There is a superb article by Martin Bright in the Jewish Chronicle, in which he calls to British Jews and British Bangladeshi Muslims to form an alliance and take on the scourge of extremism of the neo-Nazis and the Islamists in East London.
I recently had the pleasure of addressing an audience of well-informed, liberal and politically committed Jews on the rise of radical Islam in Britain. I suggested it was a tragedy that east London, for so long associated with Jewish immigration and the fight against fascism, had now become the home of the Islamist extreme right.
How had East London Mosque and the London Muslim Centre, both dominated by Jamaat-i-Islami (South Asia’s version of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood) come to be the first port of call for British politicians? What did the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, think he was doing earlier this year when he praised ELC and LMC for tackling prejudice? The reality is that the institutions have played a central role in promoting a sectarian Islam that represents only one strand of thinking within the magnificent diversity of this world religion.
Just around the corner sits the moderate Brick Lane mosque, a former synagogue that began life as a Huguenot church. Surely this was a far more powerful symbol of migrant integration. I tentatively suggested that perhaps the Jewish community, with its deep roots in the East End, had a duty towards the area that had once been its home.
This could take a very practical form. Jews from East London could share their experiences with recent incomers. The community leadership could pass on what had been learnt from the difficult process of integration.
And Bright goes on to spell it out:
But I suggest something that goes a stage further than this. I believe there is an urgent need for a strategic alliance between British Jews, the anti-Islamists within the Bangladeshi community and other citizens concerned about the revival of totalitarian politics in Britain today.
[...]
Talking to Bangladeshi activists working to expose war crimes carried out by Jamaat collaborators with Pakistan during their country’s war of independence in 1971, one encounters a terrible sense of frustration and betrayal. They are appalled that liberals choose to make common cause with their comrades’ Islamist oppressors.
[my emphases]
I believe that we at the Spittoon and the folks from the BMSD and from Harry’s Place have already undertaken activities to form the germ of this “strategic alliance”. But much more needs to be done. There are huge challenges ahead and we lag far behind the extremists who are far more organised. We have our work cut for us but it is never too late.
14 Comments
If you want to continue forming a ‘strategic alliance’ why not make yourselves known? Isn’t that the best way to build dialogue?
You first, Ghazal.
Meanwhile, back in the old country…
Meanwhile, back in the old old country…
facebook activists against that sort of thing:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=67355280352
facebook activists against that sort of thing:
Huh? What does Hindutva (or anti-Hindutva, for that matter) have to do with Bangladeshis buying copies of Mein Kampf in Dhaka as Eid presents?
Please explain.
To point out how Nazism and Hitler-adoration is hugely significant in South Asia in general, particularly for the Hindutva and modern Hindu extremism specifically.
Am I wrong?
For the most part, yes.
With one significant exception, the subcontinent has no history or tradition of antisemitism. The few Jewish communities that have been present — and some go very far back — never suffered discrimination or persecution. They were accepted, and politely ignored, in the live and let live ethos of the majority Hindu milieu. Just like, say, the Zoroastrians. What antisemitism might be found today is a modern phenomenon.
The exception was (and still is) Islam, which is doctrinally antisemitic. Ordinary Muslims, of course, were not antisemitic — they had no reason to be, as they never encountered any Jews. Rather, it was the educated Muslims, the clerics, who imbibed their antisemitism theoretically from the conscientious study of their scriptures. (Such was the case, for example, with Ahmad Sirhindi, a veritable giant of medieval Islamic scholarship. There is no evidence that this towering paragon of Islamic values ever came within even a hundred miles of a Jew in his entire Islamically excellent life. Yet, he was moved to write: “Whenever a Jew is killed it is for the benefit of Islam”.)
And so the question would be: why then antisemitism at all, why after all this time? The answer is: because the promoters of antisemitism have come out of the woodwork. Since the only traditional source of this sentiment is the Muslim clerical class, signs and symptoms of antisemitism are much more worrisome in Muslim milieus, where this odious lot continue to exert influence.
Such as Bangladesh (or Pakistan). In a pluralistic society like India, it is still unlikely to take hold. (And anyone with an IQ above room temperature will grasp that the Hindutva brigades see Jews, and especially Israelis, as allies against Islam.)
The Hindutva-Nazi links seems to have touched a raw nerve, I see. The Hindutva, it must be said, are a nasty a shower of religious extremists and racial-supremacists as any you can point to anywhere.
But whether they hate Muslim more than Jews or not (and low caste Dalits even more so, I should imagine) there is a preponderance of Nazi adoration congealed into the “philosophies” of their high-caste ideologues:
Nazism and Hitler in the textbooks:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4711475.stm
Nazi Propaganda in India:
http://www.jstor.org/pss/3518181
THE NAZI INFLUENCE ON L.K.ADVANI
http://www.donboscoindia.com/english/resourcedownload.php?pno=1&secid=243
I could go on and on. But the question remains: If the Hindutva (notionally) prefer Jews to Muslims , why then so much Nazism at all?
Qidniz,
you make a number of excellent comments about the strong traditions of anti-Semitism amongst the ‘ulema. With these comments I would agree.
Please don’t. Your ignorance is already quite clear, as is your propensity to swallow sensationalist news stories hook, line and sinker.
Maybe because it’s a figment of some sorely troubled imaginations? Who knows? Practically anything could be rustled up to “explain” the counterfactual.
Don’t hold back now. If you must go off-topic, by all means tell us what you really think.
The historical links between Hindutva and European Nazism is not the product of “sorely troubled imaginations”. It is easily demonstrable and there is plenty of information and factual evidence available to show this to be true, in spite of efforts by apologists and revisionists to suggest otherwise.
Nazism, of all things? What are you talking about? Savitri Devi? :rolleyes:
But, before posting links to any more half-baked literature, please be sure to read this. I strongly suspect that the subject treated there is the only nugget of “fact” under the mountains of rhetoric you’re predisposed to be impressed by.
And please don’t take cover behind the more general issue of fascist influences. Though, again, I suspect you will.
“But, before posting links to any more half-baked literature, please be sure to read this.”
oh no, not Koenrad Elst erstwhile of the Vlaams Belang again. No European fascist influences there…
oh no, not Koenrad Elst erstwhile of the Vlaams Belang again.
Read the article, and comment on its manifold iniquities, if you would. (And Elst votes Christian Democrat, btw.)