Monday, January 19, 2015 

Pickled politics.

There's a simple reason as to why the Pickles letter to mosques has received the reaction it has: it's not so much due to the content, questionable as it is, as to how it's astonishingly badly written (PDF).  It appears to have been composed by someone who has the basics of English down, only without knowing what the words they're using mean.  Supposedly meant as reassurance, it comes across instead as sterile in its sentiments while demanding in what it asks.  We must show our young people this, this and this; you have an important responsibility in explaining and demonstrating how faith in Islam can be a part of British identity; we have an opportunity to demonstrate the true nature of British Islam today, and what being a British Muslim means today.  British values are Muslim values.

In so many ways, it's an example of how government thinking doesn't change.  It clearly wasn't meant to suggest imams aren't doing enough to emphasise how you can be a Muslim and thoroughly British; it just comes across that way because there's nothing Eric Pickles likes more than talking at people rather than talking with them.  It also shows how engrained communalism is, government reaching out solely to religious leaders still considered the equivalent of communicating with an entire minority.  Those already radicalised or most vulnerable to extremism are far more likely to listen to their parents than leaders at the mosque they may well have already clashed with, but of course they are the ones who must do this and must do that.  To be patronising, tone deaf and worse than useless at the same time takes particular skill though, for which much credit must go to the communities department.

After all, where do you even begin with the melange of Britishisms Pickles throws at the wall in the hope of some of them sticking?  What is British identity?  What is a British Islam, a British Muslim?  What are British values, and how can they be Muslim values at the same time?  I don't have the first idea, because almost every single person will respond in a different way, which if you were being charitable you could say would be very British.  The government itself doesn't know either, as we saw when they demanded schools teach British values in the aftermath of the Trojan Horse panic; err, it's the rule of law, democracy, free speech, that sort of thing.  Except we're more than happy to waive all three of those core values if necessary, especially if it means continuing to ally with the country more responsible than any other for the spread of extremist Islam, say.  Of those three values, only democracy is truly embedded in British society and generally respected, with the other two often deemed surplus to requirements, the rule of law especially if it gets in the way.  And free speech only goes so far, as we've gone over enough recently.

If you wanted to be additionally glib, you could say asking how faith in Islam can be a part of British identity is very much unBritish in itself.  We just get on with it, and considering the potential there has been for unrest over identity and integration, for the most part we've done pretty well so far.  Not for us the neuroses of the French, with the rise of the far-right and warnings about the simmering radicalism of the banlieues, although for all the mocking of the idea of Birmingham being an outpost of the caliphate it would be absurd to ignore completely how in some areas a very conservative interpretation of Islam is the norm, with all that entails both for women and rebellious youth.

It was all so very different at yesterday's Countering Anti-Semitism event in London.  No opaque statements about demonstrating how faith in Judaism can be a part of British identity, despite the  government acknowledging acts of extremism are not representative of Judaism, probably because it was Theresa May on duty rather than Pickles.  May instead courted votes, saying how she never thought she would see the day when members of the Jewish community would express fears about staying here.  Rather than perhaps allay those fears by pointing out how there is no specific threat at the moment to anyone, May went on to quote the French prime minister who spoke of how if 100,000 Jews left France the French republic would be judged a failure, pointed remarks that alluded directly back to the Vichy regime.  Repeating that same message except with France replaced with Britain doesn't then really work, and May then blunted it further by saying without all the other religious minorities Britain also wouldn't be Britain.  Nor would it without foreign students then, right?  As for whether Britain will still be Britain without page 3 girls, who knows?

The idea that perhaps this fearmongering over the perceived threat to Jews might be precisely what the extremists want doesn't seem to occur.  It also further highlights how specific targets can have a more dramatic impact than indiscriminate attacks, giving ideas to so-called "lone wolves".  The additional patrols being introduced, while in some cases a sensible precaution if used temporarily, can also lead to the exact opposite of the intended effect, or indeed, perhaps that response is exactly what is intended.

Certainly when last night's 10 O'Clock news dedicated almost 15 minutes to varying reports either directly on or connected to Islamic extremism, including a mother complaining about how she had received no help from the government on "deradicalising" her son after he returned from Syria, it's not difficult to see why some believe an attack is inevitable.  The challenges of radicalisation cannot be dealt with from Whitehall alone, wrote Pickles, in stating the bleeding obvious mode.  Perhaps Whitehall could at least try and deal with the root causes of the current anxiety though, which sadly involves reiterating once again just how counter-productive our policy on first Iraq and now Syria has been.  The blame however rests only with "these men of hate [who] have no place in our mosques or any place of worship" (Pickles again).  Good to know that you don't need to so much as be a Muslim to declare takfir, and I look forward to our Eric deciding in the future just who can and who can't be admitted to a Sikh temple also.  Clearly, as David Cameron declared, it's me rather than Pickles with the problem.

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Wednesday, September 18, 2013 

It's not over till the tremulant sings.

There are few more terrifying lines to come out of a politician's mouth than "we should have a national debate [about this]".  It's the ultimate sanction for every ignorant pub bore in the land to get on the phone to 5 Live and share their wisdom with the world, usually in the most belligerent and arrogant terms.  It's an invitation to newspapers and columnists to do much the same, publishing their informed stupidity for the man on the street to hastily flip over on the way to the sports page.  And of course, it's also the perfect subject for many tortured blog posts, none of which reach any firm conclusion and will go unread by everyone except the writer's dog.

Yes, we are yet again discussing the veil.  Or the niqab, as few still want to give it its proper name.  That saying the veil is confusing because it encompasses all the different types and styles of hijab Muslim women wear doesn't seem to matter, as niqab is obviously an alien word.  Nor do we ever seem to get any sense of perspective: the number of women who wear the niqab in this country is probably in the tens of thousands, if that.  Those who wear it also tend to be clustered in localised areas, due to either those who emigrated from one country choosing to settle in the same area, or the mosque they attend.  Despite living close to an area with a sizeable Pakistani diaspora, I think I've probably seen only one or two women wearing it over the years.  It really isn't anything approaching a major problem or issue.  It may be in those few communities where many do wear it, but making it into something it isn't doesn't help in the slightest.

We keep returning to the subject because it excites opinion about "the other" in our midst.  I disagree with those who refer to it as mark of separation, as I don't believe that many of those who wear the niqab do so to cut themselves off from the world at large; we however do see it as such because it so goes against our sensibilities about how we communicate and interact with each other, to say nothing about the aesthetics of shrouding yourself when plenty take the first opportunity they get to shed unnecessary clothing.  It also feeds into the whole tendency some have to instantly begin complaining about how if we couldn't live as we do here back in their "home land" that they shouldn't be able to import their ways either.  That this confuses governments and states, often authoritarian and completely unrepresentative, with the people they rule over naturally doesn't enter into the equation.

The Heresiarch superbly covers just about every argument and counter-argument there is for and against either tolerating or putting restrictions on the wearing of the niqab.  My view is the classically liberal, boring, one that mostly it should be decided on a case by case basis.  In the specific instance of "D", as she is being referred to, I think Judge Peter Murphy has been too willing to accede to what looks like special pleading on her behalf.  It might be different if "D" wasn't charged with intimidation, but I see no reason whatsoever why she should be allowed to cover her face when not giving evidence when she is in an enclosed space in a court of law.  She's not in public, she's facing a serious charge and the jury and judge should be able to see her reactions to the evidence given against her if they so wish.  She could still wear a hijab, so it's not as if she's being asked to completely discard her religious beliefs, just her specific interpretation that modesty means a complete face covering.  I don't accept that would in any way infringe her rights under the HRA or ECHR, as France and Belgium have both banned the wearing of the niqab in public completely, and as yet there has been no ruling on whether that is in breach of Article 9.  As a letter in the Graun points out, it seems ridiculous that we can be tying ourselves up in such knots over this when judges and the police continue to persecute the naked rambler in what has turned into an absurdly wasteful battle of wills.

