Islamophobia is not a uniquely British disease: across Europe, liberals openly express prejudice against Muslims. Do new pogroms beckon? Ziauddin Sardar reports from Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and France.
New Statesman, 5 December 2005
See also Yusuf Smith’s comments: Indigo Jo Blogs, 2 December 2005
And Yusuf al-Qaradawi is behind it!
Daily Ablution, 1 December 2004
Predictably this nonsense receives the backing of Melanie Phillips, who is developing something of a taste for wacko conspiracy theories (cf. her support for Bat Ye’or’s “Eurabia” fantasy).
Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 1 December 2005
Odd that, because in the past Phillips has been quick to identify and condemn such theories. A couple of years ago, when novelist John le Carré accused neocons in the Bush administration of pursuing a pro-Israel foreign policy, she denounced this as a “demented Jewish global conspiracy theory” and an “obscene display of racist bigotry and irrationality”.
Update on the story of Gay and Lesbian Humanist magazine’s “Sick Face of Islam” issue and the resignation of its editor, Andy Armitage. (For previous coverage see here, here, here, here and here.) Armitage and his supporters have issued a dossier documenting the dispute within the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association, which is available here [update: link to 2nd edition]. We are pleased to see that the role of Islamophobia Watch is given full recognition. (“It seems that nothing, but nothing other than complete abasement to Islam will ever succeed in satisfying this load of extremists.”)
A growing number of legal experts and Muslim civil rights advocates say that US prosecutors are using jurors’ ignorance of Islam as a way to get convictions in terrorism cases.
The British National Party came bottom of the poll in the Essex heartland of Thurrock last night. The neo-Nazi outfit trailed in last place in a council byelection held in the Homestead ward, Thurrock. The BNP had high hopes of winning a seat but were trounced by Labour’s Tony Benson. The party led by Nick Griffin came third in another byelection, in the Grays Riverside ward behind the winner, Labour’s Val Cook, and second-placed Sharon Ponder.
Sabby Dhalu, Unite Against Fascism Joint Secretary, said: “This is a great result particularly after a racist hoax leaflet attempting to stir up Islamophobia was distributed in both of the Thurrock wards. The vast majority of people abhor the BNP – a fascist, racist and homophobic organisation that is full of criminal thugs – and this majority made their voice heard.” BNP activists have been blamed for a hoax leaflet purporting to be from the “London East Islamic Movement”, an invented name.
Top police officers have criticised plans to allow the shutting down of places of worship such as mosques suspected of inciting extremism. In their response to proposals to give courts the power to close such premises, police warned there were better ways to deal with the problem. Assistant Chief Constable Rob Beckley of the Association of Chief Police Officers said it was a “blunt tool”. “This proposal might be seen as an attack on religion,” he said.
The government is also considering banning the radical Muslim group Hizb ut-Tahrir. ACC Beckley told Today: “They proclaim themselves to be against violence – what we need to do is test that but not just automatically ban them because there are some radicals within their organisation.” He added: “Extremism and radicalism, where it is not an offence – we don’t want to drive that underground.”
Robert Spencer is not happy: “So fair and foul an example of dhimmitude and wrongheadedness I have not seen.”
Italian bishops gave warning yesterday against Catholics marrying Muslims, citing cultural differences and fears that children born to mixed marriages would shun Christianity. Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the president of the Italian Bishops Conference, said: “In addition to the problems that any couple encounters when forming a family, Catholics and Muslims have to reckon with the difficulties that inevitably arise from deep cultural differences.”
Cardinal Ruini, one of the right-hand men of Pope Benedict XVI, said that it was often the woman who married a Muslim man and it was she who converted to Islam. In a statement, the bishops said that if an Italian woman married a Muslim immigrant and then settled in his country of origin, her rights were “not guaranteed in the way they are in Italy or in other Western nations”. In addition the children of mixed marriages tended to be brought up as Muslims and not as Catholics. Such marriages should, therefore, be discouraged.
“Ayaan Hirsi Ali is much more than just a voice for the voiceless oppressed. In person, she is a thoughtful, calm, clear, almost pedantic spokeswoman for the fundamental liberal values of the Enlightenment: individual rights, free speech, equality before the law.”
Timothy Garton Ash boosts the right-wing Dutch MP, friend of the late racist film-maker Theo van Gogh, a woman who is on record as saying that “immigrants from rural areas, most of them, are at a certain phase of civilization that is far behind that of the host countries, like the Netherlands”.
Garton Ash may regard this as defending Enlightenment values. Others would see it as playing into the hands of the far Right.
