Following the Breivik atrocity, the ‘counterjihad’ blogosphere had a certain amount of shuffled feet and shifty glances. One common refrain is that there is a fire of condemnation heard about the grisly acts from groups who were in the process of excusing it when it appeared to be a Jihad atrocity. That’s true, but it’s a truth that cuts both ways. Another line is that Breivik can’t be inspired by a given person because he also cites a large list of other figures including Churchill, Ghandi etc. Well, I know bad faith and casuistry when I see it. One cannot insist that various jihadist should be taken at face value when they say their religion is their inspiration and then demand that Brevik be taken at something other than his face value.

That said, there is also a bad faith attempt to use this gross crime to silence any criticism of both Islam and the Islamic far right. The wretched Stalinist technique of the amalgam, and the related tactic of assuming that the worst motive for anything is always the right one. And then there’s the combination of hyperbole with banality. In particular the term fascism has become diluted to the point of meaninglessness, applied by a certain section of the left to everything from budget cuts to Srebrenica, from David Cameron to Nick Griffin. A word that can mean so many things ends up meaning nothing. This is particularly bad in the barrooms of the web, where ill-thought positions must be defended to the death. The same thing can be seen on the right, where “radical Marxist” or Stalinist thrown around with the same lack of continence.

What makes Øyvind Strømmen such a treasure is that, when he starts discussing fascism, he tells us exactly what he means. He gives us the definition of Roger Griffin, Professor at Oxford Brooks University:  ”Fascism is best defined as a revolutionary form of nationalism, one that sets out to be a political, social and ethical revolution, welding the ‘people’ into a dynamic national community under new elites infused with heroic values. The core myth that inspires this project is that only a populist, trans-class movement of purifying, cathartic national rebirth (palingenesis) can stem the tide of decadence.” And he adheres to it severely, insisting that, whatever one thinks of them, restrictions on immigration, or even xenophobia, are not fascism.

It’s for this reason that he is worth taking seriously when he warns about a resurgent European fascism. Central to his analysis is the work of the blogger Fjordman (Peder Jensen). Reading through Defeating Eurabia (an achievement in itself), Strømmen shows that Jensen’s views agree entirely with the classical model of fascism. The EU is predicted to collapse, civil war result and only a strong, revolutionary caste of nationalists can be the answer to both the current decadent ruling class and the Muslim minority.

The precision of this analysis is worth noting. Mark Steyn, Bruce Bawer, and Sam Harris have all posited the rise of the European far right in response to the Islamic, but none of them can be called fascist, as they write in various degrees of warning. Jensen, by contrast, actively advocates for such revolutionary overthrow. Moreover, Strømmen is one of the few writers (your humble servant amongst them) who noticed the connection of Breivik with the nouvelle droite, the European fascist international. His book, Eurofascism, is now available online, and is probably the best work on the subject around.

Strømmen’s restraint makes him all the more devastating. It would be neither true nor useful to indict the whole or even the majority of the counterjihad scene as fascists. However, in the same way that one can argue that in many cases there is no firewall between conservative Islamic religiosity and Jihadism, one can argue that in other cases there is no firewall between the crypto-fascists and the counterjihadists. The blog BrusselsJournal, for example, routinely praises the writers of the nouvelle droit, whose website Arktos features such items as posters of Codreanu, the founder of the Romanian Iron Guard.

There really isn’t an excuse for tolerating this sort of thing. As the old AIDS slogan goes, “Silence = Acceptance”. Peter Hitchens, a proud and open reactionary, believes in the Christian religion as the moral basis of Britishs society, is opposed to homosexuality, supports a strong law and order system, and sharp controls on immigration. Yet no one could seriously call him a fascist because he makes it quite clear that he despises the BNP and any other neo-fascist who tries to get chummy or ingratiate himself. Serious conservatives should pay heed.

The method of getting at the truth is the dialectical and adversarial. But name-calling is not dialectic, nor are taboos or tantrums. Dialectic requires sound arguments based on facts. For this reason, Strømmen’s work on the rise of Eurofascism is invaluable, and should be read by anyone with a serious interest in the various far-right factions, be they Islamic, home grown, or otherwise, on the loose today.

A debate on Islam in Amsterdam with the Canadian Irshad Manji, author of the book ‘The Islamic Dilemma’, and the parliamentarians of the Green Left Party Tofik Dibi, was disrupted on Wednesday evening by a group of radical Muslims.

The Islamists threatened and spat at Manji. Tofik Dibi accompanied Ms Manji to the police station where she filled a report. He said that “the failure of the debate shows that it is necessary also in the Netherlands to continue the debate on a free and moderate Islam.”

Finally, the police were called to remove the protesters. A police spokesman said later that two of the 22 men involved were arrested, one for threats and another for insulting the police.

Irshad Manji, a known critic of Islam, is the author of ‘The Islamic Dilemma’. She said she had already experienced fierce resistance, but this was something she had never seen before.

The rioters were of the view that Tofik Dibi and Irshad Manji did not have the right to talk about Islam “because they were too liberal”,  said Dibi. When the riot began, but the audience took Irshad Manji and Tofik Dibi took under their protection.

The Islamists, who also threw raw eggs demanded that the participants leave the stage of the debate, which the panelists rejected. Mr. Dibi later wrote in his Twitter that the debate “about a promising new generation of Muslims” was later continued at the request of Ms Manji.

Raed Salah has lost his ill conceived attempt to prevent his deportation from the United Kingdom. Despite being the subject of a banning order, you will remember that the hate preacher was accidentally admitted to the United Kingdom.

He has had his fun. It is now time for him to sling his hook.

This is what the court found:

We are satisfied that the appellant has engaged in the unacceptable behaviour of fostering hatred which might lead to intercommunity violence in the UK.

“We are satisfied that the appellant’s words and actions tend to be inflammatory, divisive, insulting and likely to foment tension and radicalism.

I urge you to read the response of The CST to the judgement.

Given that Salah was bound to fail in his challenge, one might ask: why did he bother. As the trial unfolded, the strategy of the Salah team became clear. Their case was, in essence, a pretty disgraceful attempt to portray Raed Salah as a victim of a Jewish conspiracy.

Specifically, the Raed Salah defence campaign spread the defamatory lie that the Community Security Trust, a respected anti-racist organisation, had fed the Home Office “doctored quotes” about Raed Salah. About that allegation, the CST notes:

CST completely rejects this wholly untrue claim, which is not mentioned in today’s ruling. It appears to be something given to journalists writing about the case rather than a meaningful claim relied on in court by Salah.

Indeed,  The CST provided original source material, on which the partial newspaper reports about Salah’s conduct were based.  Far from doctoring the quotes, The CST provided full context for Salah’s behaviour, in a manner which was potentially helpful to his case.

In advancing this “Jewish conspiracy” defence, Raed Salah’s team relied on two supposedly “expert witnesses”. The first is Professor David Miller. The second is Bob Lambert

David Miller runs a website called “Spinwatch”. Spinwatch has a shameful track record of attacking Muslim liberals and opponents of terrorist movements. Notoriously, David Miller’s site presented the views of the prominent neo-Nazi academic Kevin MacDonald, to explain the political behaviour of Jews.

The second is Bob Lambert, who has recently been exposed as a police spy, who deceived not only the members of Green anarchist group he had infiltrated, but also lied to his girlfriend, to whom he pretended to be an environmental activist on the run. Quite apart from Lambert’s personal and political dishonesty: his faux-academic European Muslim Research Centre (“EMRC”)  at Exeter University is funded by two Muslim Brotherhood front organisations: Islam Expo and the Cordoba Foundation.