On the other controversy over the weekend, that of Birmingham Metropolitan College dropping its ban on the niqab almost as soon as it was introduced, it's not quite as clear cut.  I have no problem with schools banning the niqab, whether for pupils or teachers, but when it's a 16+ institution where attendance is by choice, being more forgiving of personal beliefs or idiosyncrasies in dress ought to be the way to go.  You can understand the safety aspects of a ban, but that's hardly an insurmountable problem when everyone will soon get used to who does and doesn't normally wear a niqab.  Such a policy would surely also further understanding rather than the opposite; giving those who choose to wear it the possibility of only attending Islamic institutions doesn't help anyone in the long term.

The thing that most annoys is that as before, this entire episode was began by a politician claiming that they were speaking up for those who are being forced into wearing the niqab.  Apart from there being little to no evidence for this being the case, even if such a statement was accurate it rather ignores the fact that far more women and girls will have little to no choice when it comes to wearing the hijab.  One of the most depressing sights I've seen in recent times was a double page spread of photos of London schoolchildren in the Graun, and the number of girls pictured that were already covering their hair, despite not having yet reached 10 years of age.  We don't however question the hijab as opposed to the niqab, as we mostly accept it as an inherent part of Islam (internal differences considered), personal dislike for the practice or religion in general aside.

What we really don't need is the front page of the Sun DEMANDING action, even if those DEMANDS weren't completely outrageous.  Legislation isn't needed, unless it really does become a major issue in courtrooms, where hopefully Judge Murphy's compromise won't necessarily set an overall precedent.  Banks and other places can come up with their own policies without parliament intervening, as the Border Force or whatever it's called now already has.  Within reason we ought to be able to walk around in public wearing what we please; just as I often wear a hood in the winter and usually cover my mouth as well, which some claim intimidates them (although I'm just about the least intimidating person to walk on a pair of legs), so if someone wishes to only have their eyes visible out of adherence to a scripture written hundreds of years ago, they can.  If it does no harm to anyone else, live and let live.  And tone down the rhetoric.

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Tuesday, June 07, 2011 

Radicalisation and the ideologues.

It's Tuesday, which means it must be time for another government review to publish its findings. Having yesterday demonstrated muddled thinking and a complete unwillingness to confront the real fundamental problem when it comes to the supposed commercialisation and sexualisation of children, so today we have a report on the Prevent strategy of countering radicalisation which demonstrates muddled thinking as well as an apparent determination to potentially make things much worse.

For this we have the prime minister to principally thank. Where Tony Blair once told the country that the rules of the game were changing, and the prospect of 90 days detention without charge followed shortly after, David Cameron back in February in Munich of all places informed the nation that the time had come for a muscular espousal of our values. In what was meant to be a speech on terrorism he decided the time was right to pronounce on both integration and the failure of "state multiculturalism", when even if the issues are hardly mutually exclusive he had not even begun to exercise the proper level of caution before making sweeping statements of fact. His key new point was that no longer would the government tolerate organisations which hold "extremist" points of view being either funded by the state (which they weren't in the first place) or consider them as useful in combating extremism. Why, you wouldn't expect a fascist political party to help in steering followers away from a violent white supremacist grouping. Why should it be the same when it comes to groups with an adherence to Islamism?

Two months in to a consultation exercise then and the findings of the review had already been set out. As well as being heavily influenced by the personal biases of Michael Gove, he of such remainders as Celsius 7/7, along with Policy Exchange, they of such fine reports as the one which was undermined somewhat by the forging of receipts from mosque bookshops, it also draws heavily from the work of the Quilliam Foundation, the counter-extremism think-tank which is err, mainly funded out of the Prevent budget, and has, err, Michael Gove on its non-executive advisory board. Having started out promisingly, the think-tank has since settled on a course of annoying almost every other Muslim organisation it's come into any sort of contact with, and last year singled out a good number of them as being the kind the government should have little or nothing to do with, among them the Muslim Safety Forum, a grouping which has been praised for its work with the police in helping to understand the concerns of the community.

Not that this closeness has stopped Quilliam from today being highly critical of the end result. The criticism is also rather rich, and more than a little self-contradictory: having previously set out in a secret document which Muslim organisations had extremist leanings, it now finds that Prevent's definition of what Islamism is is flawed. To quote from their press release (PDF):

The Prevent strategy’s definition of Islamism as ‘a philosophy which, in the broadest sense, promotes the application of Islamic values to modern government’ shows a complete misunderstanding of the nature of Islamism and why it is problematic. This current definition downplays the negative aspects of Islamism and ignores the fact that most non-Islamist Muslims also believe in combining Islamic values and modern government. The Prevent strategy’s definition therefore risks smearing ordinary, non-Islamist Muslims as Islamists and thus falsely identifying them as being part of the problem while also implying that Islamism is one of the aspirations of every Muslim.

Yes, smearing ordinary, non-Islamist Muslims as Islamists is something Quilliam would never do, would it? The point however is a sound one, even it comes from those with plenty of baggage. For however much we want to espouse and define ourselves by our values, it's those very values that those at risk of radicalisation and turning to terrorism are either unmoved by or are actively opposed to: the best hope of turning them away from such a path isn't to imply that the entirety of Islamic-influenced political thinking is reactionary and opposed to Western values, especially when much of it isn't, but for such ideology to be recognised as perfectly legitimate. This is exactly why Cameron's analogy of not relying on fascists to be part of the solution to violent white nationalism is so fatuous: those inclined towards Islamism are not going to be suddenly converted to the joys of Western democracy as it stands overnight. Moreover, if we regard the likes of Hizb-ut-Tahrir or the remnants of al-Muhajiroun to be stepping stones towards full on radicalisation in the takfirist jihadist mould, shouldn't we also consider that Islamist groupings opposed to violence but not able to pass the new "extremism" test are viable steps on the road to recovery?

Quilliam is also, notably, critical of the new definition of "extremism" as laid out in the new Prevent strategy, this time for the reason that it isn't tight enough to contain all the awful Islamist groups:

For instance, the definition’s description of extremism as being opposition to ‘democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual tolerance’ is far too open to interpretation. For instance this overlooks that both far-right and Islamist extremists are authoritarians who want more ‘rule of law’ rather than less.

This is besides the fact that governments themselves often have a rather hazy concept of the rule of law and individual liberty. The last one certainly did, whether it was ordering the end of an investigation into corruption or deciding that the threat to the country post-9/11 was so massive that it meant foreign nationals could be detained indefinitely without charge.

It is that threat after all that this entire document is meant to be about thwarting. Just how serious is the threat, though? There hasn't been a major terrorist plot in this country prevented now since the "liquid bombs" ring was broken up, and to tempt fate, there's no sign of one on the horizon. Yes, the threat remains at severe as we are endlessly informed, yet for the most part the last few years have seen the rise of the "lone wolf" attackers, operating alone or with minimal if any contact with the base organisations overseas. Just how these individuals can be prevented from becoming so disillusioned with society that they feel impelled to attack it is almost impossible to prescribe, and this document doesn't really even begin to provide any answers. Yes, some vulnerable individuals have been identified through the Channel programme, along with dozens of others it's reasonable to surmise who had nothing other than temporary interest in the subject of jihadism. Much depends then on the groups the strategy seems intent on all but proscribing at worst and dismissing at best.

