Category Archives: Moral relativism

Liberal Confusion

By Faisal | Published: March 12, 2010

Terry Eagleton is interviewed by the Culture Editor of the New Statesman. Asked about his very public spat with Martin Amis two years ago, Eagleton replies:

I’m interested in the way a whole stratum of the liberal literati (Rushdie, to some extent Ian McEwan, A C Grayling, obviously Amis and Hitchens) – the very people you’d have expected to be guardians of the liberal flame of tolerance and understanding – have, at the very first assault, rushed into these caricatured postures driven by panic. I’m very struck by how those who are making ugly, illiberal, supremacist noises about the superiority of the west are precisely the sort of literary and liberal characters from whom you’d expect more imagination, openness and sensitivity.

Norm defeathers and skins that turkey most elegantly:

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Also posted in The Far Left | 4 Comments

The “Hate Sahgal” Template

By Faisal | Published: March 7, 2010

Support for the Amnesty-Begg partnership now follows a predictable shape and form. There is even a template for it. It follows these 6 simple rules-

1) Mention as many times as possible the statements made by present and former officials of Amnesty International, who are paid to tow the official Amnesty line, viz a viz Claudio Cordone, Irene Khan, Widney Brown, Sam Zarifi, Kate Allen et al.

2) Never mention Cageprisoners’ support of jihadi terrorism despite the extensive documentation that demonstrates this support.

3) Never mention Moazzam Begg’s association with Cageprisoners.

4) Never mention the words “partner” or “platform”

5) Never mention the fact that Gita Sahgal has always spoke about the need to protect the rights of Islamists and terrorists from torture, renditions and arbitrary detention.

6) Never acknowledge that Gita Sahgal’s fundamental point is that Amnesty should never have made the individual(s) of point #5 into poster boys or torch bearers of those human rights.

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Posted in Moral relativism | 36 Comments

Sunny falls off his brown high horse, again

By Faisal | Published: February 19, 2010

Here’s another blog gem from the irrepressible Sunny “Browner Than Thou” Hundal.

It’s yet more proof, if such were needed, which shows how Hundal only looks at everything through a white/brown lens. In this case, Hundal suggests that Amnesty’s campaign for the IRA in the 70s happened without outcry because the IRA were white. He introduces a second point that Amnesty requested a moratorium on Timothy McVeigh without controversy only because he was a white supremacist – not a brown Islamist supremacist!

Someone explain to Sunny, the difference between Amnesty and the IRA and Amnesty and CagePrisoners, which he intentionally fails to grasp, is that Amnesty campaigned for the former’s legal/civil rights. They didn’t share platforms with the IRA and marginalise and suspend internal critics of this policy.

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Also posted in Farce | 4 Comments

Begg pulls out, Issues Statement, Apologists Cheer Loudly

By Faisal | Published: February 16, 2010

Yesterday Amnesty announced:

Moazzam Begg is no longer able to attend this event as a speaker.

Sunny Hundal of Pickled Politics “managed to get a statement” from Begg, which he published as an “Exclusive”.

Incidentally, this “exclusive” seems to have pissed off our other Begg-apologist Andy Worthington, who wants the world to know that he had that statement before Sunny Hundal did!

Moazzam’s statement will be read out at the screening tonight. Although I was provided with a copy, I had no intention of publishing it in advance, but have done so because Sunny Hundal published it on Pickled Politics, stating, “I managed to get a statement by Moazzam Begg on why he pulled out of the Amnesty event,” and adding, “I’ll have more on this tomorrow.”

So here is Begg’s statement in full:

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Also posted in Human Rights, Islamism | 3 Comments

Zarifi breaks Amnesty ranks

By Faisal | Published: February 15, 2010

Time was when Amnesty International would never compromise its principles by failing to distinguish between supporting an individual’s legitimate right to be protected from torture and illegal detention, and supporting that individual’s politics. Especially if those politics were some form of sectarian, supremacist movement.

But today, Islamism is a form of political resistance which has been excluded from that distinction, by Amnesty and many others. And only because some people (of the Left) have decided that political Islam and jihadism in particular is a form of anti-capitalist resistance. And that principle has now been eroded.

Gita Sahgal explains how this is a form of racism, in a disarmingly honest profile in the Sunday Time:

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Also posted in Human Rights, Islamism | 8 Comments

Race card Ali, your time is up

By Abdul Hamid al Manchesteri | Published: February 15, 2010

This is the story of how a bent copper in the Met managed to keep his detractors at bay by playing the Institutional Race card repeatedly.