The directors of IslamExpo include fugitive Hamas commander and Istanbul declaration signatory Mohammed Sawalha. The Cordoba Foundation is run by the Muslim Brotherhood activist, Anas Altikriti, who has called the murder of coalition troops in Iraq “legitimate“. The EMRC Board includes Bashir Nafi, who a decade ago was a senior operative of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group, indicted in the United States.

As the CST was not a party to this litigation, it did not have the opportunity to rebut the spin of the Salah team:

Salah’s defence called two witnesses, Professor David Miller of the Spinwatch campaign group and former police officer Bob Lambert, both of whom contested CST’s expertise in this area. The judgement notes their claim that CST “failed to distinguish between anti-Semitism and criticism of the actions of the Israeli State and therefore gives an unbalanced perspective”, but that both Miller and Lambert accepted it was not “improper for the Secretary of State to seek the views of the CST in this matter”. Needless to say, CST totally rejects the claims of Miller and Lambert that we fail to distinguish between antisemitism and criticism of Israel. OurAntisemitic Incident Reportsand Antisemitic Discourse Reports (both available here) lay out this distinction in great detail. However, we were not afforded an opportunity to defend CST’s position during the hearing and no witnesses were called by the Home Secretary’s lawyers to counter their claims. Consequently, CST’s rejection of Miller and Lambert’s ‘expertise’ was not heard in court and is not in the ruling.

Quite apart from the pathetic attempt to attack The CST, Salah’s substantive case was all over the place. He hopped from one lie to another. I’d imagine that his legal team was tearing their hair out by the end of the case:

When these allegations were first aired, Salah denied having written the poem; denied making the blood libel comment; denied facing any charges in Israel; and denied any links to Hamas. Only after CST provided evidence to the contrary, did Salah admit to having written the poem and making the blood libel comment, and argued instead that CST’s interpretation of those texts was wrong. He also admitted his conviction for funding organisations linked to Hamas, but claimed this was for “charitable and humanitarian purposes.”

I’d like just to focus on one aspect of Raed Salah’s inconsistent and shifting defence, in this post. You’ll remember that one of the many pieces of evidence uncovered to illustrate the nature of Raed Salah’s racism was a poem that he had written, in which he says:

“You are the germs of all times. The Creator had deemed you to be monkeys and losers.”

One newspaper report had inserted the word “[The Jews]” in square brackets into its translation of the poem. Initially, Raed Salah accepted that this poem was antisemitic and denied authorship of it:

The British press had circulated accusations of an anti-Semitic “poem” they attributed to Salah. But under instruction from Salah, Husain emphasized he absolutely denies writing the poem and “finds it offensive” because of its anti-Semitic content.

Unfortunately, evidence then emerged that established that the poem was indeed published, under Raed Salah’s name. The defence then shifted to a different lie: that the poem was about “all oppression” and not really Jews at all.

Lying is a strategy employed without the slightest shame, not simply by Raed Salah, but by his supporters. Have a read of MEMO’s press release, desperately trying to spin their hero’s utter failure, by misrepresenting the content of the judgement. I’ve read the judgement, and the attempt to present the court’s recital of legal arguments as findings in Salah’s favour is both pathetic and dishonest.

Popout

Now, here’s a question for you.

If a person denies clear evidence of racism, defends a racist, and attacks a leading anti-racist institution, is it fair to conclude that they are in fact a racist?

I ask, because Raed Salah attracted a large number of supporters and admirers, who rushed to his defence, during the course of his self-imposed stay in the United Kingdom.

One by one, we plan to examine the role of each of these institutions and individuals in the Raed Salah saga.

Okay, that was slightly harder to type than I expected. Lest anyone think I am being flippant about this disgusting atrocity (I refuse to use the word tragedy, which carries connotations of either self caused or non caused), let me point out that the above drivel has been mobilized following every atrocity by the Islamic ultra right for the last ten years. It was heard last weekend too, when Islamic fascists initially claimed responsibility for the horrifying events on that Norwegian island and in Oslo.

The reactionary left and the pro fascist left have spent the last ten years building the most accomplished machinery of excuse and justification for far right violence without ever asking themselves whether other groups might like to use it. You cannot excuse and defend movements so far to the right that they make Nick Griffin look like Nick Clegg and then posture as an ‘anti-fascist’.

A seed of dragon’s teeth has been sown, and its harvest is at hand. Brevik’s fellow ‘knights templar’ include the German neo-Nazi Nick Greger, Johnny Adair, the former leader of Ulster Freedom Fighters, Paul Ray, former BNP member, and even Serbian war criminals and African gangsters. It gets worse still. The rise of the Islamic far right has been a force multiplier for homegrown far right groups. Given the failure of Western governments to confront, say, Islamic Jew-bashing in Oslo or Islamic gay bashing in Amsterdam, it is unsurprising to see significant percentages of the population turn to less savory movements. This, however, does nothing to ameliorate their character. To take my least favorite example, behind closed doors the German NPD openly admits that its agenda is the destruction of the German republic and the restoration of the Reich. Similarly, Le Pen, who has tried to reinvent himself as the defender of French Jewry until quite recently was perfectly happy with ‘oven jokes’ in public. Lest anyone think that this sceptered Isle is immune from this, allow me to relate that, wandering down the streets of our own dear city with my young lady, from the window of a speeding car I heard two shaven headed Neanderthals call out: “Race Traitor!”

It is worth stressing that it is mainly those who have been alert to the menace of the Islamic far right who have also been aware of the more homegrown variety. The neoconservative Douglas Murray has produced two reports on the spread of hardcore neo-Nazism and its links with the BNP. In some of the most chilling sentences I have read, Sam Harris wrote: “The same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its inhabitants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists. To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: it does not bode well for the future of civilization.”

Having seen them proved right, it is a bit much to see men such as this slandered. I note with some weariness a Guardian column implicating Bruce Bawer in this massacre. I also notice the reptilian Chris Hedges has decided to dispense with innuendo and state that Sam Harris is responsible for Breivik. Anyone who believes this will believe anything. One would not know, reading these articles, that Bawer is a gay liberal who has written extensively on the bigotry of America’s Christian right. One would also not know that Sam Harris is one of the most liberal and internationalist thinkers on the world stage today.

Leaving aside the opportunism and dishonesty involved, there is a greater problem. It is part of the process that has driven all criticism of the Islamic far right into the fringes and margins, and in that outer darkness monstrous things have bred. Furthermore, this discourse has so relentlessly cheapened and abused the terms ‘racist’, ‘far right’, and ‘fascist’ that they have lost their pungency and warning power. We are at the point in the story where the little boy meets the real wolf. And we are all the little boy.

I shall give one example of this. It is common to hear Geert Wilders described as ‘far right’. Now, whatever you think of him, how can this epithet be sanely applied to a philosemite who has made opposition to racism, misogyny and homophobia the centre of his campaign?

This debased discourse will only ensure that things get worse, especially given the transnational and transcultural spread of the fascist virus. Discussing the EDL rally with an honorable old feminist friend of mine, I maintained that the most unsettling thing about the EDL was that they probably are not racists. Racism is inherently self-limiting. A return to a mono-racial Britian is simply not going to happen. On the other hand, try to imagine the consequence of the EDL allying with the Hindu fascists of the Shiv Sena and RSS. Both groups already have a significant present in the United Kingdom (for example, they were capable of bullying the artists M.F. Hussain into submission even after he fled to our shores), and it is already possible to hear sympathy for Breivik coming from that quarter.

Another area we should be watchful of is Eastern Europe and Russia. A 1999 German documentary on the far right interviewed one neo Nazi speaking cheerfully of the fact that his ideas found far more ready acceptance in the former Eastern bloc, and that Russia had more neo Nazis than all of Europe. Though one has to visit certain grim websites to find this out, Breivik is already being feted as a hero there. And of course, it was the Eastern Orthodox Church that gave clerical sanction to the genocide of Bosnia.