This isn't to suggest that all of the changes to the strategy are bad: belatedly it's been decided that it will cover not just Islamist extremism but also what it terms as "Northern Ireland-related terrorism", as well as extreme right-wing ideology, although it massively plays the latter down, something that seems curious when it's the radicals of the English Defence League that currently pose the biggest threat to community cohesion. It's also discarded the previous combination of work on integration along with tackling radicalisation, something that David Cameron could have learned from. So much else though is either counter-productive or worrying: the document applauds the "No Platform" stance of the National Union of Students, something that continues to shut down debate, while urging universities to keep closer tabs on their charges, even if it doesn't say so in as many words. The section on the internet also appears to suggest that the Internet Watch Foundation's role in blocking "extremist" content will be stepped up, as if its completely unaccountable work wasn't already raising more than legitimate concerns.

Counter-terrorism policy is far too important to be left to ideologues, as we saw under the last government. Instead what works has to be prioritised, however much that potentially offends our political sensibilities. For all the nonsense spoken today about "extremist" organisations being funded out of the public purse, the review itself fails to name a single one which was, only saying that groups it would now define as "extremist" had previously picked up public funds. It might well have been some of those small organisations that helped those on the path to outright radicalisation to step back and reconsider; after all, there were no successful attacks over the period it was in operation. We'll have to wait and see if that remains the case in the years to come.

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Monday, February 07, 2011 

Assimilate or you don't belong.

The formation of the coalition government has in many ways relatively spoilt those of us of a socially liberal bent. While there was never much danger of the Tories rolling back the many advances New Labour made on the equality front, it seemed certain that they would continue to pursue the authoritarian policies on law and order which had been the consensus since the days of Michael Howard. Down to a mixture of the forced inclusion of the Liberal Democrats, the defenestration of Chris Grayling and the pairing of Ken Clarke and Theresa May as justice and home secretary respectively, instead of bubble economics and illiberal triangulation we now have austerity and nominal but welcome defiance of red-top "solutions" to crime and disorder.

We have perhaps then been heading for a challenge to that arrangement, although it seemed more likely to come from a scandal/debacle similar to that which did for Charles Clarke than from the prime minister himself. David Cameron's speech in Munich was unexpected precisely because the coalition has done its best to take the politics out of the debate on the terrorist threat, having with the exception of the reforms to the control order system managed to successfully scale back Labour's excesses in legislating while causing the minimal amount of fuss from those who had previously screamed and demanded ever further impositions on liberty for the illusion of more safety. As others have pointed out, it's all the more puzzling because so much of what he said he's dealt with before, albeit it in opposition. Was it too much to expect that he would drop his shallow critique of "state multiculturalism" along with his constant references to the "broken society"?

For whatever reason, and it's difficult to dismiss that it has more than something to do with the increasing problems the coalition is facing as the cuts begin to bite and the economy flatlines, it's time to once again return to exactly what it is that motivates some Muslims to become so disengaged from society that they are willing to kill their fellow citizens. Why else indeed would he conflate terrorism, which those in Munich at the security conference were doubtless expecting him to speak about, with multiculturalism and integration as a whole? It certainly wasn't intended that he would give the speech on the same day as the English Defence League paraded through the boarded up streets of Luton, yet through not offering any overt criticism of the organisation and by all but echoing their message that the only real issue facing us is the refusal of Muslims to engage in wider society he will have certainly provided them with all the encouragement they need to keep bringing disruption to towns and cities across the country. It has only been thanks to supreme patience and the community leaders that Cameron has effectively impugned that there hasn't been a recurrence of the full scale riots of 10 years ago.

It is after all worth taking a step back and examining the supposed threat and just how large it really is. If we take the probably exaggerated estimates of the security services at face value, there are around 2,000 people in this country actively dedicated to what Cameron describes as the violent element of political Islam, a number which even considering the potential harm and suffering they could cause is tiny. As Jamie argues, there really has been relatively little to prevent given even those numbers post 9/11, thanks to a mixture of old-fashioned intelligence work and the stupidity of many of those involved. Nonetheless, Muslims as a whole have found themselves threatened, told to inform on those in their midst, been widely disparaged for failing to do just that and now find that even if they don't hold views defined as being extremist, they're being informed by none other than the prime minister of the country that they don't "belong".

This is the massive flaw in Cameron's Michael Gove/Policy Exchange inspired analysis. Even if we accept that the problem fundamentally is the attraction of violent political Islam as an all encompassing ideology, rather than his straw man of "soft left" compiled grievances, the idea that the solution is a new British identity built around a "muscular" promotion of "our" values is laughable. Cameron's example of communities being allowed to live apart, with white racism condemned while practices such as forced marriage are allowed to go ahead is muddled thinking at its worst, even if it was accurate. How would extremism be dealt a blow if we managed to stop every such arrangement from going ahead? Surely the opposite might well be the case? He goes on to talk of "groups and organisations" and "non-violent extremists" having first influenced those who have gone on to plot or carry out attacks, to which he can only be referring to either Al-Muhajiroun and its successor organisations, all since banned, and/or Hizb-ut-Tahrir, the organisation the Tories previously promised to ban. None of these groups have ever received government funds, and as Sunny points out, those organisations which hold views Cameron now says should proscribe them from direct involvement with the government stopped receiving it in around 2006.

While there is then more than a element of posturing to some of Cameron's points, he often isn't comparing like with like. If political Islam is a perversion of the faith, it requires those that share that faith who may potentially have some views we find abhorrent in order to properly fight against it; this isn't the equivalent of expecting a fascist party to fight a violent white supremacist moment. Some of those who have become radicalised simply won't be convinced by the arguments of the likes of the Quilliam Foundation, however much we would like it to be so. Cameron does in fact all but say this, then instantly contradicts it. This isn't to say that such groups or individuals should receive government funding, but it is counter-productive in the extreme to tell them to their face that they don't belong. Not only is this, as others have again argued, completely alien to the exact concepts of liberal democracy which Cameron wants to espouse and "muscularly" promote, nothing seems more calculated to breed resentment and disillusion with our society. It is exactly what the extremists would and will play on. Assimilate or you're not one of us is a disastrous message to send.

It could well be that this is just another speech that won't be properly followed up with action, or that in reality it just means that Labour's Prevent strategy of showering counter-radicalisation groups and organisations regardless of their provenance with money is coming to an end, as could be expected as the funding for almost everything else dries up. Tony Blair declared the end of state multiculturalism in a similar fashion, and little has changed. Alternatively, and with the announcement of the replacement for ASBOs following a similarly illiberal path, it could mark the end of the one reason to cheer the formation of the coalition.

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Wednesday, March 25, 2009 

Scum-watch: Demanding the immediate arrest of Anjem Choudary.

One of the great things about the Sun is that every so often it gets enough of a bee in its bonnet, or rather sees a passing bandwagon, and it can't help but leap upon it. On occasion it starts the ball rolling; at other times it just enjoys the ride. These campaigns, if they can even be termed such, rarely last long; long-term attention span, except when it comes to something like the Human Rights Act, is not the Sun's strong point. Sometimes these campaigns will have a lasting and damaging effect, such as late last year's witch-hunt over the death of Baby P, and at other times they will have absolutely no impact at all, and end up being quietly dropped and forgotten. Their campaign against knife crime is one such example, although ostensibly it is still on-going. "Broken Britain", last year's big motif, has also not been so big this year, what with Jade Goody dying to instead concentrate on.

