“French education”, declares a trim man behind a big desk, “aims to allow each person, irrespective of their religion or their community, the chance to start on an equal footing and receive the same education.” This impassioned defence of French secularism comes from Raymond Scieux, headmaster of Lycee Eugene Delacroix in Drancy, a suburb northeast of Paris.
By Elizabeth C. Jones, director of “The Headmaster and the Headscarves”, BBC2, 9pm, Tuesday 29 March
A US blogger applauds Harry’s Place for its “magisterial dismembering” of Islamophobia Watch. (Must have missed that one.) Apparently we’re suffering from “reflexive Islamophilia”, defined as “the tendency of some Western Leftists to offer an intellectual free pass to Islam and Muslims because it is non-Western”. (I’m afraid grammar is not one of this blogger’s strong points.)
Our basic mistake is to suppose that Islamophobia is a form of racism: “It is not – Islam is a religion, an ideological choice.” Really? How come there are so few Muslims among white inhabitants of the United States, then? And rather more among people of colour in the Middle East? Well, obviously, they just made different individual choices.
Pearsall’s Books, 26 March 2005
Update: For Pearsall Helms’ reply – which fails to address the point I was trying to make, namely that religion is not primarily an individual choice but rather part of a community’s collective culture – see here.
Anthony Browne tries to set Christians against Muslims – with the assistance of Patrick Sookhdeo of the Barnabas Fund.
Update: For a reply to Browne, see here.
MONTREAL – Suspected Moroccan terrorist Adil Charkaoui joined several dozen people Saturday to protest national security certificates used to detain alleged terrorists without trial or charges.
“I had a normal life like everybody and then one day (the Canadian Security Intelligence Service) decided I was a threat to national security,” said Charkaoui, 31, who was detained under a certificate for almost two years before being released under stringent bail conditions in February.
“They arrested me, they didn’t show any proof and they told me I was very dangerous,” he said, pulling up his pantleg to show the electronic ankle bracelet he must wear. “I am just asking for justice … I want the government to give me a fair trial to clear my name and show I’m not a terrorist.”
The use of racist and xenophobic rhetoric, including by mainstream political parties, has dominated national and European Parliament election campaigns over the past two years, according to a new study.
The study, commissioned by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), maintains that immigrants and refugees from Muslim countries and Islam itself are primary targets of politicians who exploit feelings of insecurity in an increasingly complex and multicultural world.
French political scientist Jean-Yves Camus, who conducted the study, found that the theory of a so-called “clash of civilizations” is gaining ground.
For the ECRI report see here.
Harry has another go at Islamophobia Watch.
I particularly like Harry’s account of the Algerian civil war: “In Algeria between 1992 and 1998 an estimated 150,000 people were killed as a result of a campaign launched by the Armed Islamic Group….” Of course, this does rather overlook the fact that many of these deaths were caused by the Algerian state forces’ ferocious repression of suspected Islamists, and that the civil war itself was the result of the secularist FLN regime having suppressed the 1992 parliamentary elections on the grounds that the Islamist FIS were about to form a democratically elected government.
Equally impressive is Harry’s staunch defence of oppressed Iraqis against their oppressors. Did he issue a forthright condemnation of the continuing violent occupation of Iraq by foreign armies, I hear you ask. Did his anger boil over at the estimated 100,000 deaths that have resulted from the US invasion? Did he express his fury at the destruction of Fallujah?
Er … no. What he had in mind was the defence of a group of students in Basra whose picnic was reportedly attacked by members of Moqtada al-Sadr’s militia.
And we still haven’t been told who precisely the moderate Muslims are that Harry supports. But apparently to qualify as moderates it is not enough for them to support democracy, human rights and freedom of organisation for other faiths – they also have to support a separation of religion and state along the lines proposed by western secularists. Which of course excludes even the most democratic, reformist tendencies within Islamism.
The jury’s still out on that one, Paul.
See Paul Anderson’s take on Islamophobia Watch: Gauche, 25 March 2005
Gordon Brown makes some favourable comments about British Muslims. Robert Spencer is appalled by this abject capitulation to Islam. “Please, Mr Chancellor, show me where I can find in the Qur’an and Sunnah the idea of equality for non-Muslims.”
Mind you, Spencer is on record as saying that “Islam is not a monolith”, and that he is prepared to “encourage any Muslim individual or group who is willing to work publicly for the reform of the Islamic doctrines, theological tenets and laws that Islamic jihadists use to justify violence” (see here) – so, according to some people’s reasoning, he can’t be characterised as an Islamophobe.
“Today’s Muslims are portrayed as dangerous and disloyal when, just like Roman Catholics 200 to 300 years ago, the vast majority want nothing more than to get on with their lives, earn a living and practise their religion in peace. Like the 17th and 18th century Catholics, they have been assaulted, abused and discriminated against. Once again, legitimate suspicion of a tiny minority is being used to promote hysteria against the loyal and law-abiding majority.”
Frank Dobson argues that Muslims should not have to wait as long as Roman Catholics for equal rights.
Over at Harry’s Place, the eponymous blogger offers a critique of Islamophobia Watch and challenges our characterisation of certain leftists and liberals as Islamophobes. Compared with some of the anti-Muslim rants that have appeared on his site, it’s quite a reasoned piece – but entirely wrong, of course.
In his critique Harry quotes part of the Runnymede Trust’s definition of Islamophobia, which is reproduced on our site: “Islam is seen as a monolithic bloc, static and unresponsive to change.”
He claims that most of the leftists and liberals criticised on our blog would reject that view and therefore cannot be characterised as Islamophobes: “The whole point of supporting liberal progressives, socialists or gay activists in Muslim countries or in the ‘Muslim community’ is that there is the potential for change and that Islam most certainly isn’t a monolothic bloc.”
The problem with this argument is that, if you take the Runnymede Trust definition absolutely literally, then Islamophobia doesn’t exist anywhere in the world. Even fascists are prepared to make a formal distinction between different tendencies within Islam, along the lines Harry proposes.