i have for some time been aware of the powerful analytical frameworks for bio-psycho-social systems developed by the american psychologist dr clare graves and systematised for practical application by don beck and chris cowan in the excellent book “spiral dynamics” (i’m not affiliated with anyone concerned, incidentally). at the risk of sounding like somewhat of a “fanboy”, as i believe it is called on teh interwebs, i am convinced it constitutes an important piece of intellectual real estate for the understanding of complex socio-political systems, particularly in behavioural terms.

you can read more about the basics of spiral dynamics here and here - and i strongly encourage you to do so, but perhaps the easiest way to demonstrate its unique way of enabling insight into human nature is by a review of the various behaviours that have been exhibited during the riots. in the table below you will see a number of different types of responses and the messages associated with them, which you will have seen reflected by the proponents of these value systems in the various media channels. the vast majority of these types of response can present in either healthy or unhealthy forms – thus “C-P” (“red”) behaviours and messages were used both destructively (wanton destruction) and constructively (arresting looters) – in both cases, the behaviour was the demonstration of dominance and power, with corresponding public messages (a cartmanesque “RESPECT MY AUTHORITAAH!”) sent to the media.

you’ll see that whilst most of the operational trouble has functioned at C-P/red systems level, most of the discussion and analysis has been conducted by politicians and the media at blue (mostly “societal breakdown”, good-and-evil) orange (intellectual, opportunistic and tactical) and green (communitarian, progressive and inclusive) levels – and if the reactions are to be systematic, they will have to be a combination of green, blue and orange solutions appropriate to the situation, just as identifying looters using website photos (orange), communally organised clean-up squads (green) and attempts to strengthen traditional family structures (blue) have already been used. i note that ed miliband (who i usually have little time for) has supposedly come out against knee-jerk reactions and i think he’s correct in this at least; david cameron will not get very far if all his responses are couched in “blue” terms to appeal to the “respect for society must be restored” brigade and executed in “orange” technocratic action plans by community workers who are uncomfortable with anything which doesn’t take account of “green” inclusion. if he is serious about the “big society”, he will need to understand that the big society needs *all* these things, it is not a blue, orange or green concept, just as it needs “red” defences and alternative “purple” clan and kin affiliations than those of gang, patois and skin colour – and that includes the purple affiliations of the non-rioters, too! the “big society” could be second-order policy thinking and leadership, but that needs a shift in both our understanding of the situation and the strategies we use to manage it.

in all these cases i would say: if you want to find a constructive, insightful way of discussing the value systems that led to the events of the last couple of weeks, you would do worse than to look at how spiral dynamics sheds light on the tensions, relationships, structures and messages involved.

all comment and discussion welcome.

with this in mind, i thought it was worth setting out a few of the principles that i think are fairly basic to pursuing both the more aggressive and the more peace-loving sides without compromising the integrity of either. i believe we can both aspire to a more peaceful future at the same time as defending ourselves against those who threaten our society; i think these might be the things that we hold in common and the things which we believe are not held in common by those we oppose:

1. the belief that muslims have the potential to integrate into british (and other western) society as productively as jews have.
2. the belief that eventually mainstream islam will decisively reject the path of taking practical steps to take over the world and relegate this safely to the realm of the eschatological – at present the islamist movement still actually thinks it can win over this debate.
3. the belief that peaceful coexistence is possible even in the middleeast, given goodwill and a real desire to find a workable solution.
4. the acceptance that, islamism aside, there are a lot of people out there who have an unreasonable prejudice against any and all muslims, not just the fundamentalist sort – and that if we can only get the mainstream communities committed to a pluralistic, polycultural modern world rather than a salafist 7th century cloud-cuckoo-land, a commitment to standing shoulder-to-shoulder with muslims in fighting those islamophobes for their rights to be a part of that future.
5. the acceptance that 1, 3 and 4 also have ethnic dimensions and that we have nothing against arabs, persians, turks, pakistanis, bangladeshis etc qua arabs, persians, turks, pakistanis and bangladeshis etc.

if these can be accepted, without significant reservation, then we can begin to accept and deal with the following challenges that we believe to be real:

• a. that there are some muslims, whether individuals, groups, sects, parties or tendencies, that have the downfall of our society in mind and consequently hold what we consider to be unacceptable points of view – let’s say 13%, for argument’s sake; not even a particularly sizeable minority in relative terms, but in absolute terms, given the number of muslims there actually are, enough to cause problems for both their own communities and wider society.
• b. that some of these groups are busily trying to co-opt and own all the islamic community structures that presently exist, as well as present their narrative as that of “all” muslims.
• c. that these people have, over the years, received large amounts of funding and inspiration (with strings attached) from saudi and other insalubrious middle eastern places, as well as from credulous, starry-eyed orientalists in the guardianista / multiculti camp – without strings attached.
• d. that these people are busily engaged in not only political entryism a la tower hamlets, but in hoodwinking well-meaning liberals into acting as figleaves for their disingenuous political and religious programme and thereby bolstering their own credibility.
• e. that if you take a look into the history of many of these socalled respectable “community leaders”, you don’t have to look very hard before you start finding the bloody trail of the bangladeshi genocide as well as the knuckle-prints of the global islamist movements like the ikhwaan and hizb ut-tahrir, let alone all the dodgy things that get said in arabic, farsi, urdu and so on compared to what gets said in english for the benefit of the western media.

if one can accept all of these things, perhaps dialogue can get beyond the ceremonial and cynical to the meaningful and productive. i myself have to do some serious thinking about where i stand on “platform-sharing” issues in particular. on one hand, i try and follow mandela’s excellent principle of “talking to anyone that will talk to me”, but on the other, my deep distrust of certain people and groups, not to mention 16 years of experience, have led me to conclude that there are some people that it is not worth engaging with, like, say, the al-muhajigoonies of this world, who deserve nothing but merciless lampooning in the most liberal of terms (of late the ahmadis have been added to this list – so i saw with displeasure this morning an advert for them on the side of a bus). similarly, i have to consider the rabin principle – that it is one’s enemies that one makes peace with, not one’s friends and that platforms for dialogue will sooner or later have to address the points that i raise above – but you have to suspend certain questions until trust has been established; you can’t jump straight into a conversation about israel, for instance.

i would be most interested in whether people think i have the basis of the argument down correctly. alternatively, you can all call me an islamophobic racist or something.

Tomorrow, the heads of State and Government and other senior officials from countries that are members in the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR)―a regional body that includes Angola, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia―will meet in Lusaka, the Capital of Zambia, to discuss measures to curb the illegal use of natural resources, which often fuel conflicts in the region, leading to immense human suffering, including sexual and other forms of gender-based violence against women and girls.