One of the previous campaigns which the Sun has not since stopped crowing about involved Abu Hamza. The Sun has since claimed that it was more or less thanks to them that he ended up behind bars, which was utter nonsense, as have other "internet investigators" that have since become rather discredited (see Bloggerheads RE: Glen Jenvey). Nonetheless, the Sun's continual emphasis on Hamza ended up turning him into a major villain and the archetypal spouting Islamic madman. How much influence he genuinely had on those who went on to take part in terrorist attacks is disputed; he certainly was involved in radicalisation, but the more lurid claims against him don't necessarily stand up to scrutiny. He was definitely on the periphery, and some who have gone on to become noted extremists certainly did go to the Finsbury Park mosque if not regularly then on more than one or two occasions to hear him speak, but also thanks to the portrayal of Hamza many now imagine that it's radical imams in mosques that do the radicalising when this is overwhelmingly, especially now, not the case. Hamza has if anything now become a cartoon, a puppet who can be brought out and used for almost any purpose.

Since Hamza's sad sojourn to Belmarsh, the Sun has been looking for someone to replace him. First they alighted upon Omar Bakri Muhammad, the then leader of al-Muhajiroun, since banned and now exiled in Lebanon, having been denied re-entry to the country. He even more than Hamza was a media whore, who loved the attention and had even less discernible links to those who have subsequently took part in if we must call it that, the global jihad. He still regularly pops up, when the Sun can be bothered to phone him up and incur the international charges. Replacing him though has been the second in command of al-Muhajiroun, now supposedly the leader of one of its numerous successor organisations, Anjem Choudary. Choudary is interesting for two reasons: firstly because unlike either Hamza or Bakri he has no religious training whatsoever, and has not studied to be an imam, and is instead a lawyer by profession, albeit one that doesn't seem to practice; and secondly because Choudary used to be a "normal" person, i.e. got drunk, slept around and generally had something approaching fun. Hamza also didn't embrace radical Islam until he was in his late 20s, during the mid-80s, but was not as well-known for similar behaviour as Choudary was.

Choudary however is even more shameless when it comes to media attention than Bakri and Hamza combined. He appears to adore it, perhaps even crave it. He never seems happier than when appearing on Newsnight or some other news programme, moderating his rhetoric somewhat to not appear completely out there, addressing the anchor by name (he almost seemed to be flirting with Kirsty Wark on a recent NN appearance) and generally enjoying the attention. This is not to deny that Choudary holds undoubted extremist views which go against not just the vast vast majority of people in this country but also the vast vast majority of Muslims as well, but he is, not to put too fine a point on it, an idiot, a shill, a complete incompetent who almost seems like a plant by the security services to discredit radical Islam even further. He is leader of a tiny sect that has only gained attention because both of his own inflammatory views, their skills at exploiting the outrage of the gullible, and because the media itself adores him, because he makes either their programme or their newspaper seem exciting, even vaguely dangerous. It's quite accurate to lump Choudary in with the British National Party, except that it's acceptable to use Choudary where it isn't to use the BNP. If anything, the roles should be reversed: the BNP is far more influential than Choudary and deserves challenging in the media spotlight, unlike the clownish Choudary.

Choudary is a distraction. His group may well contain some individuals who might go on to put their words into action, although not necessarily in this country, hence why it should be carefully monitored. Choudary though is just a windbag, someone who can be relied upon for a quote but who can equally be turned on when the press feels like it. Which is what the Sun has done today.

Coinciding with the release of the CONTEST anti-terrorism strategy, the Sun has unilaterally decided that Choudary is such a danger and has got away with his "incitement" for so long that he must be immediately arrested, charged, and locked away. Quite why it's decided now is anyone's guess, although it might be connected with the fact that the terrorist threat from jihadists in general seems to be receding somewhat, as the strategy set out, meaning the Sun might not be able to scaremonger relentlessly for much longer, as it also does today, as we shall come to. Other papers would suggest that the police might well want to look at the "evidence" they've gathered and go from there; not the Sun. No, the paper "DEMANDS" on the front page that the police take action. And inside it does much the same:

So today The Sun calls on police chiefs to stop dithering and charge former lawyer Choudary, 41, before he poisons more young minds.

There isn't of course the slightest evidence that Choudary has "poisoned" any young minds; those he appeals to have probably already gone through their "radicalisation" process.

Needless to say, the Sun's evidence is predictably weak and contentious, with context being everything. In his latest rant, the paper breathlessly informs us:

In his new outburst — a recording posted on a password-protected Al-Qaeda website — he said: “You do not neglect any of our duties...

“If many of our Muslim lands are under occupation then of course jihad — you are going to be talking about jihad. You are going to be recruiting for the Mujahideen.

“You’re going to be working to overthrow, sorry, liberate, Muslim lands. Because you’re living in a situation where there’s lots of Muslim lands under occupation.”

Quoting from Islamic text, Choudary added: “ ‘You cannot accomplish this until you train... train for jihad.’ What kind of training is he talking about? He’s talking about military training.”


Choudary is quite clearly not directly inciting those listening to go abroad and start overthrowing "Muslim lands". He's talking rhetorically, for a start. Britain has also never been considered a "Muslim land"; the caliphate which many radical Muslims wish to re-establish only ever reached as far as Spain. Choudary's group and Choudary himself talk rather hilariously about instituting Sharia law here and flying the "flag of Islam" from Downing Street, but it's for the birds. Not even they really believe it. The Sun doesn't try and suggest he's broken any laws here, but it's painstakingly analysed his other utterances for the slightest suggestion that he may have done:

Last September Choudary claimed the publisher of a novel about the prophet Mohammed should face the death penalty.

Martin Rynja — who put out fictional tale The Jewel Of Medina about the Prophet’s child bride — was placed under armed guard after petrol was poured through his letter box.

At the time Choudary appeared to be condoning the attacks, saying: “It is clearly stipulated in Muslim law that any kind of attack on his honour carries the death penalty.

“People should be aware of the consequences they might face when producing material like this.”

Our legal experts say this breaks section 31 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 which states racially or religiously aggravated disorderly behaviour with intent to cause harassment, alarm or distress, is a crime punishable by up to two years in jail.

If it could be proved Choudary’s comments were directly linked to an attack on the publisher’s life, he could be prosecuted for conspiracy to murder — which carries a LIFE term.


Again here, it's quite apparent that Choudary is not directly inciting violence against the book's publisher. Choudary had made similar remarks to prior to this, including at a demonstration against the speech by the Pope which referred to Muhammad's work as "evil", where he said that under Islamic law the Pope could be executed for his slur on the prophet. He was careful during the actual protest to make clear the inference that it had to be under an Islamic system; with reporters he was not so careful, apparently telling one:

"Whoever insults the message of Muhammad is going to be subject to capital punishment. I am here have a peaceful demonstration. But there may be people in Italy or other parts of the world who would carry that out. I think that warning needs to be understood by all people who want to insult Islam and want to insult the prophet of Islam."

Now that is potentially incitement, but the Met had already investigated and decided not to press charges, as the remarks were apparently made in private. It's unlikely that they'd be able to prosecute or make the case stand up were they to attempt to do so over what the Sun highlights.

The paper isn't beat yet though:

Recently Choudary threatened that Lord Mandelson would be stoned to death under Sharia law and declared: “He would not be able to speak openly about homosexuality.”

Our experts said his comments broke the Public Order Act 1986, section 4A. It outlaws behaviour with intent to cause harassment, alarm or distress. Breaking this law carries a heavy fine and/or six months in jail.

They might have a case here, but it would be a piss weak one and not get rid of Choudary for long. And err, that's it. That's all the Sun's evidence. To call this an investigation is itself rather pretentious, considering the amount of work that must have gone into it.