An article in the Nation last June featured some harsh words about Ayaan Hirsi Ali from actual representatives of the oppressed.
From The Nation, 27 June 2005:
Hirsi Ali’s many critics contend that far from being a revolutionary, she brings a message that the West is all too willing to hear. They say that in calling for European governments to protect Muslim women from Muslim men, she and her admirers recycle the same Orientalist tropes that the West has used since colonial times as an excuse to control and subjugate Muslims. “White men saving black women from black men – it’s a very old fantasy that is always popular,” Annelies Moors, a University of Amsterdam anthropologist who writes about Islamic gender relations, said dryly. “But I don’t think male violence against women, a phenomenon known to every society in history, can be explained by a few Koranic verses.”…
Karima Belhaj is the director of the largest women’s shelter in Amsterdam. She’s also one of the organizers of the “Stop the Witchhunt!” campaign against what she sees as anti-Muslim hysteria. On the day we talked, she was despondent. Arsonists had set fire for the second time to an Islamic school in the town of Uden. A few days later a regional police unit warned that the rise of right-wing Dutch youth gangs potentially presents a more dangerous threat to the country than Islamist terrorism. “The rise of Islamism is not the problem,” Belhaj said. “The problem is that hatred against Arabs and Muslims is shown in this country without any shame.” With her message that Muslim women must give up their faith and their families if they want to be liberated, Hirsi Ali is actually driving women into the arms of the fundamentalists, said Belhaj: “She attacks their values, so they are wearing more and more veils. It frightens me. I’m losing my country. I’m losing my people.”
If Belhaj was sad, another “Stop the Witchhunt!” organizer was angry. Like Belhaj, Miriyam Aouragh is a second-generation immigrant of Moroccan background. A self-described peace and women’s activist, Aouragh was the first in her family to attend university. She’s now studying for a PhD in anthropology. She scoffs at the idea that Hirsi Ali is a champion of oppressed Muslim women. “She’s nothing but an Uncle Tom,” Aouragh said. “She has never fought for the oppressed. In fact, she’s done the opposite. She uses these problems as a cover to attack Islam. She insults me and she makes my life as a feminist ten times harder because she forces me to be associated with anti-Muslim attacks.”
Aouragh accuses Hirsi Ali and her political allies of deliberately fostering the hostility that has led to the attacks on Islamic institutions and to police brutality against young Muslim men. “I’m surprised the Arab-Muslim community isn’t more angry with her,” Aouragh said. “When she talks about Muslims as violent people, and Muslim men as rapists, this is very insulting. She calls the Prophet a pedophile. Theo van Gogh called the Prophet a pimp, a goat-fucker. Well, no, we don’t accept that.”
Although the press has focused on the threats against critics of Islam like Hirsi Ali and Geert Wilders, Aouragh says that there have been many more attacks on Dutch Muslims than on non-Muslims. She suspects that what the Dutch really fear is not Islamic fundamentalism but the prospect of having to deal with a new generation of highly educated young Muslims who demand a fair hearing for their values. “We are telling them, ‘We have rights, too. You have to change your idea about freedom or face the consequences.'”
Oriana Fallaci told a Manhattan audience on Monday that she hates Islam and fears that Muslim immigration poses a greater danger to the West than Islamic terrorism.
The Italian journalist and author, who came out of retirement after September 11, 2001, to sound the tocsin on what she viewed was a clash of civilizations, said in a lengthy speech that she doesn’t believe in the existence of moderate Islam. “There is no such thing as good Islam,” she said.
She compared the Koran, the Islamic holy book, to Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and said she opposed the notion of dialogue between followers of Islam and other religions.
New York Sun, 30 November 2005
Even Daniel Pipes thought Fallaci’s speech was a teensy bit over the top. Not so Robert Spencer, who wholeheartedly endorsed this racist diatribe: “Fallaci’s a voice of rare courage…. When she is gone, we may hope – for all our sakes – that many others will be ready to step into the breach and speak the truth as she did, whatever the cost, as she did. As Oriana Fallaci so memorably demonstrated in her address on receiving the Annie Taylor Award, nothing less than our civilization itself is at stake.”
Front Page Magazine, 30 November 2005
It’s worth recalling that not so long ago Nick Cohen published a defence of this revolting bigot in the Observer. See here.
Another “Baa Baa Black Sheep ban” story: “Meddling cricket chiefs could ban the anthem Jerusalem from England’s home Test series against Pakistan next year in case it offends Muslims. The English and Wales Cricket Board are worried about the words building the holy city ‘in England’s green and pleasant land’.”