Islamophobia Watch

Comedian Ben Elton has said the BBC is too "scared" to poke fun at Islam. He accused the broadcasting company of allowing programmes to run jokes about Christianity and vicars. However, he claimed bosses were too politically correct and worried about a negative backlash to do the same about imams. In an interview, Mr Elton, 48, who admits he has little religious faith, said: "I believe part of that is due to the genuine fear that the authorities and the community have about provoking the radical elements of Islam." Mr Elton's comments appeared in Third Way, a Christian culture magazine.

Daily Mail, 2 April 2008

Update:  Elton has received the endorsement of the BNP – and also of an extreme right-wing blogger rejoicing in the entirely appropriate name of Fulham Reactionary.

On the principle of "we read this reactionary crap so you don't have to", Islamophobia Watch has invested in a copy of Brother Tariq, the English language edition of Caroline Fourest's attack on Tariq Ramadan, recently published by the right-wing Tory think-tank the Social Affairs Unit.

The book's jacket features accolades from Peter Tatchell and Joan Smith. Tatchell poses the rhetorical question: "Is Tariq Ramadan an Islamic liberal or a clever Islamist strategist who uses the language of liberalism to disguise a fundamentalist agenda?" Fourest's book, of course, comes down firmly in favour of the latter, and in recommending it Tatchell clearly does too. Smith, for her part, tells us that "political Islam, catalogued in this book in forensic detail, loathes the modern world" and recommends Fourest's anti-Ramadan polemic as "an essential guide to decoding Islamist rhetoric, exposing the political project which lies behind contrived controversies such as the veil".

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The Independent on Sunday (IoS) of 10th February 2008 had an article under the headline "A question of honour: Police say 17,000 women are victims every year". It chose this headline with a picture of a Muslim woman implying that 17,000 'honour' crimes are taking place within the Muslim community.

The paper quoted Commander Steve Allen as stating "We work on a figure which suggests it is about 500 cases shared between us and the Forced Marriage Unit per year," he said: "If the generally accepted statistic is that a victim will suffer 35 experiences of domestic violence before they report, then I suspect if you multiplied our reporting by 35 times you may be somewhere near where people's experience is at."

The MSF has been in discussions with Commander Allen and has established that during the conversation with the journalist from the IoS he had made it clear that these figures were only indicative. Yet the IoS still chose to use this in an inflammatory manner.

"The Independent on Sunday article simply multiplied the 500 cases that are reported to police by a factor of 35 and used the answer to write a headline. It was never intended that my comments should be interpreted in this literal way." Said Commander Allen.

He further states, "ACPO is also very clear, and repeats in all its guidance on the subject, that Forced Marriage and Honour Based Violence are not connected to any particular religion or set of religious beliefs. They are cultural phenomena that cut across a wide range of communities from around the world."

The MSF is saddened to have seen IoS run an article on an important issue such as this in this irresponsible way. With all the vitriolic Islamophobic reports in certain sections of the Media, we never expected the IoS to have joined in to the foray.

We hope that the Independent will look at clarifying this matter and not damage its good reputation with this kind of Islamophobic reporting in the future.

Muslim Safety Forum, 14 February 2008

"There may no longer be much in the way of ideological enthusiasm for what can be described as multiculturalism. But in practice it gathers pace anyway, and there remains an unwillingness to take even a normative stance against it. Tony Blair may have declared that he considered the veil to be 'a sign of separation'. But there is little sign of any appetite for issuing any formal guidance that might suggest that such dress is not in keeping with the values and aspirations of modern British life."

Deborah Orr in the Independent, 13 February 2008

Ayesha Khan, reporter on the Channel 4 documentary "Divorce: Sharia Style", offers a balanced view of the operation of sharia courts in the UK.

Guardian, 11 February 2008

For a rather less balanced view, see Johann Hari in the Independent, 11 February 2008

An Islamist cleric who has defended suicide bombings and the execution of homosexuals is to be allowed to enter the UK, sparking a major row between government departments.

The Observer understands that senior civil servants in the Home Office and Foreign Office have recommended that ministers approve an application by Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who is banned from entering the United States, to come to London for medical treatment.