It's the Sun's leader though that is bordering on hysterical (url will change):

GORDON Brown warns of unprecedented terror threats as he prepares to host next week’s G20 summit.

Err, no he hasn't. He hasn't used any such terminology, either in his pronouncements on the anti-terrorist document, or in his Observer article at the weekend, "unprecedented" being entirely absent.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith raises fears further, predicting extremists will stop at nothing, including a nuclear “dirty bomb”, to inflict mass murder.

Again, no she hasn't. The most the document goes is to suggest that the "aspirations" of terrorists to use such materials has risen. My aspiration has risen to not get so worked up about a tabloid newspaper, but it doesn't mean it's going to happen.

So why hasn’t she rounded up dangerous loudmouth Anjem Choudary whose rants are most likely to provoke such an atrocity?

Probably because he is just what the Sun calls him, a loudmouth, just not dangerous. His rants are irrelevant except to his tiny band of followers and to the tabloid newspapers that love reporting them.

Ministers would ban harmless jokes about gays — even by gay comics — yet they allow Choudary to demand homosexuals’ execution.

Only neither is happening, or happened. Choudary was again talking about under Sharia law, while the government is not banning jokes about gays, despite the more ridiculous interpretation of potential laws again by the likes of the Sun.

This rabble-rouser pays lip service to peaceful action, yet is free to stir the hatred of gullible Muslims who might blow themselves and us to smithereens.

The key word here is "might". No Muslim listening to Choudary is suddenly going to decide to blow themselves and us to smithereens; to pretend radicalisation is that simple is more than daft, it's ignorant.

Despite his past as a cider-swigging, dope-smoking womaniser, Choudary demands death for anyone who drinks, takes drugs or fornicates.

He was behind the vile Luton demos against our brave soldiers. And he wants to sack our elected Parliament and raise the flag of revolutionary Islam over the House of Commons.


So? Is the Sun really so frightened of a thing called freedom of speech? He can call for whatever he likes or fantasise about whatever he likes as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else, and so far there is nothing to suggest that it has.

This is worryingly like a re-run of the Abu Hamza saga.

“Hooky” spent years fomenting terror right under the noses of our security services before he was finally put away. And that was only to stop America getting their hands on him.


This is simply bollocks. The security services were well aware of Hamza, it's true, probably because like with the other radicals they believed that had a "covenant of security", where they were more or less free to do what they wanted as long as they didn't target this country itself, as well as quite possibly informing the security services of those who wanted to. There are still accusations that Abu Qatada, for example, is a double agent. The others also had regular contact with MI5. How deep the links go we simply don't know. The American part is double bollocks: the Americans still want to extradite him.

If the PM is right, another 7/7-style massacre is looming.

Again, Brown has said absolutely nothing like this. The head of MI5 back in January said the threat level was if anything decreasing, and that al-Qaida had no semi-autonomous structure in this country at present. He could of course be completely wrong, as you can't really trust a single thing a spook says, but considering how they've scaremongered in the past it seems doubtful whether they would suddenly decide the threat level was decreasing unless it actually was.

One day our hand-wringing police will have to take action against Choudary. What are they waiting for?

They should slam this nasty piece of work behind bars NOW — before our emergency services have to count the corpses.


Again, like with yesterday the paper almost seems to be willing such an attack to happen, almost say it can say it told you so. If the paper really cared about the terrorist threat to this country it would completely ignore Choudary and go after the really dangerous people - the ones who don't become media whores who can be contacted by phone for an instant quote, the Mohammad Siddique Khans that stay under the radar until it's too late. That though is far too difficult and costs too much. Far simpler to demand that Choudary be thrown behind bars, no matter how weak or dismal the actual evidence to do so is.

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3/25/2009 11:59:00 pm | | | links to this post

Monday, March 16, 2009 

Scum-watch: Kavanagh demands Muslims personally apologise to him, and crime confusion.

Almost a week on from the protests in Luton by around 15 Islamists, those out to milk it for all its worth still haven't let go. Today Trevor Kavanagh in the Sun, having previously treated us to Islamophobia in response to accusations of Islamophobia instead introduces us to his amazing knowledge of both the terrorist threat and the Muslim community:

IF you thought public fury over the latest ‘IRA’ atrocities was impressive, wait for the uproar over the next 7/7.

For the jihadists haven’t gone away, either.

They are just furious that a few flint-eyed extremists from the Real IRA and Continuity IRA have beaten them to it.

How does Kavanagh know this? Simple: he doesn't. The jihadists haven't gone away, it's true, and undoubtedly the threat from them is worse than it is from Republican dissidents, but it's also worth bearing in mind that there now hasn't been a major attack foiled since the liquid bomb raids, over two and a half years ago, not counting the dismal failure of the Tiger Tiger and Glasgow airport patio gas canister attacks.

Last week’s Belfast demos involved peace-loving citizens from both sides of the community.

The question is, will we see peace-loving Muslims, preferably some in hijabs, filling the streets of Bradford after the next Islamist outrage?

Most British Muslims are as appalled by violence as the people of Northern Ireland.

Some bravely condemned the Luton fanatics who spat bile at our soldiers as they marched home last week.

But would they turn out in their thousands to denounce another massacre like the London Tube murders?

Unlikely. Yet, if they fail to join other British citizens in publicly expressing disgust, they risk being seen as silent sympathisers.

Kavanagh here doesn't see the flaw in his own argument. He is suggesting that Muslims would be the only ones that wouldn't turn up to denounce a second 7/7 attack, yet there was no response after 7/7 akin to that which we saw last week in Northern Ireland, also unlike the response in Spain to the Madrid attacks there. And why preferably some in hijabs? Because Kavanagh assumes that women wearing them must be more extreme, or more devout? This mirrors Kavanagh's previous comments regarding hijabs, which he described as "provocative", when they are nothing of the sort. Niqabs maybe, hijabs from this secularist's view unpleasant and unnecessary but not "provocative". Kavanagh's remarks that if they fail to live up to what he demands of them they "risk" being seen as "silent sympathisers" could not be more clear: he views them as outsiders unless they distinguish themselves by denouncing something that was not done in their name but by those who claim to share their religion. He wouldn't subject any other group in this country to this sort of treatment; what makes it's acceptable to do it to Muslims?

Not satisfied with this, he then, like the Sun has repeatedly, questions the allegations made by Binyam Mohamed regarding his rendition and torture:

But lying is the default position for Islamists. Which is why we should question Guantanamo inmate Binyam Mohamed’s claim he was tortured by America and hung out to dry by the British.

On balance, I prefer the word of our security services.

The Ethiopian asylum seeker is another ex-druggie convert, deluded by fantasies of Islamic purity in hellholes such as Chechnya and Afghanistan.

Yet we are giving him sanctuary, at huge cost and potential risk.

He is not British. He should be sent home, along with ALL foreign terror advocates who trade off the freedoms they are so determined to destroy.


Except he doesn't claim that it was only Americans that tortured him. His main mistreatment occurred in Morocco, where he was rendered by the Americans (undisputed, as we have the flight logs which showed a trip on the correct date on a plane associated with the rendition programme) and where, as the Intelligence and Security Committee has already said, MI5/6 provided his interrogators with questions which were used while he was tortured. How much evidence does Kavanagh actually want? Does he want to see Mohamed's penis, which was sliced with a razor and still bears the scars? That he has lived here since he was a teenager has no real links to any country other than here is irrelevant to Kavanagh; he should just be thrown out because of his own ideological bias.