Today, in Khartoum, the government’s security arrested forty-six women and six men who participated in a peaceful demonstration in Khartoum, to protest the flogging of women under various articles of Sudan’s Criminal Act 1991, and Sudan’s Public Order regime which discriminates against women. A press release by Sudan’s police (in Arabic) indicated that the demonstrators were arrested in accordance with Articles 68 and 69 of Sudan’s Criminal law. These articles cover ‘public disturbance’ offences such as illegal assembly and riots against the state. The arrests are unconstitutional, as Sudan’s Interim National Constitution guarantees freedom of assembly.

The protest came as a direct response to a very disturbing video that surfaced on YouTube (please use your discretion) as activists across the world were preparing to conclude the annual 16 days of activism against violence against women campaign.

The video shows the flogging of a woman in the courtyard of a police station or court in Omdurman, Sudan. It includes no information on the identity of the woman, why or when she was being flogged, or the location of the flogging. All one could see (and hear) was a man (allegedly the judge), ordering the woman to sit down so they can ‘get this over with’. The woman’s body language shows it is not the first time she was about to undergo such an ordeal. Sobbing, and shaking her hands in dread of what would follow, the woman sits on the floor, begging the policeman to lash her gently, barraha.

The policeman starts to flog the woman mercilessly on the back, the hips, and the shoulders, as the woman shouts and calls her mother, and as she shifts on her knees to avoid the whip. Another man in police uniform comes to the aid of his colleague, cracking his whip over the woman’s back. It seems the policemen were conscious that someone was filming. In fact, one said ‘let him videotape her. ‘falyashhad 3zabahuma taifa min al Muminen’, citing a verse of the holy Quran on the corporal punishment of Zina (adultery).

The woman (name withheld), a resident of Omdurman, was arrested and lashed under Articles 154 and 155 of Sudan’s Criminal Act (1991). These articles cover prostitution and running of a brothel, and carry a sentence of flogging of up to 100 lashes for ‘adultery’ or enticing prostitution. The Articles are part of the broader, infamous, public order regime, which includes other provisions in the Criminal Act that can carry a flogging sentence, such as Article 152, which levies a sentence of up to 40 lashes on a variety of vaguely defined ‘immoral acts’ which include ‘indecent or immoral dress’.

The flogging of the woman is not an isolated incident. It has been a routine practice in Sudan since the early 1980s when the then military regime of Gaafar Numeiri introduced Islamist Sharia as the main source of legislation. The democratic regime that followed did not repeal the laws. The current ruling party, which assumed power through a military-backed Islamist coup in 1989 re-introduced a very strict version of Sharia, including the Criminal Act and so called ‘Public Order Laws’ under which thousands of women (and men) were flogged for various reasons. Accurate statistics are not available but the spokesperson of the police has reportedly stated that in 2008, a total of 43,000 allegations related to public order were made against women in Khartoum state alone.

Within a matter of hours of emerging on widely-read Sudanese Internet forum sudaneseonline.com, the video generated wide interest, outrage and commentary among activists, journalists, politicians, and ordinary Sudanese whose sentiment were injured by what they watched on YouTube. The video quickly found its way to various global media outlets, including CNN’s iReport; and to several Arabic language channels and the international press.

The video is yet another blow to the ruling National Congress Party’s attempts to improve its image and construct itself as a moderate regime. Last year, in July 2009, Sudan similarly commanded the world news when Lubna Ahmed Hussein, a Northern Sudanese journalist who then worked as the public information officer at the United Nations Mission in Sudan waged a campaign against the infamous public order laws following her arrest, along with twelve other women, for wearing trousers at a restaurant in Khartoum. Ten of the women arrested pleaded guilty and consequently received ten lashes and paid fines of 250 Sudanese pounds (about US $100) each. The women were tried under Article 152 of Sudan’s criminal law, which criminalizes so called ‘indecent and immoral acts and behavior’ in public. Four of those were non-Muslim from Southern Sudan (and thus exempt from imposition of Sharia law as per the Comprehensive Peace Agreement which ended twenty years of war in 2005) but were nonetheless flogged. Lubna asked for a lawyer and as such her trial was postponed. She issued invitations to the media, diplomatic missions in Khartoum, and others, to attend her trial and flogging, if sentenced to flogging.

Lubna Hussein, who is currently in exile in France, quickly commented (in Arabic) on the YouTube video, exclaiming,

Have you seen on YouTube what I saw on the ground? How about if you saw a girl, strained from the chest, waist, and other parts [of her body] by seven men in police uniform?…what if you saw a 16 years old child urinating on herself out of fear, in court? It is a painful seen.

In light of on-going, very complex political processes in Sudan, such as a referendum where the people of Southern Sudan will vote on unity of Sudan or independence for South Sudan in less than a month; recent arrests of Darfuri activists in Khartoum, and planned popular consultations in two regions of Sudan to determine, among other things, whether the CPA and its implementation has met the aspirations of the people of these two regions, some may question the outrage that burst around the flogging of the woman. Some voices sympathetic with the regime see it as yet another ‘Western conspiracy’ against Islam that aims to divert attention from other, ‘more fundamental issues’ in Sudan.

In fact, in the case of Lubna Ahmed Hussein, the ruling National Congress Party has used one of the on-going political processes to criticize the Western media’s focus on Lubna’s case. The Sudanese embassy in London, for example, issued a statement in response to media reports and articles about Lubna Hussein, pointing to “the floodgate of expert and non-expert comments on Sudan [that] opened suddenly on 29 July in the wake of an indecency and antisocial behavior [sic] involving journalist Lubna A Hussein” on one hand, and lack of coverage of a landmark arbitration ruling on the region of Abyei, contested by the north and the south on the other. The statement said “The real question, which is relevant to the deep-rooted Islamophobic and anti-Arab prejudice, is the selective spotlight on Ms Lubna Ahmed Hussein and determined neglect of Abyei dispute’s result for eight long days.”

While it is important to pay due attention to the key on-going and upcoming political processes in Sudan, the logic in the statement above is flawed. It is true that the Public Order Law affects all women in Northern Sudan, and it is true that, at times, the issue has been sensationalized in the media. Nonetheless, it is often women from marginalized areas, such as Abyei, who live in the North, who are most affected by these laws. As far back as 1992, independent research has documented the racialized and selective use of the law in states like Khartoum, and the way this specifically affected economically disadvantaged women, especially those from historically marginalized regions displaced by war. For example, a study by a women’s legal aid organization in 1992 showed that out of a total number of 825 in Omdurman women’s prison, the majority were from the South and the Nuba Mountains. Those comprised 35.7 percent and 32.3 percent of the imprisoned women respectively. According to the same study, over 60 percent of these women were illiterate, and 58 percent had been arrested for selling liquor. Activists in another Khartoum-based women’s organization told me in 1995 that most of the imprisoned women were unaware of their legal rights, did not speak Arabic well, and often had to bribe police officers.