A third threat, and one that has been completely missed comes from the European Union. The EU sells itself as the restraint on the worst impulses of nationalism and xenophobia, and does so in the most cheap and demagogic manner. However, when Norman Lowell, one of the leading ‘thinkers’ of the “New European Right” was giving a speech in London (titled ‘Implementing the Imperium’. Seriously.), he stopped to cheer up some BNP members. Don’t worry, was his line, about getting members into the House of Commons. Your success in the European Parliament is much more important. The EU Parliament manufactures the majority of European legislation, and it is not subject to much in the way of democratic – or any other kind of – oversight. If this sounds like the vain ravings of a fascist loser, consider that the third largest block in the European Parliament, after the Center Right and the Socialists, is the far right alliance. So an institution sold as a corrective to ultranationalist xenophobia may yet give us Festung Europa. Wonderful.

There are some serious lessons to be learned here. The first is that nothing will be gained by further narrowing the bounds of discourse. It is worth reminding everyone that the Weimar republic had no less than two hundred prosecution of the NSDAP for hate speech: all this did was to force the party to clean up its image and make it more attractive. Conversely, none of the empty posturing about the BNP did as much good as Nick Griffin being caught on tape giving his real views to David Duke and his supporters. The more people can hear about the true views of these people, the better.

The second is that all fascists are brothers under the skin. In his manifesto, Breivik specifically calls for cooperation with Jihad terrorists to carry out attacks in Europe and allow them the establishment of a theocratic tyranny. Conversely, on 9/11 the televangelists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson joined Al Qaeda in praising the attacks as divine punishment, while many neo Nazi and white supremacists expressed their envy and admiration for the killers. Meanwhile, many anti-fascist and reformist Muslims condemned the attacks in round and solid terms. And, of course, in the same way that Breivik targeted his fellow countrymen, it is precisely these brave Muslims who are the first targets of Islamic fascists.

The third is that there is no sectarian answer to the problem of sectarianism. The shadow of a ghost of a point that our comentariat have had in the last few days is that there are some writers on the subject of Jihad and Islamic supremacism – Melanie Phillips, Robert Spencer – who root their opposition in a defense of “Christian” or “Judeo-Christian” civilization, something of an undefined term. Even a cursory reading makes it clear they mean a society of free speech, equality of the sexes, individual rights and so forth, but the vagueness of the term provides a modicum of cover for those whose vision of ‘Christian Europe’ is rather different. Indeed, it is quite possible, perusing the wild-lands of cyberspace around The Brussels Journal, to find those who are nostalgic for Codreanu and the Iron Guard.

Over thirty years ago, Ayn Rand warned of global balkanization, and its roots in irrationalism and tribalism. She has been proved right. Individualism and internationalism are not merely items on a menu, they are the only moral and practical way in which to organize the world. This must not be forgotten as we find ourselves, like peppercorns in a grinder, between two fascist movements competing for the right – or do I mean Reich? – to destroy liberal society.

Time then, for a stiffened spine. For some resistance, for some internationalism, for some solidarity. Time, in short, to reaffirm the values of the Enlightenment and to earn the title of ‘antifascist’ that has been too long defaced by frauds and failures.

Following the publication of ‘Enemies Not Allies: The Far-Right’, our new report which investigates his and similar organisations, Stop Islamization of America director Robert Spencer has invited One Law for All to ‘substantiate [our] charges, or withdraw them and issue a public apology.’ One could simply recommend that Mr. Spencer read our report. Indeed, in his ‘rebuttal’, he writes as if he has answered all of these charges before. It’s therefore strange that he felt the need to reply to them at ‘11:53pm’ on a Sunday night, and to attempt to smear his critics as ‘racist anti-Semites’ and ‘supporters of Jihad’. One could be forgiven for thinking that Mr. Spencer hoped to prevent people from reading the report for themselves.

In any event, I’m happy to list our main charges against his group and refer interested readers to the relevant citations in our report:

- Stop Islamisation of Europe is the ‘expansion’ of a Danish anti-Muslim party, Stop Islamiseringen af Danmark (SIAD), which was itself the result of a split within a xenophobic lobby group. (p.36-37) It calls for a boycott of all ‘Islamic countries’, for the Qur’an to be banned, for the mass deportation of immigrants from Europe, and protests against the building of Mosques. (p.37, 44-46) SIOE’s leadership consider all Muslims to be congenital liars who have a ‘culture of deceit’, and never tire of announcing that they ‘do not believe in moderate Muslims’. (p.40-41, and here)

- SIOE’s leaders have collaborated with and defended Julius Borgesen, former spokesperson for the right-wing extremist group Danske Front, which has ‘co-operated’ with Blood & Honour and Combat 18. Borgessen has reportedly participated in a march to celebrate Rudolf Hess, and was imprisoned in 2007 for calling for an arson attack against a Danish minister. SIOE insist that Borgesen is ‘in no way Nazi [or a racist], but is fighting for the democracy and freedom of Denmark’. (p.38-39) Further, there is evidence to suggest that other Danish neo-Nazis, as well as members of the BNP and the National Front, have attended SIOE and SIAD events. (p.38, 47)

- Stop Islamization of America is the U.S. branch of the SIOE umbrella group, and was entrusted by its leadership to Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer in January 2010. Geller and Spencer have praised SIOE, endorsed its political programme, published its statements and expressed admiration for its leaders. (p.48-49)

- SIOA’s leaders have surpassed SIOE’s defence of war criminal Radovan Karadzic, (which included offering justifications for his actions), by defending Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, denying Serbian atrocities including the Srebrenica genocide, publishing the work of professional apologists for the Milosevic project, and in Spencer’s case working on an institutional level with such people to oppose an independent Kosovo. Ms. Geller has gone so far as to say that Bosnian Muslims killed themselves in order to ‘manipulate media coverage’, and refers to the 1995 genocide as a ‘propaganda lie’ which was ‘manufactured [by] the international community’ as part of ‘the ongoing blood libel against the Christian Serbs’. (p.42-43, 53-54 and here)

This is presumably what Mr. Spencer means when he writes of SIOA’s ‘opposition to the jihad in the Balkans and skepticism (sic) about some of the charges made of Serbian war crimes.’

- SIOA’s leadership has supported, defended and praised the English Defence League, (without equivocation until recently), and has promoted their events, published their statements and attacked their critics. (p.55-59) Co-director Pamela Geller’s web log has featured conspiratorial articles regarding the President of America’s religion, his family, his sexual history, and the circumstances of his birth, and has likened his ‘stealth jihad on the White House’ to ‘an SS officer getting elected president during WW II’. (p.52-53) In 2010, Robert Spencer defended his and Geller’s ‘colleague’ Joseph John Jay, who had recommended the ‘wholesale slaughter’ of Muslim civilians, including children, on the grounds that he had been ‘misinterpreted’. Spencer maintains this still, and Ms. Geller has recommended Jay’s writings as recently as July 2011. (p.51-51)

I could go on, but I ought to address Mr. Spencer’s direct challenge regarding a quote of his which we included. Here is the quote, published on his Jihad Watch site in 2005: ‘there is no distinction in the American Muslim community between peaceful Muslims and jihadists. While Americans prefer to imagine that the vast majority of American Muslims are civic-minded patriots who accept wholeheartedly the parameters of American pluralism, this proposition has actually never been proven.’

Writing today, Spencer claims ‘what [he] meant was there is no institutional distinction, so jihadis move freely in Muslim circles among those who oppose them and claim to do so’. However, when asked by a commenter on the original article in 2005 ‘how distinctions can be made’, Spencer replied: ‘That’s simple. Let American Muslims renounce all attachment to violent Jihad and Sharia, refuse all aid from Sharia states (chiefly Saudi Arabia), and cooperate fully with anti-terror efforts aimed at rooting jihadists out of American mosques.’ (p.52) Having thus identified all Muslims as suspects who are guilty until proven innocent, Spencer does not specify how to treat Muslims who do not ‘cooperate fully’, or who fail to make the prescribed disassociations. But based on his record and the company he keeps, I’m glad we’ll never have to find out what it might entail.