Much of the rest is the same old spouting that the Sun has cranked out for years, all without anything approaching proof or anything approaching insight, bringing up the old already disproved idea that it's foreign imams that are brainwashing the youth when in fact the radicalisation process is far more complicated and more to do with groups of like-minded individuals and the internet than simply listening to the sermons of the Qatadas and Hamzas. The new tactic is to quote at length those who have turned their back on radical Islam, even when they themselves are discredited. Shiraz Maher, who produced a report which had the most ridiculous and rigid recommendations for the government when tackling extremism for the think-tank Policy Exchange, discredited over Islam after Newsnight exposed that it had fabricated parts of a previous report is given space, while Ed Husain, more reliable but also unwieldy in what he thinks should be done, unlike his more amenable colleague Majjid Nawaz, also of the Quilliam Foundation, is also given room to voice concern over how Luton didn't turn out to denounce 15 people who weren't even all from the town, despite pictures from mosques on Friday which featured many worshippers condemning the protests.

All of this covers up the fact that the very thing Kavanagh seems to want is in fact just as likely to alienate as it is to unite. Demanding that Muslims as a block denounce something that doesn't in any way represent them is the exact sort of thing that is guaranteed to cause resentment towards a society which is already fearful and sceptical, and in some cases even prejudiced against them. The Sun's entire coverage of terrorism and the war on terror has been conducted in an "us and them" style, completely wedded to the Bush administration's policies on it, and scornful of the alternatives. That this has been counter-productive could not be more plain, yet the paper continues to defend it, ridiculing those tortured and demanding that terror laws be ever further tightened.

Elsewhere, the Sun's leader is typically confused (url will change as usual):

CRIME statistics alone cannot reveal the truth about Broken Britain.

They can be twisted any way the Government likes.

The Tories point to Justice Ministry figures showing convictions for teenage violence and theft doubling since Labour took office.

True, says the Government — but only because we’re bringing more yobs to book.

In fact crime is DOWN by a massive 39 per cent.

Does someone really need to explain to the Sun that just because crime is down that doesn't mean that convictions must also be down? It seems like it. As with Kavanagh, the Sun has already decided what's actually happened: Britain is broken and the government twists the statistics. True, it doesn't help when the government is caught doing just that, such as over the knife crime statistics released late last year, but the Sun itself fell for that and then claimed that no one had believed them anyway. The Sun then launches its own survey:

Crazy, isn’t it? So we must all decide for ourselves.

Today, we report four teenage murders in three days.

Do you think crime levels are lower than in 1997?

Do you feel there are enough police to keep order? That sentences are sufficient deterrent?

Do you think Labour really has been “tough on crime”? Do you feel safer than when they came to power?

We’ll bet the answer, every time, is No.

And the Sun is determined that the answer remains no, as its hysteria over "Broken Britain" and demands for ever more police and prison places continue unabated.

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3/16/2009 11:59:00 pm | | | links to this post

Thursday, March 12, 2009 

How not to react to idiotic protests.

Over 5,000 people protested yesterday across Northern Ireland for peace. That was on the inside pages. On Tuesday between 12 and 20 Islamists, almost certainly connected with the successor groups to al-Muhajiroun, exercising their clear democratic right, protested at a parade of troops returning from Iraq. Their slogans and placards were admittedly inflammatory, but probably just on the side of not causing a public order offence or inciting hatred, and in any event they should have been given the benefit of the doubt in order to exercise their legitimate right to demonstrate. Their protest, clearly designed to attract widespread attention, makes the front pages of the tabloids for two days running. Forgive me for wondering about the sense of priorities.

Not that any of this was in the slightest bit surprising. It ticked all the buttons for the tabloids: our brave heroic boys being unfairly abused when they are just doing their jobs, mad Muslims doubtless sponging off the state daring to appear in public with a different view from that of the Fleet Street consensus, and then they of course got to make phone calls to their favourite people, the spouting likes of Anjem Choudary and Omar Bakri Muhammad, always waiting on the end of the phone line to deliver a diatribe against some part of life or society. All so predictable.

Less predictable was the tenor of the condemnation from politicians, who rather than suggesting that perhaps the best way to respond to the protest was to not give those who desperately wanted publicity the exact thing that they craved instead competed to spout the most meaningless platitude. Hence we had Harriet Harman hilariously suggesting that the soldiers were fighting for "democracy and for freedom of speech as well as peace and security in the region and the world." These were the troops which have just spent their last six months rarely leaving their base outside Basra, and according to most accounts doing a rather poor job of training the Iraqi police. Their presence, according to no less an authority than the head of the army himself, was in fact "exacerbating" the security situation. She was however outdone by the egregious Liam Fox, who said "[I]t is only because of the sacrifices made by our armed forces that these people live in a free society where they are able to make their sordid protests." He is of course right, up to a point, but the idea that our current armed forces and their deployments are in any way protecting us currently, and that this somehow means that they are beyond criticism, is an attempt to close down such debate, without getting into other arguments such as that made by Matthew Norman. We could however depend on other shrill Tory politicians, such as Sayeedi Warsi, who described the protesters as "criminals", and this blog's much loved Nadine Dorries, who described their intervention as "atrocities" (according to the Sun, although I can't seem to find her describing them thusly elsewhere, although she makes points similar to Harman and Fox on her blog) to even further ramp up the synthetic outrage.

Quite how far what should have been an insignificant protest launched by marginalised individuals with absolutely no wide support was blown out of proportion was symbolised by what we have since learned about the attempts to organise their presence. Mass leafleting went on in Luton, which has an estimated population of around 20,000 Muslims, to encourage protests at the homecoming: that just 20 turned up, and that indeed there are claims that some of those there were not even from Luton or the surrounding area shows how ignored their message was in the town itself. Indeed, the TV pictures clearly showed that there were plenty of other Muslims who had turned up to applaud the troops, who have been completely ignored in all of this. That though was never going to fit into the message which was meant to be conveyed here: that the protest itself was bordering on the almost treasonable, and that anyone who treats the armed forces in such a disrespectful matter ought to be put on the first plane out of the country.

The reaction which those who organised the protest have received will if anything embolden them to repeat their actions. That one of them has lost his job working at Luton airport due to his attendance will be a further greviance they will build on. The real victims in all of this will of course will be the ordinary Muslims whom have been tarnished, both by the protesters themselves and by the media who at the first opportunity get in contact with individuals who build themselves up as representative of the wider community when they are representative only of themselves. Choudary and al-Bakri stigmatise Muslims as a whole, and then individuals demand that good, decent Muslims raise their voices against them; why should they when it should already be apparent that they loathe those who are only interested in their own self-aggrandisement? The other beneficiaries, as always, are the BNP, with Nick Griffin sending out an email to supporters which was actually milder in the language used than most other politicians were.

One final, controversial point to make is to challenge the idea that the troops themselves are completely above reproach. While we thankfully don't have the same jingoistic view of our soldiers as they do in the US, the tabloid press especially insists on regarding every single member of the armed forces automatically as a "hero"; this, it should go without saying, is an incredibly simplistic and unhelpful view to take. The soldiers themselves for the most part resent the way the media portrays them, regarding it both as cynical and false, not to mention embarrassing when they themselves are for the most part incredibly humble about what they do. It also undermines the very real fact that they are working for what many of us would regard as poverty pay, in often horrendous conditions, with old equipment and in unsanitary housing. They deserve respect and support, not fawning and brown-nosing. Targeting them in such insulting terms is wrong, but is not to say that all protests against soldiers are automatically unacceptable. If only we could get past all such orthodoxies, we might eventually get somewhere in challenging all those involved, but it seems destined not to be.