Moreover, in his report to the former United Nations Commission on Human Rights in January 1995, former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Sudan Mr. Gaspar Biro cited independent sources showing that prisoners from western and Southern regions of Sudan in Khartoum constituted 95.17 percent of the total number of women prisoners (about 6,000 annually). According to Biro, 88.3 percent were sentenced under section 79 of Sudan’s criminal Act (brewery), and 2 percent for prostitution (Articles 154 and 155 of the Act).

In recent years, numerous reports, including by Refugees International and Doctors without Borders have shown how Sudan’s criminal Act has deterred women victims and survivors of rape in the Darfur conflict from seeking justice. Article 149 of the criminal act conflates rape with the offence of Zina (intercourse between a woman and a man who are not married to one another) that is performed without consent. If a woman is unable to prove lack of consent on her part to intercourse she can face charges of zina as she has confessed to sexual intercourse outside marriage. In such cases, a woman can receive a sentence of up to 100 lashes if unmarried, or to death by stoning if married.

More recently, a report by Amnesty International published earlier this year documented the experience of a 16 years old young Southern Sudanese woman who was flogged in Khartoum for ‘indecent dressing’. Moreover, a submission to the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights in November 2009 and 2010 by the regional network ‘the Strategic Initiative on Women in the Horn of Africa’ (SIHA) similarly underlined the specific effects of the Public Order Regime as a whole on women and girls from marginalized areas of Sudan. Lubna herself, in her commentary on the YouTube video, wrote,

It is even more painful when Randa, Reem and Riham [names that often denote affluent, Northern Sudanese background] escape the flogging because they bribed the police, whereas Bakhita, Hawa and Kaltum [names that often denote belonging to historically marginalized groups and regions of Sudan] because they were not wearing golden rings or necklaces they could use as a bribe

According to the state’s news agency (SUNA), Sudan’s National Judicial Service Commission has launched an investigation in relation to the video of the flogging, to establish whether the punishment was implemented improperly. As several commentators have argued, however, the question is not whether the punishment was implemented properly. The question is whether sharia is relevant as a source of legislation in Sudan.

The flogging incident ―or rather the video on YouTube― brings to the forefront debates around secularism and the application of Sharia law in Sudan. This question was among the key points of contention during the negotiations of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (the CPA) between the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and the Government of Sudan. At the end, the CPA (and Sudan’s Interim National Constitution) identified Sharia as the source of legislation in Northern Sudan. It is widely held in Sudan at present that one of the reasons that the two systems-one state arrangement under which Sharia prevailed in the North has contributed to an almost–certain vote for secession in the upcoming South Sudan referendum. Similarly, the question of Sharia is relevant to the process of popular consultations, where the people of Southern Kordufan and the Blue Nile, through their elected legislature will eventually decide whether the CPA and its implementation (including in the area of the relationship between religion and the state) reflects the aspirations of the people of these two states.

Despite harassment by the National Congress Party’s security and police, now more than ever, women’s groups and other civil society organizations and movements in Sudan need to be vigilant and on a stand-by gear, including around the question of Sharia; but also around other on-going and upcoming political processes. Other protests should immediately follow the action to protest the abhorring flogging incident: Protests for the release of recently arrested and detained Darfuri activists; protests to support the rights of Southern Sudanese women (and men) to a free and fair ballot; protests to ensure that Southerners, especially in Northern cities, are not the victims of violence or of violation of their citizenship rights, regardless of the outcome of the referendum; protests to ensure gender and women’s concerns are is taken into account in post-referendum arrangements, protests to show solidarity with the women and men in the Western Equatoria state of South Sudan―currently regular victims to attacks by the Lord Resistance Army― to live in peace; protests to ensure women’s meaningful participation in a free and fair ballot in Abyei, and protests to ensure popular consultations in the states of Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile states take place, with meaningful participation for women.

Within the African continent, women’s groups need to exert continuous pressure on the continent’s heads of state and government― including those participating in the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) meeting in Lusaka― to ensure ratification and proper implementation of the African Women’s Rights protocol, which prohibits inhuman and degrading punishment, such as flogging. The African Women’s Rights Protocol, which Sudan has signed in June 2008 but did not ratify, states in Article 4(1) that “Every woman shall be entitled to respect for her life and the integrity and security of her person. All forms of exploitation, cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment and treatment shall be prohibited.” In Article 8, the protocol further mandates states parties to “take all appropriate measures to ensure that law enforcement organs at all levels are equipped to effectively interpret and enforce gender equality rights”; and to ensure the “reform of existing discriminatory laws and practices in order to promote and protect the rights of women.”

By continuing to harass women and flogging them through the Public Order regime, and by restricting women’s the freedom of assembly, Sudan not only violates the African Women’s Rights Protocol, but it also violates the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region’s Protocol on the Prevention and Suppression of Sexual Violence against Women and Children, which Sudan ratified in 2008. The Protocol defines sexual violence in a way that includes “gender-based violence that is directed against a woman because she is a woman or that affects women disproportionately.” Heads of State and Government gathered in Lusaka to discuss measures to eradicate the illegal exploitation of natural resources which feed and fuel conflicts in the region, should ensure that member states in the ICGLR, such as Sudan refrain from inflicting harm and abuse on the continent’s most important resources: human beings, and especially women.

If she feels inconvenienced by law which obliges her to remove her niqab when apprehended by a policeman, rather than accuse the law of racism, she can choose to live in Saudi Arabia, where she won’t have to drive, because being a woman, Saudi Islamic law does not allow her to get behind a wheel. Remember, if you wear a niqab, you are not allowed any more privileges than anyone else. And that means you, sister.

A Muslim woman living in Europe talks of her experiences with markers of Islam and her reasons for affiliating herself with Muslimness alongside equally powerful reasons for distancing herself from its overt expressions in the public sphere.

This was still a world before 9/11, and my article generated a lengthy, if unclear, counter-response in the Telegraph on the folly of my position – the writer, a prominent academic, assumed that this position was one of supporting the practice of veiling. My mother, reading both articles, made a perspicacious comment: that, having witnessed first hand the abuses of the pir system in a rural Bengali Muslim ashraf household, she could not understand what the fuss was all about: the burqa was, in her opinion, firmly a practice that degraded and entrapped women within patriarchy’s collusion with religion. Educated as a doctor in Calcutta, and married into what would be called a “highly progressive” Muslim family in which, for three generations, there had not been a veil in sight, she found it absurd that any woman would want to regress in this manner, especially if she had had the benefits of education.

