Me – Islamophobic? Tatchell responds to critics

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“We have only once staged a protest against a muslim leader”, Peter Tatchell states. “That was against the rightwing, misogynist, anti-semitic and homophobic cleric, Dr Yusuf Qaradawi.” So that’s alright, then. Tatchell and his friends in Outrage mount a hysterical, lying campaign against one of the world’s leading Muslim scholars, but it doesn’t means they’re Islamophobes.

Weekly Worker, 24 November 2005

Tatchell also informs us that “most of the Muslims that the SWP-Respect ally with are homophobes, but the vast majority of Muslim people in this country seem to be prepared to live and let live”.

Now here’s a thing. On Tatchell’s website you can find this article which warns that “homophobic Muslim voters may be able to influence the outcome of elections in 20 or more marginal constituencies. Their voting strength could potentially be used to block pro-gay candidates or to pressure electorally vulnerable MPs to vote against gay rights legislation (and other liberal measures)”. Has Tatchell changed his mind about this, then? In which case, why is the article still on his website?

It would also be interesting to hear from Tatchell about current relations between Outrage and the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association, given that the two organisations have long enjoyed a close alliance and some overlap in membership.

GALHA secretary George Broadhead’s Islamophobic remark – “What does a moderate Muslim do, other than excuse the real nutters by adhering to this barmy doctrine?” – was quoted in a speech at the Respect conference. Earlier this year, in reponse to reports that Dr al-Qaradawi was about to visit Britain, Broadhead stated (see here and here) that Qaradawi should not be allowed into the UK at any time, “let alone at a time when the country is reeling from the kind of extreme violence that is spawned by his religion”.

Given the historically close association between Outrage and GALHA, one might have thought that, as a staunch opponent of Islamophobia, Tatchell would be the first to condemn such remarks. But, so far, not a peep.

‘The first step to Britishness is your poppy’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Carol Gould claims she got into an altercation with “a young Arab man” on London’s Edgware Road because she was wearing a Remembrance Day poppy. Fortunately help was at hand, in the form of a BNP-sympathising taxi driver:

“I hailed a taxi and, thankfully, my pursuer, who was by this time shouting, did not get into the taxi. The driver was enormously sympathetic but told me that I had been ‘asking for it’ by walking in what he called ‘Little Beirut’. He then told me that we were in World War III. His white, working class anger at what he perceived as ‘the Islamic takeover’ of Britain was palpable. He was not the first London cabbie who has told me he would gladly join the far-right British National Party if pushed.

“(It is worth noting in this context that London Mayor Ken Livingstone is trying to institute an initiative to bring ethnic minorities into the taxi fleet, to tackle its almost exclusively white domain. Keeping in mind that Washington D.C. has one of the worst taxi systems in the world, in part because most drivers can barely speak English and do not know the meaning of the words ‘cordial’ or ‘polite’, especially where female passengers are concerned, one prays the Livingstone initiative will be approached with caution.)

“The driver dropped me at Marble Arch. I decided to walk back slowly should my scary have made his way in my direction. As I walked, I realized that not one of the hundreds of Middle Eastern and British-born Muslims who run all of the establishments along Edgware Road was wearing a poppy.”

Front Page Magazine, 25 November 2005

Why are people so obsessed with women in veils?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The Observer had a story on the front page of its review section last Sunday on niqab, the face veil worn by some Muslim women. ‘The Big Cover-Up’ fails to ask the obvious question of why people can’t mind their own business – after all, given what some women (and some men) don’t wear, one might ask why it matters why some women choose to cover their faces as well. The thing nobody seems to mention is that of all the problems some Muslims cause, none of them seem to come from women, and none of them are the result of women covering their heads or faces, so why is anyone bothered? … Why are people so obsessed with women in veils?”

A succinct reply to Andrew Anthony from Yusuf Smith.

Indigo Jo Blogs, 23 November 2005

Tatchell and pink-veiled Islamophobia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Tatchell is disturbingly fixated on men with dark skin. How else can you explain why, when invited to comment on the murder of Jody Dobrowski, he rapidly started telling his radio audience about the homophobia of a well known Muslim cleric? I doubt the two white men charged with the crime place much store by the words of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi.”

A reply to Outrage’s press release about the Respect conference resolution on LGBT rights.

Lenin’s Tomb, 23 November 2005

EU Muslims face challenging conditions: report

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EUMC report 2005The Muslim minorities in Europe has been subject to increasing discrimination and violent attacks, EU’s racism watchdog said Wednesday, November 23, urging the European countries to do more efforts to combat racism and xenophobia.