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3/12/2009 10:46:00 pm | | | links to this post

Thursday, February 26, 2009 

Express-watch: It's the Muslims again.

It's an adage I've doubtless alluded to here before, but it's often been said that no news is a perfect opportunity to make it up. Apart from the topic which the two previous posts have mentioned, there wasn't much news about yesterday, and when you're a journalist on the Daily Express, creative news values are already something which you're more than familiar with. Half the time the Express's dubious news values and journalism aren't worth engaging with, especially when the editors of both the Express and the Star have been apparently instructed by Richard Desmond to go as far to the right as they can without disengaging the more liberal readers of the papers.

The screaming headline "BRITISH MUSLIMS ARE KILLING OUR TROOPS" does however deserve a response, mainly because of just how ancient the main sources for it are. There is no actual evidence provided that any British Muslim has killed a British soldier; rather it instead suggests that if anything, the opposite is the case. In any event:

Last week on a visit to Afghanistan, Foreign Secretary David Miliband was shown Taliban bombs containing British-made components. They had either been sent from Britain or brought from the UK by a home-grown recruit.

This was first reported in the Sun and probably elsewhere last Saturday. It proves precisely nothing: components of a bomb, especially the crude improvised explosive devices made by insurgents will inevitably come from all over the place, just as weapons are manufactured all over the world. The same fighters probably have some American-made guns, although they tend to favour older, more easily serviceable weapons. Likewise, it was revealed previously that a number of soldiers in Basra had been killed with American-made bullets from the same NATO sniper rifle. Drawing conclusions that this immediately proves that British Muslims are directly involved in putting together IEDs is taking things too far.

Tal­­i­ban fighters with Yorkshire and West Midlands accents have also been heard talking in intercepted communications, according to a security agency briefing.

This is even older. The Sun first screamed about Nimrods hearing British accents in February last year, in what was probably propaganda that also revealed that, err, we were listening in.

The former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, Brigadier Ed Butler, said: “There are British passport holders who live in the UK who are being found in places such as Kandahar.

 “There is a link between Kandahar and urban conurbations in the UK. This is something the military understands but the British public does not."

All well and good, but Kandahar is in the neighbouring province to Helmand, and is regarded as one of the more stable cities, which the Canadians are currently in charge of. There are plenty of British passport holders who live in the UK that, believe it or not, have perfectly legitimate links with both Pakistan and Afghanistan. They're not automatically jihadists just because they're visiting those areas.

Last night Tory MP and former infantry officer Patrick Mercer, chairman of the ­Commons counter terrorism sub committee, said: “I am aware from the troops I have ­spoken to that there are British-born insurgents working and fighting with the Taliban. "The evidence is principally from intercepting their radio communications. But in Iraq ­British troops found bodies of insurgents and they were as certain as they could be that they were British.

So now we're conflating Iraq with Afghanistan in a desperate attempt to get at some direct evidence that British Muslims are killing British soldiers.

None of this is to deny that there probably are some British Muslims fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan, but that they most likely number in the tens or less rather than anything approaching three figures. Screaming that they're murdering our boys without providing anything approaching actual evidence is hardly likely to help matters.

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2/26/2009 11:27:00 pm | | | links to this post

Monday, July 07, 2008 

Responding to accusations of Islamophobia with Islamophobia.

Trevor Kavanagh, the Sun's ex-political editor, and still largely the real ideological power behind the paper due to his closeness to Murdoch, doesn't usually devote his weekly column to Muslims or Islam, preferring to spout the same right-wing rhetoric which has flavoured his pieces for years. Today however he dedicates his column to Muslims and Islam, with it headlined "Islamophobia... or cold, hard truth?"

His reasons for doing so are not immediately clear, or wouldn't be if the only news source you subjected yourself to was the Sun. The clues are however there:

This time, he [Peter Oborne] is making the argument that the British media is anti-Muslim.

He cites invented incidents which portray Muslims in a bad light and incite attacks fuelled by religious or race hatred.

...

The accusation that the media — with a few badly researched or unchecked stories — is fomenting race hatred is in itself a trivialisation.


Kavanagh doesn't feel inclined to inform his readers that these invented incidents and badly researched or unchecked stories, which can and do foment race hatred, appeared in his own newspaper. The Sun in fact is the newspaper most featured in the pamphlet published along with Peter Oborne's Dispatches documentary, entitled Muslims Under Siege (PDF). Not only does it draw further attention to the story of the Muslim bus driver who allegedly ordered his passengers off so he could pray, a story we now know to be completely untrue and one which the bus driver is taking legal action over, with the story removed from the paper's website, it dedicates the entirety of its first chapter to another well-known completely untrue story about Muslims which featured here and in the Sun: the myth of the "Windsor Muslim yobs." Even now one of the Sun hacks responsible for the piece, Jamie Pyatt, denies that it was wrong: rather the police were being "politically correct" for not admitting that Muslims had been responsible. That there was no evidence whatsoever to even suggest Muslims had been near to the house that had been vandalised, and that those who actually lived in the road were the more likely "yobs" to have vandalised the house the soldiers had looked at because they felt that they might lower the tone and at the same time lower house prices cannot be allowed to get in the way of a brilliant Sun scoop, even if it is one that potentially inspires hate against Muslims as a whole.

Even those two articles are not the only ones which the pamphlet flags up; it also mentions another untrue story about Muslim medical students in Leicester supposedly refusing to comply with new regulations requiring staff to wash up to the elbow and therefore putting patients at risk of infection. As there sometimes is with such stories, there was the very slightest kernel of truth to it: one student had asked about the new regulations, not even objected to them, and from this swirled the eventual Sun story. Some other Muslim students had also expressed reservations about being bare below the elbow, but not one of them had actually refused to comply with the regulation, and as the pamphlet makes clear, after following Muslim students around the hospital while they worked, all were doing as they were required.

It's clear then what Kavanagh is really responding to: Oborne and his team so much as daring to question the Sun's brilliant public-service journalism. He can't however sow doubt in the average Sun reader's mind that its own stories lack credibility and in some cases have been completely untrue. Instead then he attacks Oborne in a typically roundabout way. He doesn't actually at any point demure from the fact that the media is anti-Muslim; he instead attempts to justify why some are Islamophobic.

What this amounts to in actuality is a list of generalisations, a couple of quotes and the most shallow allusions to what life is like for women in Middle East majority Muslim countries:

Hmmm. Well, what about my criticism of Muslim immigrants for their self-imposed isolation and reluctance to integrate? Wasn’t the same true for some Orthodox Jewish communities?

Maybe, I replied. But Jews — who are themselves increasingly the target for hate attacks — are not trying to bomb Britain.


Neither of course are 99.99% of British Muslims, and those that are abide by a twisted perversion of Islam that is being increasingly opposed by British Muslims themselves, but to say that might not justify the Islamophobia which Kavanagh thinks is perfectly OK. That Muslim immigrants have also historically not isolated themselves, rather that those around those where they have settled have "fled", is also not worth mentioning. Integration and isolation are two-way streets, and both communities have further steps they should take. Multiculturalism hasn't failed, there simply hasn't been enough of it.

In the past, I have also questioned the “provocative” trend by British-born Muslims to start wearing tribal costume and the hijab.

It's a good thing that Kavanagh places "provocative" in quotation marks, as hardly anyone can seriously argue that either is truly "provocative". Very few Muslims wear "tribal custume" apart from on Fridays when some do on the traditional day of prayer, and while the hijab is an issue of dispute within Islamic theology and is influenced more by cultural rather than religious issues, the headscarf, as much as even I dislike it, is a fact of the religion. If Kavanagh had called the niqab provocative then he might have something approaching a point, but again, only tiny numbers wear it, and there still has been little proof provided that those who do choose to wear it are doing so because their family or husbands demand it.