1992-2010: Personal Experiments with Muslimness
Looking back to that moment a decade later, when the burqa ban in France brought the issue of women’s veiling back on the Liberal agenda, I am struck by two things. First, the ease with which one could open oneself to misunderstanding and rebuke from the Indian left if as a self-identified Muslim woman, I chose to analyse the choices other Muslim women were making in local and global spheres, rather than take overt sides. This would be even more so, if I chose to interrogate the responses of the so-called Indian “mainstream” to images of the veiled woman. Second, I realise how much more clearly I understand today my mother’s position and how much I appreciate being the legatee of the Nehruvian secularism that she was a beneficiary of and that my parents found the most congenial dogma to raise a family in post-Partition India. This benefit of hindsight has been enabled by a change, however, cosmetic, in the ideologies emanating from those that rule at the Indian Centre: through the 1990s and the 2000s, I had found myself, as a secularised Indian Muslim, thrown into epistemological and philosophical confusion about how I felt about markers of “Islam”.

During that period, I became a barometer that responded to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) aggressions by becoming a defender of practices and beliefs that were otherwise alien to me. Searching for ways to protect myself psychologically from daily polemical assaults on people like me – secular, middle class Indians who happened to be Muslims – I tried even to import practices of a Muslim habitus into my daily life – experimenting with fasting, praying namaaz, and reading the Qur’an every morning. But the truth was that, without food and coffee, I could not teach; I could not remember the motions of the wazu without reading my mother’s notes on the matter; and I found I would rather spend early mornings writing 500 words than struggle through Arabic script. I knew what those practices meant, but no one had forced them on me in childhood and as an adult I could not import them into my lifestyle willy-nilly. Close to veritable despair, I found anchor in a sense of humour, in the shared confusions felt by other Indian Muslim friends, and in the powerful spiritual energies of Sufi music and shrines, especially Ajmer, that called to me and somehow transmitted what the qawwals termed sukoon (peace of mind).

I still remember the day when my late father telephoned from Calcutta to tell me triumphantly that the BJP had lost the national elections. As we rejoiced together in some disbelief (I had gone to bed in Manchester listening to the NDTV psephologists prognosticating the BJP’s victory), I felt a burden physically slipping away from me. No longer, I realised in a flash, would I have to respond defensively to the BJP’s Hindutva agenda that had been pushing me ideologically into an ever-tighter corner. I emerged through that period when the BJP government went out of power, able to regain a sense of self again, of being strict about the principles of Nehruvian secularism that had shaped me as an individual and that, although old-fashioned, I realise I hold dear to me and are, paradoxically, akin to a religious affiliation. Now that the question of the veil has once more taken the global centre stage, I feel able to stare the issue squarely in the face and say with conviction, “I do not support the practice of full face covering, call it burqa or niqab, particularly when it comes in the form of a black, shapeless garment (however luxurious its material may be) and the extent of my distaste is such that I find myself fine with the French government’s ban on it.”

Cultural Relativism vs Humanism
This position is relatively rare amongst my friends, colleagues and acquaintances, whether in India, south Asia at large, or Europe. Indeed, it opened up a bizarre situation where I, of Muslim heritage, was expressing my lack of sympathy for those crying hoarse about the French ban, while colleagues with no such connections but with self-declared liberal affiliations all but rebuked me for my stance. What is this liberalism that goes about supporting the right of women to cover completely their faces and wander around beshrouded in shapeless black garments? Such is the topsy-turvy, post-postmodern, post-postcolonial world we live in, where Left and Right have totally interchanged positions that one might intuitively associate with them. Caught in the quagmire of argumentation, we inadvertently support stances we would normally distance ourselves from. We do not like the reactionary shades the French call for “laicité” seems to have taken on, and so we argue against their banning of the burqa, just as we might have rejected the idea of a uniform civil code when it was the BJP that called for it.
As a Muslim woman living in Europe, I experience powerful reasons for affiliating myself with Muslimness alongside equally powerful reasons for distancing myself from its overt expressions in the public sphere. The former arise from that grey zone where “religion” and “culture” intermingle. I feel a strange, almost romantic affinity with those who know what words like wazu and sehri imply, but a similar feeling resurges when I am in the company of someone who knows what a kofta or a dolma is. By that token, I feel that affinity with anyone belonging, say, to a one-time Ottomanised cultural sphere, such as my Bulgarian friend who knows what a shelwar is, and knows that I know too. The more I work through this instinctive affiliation, the more strongly I realise that what I am responding to is historical membership of an Islamicate heritage that was shaped by and shaped the forces of modernity. The kofta becomes a version of a Masonic handshake. On the other hand, the roots of my disaffiliation to veils of any kind, or to dietary restrictions imposed by religion, lie in the fact that my strongest ideological affiliations are to principles of secularism, socialism, and humanism.

This realisation has helped me arrive at a situation of no compromise over some fundamental issues that include veiling practices, although I can tolerate the headscarf (for reasons I explain below). I admit I may seem full of contradictions as I try to work my way through a mesh of local, global and national politics that once again draws sustenance through the Muslim woman’s veiling practices. It is only superficially paradoxical, however, that I feel strongly the need to retain for myself the label of “Muslim” precisely while being as far away from any kind of head covering as can be: ironically, those who want to seek out the “moderate Muslim” do not seem to want to acknowledge that in the existence of such a strange creature, a self-declared Muslim woman who has no truck with veiling practices, may lie that Holy Grail they are so fervently searching.

An Anti-Veiling Rationale
But there is another reason why I cling to the label “Muslim”. Attached to the adjectives “Indian” and “Bengali”, it encapsulates for me a political, ideological and affective heritage that is no less than a specific trajectory of south Asian modernity. This is my inheritance, and the very rejection of the burqa and niqab that I feel able to articulate is predicated on it. It is no contradiction to my mind, that along with the Sufi music of Ajmer and Nizamuddin Aulia, and the Baul music of Bengal, I appreciate the local vernacular practices of my Bengali Muslim world where grandmothers, mother, aunts and even I can discreetly draw the end of a sari across the head if occasion calls for it – which can range from visiting a graveyard to protecting oneself from the sun’s rays – and equally seamlessly let it drop once the moment is over. This was the very spirit celebrated (and its disappearance mourned) in Sabiha Sumar’s fine film Khamosh Pani, through the juxtaposition, in particular, of two distinct scenes.