“Muslim groups face particularly challenging conditions in many member states,” said the Vienna-based European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia in its annual report, reported Agence France Presse (AFP) said.

It said that Muslims in Western Europe have been target of a wave of violent incidents in the wake of the March 2004 train bombings in Madrid and the murder of Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh.

The 104-page report said that Muslims and mosques in the Netherlands have been under a wave of racist attacks after Van Gogh’s killing. Van Gogh was shot and stabbed by a Moroccan-Dutch after he had written his anti-Islam film “Submission.”

Up to 6,000 Dutch people staged a mass rally in the capital Amsterdam in September to say “enough is enough” to the right-wing government for what they called racism and discrimination against minorities.

The report also cited a rise in attacks against the Muslim minority in France in the wake of the Madrid train attacks.

Islam Online, 23 November 2005

For the EUMC report, see (pdf) here.

Nordic views on Islam sour after global attacks

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In October, leading Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten stirred emotions when it defied Islam’s ban on images of Prophet Mohammad by printing cartoons depicting him in various guises, including one where his turban appears to be a bomb.

In Norway, the anti-immigration Progress Party won a record 22 percent of parliamentary seats in a September election.

A poll by Sweden’s Integration Board in September showed that while the country was more tolerant towards foreigners, it had grown less positive towards Muslims, with 40 percent saying they did not want a mosque in their neighbourhood.

“Islam has become the bottom of the pecking order, a type of new enemy,” Helena Benauda, head of the Swedish Muslim Council, said when the poll was published. “I fear it will get even worse after the terrorist attack in London this summer.”

Reuters, 23 November 2005

US citizen faces terrorism trial after 3½ years in custody

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jose Padilla badgeJose Padilla, a US citizen held without charge for more than three years after being accused of planning to detonate a radioactive “dirty bomb” in a large American city, was yesterday indicted on the lesser charges of conspiring to “murder, kidnap and maim persons” overseas.

The original allegations against Mr Padilla, a Brooklyn-born Muslim convert who until yesterday was being held as an “enemy combatant” at a navy prison in South Carolina, were used by the White House as evidence of the continued threat posed by al-Qaida to the US homeland.

Announcing the charges against Mr Padilla yesterday, the attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, refused to comment on why no allegations involving attacks on America were included.

Guardian, 23 November 2005

See also “US man guilty of Bush death plot”, BBC News, 22 November 2005

Respect conference reports

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Respect rejects call to oppose Racial and Religious Hatred Bill

An amendment calling for opposition to the Bill was defeated. Ifhat Shaheen from Hackney, east London, spoke against the amendment. She said, “As a Muslim woman I face racial abuse every day – but I can’t even call it racial abuse, because as a Muslim I’m not covered by the Race Relations Act. Sikhs and Jewish people are already covered – if they suffer abuse because of their religion, they are protected under the law. So why, when a bill is put forward that will give Muslims the same protection, does it suddenly become an issue of limiting people’s free speech?”

Socialist Worker, 26 November 2005

Respect conference reaffirms commitment to opposing homophobia

While there was one speech arguing that the organisation had not sufficiently highlighted the issue at the general election, there were three others detailing how clear arguments for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality were put and won.

Dave Goodfield from Coventry said, “We have just seen the recent appalling murder of a young man, Jody Dobrowski, on Clapham Common.” Dave called for a clear stand against bigotry, wherever it comes from, and rejected the idea that black and Muslim communities are in some way the main source of such attacks.

Delegates were shocked when he read out a quote – “what does a moderate Muslim do, other than excuse the real nutters by adhering to this barmy doctrine?” – and revealed it came not from the far right, but from a gay publication. He told delegates this was an extreme reflection of a “disproportionate focus” by a small number of activists against homophobia on African Caribbeans and Muslims.

Coventry’s amendment was passed unanimously. The overwhelming feeling among delegates was both to campaign against homophobia and also not to allow the issue of lesbian and gay rights to be cynically used as a cover for Islamophobia.

Socialist Worker, 26 November 2005

Imperial College bans veil on campus

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Imperial College in London has emulated that reactionary little town in Belgium that banned the Islamic veil on the grounds of security – a policy also advocated in the Netherlands by right-wing politician Rita Verdonk. And the logic of Imperial College’s policy is of course to impose a general public ban. If Muslim women covering their faces are a threat to security on campus, are they not equally a threat in wider society?

See Polly Curtis’s report in the Guardian, 23 November 2005