50 years. “I didn’t believe him at the time, but when you actually look at the birth rates and you look at the fact that we (non Muslims) are aborting ourselves almost out of existence by 100,000 abortions every year,” Vale told reporters late on Monday. “You multiple that by 50 years, that’s 5 million potential Australians we won’t have here.”

Vale’s remarks came ahead of a vote by the lower house of parliament this week on whether to scrap a government veto on abortion drug RU-486. The upper house Senate voted last week to remove the power of the health minister – conservative, Catholic, anti-abortionist Tony Abbott – to veto applications from firms and doctors who want to import and prescribe RU-486.

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