The first was a wedding scene where men and women singing traditional songs were separated by a flimsy and translucent curtain that, at the height of merriment, was playfully breached; the second was one where young men of the village sought earnestly to erect a brick wall around the girls’ school to protect the “modesty” of their female counterparts. Separating the two scenes is the gradual radicalisation of those youth by Islamic fundamentalist preachers from Lahore (the film retrospectively explores the Islamicisation of Pakistan under Zia-ul-Haq). It is no coincidence that those Muslim women whose views on veiling resonate most closely with mine are from Bangladesh and Pakistan as well as India (rather than second or third generation Europeans). The visual contrast between the flexibility of the curtain and the rigidity of the brick wall is the same that distinguishes the flexibility of the pallu/aanchol and the rigidity of the burqa and niqab, which renders problematic even the basic act of eating in public.

At the heart of my objections to this practice, is, finally, a very simple matter – the intrinsic humanism of conducting person-to-person contact by allowing your interlocutor to see your face. Whether we like it or not, those of us conducting this conversation about full veiling move in a modernised public sphere, at the basis of which is the assumption that we speak to each other, face to face. This is not merely an aspect of humanism but an aesthetics of the face, where aesthetics stands not for elite privilege but is akin to rasa – the ability to enjoy and savour life in heightened form, to adorn and to express oneself. The amassing of sequins and encrustations of embroidery on a burqa renders it not a whit more aesthetic to me, but rather makes it more sinister, more counter-aesthetic in this fundamental sense that I am proposing. This is a practice that signals to me sullen joylessness, a declaration of shutting out the world.

How to Spot the Moderate Muslim
This interpretation also furnishes me with the reason why I do not condemn the headscarf (though I do not like it): it does not necessarily breach my framework of humanism and a rasa-driven aesthetics. It can also explain why I can find unreasonable the French government’s ban on the turban, which does not obscure the face of the wearer and in whose colour-coordinated care I locate a true note of rasa. I appreciate that Sarkozy’s government is driven by bigotry and arrogance, and that expounding freely about the anti-humanism of full veiling can easily be misinterpreted as support of that bigotry and arrogance. But on balance, the dangers of keeping quiet about one’s objections to full veiling cedes ground to the forces within Islam that have been attempting to seize control over what “Islam” can and must mean. The biggest problem is that the liberal, leftist position all over the world seems determined to accept their definitions, while hunting high and low for where the moderate Muslim might lurk, and for ways to coax him or her out of hiding.

Ananya Jahanara Kabir (a.j.kabir@leeds.ac.uk) teaches at the School of English, University of Leeds, UK.

Praying for the destruction of the Kufar, but not before a payout

Torture is heinous. It does not work nor does it pay. Certainly not for the British taxpayer who will have to foot the bill for millions of pounds of compensation to be paid to a crew of former Guantánamo inmates and jihad tourists:

Those detainees understood to be in line for settlements include Binyam Mohamed, Bisher al-Rawi, Jamil el-Banna, Richard Belmar, Omar Deghayes, Moazzam Begg and Martin Mubanga.

The payments will be controversial with some claiming the former prisoners are using the courts to extract cash from a British state they allegedly intended to destroy.

Others will praise the courts for forcing the UK to either openly admit the methods it had sanctioned, or else pay a financial penalty through compensation.

No doubt the boys will be celebrating hard tonight. We hear from their agents that they will shortly be flying to the Bahamas for a C4 one-off, titled ‘I’m a Jihad Celebrity – Get Me Out Of Here’ to be shown next spring.

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.

the thing that struck me initially, from the moment i got to the airport for our easyjet flight, was the other-worldliness of our ultra-orthodox fellow-travellers. now, the thing is, we live in a strictly orthodox community at least in part and know a lot of people with black hats, large beards, modest wigs and a mediaeval approach to family planning and, for the most part, they’re really just like everyone else. these guys on the plane, though – they’re really, really not fun to be around. mrs bb had some words with one who pushed in front of the buggy with mini-banana #2 in it and he looked at her like she was from outer space. she was clearly a respectable married woman, modestly dressed (at least by most people’s standards, even if she wasn’t covering her hair) and travelling with a skullcap-wearing husband. casual interaction with these people doesn’t appear to reveal that they have learned any of the laws of deportment, behaviour or politeness – and, yes, there are plenty of these in the halakhah. next thing, we sat down next to another who was quietly studying talmud, and rocking his daughter in her buggy. he’d seen the whole thing and said quietly to us “people just don’t know how to behave these days”. it was nice to be reassured that appearances aren’t everything.

this initial impression i got of the total fracture of israeli society along religious lines was only reinforced throughout my stay. bernard lewis famously described it as split down the middle between the “jews of christendom” and the “jews of islam”, which, largely speaking, remains true: the “christian” jews – i.e. mostly ashkenazi, from europe, north and south america and the british commonwealth, split into multiple ideologically-driven subgroups covering the spectrum from militant secularism to religious fanaticism, each with its own microclimate. the “islamic” jews, from the middle east, africa and south/central asia, whose relationships are more tribal, more ethnically based, and a traditional approach to religion that embraces all levels of observance – their relationships with each other and the islamic world based more on empirical and family experience than ideological principle. both “christian” and “islamic” jews can be pragmatic or stubbornly bloody-minded, depending on circumstance.

however, the real change i see in the society is from the russians – jews (mostly) of neither european christendom nor the islamic world, but fundamentally different to both; for the most part as hostile to religion as only people brought up under communism can be, with the attitude to ethnicity and human rights that brought us the siege of grozny and the ascendancy of vladimir putin; they understand the law of the jungle, but for all this, their very lack of religious scruples brings its own pragmatism. not to mention, of course, israel’s significant population of arabs, druze and circassians. this, then, is the israel that has developed since the end of the cold war. the fundamental four-way split is only exacerbated by the political culture, with proportional representation enabling parties to be created around ethnic blocs, religious minorities and political tendencies, the current coalition being comprised of parties which are defensive hawks, ethnic conservatives and free market economists, which is why it looks so right wing to your average guardian reader.

what really struck me, however, is the extent to which religion divides the society. we were initially staying in a hotel in the beach resort of netanya and it astonished me just how hard it was to find a kosher restaurant – and the preponderance of cyrillic menus. we also spent a goodly time staying with mrs bb’s utterly delightful cousins in haifa who are what i’d call “soft” secularists; in other words, they have no problem with religious people as long as nobody gets in their face about it. however, they don’t know the first thing about jewish practice, not even the most basic blessings; even our three-day-a-yearers know more. aside from them living in israel and speaking hebrew, you’d be hard put to tell them apart from, say, your average brazilian. my own cousins are somewhat more traditional, but not much; then again, their parents made aliyah as adults with a jewish education and some of their partners are from traditional or religious families. however, this is the exception rather than the rule. both are relaxed about the religious practice of others, but what really gets their goat is the behaviour of religious people who refuse to participate economically, who they see as cynically exploiting society and the political system.