And I touched on the appalling fact that many women are treated as chattels.

All this, Peter Oborne concluded, amounted to “Islamophobia”.

Is he right? Does severe criticism of a creed or its teachings justify the accusation of hate?

Or is that just a way of shutting down the debate, just as critics of the EU are branded Europhobes?


It's instructive that Kavanagh invokes the EU, his other favoured hate target. It'd be nice if Kavanagh provided some examples of where critics of it are branded Europhobes however, outside the columns of Polly Toynbee, as almost always critics of the EU are referred to as Eurosceptics. The reality of course here though is that there isn't a debate, and there can't be one when the debate is so coloured by the very journalistic stories as those pointed out above, and especially when as the study by Cardiff University found, only 5% of stories involving Muslims discuss their own problems, and when only 2% make clear that Muslims support dominant moral values. Kavanagh also confuses Islamophobia with the definition that those accused of it hate Muslims; rather, it also infers that those accused of it are spreading fear of Muslims and also fear them. This is most applicable with the insane idea that Islamists are somehow plotting to take over Europe or will be within a century the majority in Europe: it spreads fear, and those that spread that fear often do hate Muslims.

Here then come the quotes:

In the wake of 9/11, the Muslim head of Al Arabiya TV, Abdul Rahman al Rashed, said: “Not all Muslims are terrorists but, with deep regret, we must admit that almost all terrorists are Muslims.”

Is he an Islamophobe?

No, he's just making a trite and ahistorical comment. Only recently have Islamic terrorists motivated by a millenarian Salafist ideology come to the forefront of current worldwide terrorism; beforehand Muslims may well have been terrorists, such as the PLO, but their religion was second to their nationality. It was the nominally Marxist Tamil Tigers that populised suicide bombings, which Hizbullah, then Hamas and Islamic Jihad and then finally al-Qaida co-opted. Terrorism goes back through the ages, and is also not just a tactic by individuals or groups, but can also be used by nation states, whether against their own populations or other countries.

Try watching Syrian-born Dr Wafa Sultan on YouTube as she challenges a furious cleric to name a single Jew or Buddhist suicide bomber.

“Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by killing people, burning churches and bombing embassies,” she storms.

Is she Islamophobic? Or simply spelling out the facts?


Simon C on the comments on Lenin's helpfully provides a number of links to others who habitually take it upon themselves to burn churches. The British colonial headquarters in Palestine was also for instance bombed in 1946 by the Irgun, a Jewish militant group.

Now we have the generalisations:

Muslim men are entitled to beat their wives and take more than one wife. Women are automatically suspect, banned in some communities from showing their faces or limbs because they are sexually tempting — to men. Visit an Arab country, or watch TV shows about them, and you will see plenty of men and boys.

Women appear rarely and, when they do, are covered head to toe. The rest are under virtual house arrest, living behind closed doors in ignorance and isolation.

We cannot interfere in the way other countries order their societies.

But such barbaric treatment of women has been imported and thrives here.


Kavanagh is producing the most extreme examples from the most extreme states, such as Saudi Arabia, and providing them as reasons for why Islamophobia is acceptable. That this is an attempt to smear Muslims as all the same, and ignores the vast cultural differences between such Muslim majority countries as Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan to name but a few, not to mention the differences between the different strands of Islamic thinking, whether it be Sunni, Shia or Sufi, again matters little. The irony is that the states which tend to be the most extreme are the ones which his newspaper, through its allegiance to America, helps to prop up. This is without pointing out that the Sun and female emancipation are far from being synonymous, unless you associate female emancipation with the freedom for women to get their tits out for the lads. Kavanagh realises that he can't claim the same happens here however, so he's forced to somewhat scale back his claims:

Forced marriages are common. Honour killings and beatings are far from rare. Women are refused education or a chance to learn English.

Yet again, that this is little to do with Islam itself and is much more influenced by cultural background is not mentioned. The idea that British Muslim women who have grown up here are refused education or a chance to learn English is completely risible, and for those who emigrated here is simply not backed up by even the slightest of evidence. Forced marriages and honour killings are a challenge which need to be tackled, but blaming Islam rather than the individuals themselves out carry them out is a typical hate tactic.

I receive emails from women Muslims crying out for help. One, Gina Khan, has written eloquently in The Sun about oppression of women in a male-dominated society through arranged marriages, polygamy and the veil. Is she Islamophobic too?

Or is she a lonely voice on behalf of millions of women who are being ignored and gagged by a politically correct establishment which is too timid to face the truth?


No, she's speaking out strongly on the behalf of those who are facing horrendous ordeals because of the family they were born into. This though ignores the point which Oborne and the pamphlet are making: they're not arguing against legitimate criticism of Islam, especially over the points which Khan has raised, which most certainly need to be dealt with. They're concerned with the casual way in which Muslims are treated as either a threat of something to be feared, and the ignorant, abominable and completely untrue newspaper coverage which fuels this. For being concerned for some of the most vulnerable in society, they're accused by Kavanagh of being a politically correct establishment. That the Sun, Trevor Kavanagh and Rupert Murdoch are also doyens of the establishment once again matters not one jot.

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Roy Greenslade writing in the Guardian noted with approval that the Sun dedicated a leader column to a statement of the obvious, but one with a decent point: "Islam is not an evil religion," and people "must not play into the hands of racist bigots." Today, 3 years on from the 7/7 attacks, the Sun not only publishes an article by its ex-political editor defending Islamophobia, it also publishes this:

THE family of evil 7/7 bomber Shehzad Tanweer held a party at the fanatic’s grave – on the third anniversary of the London terrorist outrage today.

The sick celebration has been branded an “insult” to July 7 victims and their relatives.


First of all, who cares, especially as this is supposedly taking place in Pakistan and not the UK? Secondly, what is the point of this article, other than to inspire similar revulsion and hate? On a day which ought to be dedicated not only to remembering but also to fighting against the intolerance which helps to lead to such attacks, it also publishes these comments:

I doubt it. Infidels don't count so why would they be remotely upset about the terrorist attack? Loyalty is to Allah, and it is unfortunate for them that a Muslim had to die in committing his heinous act. Tanweer was brought up in the UK with this education, and it is why there are plenty more Tanweers about. It is a mistake to ascribe Western moral values to the way of thinking that creates Tanweers and his ilk. Political correctness now prohibits thoughts that people are actually different in their views.

Most Muslims proclaim horror at all of these types of attrocity but they do sweet FA about it - time to get off your butts and get your houses in order & stop playing the percecuted victims.

if u know where the party is held why don't u just bomb them back

Who are these sick people? The UK has become a haven for scumbags like this, if anyone protests they will say that they are being discriminated against, stupid laws that help them and let this country head for the gutter.

surely it is time for the socalled good muslims to tart to condemn these fanatics. if they do not then they are all as bad theres no wonder that there is racial tension. I read today that a group in england had sent the brother of one of these bombers to pakistan so that relations could be better. I wonder if he went to this so called party - if so he should bebanned from returning here and if he has returned he should have his passport taken away as well as his benefits.

The Muslims under Siege pamphlet concludes with:

We think we should all feel a little bit ashamed about the way we treat Muslims in the media, in our politics, and on our streets. They are our fellow citizens, yet often we barely acknowledge them. We misrepresent them and in certain cases we persecute them. We do not treat Muslims with the tolerance, decency and fairness that we so often like to boast is the British way. We urgently need to change our public culture.

The above is the Sun's response to the need for that change.

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