I think this meets Mr. Spencer’s challenge, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to bring all of this to people’s attention. I’m not sure how one squares the above with the claim that SIOA ‘stand[s] for the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and equality of rights for all people’. Perhaps Mr. Spencer will enlighten us.

The video contains violence:

[Flash 10 is required to watch video]

The videos are poor quality and it is difficult to identify the perps but the EDL member has been identified as ‘Cobz Smith’.

I’m pretty sure I will pray to God as I’m rushing through my city, guns blazing, with 100 armed system protectors pursuing me with the intention to stop and/or kill. I know there is a 80%+ chance I am going to die during the operation as I have no intention to surrender to them until I have completed all three primary objectives AND the bonus mission. When I initiate (providing I haven’t been apprehended before then), there is a 70% chance that I will complete the first objective, 40% for the second, 20% for the third and less than 5% chance that I will be able to complete the bonus mission. It is likely that I will pray to God for strength at one point during that operation, as I think most people in that situation would….If praying will act as an additional mental boost/soothing it is the pragmatical thing to do. I guess I will find out… If there is a God I will be allowed to enter heaven as all other martyrs for the Church in the past.

Andrew Sullivan identifies this as articulation of what he calls Christianism and, not surprisingly, it reads like the text of a suicide video lovingly prepared by a jihadi terrorist.

Notice the absence of real faith, which would recoil even at the very thought of killing innocents, but the pragmatic, cold-blooded use of faith as a psychological mechanism to enable mass murder. Bin Laden, we should recall, had been a very Westernized rich kid before he became a “believer.” Breivik – who killed a greater proportion of Norwegians than bin Laden did of Americans on 9/11 – has the same internal conflict. It is his fear of his lack of real faith that propels him to pragmatically embrace the psychological structure of religion to murder his cultural enemies, to reify “Europe” or “Christendom” or “the Church” in order to defend them and give some meaning to his life. He also needs to reify Islam into a purely political and cultural entity that exists solely as an existential threat to Western freedom and in which every Muslim is therefore suspect.

My point is this: this was about as far from an act of meaningless violence as you can get. It is an explicitly articulated, carefully argued conclusion from a mishmash of every current far right platitude out there. Breivik does not merely claim influence by someone like Robert Spencer, he quotes him and so many others at great length as part of his manifesto! It’s a pastiche of vast tracts of the far right blogosphere. None of this delegitimizes sane, vital critiques of Islamist intolerance, violence and ideology; none of it makes these cited ideologues and fanatics guilty of murder or in any way being accomplices to murder, or in any way connected to his crime. But it does seem to me to prove beyond any doubt that Christianism is indeed a phenomenon in its own right, and that its evolution into neo-fascist violence, like Islamism’s embrace of neo-fascist violence, is now something that cannot be denied.

And then are Breivik’s links to key members of the EDL:

Scotland Yard was investigating Breivik’s claims that he began his deadly “crusade” after being recruited to a secret society in London, and that he was guided by an English “mentor”. David Cameron, who was being kept updated on developments, said Breivik’s claims were being taken “extremely seriously”.

Breivik wrote of having strong links with the EDL, saying he had met its leaders and had 600 EDL members as Facebook friends.

Mr Hobson said in an online posting that: “He had about 150 EDL on his list … bar one or two doubt the rest of us ever met him, altho [sic] he did come over for one of our demo [sic] in 2010 … but what he did was wrong. RIP to all who died as a result of his actions.”

Whether Breivik acted as a “lone wolf” or as part of an organised group is yet to be uncovered. But more to  the point, Breivik certainly ingested and regurgitated large amounts of writings of right-wing ideologues: Theodore Dalrymple, Robert D. Kaplan, Lee Harris, Ibn Warraq, Geert Wilders, Robert Spencer, Walid Shoebat, Bat Ye’or, Mark Steyn, Melanie Philips, Pamela Geller et al are all quoted and get a name check. Their ideas were the intellectual padding employed to justify his narcissistic journey to Christianist nationalism. His manifeso makes much reference to the “Vienna School of Thought” promulgated online by the ‘Gates of Vienna’ blog and the far-right Norwegian blogger, Fjordman.

This mind-boggling act of mass murder is the ultimate and logical conclusion to the “Eurabia” conspiracy thesis which has been developed into a keystone of European far-right ideology. Sane people of the political centre must debunk this idiotic conspiracy theory once and for all if they are to oppose the rise of the European Far-Right. Opposing far-right fascism can only be achieved with the same principled and well-informed rigour that has been applied to tackling Islamist extremism – by identifying key individuals and groups rather than employing spurious generalisations.

Breivik has been universally condemned, of course, and although it is encouraging to see proponents of the far-left commentators condemn this act it is difficult to ignore the glaring note of hypocrisy. Although the far-left blogs have been robust in their criticism of  the horror in Norway, Islamophobia-Watch used the opportunity to score cheap tribalist points by attacking, once again, moderate Muslims and organisations opposed to Islamic terrorism. There is an irony at play here: the great pity is seeing so many people who are now (correctly) condemning the terrorist atrocity in Norway but who have previously never been able to bring themselves to condemn Islamic terrorism in, say, Pakistan or Afghanistan with the same moral outrage.

Far from being a sop to the English Defence League, this speech was ultimately about the future of Prevent: that the government will stop working with, and giving money to, organizations that are ‘non-violent extremists’ in the hope that they might help us beat the ‘violent extremists’. As a think-tank, Demos has been associated with that position, through a 2005 pamphlet – hence this blog.

Our position has since changed subtly since to a more muscular liberal one. I agree entirely that the government – and the rest of us – should be more aggressive in promoting the best set of values anyone anywhere has yet come up with: democracy, liberty, freedom, justice, tolerance. I’ve argued that wherever I’ve been, including last night on the Islam Channel where I defended the speech.

But if this means Prevent should never work with non-violent extremists, I disagree. Bear with me on this. Prevent will probably be refocused when the review of it is released shortly. Instead of being a tangled mess of counter-terrorism, integration and cohesion, it will become more targeted on counter-terrorism/public safety. This means the police will sometimes have to work with non-violent extremists if they think it can help achieve this goal. And sometimes it can. There are numerous examples of non-violent extremists pulling people back from the brink of terrorism, and of providing the police with valuable information and intelligence. I accept some of these non-violent extremists – Islamists or Salafis or whatever – are not representative of all Muslims, and I wouldn’t want them given money to develop Madrassah classes. But that is not what Prevent is about. If non-violent extremitst can help stop terrorism in specific instances, we’d be foolish not to use that. It is tactical, not strategic.

Other forms of extremism – not the political pro-Palestine movements, but the most odious anti-democratic and anti-human rights extremism – deserve to be tackled on their own (de)merits, and not because of any relationship to terrorism.

The other concern I have is about platform sharing. Non-violent forms of extremism are part of living in a free society. Any true liberal believes that extreme and intolerant ideas should given a hearing, so that they can be dissected and demolished. Indeed, banning often adds to the appeal of radical ideas, especially those of groups like al-Qaeda that trade on notoriety, glamour, and anti-establishment status.

This means the onus is on us to expose them, because a liberal approach to debate and freedom of speech requires strong counter-arguments. It would have been far better had Baroness Warsi to attended the Global Peace and Unity conference last year, and proceeded to roundly denounce extremism. After all, freedom is not the same as agreement, and we don’t honour the dishonourable when we open the public forum to their voices. To be a true muscular liberal, you need to take the arguments into the lion’s den.