israelis (particularly in corporate jobs) also work a six-ish-day week, from sunday to friday lunchtime in most cases. if you’re sabbath-observant, this doesn’t leave a great deal of time to do anything else. effectively, this means a significant barrier to socialisation or interaction with the non-sabbath-observant. if i lived in israel, my own practice would effectively remove my social life with anyone who wasn’t within walking distance, or sabbath-observant. in fact, there would be significant pressure to abandon my observance entirely or become more obsessive about it, because there’s no time to actually do anything like take the kids out for the day. it seems to me that this drives a wedge between the religious and secular, leaving little room for the moderately religious and driving polarisation of behaviour. it is easy to see why any religious control over public life causes huge inconvenience to the secular, as well as why secular behaviour clashes so hugely with religious observance (for example, israelis never, ever turn off their phones!)

compared to the gaping rifts in the jewish population, there is comparatively little dislike of arabs. the general abrasiveness of israeli behaviour is observable in the aggressive use of mosque loudspeakers, but certainly in the north (from about haifa up to the lebanese border) there is a sizeable arab population which appears moderately well-integrated into the workforce, if not socially. i didn’t get any attitude from any of the arabs i interacted with, certainly and, if anything, they were friendlier and politer than the jewish israelis (well, that’s family). my cousins don’t have many arab friends, though they appear comfortable working with and employing them. my recently-widowed, english-born uncle is of a different generation, but even he made reference to the integration of arabs in the workforce – they’re not all blue-collar by any means. he volunteers at a major city hospital where the director is an arab, dr masad barhoum - “and”, said my uncle, “good for him”. the sad thing is that the policy of separation from the palestinians has simply resulted in the importation of foreign labour – it’s not unusual to see asian “guest workers” where once you’d have seen palestinians. i think we’re all pretty aware of the effect on the palestinian economy, but the israeli economy simply sources its labour elsewhere. this is the result of the bombings and terror; fifteen years ago, it simply wasn’t the case. this is why economic co-operation must at some point resume, at which point the wall will have to come down.

the matzav – the “situation” – is clearly a cause of huge frustration. i was struck by the disappointment in the political class and in the country’s leadership (our relatives are generally kadima supporters, with some likudniks, albeit i’d say they were pretty left for likud) together with the repeated recognition that “we are authors of our own misfortune”. if i had to sum it up in one sentence, what i heard from my family could be stated as: we should be doing our bit to fix the situation with the palestinians, but we just haven’t done so; it just seems to be too hard to do and there are too many forces, internal and external, that are pulling in the other direction. there is a sort of quiet despair that i haven’t seen before, together with a dogged determination to give the iranians and their hizbollah stooges a dam’ good kicking if they go any further. not many of the people i talked to were looking for a fight, but more than one person stated flatly that an attack on iran was on the cards; they are now purpose-building “sealed rooms” in their flats and houses as a matter of course against WMD-enabled rocket attacks. but in the meantime, life goes on, although there isn’t much hope of a resolution, people simply try and get on with life as best they can. i talked to a number of people about the ray hanania peace plan that i have previously promoted. it produced reactions varying from surprise (for all that it was reported in the israeli press) to disbelief to sceptical welcome. it was just hard for people to believe that such a thing was feasible although, in principle, they understood and supported the compromises that would be necessary. this, if nothing else, i found encouraging and cause for hope.

of course, none of this is the “front line”, politically speaking. i didn’t visit the separation wall, or the green line, or jerusalem. these places are where the people with an axe to grind (like extremists, journalists and activists) tend to cluster and they’re extensively reported. naturally, few of these people – and it is largely they who influence the political arena – it is rare, however, that anyone ever reports on how people think and act in israeli civil society itself, because it’s not nearly as “interesting” (read “nutty”).

in my view, there are a couple of things that are absolutely essential for israeli society to get out of the stalemate it’s currently in:

1. political reform – this eternal coalition-building simply gives extreme views and splinter groups disproportionate leverage.
2. a comprehensive commitment to social cohesion – this means not only that the ultra-orthodox are going to have to work, but that israel itself needs a five-day working week; israel once spent a great deal of effort on social integration, unfortunately it was mostly wasted on trying to build a socialist, secularist utopia. israeli society needs a vision for all its people, not just the excluded middle.
3. more long-term political horizons and engagement with the world; i think this will come from new realities in the diaspora, j-street and the new european jewish lobby organisation ought to help this reorientation.

i don’t know if any of these things are possible – the social, political and international pressures against it are formidable.

we can but hope.

This, I’m sorry to say, is how it strikes me as being with Christopher Hitchens’s piece in Slate supporting the French move to outlaw the burqa. He has plenty of arguments, but not one of them is compelling. Christopher tries, first, to present the agents of the prospective legislation as not seeking to impose a ban.

To the contrary, they are attempting to lift a ban: a ban on the right of women to choose their own dress, a ban on the right of women to disagree with male and clerical authority…

This is sophistical. For any woman wanting and choosing to wear the burqa or the veil, a law against doing so imposes a ban. Christopher is consequently obliged to suggest that there are no such women: ‘we have no assurance’, he says, ‘that Muslim women put on the burqa or don the veil as a matter of their own choice. A huge amount of evidence goes the other way’. He says, again, that ‘the right of women to show their faces… easily trumps the right of their male relatives or their male imams to decide otherwise’. Well, I don’t know what the proportions are as between Muslim women covering their faces out of choice and those doing so because they are compelled to, but I’ll give Christopher good odds that the number in the former category is not insignificant, and for all of them the law would constitute a ban. As for ‘the right of women to show their faces’, in democratic societies this is already protected by law, and if there are men breaching that law to force women to cover their faces against their will, then it can and should be activated accordingly.

Norm ends with a single inarguable, so-obvious-it’s-cliché take-home lesson for the French authorities and, sorry to say, Christopher Hitchens, who finds himself in an illiberal conceptual cul-de-sac of his own making:

“Anyway, from a liberal point of view, it might be said that the hard line here is that people should be able to wear what they like.”

Read the remaining six.

Henry Porter writes in the Observer:

The Queen’s speech, now being drafted, will establish a Freedom or Great Repeal bill – the title has not yet been chosen – as a major part of the coalition’s legislative programme. All the areas detailed in the agreement between the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives, such as the abolition of ID cards and the children’s database (ContactPoint database??), the further regulation of CCTV and the restoration of right to protest will be in it. Measures that weren’t in the published agreement will reassert the right to silence and protect people against the huge number of new powers of entry into the home allowed by Labour.