The news has prompted unease in the Department for Communities and Local Government, which fears that allowing Qaradawi in might offend other faith groups as well as many Muslims.

There were calls last night for ministers to reject Qaradawi's application. "Qaradawi has been banned from the US since 1999," said Dr Irfan al-Alawi, international director of the Centre for Islamic Pluralism. "Why should the British government allow him to come here?"

Observer, 27 January 2008

See also "Foreign Office approves visit by anti-semitic Muslim fascist" by Adrian Morgan. The irony of a self-proclaimed admirer of Nick Griffin denouncing fascism will not be lost on readers of Islamophobia Watch.

For the views of actual fascists on Qaradawi see Stormfront

"When it comes to world affairs, most contemporary British authors suffer from a bad case of group thinking these days. Less predictable is Martin Amis, who spurns the warm-slippered conventions of the U.K. literati. His independent streak is again on display in 'The Second Plane',' a new collection of essays, reviews and short stories, most of them about terrorism.

"One oddity about our age of terror is how enthusiastically godless European leftists have rallied to the defense of Islam. Amis is more consistent. Though he has turned from atheism to agnosticism, his distrust of religion remains unabated. Since it's now impermissible to disparage individual faiths, he writes, let us disparage all of them.

"Amis does reserve a special derision for Islamism, saying its adherents view indiscriminate killing as 'a divine delight'. Islam may not be bent on murder, but Islamism is, he says. That makes him an Islamismophobe, not an Islamophobe – if the word phobia even applies. A phobia is an irrational fear, he points out, and 'it is not irrational to fear something that says it wants to kill you'.''

George Walden writes at Bloomberg, 24 January 2008

Martin ("I could think of nothing worse than to support Boris Johnson") Bright has now come off the fence. A mere four days ago he was suggesting that voters should do no more than reconsider voting for Ken Livingstone in the London Mayoral election in May. Yet in today's issue of the Tory rag the Evening Standard (or the Evening Boris, as it has recently become known) Bright tells his readers:

"I now believe Ken Livingstone is a disgrace to his office and not fit to be Mayor of London. Any Londoner with a progressive bone in his or her body should not consider voting for him in the forthcoming mayoral elections."

At least this has the merit of consistency. And it's entirely in line with Bright's argument that the "left" (a term he laughably applies to himself and the likes of Nick Cohen) should form an alliance with the anti-Muslim right – hence his association with the right-wing think-tank Policy Exchange.

Give it another four days and no doubt we'll see Bright officially signed up to Boris Johnson's election campaign.

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In his New Statesman blog Martin Bright offers his justifications for presenting an anti-Livingstone "documentary" for Channel 4 which can only aid Tory candidate Boris Johnson's campaign to replace Ken as London mayor.

Regular readers of Islamophobia Watch will be aware of Bright's politics. He accuses a section of the Left of forming an alliance with "the clerical far-right" ( i.e. representative Muslims organisations like the MCB or MAB) and to combat this he advocates an alternative alliance between the "real Left" (i.e. people like himself and Nick Cohen) and the Islamophobic hard Right. So a de facto bloc with Boris Johnson is much what you would expect from Bright.

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"It would be fair to say that when I started working in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office unit dealing with engagement with the Islamic world at the beginning of 2005, I did not have a great deal of knowledge about British Muslim politics. I had no particular reason to question the office's process of engagement with Muslim groups....

"It is impossible to overstate the effect of the London bombings. I was really shaken by the events of 7 July and they played a huge role in informing my thinking. I took a holiday in August and devoted it to reading up on political Islam and, in particular, the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's main Islamist group. The dominant view at the FCO was that it was a moderate organisation with which the UK could do business. My reading suggested otherwise, and I gradually became convinced of the totalitarian nature of its ideology."

Derek Pasquill explains his decision to provide Martin Bright with the internal FCO documents which formed the basis for Bright's pamphlet When Progressives Treat with Reactionaries, published by the right-wing think-tank Policy Exchange.

New Statesman, 17 January 2008