I’m really pleased to report that it seems that today has passed off peacefully. The people of Luton have rejected the provocation of the EDL.

One of the main reasons for this was the great work done in the Muslim community to keep their youth off the streets. Hundreds of stewards and dozens of mediation teams were out to reduce tensions and refute the rumours that were circulating. Community elders stood hand in hand to calm youngsters down and encourage people not to rise to the EDL’s bait.

Cross and girdle

“Nationalism”. I believe the word instantly causes thoughts to materialise in one’s mind – of extremists, such as skinheads, thugs, nazis, people with “dark agendas” and violent or deceiving methods to fulfil said dark agendas. This is not me – but I still consider myself a nationalist. If you’re interested in more detail, I consider myself a “territorial nationalist”. That is to say, I don’t see colour / race and such as important, or a necessity to be “a part of the club”. I personally see it this way: everyone is a part of the club and should pull together and make this club a better place. I think most people are truly nationalists, even though they wouldn’t use that exact word to define themselves: “Hi, I’m ABC, I’m a nationalist.” But the dictionary definition tells us it is a person who loves his or her country, with synonyms such as “good citizen”. I am sure that we would all like to consider ourselves good citizens, people who care for the wellbeing of the nation and our neighbours. Sure! So, when a party brings a slogan to you like: “Putting British people first!” “People like you!” “Bring our troops home!”, they feel like reassuring statements, noble statements. Can they inspire to a degree and draw you in? Well, I thought so. I wanted to see how they were doing this and see these “people like me”. Obviously, there was a multitude of people saying this party was full of bad people, people not at all like me. As I saw myself as a nationalist, I thought they must be wrong and that I would be much, much more satisfied finding out what’s what for myself. This is how I am – always having to see for myself rather than taking someone’s word for it. Just because many people say so, that doesn’t necessarily make it true.

I wouldn’t deny for a moment from the beginning that there were bad apples within the group; you’re always going to get a few, (see if you spot the irony and please place answers on a postcard) and I feel it is unreasonable and lacking in logic to define an entire group by the actions of a small percentage. I spent months before the general elections and a few months after that becoming affiliated and trusted within the “online ranks” of the party. It got to a stage where in a relatively short time I had become respected and given Moderation / Administration authority within the groups. If I’m honest, this fuelled my ego. I started to try and educate and moderate the bad apples and promote the good parts of the party, always, always having to defend its past mistakes and errors. But I began to tire of defending the past, which I wasn’t a part of. Each time, I was assured by all the others that things such as that wouldn’t happen again – we were building a righteous nationalist party the land could be proud of, they just needed to realise we had changed! United, we had the power to change anything!

As time passed – especially after the elections – I saw more of the entrails of the beast; saw what it was and how it worked. The deeper inside, the uglier it got. Many people, making a racist remark here or slandering another who opposed them… I still held onto the idea that ‘Well, perhaps this is still just the bad apples; I need to reach the higher echelons.’ I was frustrated, because when I wasn’t there, keeping everyone in check, people would just come on and instantly start spouting hatred. There was no reason behind many people’s rants; they were blinded. “Nationalism seems to just draw this kind of people”, I thought. I finally got a meet with the area representatives; now I was buzzing, it was all going to be different, more positive, more progress, get to meet leaders – it’s going to be awesome. I had planned out so many ideas and suggestions and wanted to put them forward.

But at the meeting, all the ideas and topics I had to offer were shot down or ignored. They were much more interested in and – dead set focused on – ranting about “those damn blacks” and how “they didn’t belong here” and they were “invading inferior beings”. No matter what topic I tried to raise – always the same. It really came down to a personal hatred of black people. Now it was confirmed to me, finally. I had gone on to meet three influential people within the party, whose jobs and duties it was to encourage and promote to the members… All had blinding grudges and unreasonable hatred of other races; they had no interest in speaking to me about education, economy, health, welfare. So what are they teaching the rest of the group? Not many of those I encountered would second-guess them, or follow up on their statements -  they just wished to get people pissed off, because pissed-off people can be manipulated very easily. I felt sad, because I gave them the opportunity to prove me wrong and they, in my opinion, had sadly not done so.

These people just breed hatred and anger.  Maybe there’s something valid they’re upset about, something that looks like it needs looking into or stopping, but this sort of hate only breeds hate. The way they offer misinformation makes this a vicious cycle. I was asked to represent them, to encourage people my age and younger to join. That I just had to decline; I couldn’t encourage anyone to join a group which is so blinded.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

I have a forthcoming publication which looks into the role of Commonwealth soldiers in the First and Second World War. Their participation has been underplayed in some commemoration services despite the crucial role they played in helping defend Britain against some of her greatest enemies in the last century.

One of the largest faith-groups in the colonial Indian Army was Muslims who fought, at times, against the Muslim power of their day: the Ottoman Empire. Their letters, housed in the British Library and National Archives, reveal the extraordinary management of their religious and civic identities.

The debate about Muslims in the West is becoming ever more polarised. That much is evidenced by the rise of violent and thuggish movements such as the EDL in Britain and, more broadly, by the mainstreaming of far-right views by antagonists in the United States and mainland Europe. That is a statement of fact. It is also truism, of course, that the current terrorist threat or the problems surrounding some – and it is only some – Muslim integration in Europe and beyond is very real and serious.

Incidents such as the Fort Hood attack by Nidal Hasan undermine the quite excellent work being done by Muslims in the British and American Armed Forces today. It fuels the perception that Islam and the West are incompatible. Hasan was a traitor in every sense of the word – to his country, community, and creed. He betrayed those in whose interests he claimed to act.

Yet, his actions should not overshadow the work being done by Muslim servicemen in Afghanistan and Iraq today – or indeed, the historic contribution made by Muslim servicemen to Western military campaigns.

Two years ago I was lucky enough to interview Zeeshan Hashmi, the brother of Lance-Corporal Jabron Hashmi who died in Helmand; the first British Muslim serviceman to die in active combat against the Taliban.

“[Jabron] went to Afghanistan hoping to build bridges between the East and the West. He combined his love of Islam with the love of Britain and his main reason for joining the army was to make a difference. He certainly did that” Zeeshan told me.

He also pointed out that the timing of Jabron’s death was significant. Coming just days before the first anniversary of the July 7 attacks, it contrasted the positive contribution that young Muslims can make against the horrors they have sometimes perpetrated.

“We all have to break the barriers ourselves. Jabron’s death reflects on Muslims generally, not just my family,” Zeeshan told me. “Being Muslim does not restrict us from bring British.”

That interview took place two years ago but I was reminded of it yesterday when a friend – a senior ranking Muslim soldier – sent me the following pictures from Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan.

A congregation of 600 servicemen comprising ISAF and Afghan forces came together for Eid prayers and to hear sermons delivered by the Imam to the British Armed Forces and the Imam of the 205 Corps of the Afghan National Army.

“ISAF has again demonstrated that Islam and the West are compatible, and that Muslims are proud citizens of their countries – they wear their flags on their shoulders and chests and willingly serve their nations. I hope that this time next year Afghanistan is stable and progressing on the path to peace” the Imam to the British Armed Forces said.

The pictures below are taken from the Eid prayer at Kandahar Airfield. They were taken by my friend, though you can find more professional ones here and here.

Apparently Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the former leader of the South Asian Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami, has been banned from the UK. He had a visa that was valid until 2015. It has reportedly been revoked.

Earlier today, this blog posted a truly shocking video from a recent English Defence League (EDL) rally in Leicester which showed members of the far-right group laying siege to an Asian takeaway full of families. Watch the video now if you haven’t already, words cannot quite describe it.