Separate from this will be a complete review of terror legislation that will assess 28-day detention, control orders, section 44 stop and search powers, the harassment of photographers, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, and its amendments, which sanctioned 650 agencies and local authorities to carry out undercover surveillance operations on, for example, people suspected of making dubious school applications for their children, eel fishermen in Poole harbour, punt operators in Cambridge, depressed police officers and malingering council workers.

The strategy is to keep debate on the terror laws apart from the Freedom Act, which in one fell swoop will repeal all the anti-libertarian laws that have accumulated on the statute book in what was described to me as “an absolutely comprehensive fashion”. The government does not want discussion of terror laws to obstruct the swift repeal of Labour’s attack on liberty in other areas.

Clearly, this all has to be watched very closely indeed – a lot has yet to be decided and there will be pressures from the civil servants, police, GCHQ and MI5 on such things as internet surveillance and phone intercepts. European plans for data collection and surveillance are a particular worry. But the essential point is that this exciting turn of events would not have been possible under a Labour-Lib Dem coalition or a Conservative minority government. It is a rare stroke of luck for the interests of liberty that the coalition allows the prime minister, David Cameron, to embrace this Lib Dem policy with open arms and ignore the reservations of the law-and-order nuts on his right.

Teachers in England should not be banned from membership of the British National Party or any group which may promote racism, a review has concluded.

The government commissioned the report last September after a leaked list identified 15 BNP members as teachers.

Review author Maurice Smith added his recommendation should be reviewed every year, which ministers have accepted.

Mr Smith, a former chief inspector of schools, said a ban on BNP members in schools would be “taking a very large sledgehammer to crack a minuscule nut”.

“I do not believe that barring teachers or other members of the wider school workforce from membership of legitimate organisations which may promote racism is necessary at present,” he said.

I cannot disagree with that.

However, predictably enough the usual assortment of fashionable muddle-headed leftists and faux-liberals are up in arms about the decision. Such as Pickled Politics, Islamophobia Watch, and a collection of Trots, for example.

My own view is that a teacher’s personal politics should in no way be used to determine and evaluate their skills and professionalism, which are, first and foremost, to instil their pupils with a love of learning of their subject.

Perhaps those objecting to Maurice Smith’s decision would be OK with such legislative restrictions to apply to the far-right only, while attempting to exempt teachers belonging to the Hizb ut Tahrir or the IFE.

International Women’s Day (8 March) is a global day celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future.

But in some parts of Tower Hamlets, some things remain the same:

Shiria Khatun, 38, told the police that callers threatened to kill her and her four young children. In one call, they warned they would dig up parents’ graves and bury her there instead.

The Labour councillor in the controversial borough of Tower Hamlets is considered one of the area’s most progressive politicians. She was elected in 2006, worked for Ken Livingstone as a transport adviser at London’s City Hall and frequently campaigns for more Muslim women to enter politics.

However, over the past year she has been the victim of a “sick” harassment campaign.

At first she was “too embarrassed” to call the police, but when the threats, mostly made in the Bangladeshi dialect Sylheti, targeted her family she decided to act.

Video report from ITV.

In celebration of IWD and in solidarity with Ms Shiria Khatun, here is Maya Angelou reading her poem ‘And Still I Rise’:

hat/tip: Gauloise Blonde

****

I found about a Stop the War meeting in the House of Commons where Galloway was speaking through my friend. Peyvand Khorsandi [Shappis Khorsandi's brother]. We decided to go along and meet this stooge of dictators face to face. While queuing to go through the security we told the policeman who was directing the people to different queues that we were going to Committee Room 19. Two of the Stop the War enthusiasts heard us and cheerily said to us,

‘Oh we are going to the same meeting as well. Are you Palestenians?’

To which we replied,

‘We like Palestinians but we are Iranians’.

The two women got even more excited and replied,

‘Oh we support Iran against the West!’

They must have thought all Iranians support the regime in Iran. When I replied,

‘So why don’t you go and live in Iran and allow two Iranian women to come here and enjoy the same privileges you enjoy in the West’

they finally cottoned on that despite their initial enthusiasm, we were not in the same ilk as them.

I asked them if they liked Galloway who used to be best pals with Saddam Hussein and his murderous son, Uday Hussein. They shook their heads and refused to believe that Galloway ever had anything to do with Saddam. I asked them if they would like to give me their emails so I could send them the video links of Galloway calling Uday ‘Your excellency’ and telling him ‘That he is with them to the end’. The two Stop the War devotees however were not what you would call open minded people, more like ostridges with their heads buried in the sand who did not want to know the truth or discuss alternative opinions. They even said ‘We are going to tell ‘them’ to stop you from coming to the meeting’ and moved ahead of the queue away from us. So much for open debate and free discussion with these ‘useful idiots’.

As we entered the committee room, no one tried to stop us however, but the stares and the whispers indicated that many were uncomfortable about our presence. I quickly scanned the room, full of ‘useful idiots’,  SWP’s John Rees and Lindsay German were there in the back, but I had managed to get a seat right next to Galloway himself. I was told to move because that chair was reserved for another speaker. Well that was the closest I got to the Supreme Leader I thought and happily obliged to move one chair away.

Galloway started the meeting and it wasn’t long before he went on about UK police brutality during the Gaza protests in London! My plan was genuinely to wait for question time and say,

‘You had a moustache when you worked for Saddam, now you work for the Supreme Leader and wear a beard, you are nothing but a fraud, you can not liberate the people of Palestine by serving brutal dictators’

…but to be honest given that all of Galloway’s pets were there, neither did I think I would be given a chance to ask a question nor did I want to sit through two hours of this bullshit. Hence I shouted,

‘How can you go on about police brutality in this country when you work for a regime whose police beat up, kill and rape peaceful protesters?’.

That was it. Peyvand started backing me up as well by asking him how he can go on about police brutality in UK but remain silent about all the crimes that are going in Iran?

And guess what? The same Galloway who was going on about UK police brutality had to ask the police not only to remove us from the room but also to detain us in the House of Commons police room until their meeting was over and they had left the building.

You can’t write a better script than that, can you? what a hypocrite Galloway and Stop the War mob are!

These pictures were taken before Galloway called the police:

By contrast, here are the Islamic Republic’s police dragging students out of their dormitories and beating them senseless before they pile their lifeless bodies on top of each other:

Update:

Here is a video of our confrontation with George Galloway:

Renowned Indian artist MF Husain, under attack from hardline Hindus for his paintings of nude Hindu goddesses, has been offered Qatari nationality.