The only thing black about Commander Ali Dizaei is his hair dye. Yet this Iranian-born policeman, the most senior officer to be jailed for corruption in more than 30 years, was a president of the National Black Police Association. The NBPA was not the only organisation to have been made a fool of by this arch-manipulator of racial politics: the BBC had made his dishonest memoir its Radio 4 Book of the Week, and The Guardian was also a willing media partner in his campaign to become the country’s most powerful policeman.

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Also posted in Racism | 3 Comments

Andy Worthington: The Moral Relativist

By Faisal | Published: February 11, 2010

Andy Worthington comes to the defence Moazzam Begg and Cageprisoners. Like all the “defences” of the CP/Amnesty nexus so far, it maintains a studious silence when asked to address Gita Sahgal’s fundamental issue:

“As a former Guantanamo detainee it was legitimate to hear his experiences, but as a supporter of the Taliban it was absolutely wrong to legitimise him as a partner.”

Nothing on there to addresses the material charges that Gita made of Amnesty but lots of diversionary smokescreen and yet another defense by fuzzy personal account. The transparently biased, anecdotal, “I know and work with Moazzam Begg and I think he is a really lovely bloke. Who’s Anwar al-Awlaki?” sort.

Worthington’s piece is an especially poor defence of Amnesty built around two weak talking points:

1) Any organisation is obliged to suspend any employee who criticises its core policies on the pages of the Sunday Times. And Amnesty is just another organisation.

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Posted in Moral relativism | 22 Comments

Rahila Gupta on Amnesty’s Blind Spot

By Faisal | Published: February 10, 2010

Throughout the Amnesty-Sahgal-Cageprisoners row, Gita Sahgal has consistently kept to one fundamental point: that Amnesty International ought to maintain an objective distance from groups and ideas that are committed to systematic discrimination that fundamentally undermine the universality of human rights.

Rahila Gupta picks up the argument on whether the human rights position on torture and renditions trumps the human rights of women and sexual minorities.

This is no ordinary spat between two individuals and an organisation. It is an attempt to tease out the contradictions that bedevil the human rights debate in this country. In the campaign to achieve human rights, whose human rights get privileged? In the attempt to redress the balance, liberal-left thinking correctly identifies Muslims as the underdogs, especially those who have been terrorised by the state in its war on terror agenda. But beyond that, we need a more sophisticated response so that the human rights of even more powerless groups, such as women and sexual minorities, do not get trampled once again.

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Also posted in Human Rights | 21 Comments

Letter to Amnesty from Denis MacShane MP

By Guest | Published: February 10, 2010

Denis MacShane, the Labour MP for Rotherham and staunch defender of free speech and human rights, has sent a letter to Amnesty International’s UK Director, Kate Allen, regarding the organisation’s decision to suspend Gita Sahgal. It is reproduced below in full:

Kate Allen
Director
Amnesty UK
17-25 New Inn Yard
London
EC2A 3EA 10 Feb. 10

Dear Kate,

I was very concerned to hear on Today this morning that Amnesty International has suspended Gita Saghal because she quite rightly raised questions about whether Amnesty should be promoting someone whose views run contrary to everything Amnesty stands for.

I know she works for the International Secretariat but Amnesty UK is involved as it has been promoting the man in question. Given your own admired and respected role in raising women’s right issues as part of Amnesty’s work I do think some reflection is required before the International Secretariat victimises one of its most respected researchers because she rightly called into question Amnesty’s endorsement of Mozzam Begg whose views on the Taliban and on Islamist jihad stand in total contradiction of everything Amnesty has fought for.

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Also posted in Islamism, UK Politics | 23 Comments

Amnesty Suspends Gita Sahgal

By Faisal | Published: February 7, 2010

Gita Sahgal’s accusations were published in today’s Sunday Times, blowing the whistle on Amnesty’s unholy alliance with Moazzam Begg.

Martin Bright praised Sahgal for her bravery but also warned darkly of the repercussions she would suffer for taking a stand against the consensus of the “human rights community”:

It is difficult to make a stand on these issues and keep one’s friends on the left and in the human rights community, so I take my hat off to Gita. I have often discussed with her how best to raise these issues and she has been deeply frustrated by the way the British liberal intelligentsia gives house-room to right-wing Islamists.

She was one of the first people in Britain to warn of the dangers of the politics of Jamaat-i-Islami, the south Asian blood-brothers of the Muslim Brotherhood. She was instrumental in the making of a Channel 4 documentary on alleged Bangladeshi war criminals who had found safe haven in Britain (I can give you no further detail because the Spectator will get an immediate letter from Carter-Ruck solicitors who are representing a key individual in the film).

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Also posted in Human Rights | 24 Comments

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