In the Guardian’s Comment is Free blog, Little Green Footballs blogger Charles Johnson has given a broad overview of the problems within American ‘anti-Jihadism’, highlighting in particular the activities of Pamela Geller, the fear-monger behind the anti-Ground Zero Mosque movement. One of the things he notes is her clear and repeated support for the EDL and other far-right organisations in Europe. Geller’s support for the EDL has been quite extensively covered by the Guardian and Johnson, though it is worth reiterating that she claims to ‘share the EDL’s goals’ and personally invited them to attend her rally on 9/11 to protest the Park51 Islamic centre.

Here at Focus on Islamism, we know that Geller follows our coverage of her – last time I blogged about her refusal to cancel her 9/11 rally, she called for me to be sacked from Standpoint and lambasted me as an apologist for radical Islam (she also misspelled my name, but to be honest I can’t really blame her). So, I provide the video again for her perusal, and eagerly await a response:

When faced with the ever-mounting evidence of far-right thuggery at their rallies, the EDL leadership and their apologists often try to wriggle out by claiming that the rally was ‘hijacked’ by extremists who don’t represent the movement. In an email to Newsweek’s Declassified blog (which ran a story about her support for the EDL), Geller defended the EDL in precisely these terms, writing: ‘The left and real neo-Nazis frequently attempt to infiltrate EDL rallies in order to discredit the EDL.’ This is just not good enough. If a Muslim group that claimed to be moderate had regular appearances by al-Muhajiroun (or, to take a US example, Revolution Muslim) at their rallies, something tells me that the EDL, Geller and company would not be so ready to excuse this.

Geller’s ally Robert Spencer also attempts to defend the EDL in a response to Johnson’s piece:

I don’t believe they’re [the EDL] neo-fascist white supremacists, as Johnson claims. There is no way that Pamela Geller or I would ever work with, endorse, or approve of any genuine neo-fascist or white supremacist individual or group in any way, shape or form.

Spencer has also defended the EDL as patriots who ‘stand for freedom’, and reproduces materials from their official website. If Spencer were to apply a tenth of the amount of online research he does on Muslims to the EDL, he would find that his claims about the group are simply wrong. Here are just a couple of videos easily accessible on Youtube:

In January 2010, a Daily Mail special report into the EDL noted that,

Its leaders are professional and articulate and they claim that the EDL is a peaceful, non-racist organisation. But having spent time with them, there is evidence that this movement has a more disturbing side. There is talk of the need for a ’street army’, and there are links with football hooligans and evidence that violent neo-Nazi groups including Combat 18, Blood and Honour and the British Freedom Fighters have been attending demos. [emphasis added]

The links between the EDL and Blood & Honour should be particularly concerning. Blood & Honour is a violent neo-Nazi movement with connections to far-right terrorists (for more on them, see here). Add to all this the horrifying video from Leicester, and there is no justification for excusing or defending these people.

Geller and Spencer’s apologia for the EDL would matter far less if they were fringe figures in the United States, but, as a recent profile of Geller in the Guardian noted, she has ‘inserted herself into mainstream politics in America.’ She has also appeared as a pundit across the North American news media spectrum, including: Russia Today America; ABC News; Fox News; Canadian Broadcasting Company; MSNBC; CNN; and CBS NEWS (source: New York Times). And herein lies the problem; at present, the loudest and most well known voices against radical Islam in America are also the most willing to excuse, and even promote, poisonous anti-Muslim bigotry. Daniel Pipes recently warned against the positions held by people like Spencer and Geller when he wrote:

Misled by the Islamists’ insistence that there is no such thing as "moderate Islam," my allies often fail to distinguish between Islam (a faith) and Islamism (a radical utopian ideology aiming to implement Islamic law in its totality). This amounts not just to an intellectual error but a policy dead-end. Targeting all Muslims conflicts with basic Western notions, lumps friends together with foes, and ignores the inescapable fact that Muslims alone can offer an antidote to Islamism. As I often note, radical Islam is the problem, and moderate Islam is the solution.

This is absolutely right, and both Spencer and Geller should take heed.

Numerous US-based experts and academics on Islamism and terrorism whom I have spoken to bemoan the state of the radical Islam debate in America, and almost all identify Geller and Spencer as part of the problem, not the solution. Thankfully, the discussion on this issue in Britain is in a more mature stage, and we do not have to put up with apologists for the EDL appearing regularly on Newsnight or The Daily Politics.

NOTE

As an addendum, I also thought it appropriate at this point to direct your attention to this Geller speech where she peddles yet another paranoid conspiracy theory, referring to President Obama as a ‘Mohammedan’ (last time I saw that word used was in a WW1-era Parliamentary Hansard!) [1.48mins in]:

Here is the EDL in all their bigoted glory.

It is an astounding video, revealing the true colours of the EDL and everything you ever needed to know about its members.

This blog takes a robust line against Islamists – it always has. That much is evident from its name. Where we depart from those who like to describe themselves as anti-Islamists is that we oppose fascism and discrimination in all its forms.

It is not enough to say the EDL have been provoked into this by years of woeful inadequacy by the government. Officialdom has undoubtedly turned a Nelsonian eye to the growth of Islamism, as catalogued by this blog along with our comrades at Harry’s Place and the Spittoon. But to dismiss their actions as ‘understandable’ in this context is every bit as disingenuous as those who explain away Islamism as a reaction to ‘Western foreign policy’ or ‘oppression’.

There can be no equivocation with the likes of the EDL. They are an avowedly anti-Muslim organisation, not anti-Islamist. Their rallies are riots. Time and again they descend into violence against anyone perceived to be Muslim. They are the worst kind of bigots.

I have direct experience of EDL members. I supported – and attended – this fantastic initiative led by British Muslims from Secular Democracy (BMSD) last year:

It drew support from a broad cross section of society – including many writers from this magazine who attended on the day.

A small contingent of EDL members also turned up for their own demonstration. I spoke to some of them. They claimed not to be racist, but when the demonstration finished and I walked towards the tube station along with others we passed the same group of EDL members who were, by now, well established in a nearby pub. As we walked past they unleashed a torrent of racial abuse: "F**k off Pakis".

A one off? Not really, even a cursory glance through youtube reveals that the EDL frequently employ the most obscene racist chants at their events. I can’t reproduce every video but this one featuring a lovely young man is just far too good to pass up. Here he is on a police van shouting "dirty Muslim b******s".

Fortunately, in the UK at least, there is a genuine and progressive front against Islamists. The EDL does those of us who are motivated by sincere concerns for the future of our country and society a great disservice. They are neither comrades nor colleagues in the struggle against Islamists. Indeed, they are the flipside of the very same problem – a loathing of the ‘other’.

Just as those who defend, explain away, and minimise the threat of Islamists come in for attack, so too must those who now provide the same cover for the EDL. After all, this is struggle for values – and it can only be won if those principles are applied to all in equal measure.

The echoes of 1933 when the Nazis burnt some 20,000 books in Germany is clear. But this is not the first time Christian fundamentalists in the USA have shown their intolerance towards books by burning them, as this video show.

It goes without saying that this is an outrageous act of provocation. The fear is – how will Muslims react to this? My only hope is that they will not respond to this act of irrational cynicism and stupidity by reacting in kind, or worse. But perhaps that is asking for too much.

Video Update:

We often hear that the EDL protest the growth of political Islamism and extremism exclusively and non-violently. This man from the EDL might have reason to differ:

An injured English Defence League protester lies on the ground being treated by police medics after being hit by a rock thrown by another English Defence League protester

PRESS STATEMENT FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

TOWER HAMELTS COMMUNITY STANDS UP TO FIGHT FASCISM IN ALL ITS COLOURS:

The entry of the English Defence League (EDL) into Tower Hamlets to protest against a meeting at the Troxy in East London is a direct provocation to stir up racial tensions, foment dissent among faiths and attempt to bring disunity amongst the communities of the borough. We condemn the fascist EDL whose sole objective is to act as storm troopers for the British National Party (BNP) and pick up the pieces for them after their miserable rout in the local and national elections in neighbouring Barking and Dagenham Council. Under the guise of being non-political and upholding “English” values they are propagating a virulent form of naked Islamophobia which is rejected by the communities of Tower Hamlets. We will do everything in our power to defend the peace in the borough, protect the lives of Muslims and ensure that the unity amongst all is maintained.