The artist made the announcement in The Hindu newspaper. It is not clear whether he will accept the honour.
Since 2006, 95-year-old Mr Husain has been living in Dubai and in London.

The Hindu said that his “impending change of nationality brings to a close one of the sorriest chapters in independent India’s secular history”.

Correspondents say that Mr Husain – who has been forced to flee the country – is one of India’s most pre-eminent artists.

In 2006 he apologised for a painting in which he represented the country as a nude goddess. In the mid-1990s there were huge protests in Mumbai (Bombay) after he painted a whole series of nude Hindu goddesses.
Hindu nationalist groups accused the artist of hurting their religious sentiments and defiling their religion.

Highly offensive to the BJP

This is how SS Ahluwalia, leader of the hardline Hinduist BJP party, took the news:

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) today reacted to the news of Qatar conferring citizenship on celebrated artist MF Hussain, saying that everyone has the right to live anywhere in the world but artists should not have unbridled right of expression.

”One may accept the citizenship of any country one likes. My Party has no dispute with that, but it does not support the right to hurt in the name of artistic expression,” said senior BJP leader SS Ahluwalia.

Singling out universities as potential conveyor belts for terrorists is an old talking point for neocons. The most notorious example in recent times was American commentator Daniel Pipes’s project Campus Watch, which created dossiers on professors and universities that did “not meet its standard of uncritical support for the policies of George Bush and Ariel Sharon”, according to one critic. Anthony Glees, professor of security and intelligence studies at the University of Buckingham, told the Telegraph: “UCL boasts on its website that it has 8,000 staff for 22,000 students, which is an enviable staff/student ratio. What have they been doing?” Their jobs, perhaps?

There are two issues here. The first is about academic freedom of speech and civil liberties, which have been completely sidelined in the debate. Abdulmutallab was at UCL from 2005 to 2008 and was president of the student Islamic Society in 2006-07. The charge against UCL is that he was allowed to organise a week of debates around the US “war on terror”. It included debates on Guantánamo Bay and terrorism. Fancy that. There’s no evidence that he was radicalised at this point – almost every university in the country holds several such debates every year.

Where to start with this muddle-headed nonsense?

Well first of all, evidence of Abdulmutallab’s contact with Anwar al-Awlaki while studying at UCL was confirmed almost a week before Sunny wrote this article, but he wilfully chose to ignore it.

Hundal denies the fact individuals who lionise Anwar al-Awlaki can be identified as jihadists. Well he would, he shares platform with some of them. UCL is certainly not primarily to blame for the Islamic radicalism of its ISOC. But neither is he willing to address those primary culprits of radicalisation at UCL. So instead he draws a straw man and states Universities should not be blamed. Classic smoke and mirrors.

In Feb 2008, the radicalised students of UCL ISOC held “Islamic Awareness Week” in which Abu Mujahid incited Muslims to condemn homosexuals because, he said, Allah “hates” homosexuality. Then there is Abu Usamah ad Thahabee of Birmingham’s Green Lane Mosque, who was secretly filmed by the Channel Four documentary praising Osama bin Laden and saying

“If I were to call homosexuals perverted, dirty, filthy dogs who should be murdered, that’s my freedom of speech isn’t it?”.

The same Abu Usamah ad Thahabee was invited to speak at the UCL ISOC in November but the event was cancelled at the last minute after pressure from campaign groups, such as the CSC. He ended up delivering his diatribe at East London Mosque.

Hundal carefully chooses to make no mention of the clerical fascists and jihadi activists who have spoken at UCL. In fact, he flatly denies that there is even a problem of radicalisation at UCL or indeed at other universities.

His comparison to the public demands of UCL to address the radicalisation problem to Daniel Pipes’ Campus Watch is patently dishonest. Campus Watch was a campaign to identify and vilify Muslim academics at Universities in the USA. But Student Unions in the UK do not operate under University control and the Islamist clerics who are invited by ISOCs are external speakers, not academics working within universities. Identifying and criticising ISOCs which associate with jihadist and clerical fascists who have a record of inciting hatred of homosexuals, Jews and heterodox Muslims can not be compared to Campus Watch.

Hundal thinks the demands for UCL to be made accountable is an assault of “freedom of speech and civil liberties”. But his own approach to civil rights is curiously inconsistent. What he fails to mention is that he has previously made a statement in which he openly stated spying on citizens as morally acceptable.

Last October, the director of the Quilliam Foundation, Ed Husain, stated that it was morally acceptable for the State to spy on Muslims as part of the Prevent initiative. It turned out that Prevent has nothing to do with applying Security (that would be another initiative called Pursue). Furthermore, Ed Husain did not specify extremists were the only ones applicable but rather “British Muslims” as a whole were acceptable subjects. For this inexplicable statement, Husain was severely reprimanded both in public and behind closed doors by senior government sponsors of Prevent. Husain was then forced to make a hurried retraction but Hundal supported Quilliam on the question of spying to the hilt. In fact, these were his words:

I think all of that makes sense. All this hysteria about spying is frankly overblown, as if people were unaware it didn’t already happen to some extent.

When I asked him to clarify why spying on Muslims was acceptable, Hundal came up with this:

I said in my post I have no problems with agencies spying on radicalised British Muslims. That is what Ed was talking about. The Guardian spun it as a story saying he was for spying on all Brit Muslims. I hope that clears it up for you.

Yes, quite right, Sunny. Blame your support for spying on the Guardian, not on your own intellectual and ethical breakdown on the minor point of civil rights. Where do you want to start, phone-tapping, bank account and credit card snooping?

If there is one thing that can be said about Hundal, it is that he is consistently inconsistent. Hundal shares platforms with jihadist who openly support Anwar al-Awlaki, while supporting State spying on Muslims!

It is amusing to see him flail himself into a spittle-flecked apoplexy over the BNP speaking at Universities, going as far as supporting the NUS No-Platform ban of the BNP. But he has no such principle of No-Platform when it comes to clerical fascists or Islamist jihadis who call for the murder of Jews, homosexuals and Muslim citizens.

Why is this?

It could be because he has shared platform with them but I suspect that Hundal views radical Islamist clerics and activists through the subjective prism of “brown” and “white”. And with this binary firmly in place, Hundal regards “brown” clerical fascists as underdogs, worthy of support or, at least, morally acceptable.

But worryingly unacceptable is his pretence of support of civil liberties on the pages of CiF while at the same time defending spying on Muslims on the pages of Pickled Politics.

On the question of whether Sunny Hundal is an Islamist supporter, a confused civil rights campaigner, a racist “race specialist” or simply an opportunist, the jury is still out.