This borough has a rich tradition of successful challenge to fascist forces of the Blackshirts and the National Front. The Battle of Cable Street in the 30,s and the Struggle for Brick Lane following Altab Ali’s murder in the 70’s and the move to oust Derek Beackon in the 90’s is part of our common history. The values of universalism, anti-racism and no compromise with fascism inform our thinking and has become part of our existence. We will build on this rich tradition as we face Oswald Mosley’s grandchildren. The irony is those who attacked the Jewish community in the 30’s have tried to usurp the flag of Israel to mount their challenge today. United with the Jewish community we condemn such blasphemy.

As we confront the fascist thugs of EDL we in the Bengali and the Muslim community are being asked to stand side by side with Islamic Forum in Europe (IFE). This we refuse to do. The IFE does not represent the Muslim community in Tower Hamlets. They do not uphold the glorious tradition of Cable Street, Altab Ali and the anti racist movement. Under the patronage of an exclusivist Islam emanating from Saudi Arabia they are attempting to impose it amongst the Bengalis in this borough. Just as the EDL takes the guise of being ordinary English citizen to hide their true identity of  fronting the fascist BNP so do IFE act as the sole representatives of ordinary Muslims but are in fact operating under the direction of their parent organization Jamaat Islam in Bangladesh. It is Jamaat that was party to the massacre of innocent Bangladeshis in the 1971 war of independence that establish the independent state of Bangladesh. A war Tribunal has been established in Bangladesh to try leaders of Jaamat Islam who are IFE’s real ideological and organizational gurus. In other words IFE represent a virulent form of political Islam that is fascistic in nature like Jaamat Islam and verges on the anti-Semitic and is very exclusivist and undemocratic.

In defending the people of Tower Hamlets and especially the ordinary Muslims we do not have to defend IFE. EDL is attacking the Muslims of this borough and we must protect them. IFE must not be allowed to use this occasion to propagate their very reactionary version of political Islam.  

We must also alert the entire community about the opportunist and divisive politics of IFE. Using this latest EDL threat to the local community, it is clear to us that the IFE brigade is trying to terrify the most vulnerable in our community – the Bangladeshi women and children into joining their ranks under the banner of ‘defending the Ummah’. It has come to our knowledge that IFE and its operatives have sent out mass e-mails, text messages and visited members of the community including young children in primary schools to ask them to join forces and defend Muslims and East London Mosque from imminent threat of destruction.

All progressive forces must realize that the gut reaction to EDL is to defend everybody including IFE because they might be accused of being Islamophobic. But we boldly proclaim that it is not Islamophobic to have no trucks with the heirs of Fascist Jaamat? It is not Islamophobic to denounce the anti democratic credentials of IFE and their Saudi patrons? It is not Islamophobic to show solidarity with the Muslims of Tower Hamlets and their diverse representative organizations without marching under the leadership of IFE? We cannot be consistent in fighting the fascist EDL if we elect the “fascist” IFE as our Imam. In line with the best in the Islamic and Bengali tradition we reject the siren calls of IFE as we prepare to organise against EDL.

On behalf of:

Harmuz Ali (Bangladesh Welfare Association (BWA), Ataur Rahman Chowdhury (Brick Lane Mosque), Shamsuddin Shams (Altab Ali Foundation), Badrul Islam (Centre for Citizenship and Development (CCD), Akikur Rahman (Bangladesh Youth Association), Rajonuddin Jalal (London Bangladeshi Association), Ansar Ahmed Ullah (Nirmul Committee), Mahmoud Rauf (Brick Lane Business Association), Abdus Subhan Gedu (Banglatown Restaurant Association), Ethnic Minority Enterprise Project (EMEP), Abdul Ali Rauf (Chicksand Citizen’s Forum), Collective of Bangladeshi School Governors, Tower Hamlets Parents Centre, Tower Hamlets Parents Association, APASENTH, BYM, Nurul Islam (Kendrio Shaheed Minar Committee), Sundar Miah (Tarling Tenants & Residents Association),Nooruddin Ahmed (Bangladesh Youth League), Ruhul Amin (Progressive Youth Association), Taimus Ali (Bangladesh Youth Front), Shahab Uddin Ahmed Belal (Human Rights Secretary (Awami League), Cathy Forrester, Claire Murphy, Phil Maxwell, Terry Fitzpatrick (Blair Peach Project), Syed Sad Ahmed, Fanu Miah (Golden Moon Youth Project), Altafur Rahman, Sheikh Noor, Sirajul Islam, Shofiq Ahmed, Tanu Miah and others.

For further details:

On behalf of UNITY PLATFORM AGAINST RACISM AND FASCISM

C/O  Centre for Citizenship and Development, Business Development Centre, 7-15 Greatorex Street, London E1 5NF

The begining of the end for IFE : )

recently, i gave up posting on pickled politics, partly because of the level of personal animosity i was facing, but mostly just in frustration at my apparent inability to get my point across. now, i suppose i have nobody very much to blame for that apart from myself, but i’ve never felt that was a problem before now. now, i think i’m starting to work out what it is that is bothering me; certainly, it’s not about the denizens of one blog, or even the blogosphere, or even the media. it’s not any one set of views, not any one person, but a set of trends, a collective movement i sense in wider society.

one of the things i like about the spittoon and my co-contributors is that they take a robust approach towards the cosy relationship between the left and the various apologists for, supporters of and partisans of islamist extremism. they take, of course, an equally dim view of other forms of clerical fascism, whether it be jewish, christian, or hindu, although, of course, we are often excoriated for not writing sufficiently on these subjects. and why is that? well, the answer that “they’re not as big a problem” simply won’t do. clearly, the activities of the likes of rss/shiv sena in india, or hardcore fundamentalists in the american south ultimately affect all of us. for me personally, the behaviour of both the extreme west bank settlers and that of rejectionist ultra-orthodoxy evokes both profound heartache and deep anger – just as the “as-a-jew” clique that only appear as jews in order to display their preening self-importance whenever an opportunity to attack israel arises. however, i would nonetheless argue that, from the perspective of wider UK society, these concerns are less immediate, in that these groups have no meaningful accommodation with either our government or the UK media, however influential they may be in the communities they come from. what bothers me, really, is what the effects of ongoing and intensifying fundamentalism on me, my family and community and wider society – in this, locally speaking, islamists are in the vanguard, as the leading proponents and practitioners of violence against my community specifically and, generally, against UK civil society.

the question inevitably arises – who’s really worse? well, i think i would on balance come down in favour of the idea that wherever a particular group becomes influential and the closer they come to the levers of power, the more of a problem they are in a particular country. thus, in the UK, the utterly misguided, racism-of-lower-expectations the-west-is-ultimately-responsible-for-everything-bad-y’know attitude has allowed the entryism of islamist organisations and sympathisers everywhere from the police to government to the left-wing media. but would it be any different anywhere else? i expect not – militant fundamentalist christians are busily inching closer to the levers of power in washington, india has had already had one bjp government and i think we’re all aware of the subversion of mainstream democracy and the processes of civil society in israel by the religious parties and the settler lobby. we’ve got a lot of muslim fundamentalists here in the UK and, in a profound act of ignorance and credulity, we’ve allowed islamic education to be systematically outsourced to salafi and wahhabi dawa organisations for a generation, with entirely predictable results – i think we can say the same of many european countries, although i would fall well short of the apocalyptic and hysterical “eurabia” scenario – in fact, i’d be more worried personally about the behaviour of the catholic party in poland led by an anti-semitic priest and any prospective alliance of a russian political party with the orthodox church – not trend anyone jewish can afford to ignore.

of course, in europe particularly, this isn’t the first time we’ve been here. there was of course an “enlightenment”, which consisted in large part of reaction against the authoritarianism of various forms of christianity, whether by trying to eliminate it altogether and replace it with a sort of ersatz state paganism, as in france, or whether to regulate it as a sort of national industry, as in germany and scandinavia, or whether to simply satirise and philosophise it into a manageable social pressure and community support lobby, as in britain. the enlightenment taught that religion was nothing but a corrupt power structure which only the mad, the bad and the deluded would indulge. as we also know, removing religion simply forced the mad, the bad and the deluded to find other channels for their unpleasant attitudes and activities. we still see this outdated and reductionist position being reinvented for modern times using all the tools of modern cultural influence, from popular science to childrens’ books to comedy. religious people are portrayed as knaves or fools. there appears to be no middle ground, no compromise possible – religion must be rooted out, cleansed and exterminated.

of course, we’ve been there before too – modern fundamentalism, as karen armstrong (before she started to become part of the problem by sucking up to the goons at MPAC-UK) pointed out in her still masterful study of fundamentalism “the battle for G!D” evolved largely as a reaction against the enforced, clumsy and often brutal imposition of modernity on societies all around the world. the fundamentalisms we have today have reached their current forms because of the political, technological and social realities of the societies in which they evolved. their priorities and obsessions are driven by the battles they originally fought, against pluralism, liberalisation of dress, behaviour, increased social equality (or inequality), against practically irreversible geopolitical realities, against the aftereffects of wars and economic dislocation. those who give aid and comfort to fundamentalists are inevitably picking and choosing where they have shared priorities and obsessions – anti-imperialism, anti-abortion, anti-homosexuality, anti-israel, social breakdown, the emancipation of women, the legacy of slavery – but they are always at odds with fundamental features of the societies they criticise.

what i see developing, however, is a sort of multi-lateral polarisation in which the first casualty is moderation, the second is tolerance and the third is social consensus. the effects of this, however, touch all of us, but the effects are peculiarly corrosive on those of us who are able to combine amd integrate reason and religion and deal with the subtleties of creation, revelation and evolution. we are frequently at odds with obscurantists and bigots within our faith, but we are now fighting a rearguard defence against anti-religious forces, without any letup in the attack on reasonableness, complexity and dialogue that continues from reactionary fanatics. both sides, naturally, accuse us of giving aid and comfort to the other in its mission to destroy them – if we’re not with them, we’re against them – and no prisoners will be taken.

so, on one hand, we have the forces of militant anti-religion mounting attacks on everything from headgear to faith schools, on the other we have the walls of the ghetto being built anew, only with gun-ports this time. we can also see the social contract of the enlightenment renewed; previously, the deal was “give up your difference and you’ll get rights as a citizen” – this time, it’s “you’ve abused your rights as a citizen, we can no longer tolerate your differences”. the behaviour of religious fanatics, in their quest to dominate their own communities, has destroyed the delicate balance which allowed religion to be an integrated part of civil society. naturally, comes the response: they want all or nothing? fine – let them have nothing. but what of those of us who always wanted to co-exist? who prize our cultural and spiritual distincitiveness? oh no, distinctiveness is still allowed – but religion will no longer be a valid reason for it. diversity in sexuality, gender, disability, intelligence, talent, wealth – all these are permitted, but not religion. we are offered the choice – everything or nothing. well, we want neither.

i refuse to hide in the ghetto. i contribute to this society. i work. i pay my taxes. i don’t walk about naked, nor do i hide my face from the world. i will not assimilate, nor will i act as if i am living in another country or another century. i refuse to eat foods that are forbidden to me and i refuse to forbid those foods to others who may want them. i refuse to give up the sabbath, the festivals, the Torah and my other sacred texts – and i refuse to impose my vision of them on those who do not share my perspective. if i am attacked, i will defend myself. if i am insulted, i will respond in kind. i am not looking for a fight, but i will not shrink from one. i will not allow others to define what i am. the search for social consensus has been a long and painful one – and now it has been destroyed again, by the hubris and arrogance of religious and anti-religious fanatics. i do not know if we can put the pieces back together again, but there has to be a basis for us to live together – both enforced segregation and enforced assimilation are fascistic responses.

judaism has always been not so much a culture or a religion as it has been a 3000+ year-old argument. there is nothing so boring as loads of people violently agreeing with each other – except perhaps two groups of people refusing to concede anything that the other is saying has any value or validity. the counter-enlightenment is in full swing, without any sign that it has learnt anything from the enlightenment.

Above is Peter Tatchell - the most principled, brave and tireless left-wing activist against hate crimes, homophobia, racism and anti-muslim bigotry, not to mention a one-man anti-Nazi movement – confronting Nick Griffin.

Terry Glavin says:

“Since the 1970s, the journalist and human-rights activist Peter Tatchell has been a singularly brave and principled voice for justice and human decency. It would be hard to name anyone in left-activist circles, anywhere in the English-speaking world, whose aim has been so true.”

The man is a national treasure.

Dhume commends Britain’s decision to ban Zakir Naik and criticises India for failing to do the same in regard to his record of hate speech. Dhume identifies two reasons why the Indian Left has failed to apply its own rules on the boundaries between free-speech and that which can be considered hate-speech.

1) The unthinking readiness to deferentially accept hate speech as free speech when the speaker claims the specious title of being a “religious figure”.
2) The inability to criticise proponents of hate speech by Muslim extremists, because they are loathe to be misinterpreted as “Islamophobic” and sympathetic to the far-right Hindutva interests.

What Dhume may not realise is the situation in Indian is very similar to the situation here in Britain. Islamists are treated with all the deference they demand and allowed to hold objectionable views which they are often allowed to propagate publicly with impunity. Any criticism of this practice is shut down by invoking “Islamophobia” as an outrage to “Muslim feelings”.

But this doesn’t fully explain Dr. Naik’s escape from criticism. It helps that Indians appear to have trouble distinguishing between free speech and hate speech. In a Western democracy, demanding the murder of homosexuals and the second-class treatment of non-Muslims would likely attract public censure or a law suit. In India, it goes unchallenged as long as it has a religious imprimatur. However, create a book or a painting that ruffles religious sentiment, as the writer Taslima Nasreen and the painter M. F. Husain both discovered, and either the government or a mob of pious vigilantes will strive to muzzle you.

In general, India accords extra deference to allegedly holy men of all stripes unlike, say, France, which strives to keep religion out of the public square. Taxpayers subsidize the Haj pilgrimage for pious Muslims and a similar, albeit much less expensive, journey for Hindus to a sacred lake in Tibet. This reflexive deference effectively grants the likes of Dr. Naik—along with all manner of Hindu and Christian charlatans—protection against the kind of robust scrutiny he would face in most other democracies.

Finally, unlike Hindu bigots, such as the World Hindu Council’s Praveen Togadia, whose fiercest critics tend to be fellow Hindus, radical Muslims go largely unchallenged. The vast majority of Indian Muslims remain moderate, but their leaders are often fundamentalists and the community has done a poor job of policing its own ranks. Moreover, most of India’s purportedly secular intelligentsia remains loath to criticize Islam, even in its most radical form, lest this be interpreted as sympathy for Hindu nationalism.

Unless this changes, unless Indians find the ability to criticize a radical Islamic preacher such as Dr. Naik as robustly as they would his Hindu equivalent, the idea of Indian secularism will remain deeply flawed.