Source: Medium

The “letter boxes” and “bank robber” comments were not isolated gaffes. When it comes to inflaming public opinion against Muslims, Johnson is a repeat offender.

Boris Johnson’s recent Telegraph article, in which he mocked niqab-wearing women by describing them as looking like letter boxes or bank robbers, has been widely condemned. But this isn’t the first time Johnson has weighed in on the subject of Muslim women’s clothing. Back in 2006 he devoted his Telegraph column to celebrating the defeat of the court case launched by Shabina Begum over her right to wear the jilbab at her school in Luton. Johnson characterised Shabina’s campaign to wear clothing in accordance with her religious beliefs as a demand to “break school rules, and wear a tent”.

So demeaning Muslim women by sneering at their religious dress is nothing new as far as Johnson is concerned.

Indeed, in 2006 he went further, suggesting that Shabina’s legal challenge was part of some sinister Islamic plot to conquer the West. “This case wasn’t even about religion, or conscience, or the dictates of faith,” he wrote. “At least it wasn’t primarily about those things. It was about power. It was about who really runs the schools in this country, and about how far militant Islam could go in bullying the poor, cowed, gelatinous and mentally spongiform apparatus of the British state.”

For Johnson, the court case was yet another of “the disasters of multiculturalism, the system by which too many Muslims have been allowed to grow up in this country with no sense of loyalty to its institutions, and with a sense of complete apartness”.

But this was par for the course with Johnson, who by that point had established an unenviable record of journalistic Islamophobia. In the aftermath of the London transport bombings of 7 July 2005, for example, he similarly blamed the attacks on multiculturalist concessions to Muslims and depicted the terrorists’ acts as directly inspired by Islam.

In his Telegraph column of 14 July, Johnson asserted that the bombers were the product of a multicultural society in which “too many Britons have absolutely no sense of allegiance to this country or its institutions. It is a cultural calamity that will take decades to reverse”. He declared: “We need to acculturate the second-generation Muslim communities to our way of life.” And he continued: “That means the imams will have to change their tune, and it is no use the Muslim Council of Great Britain [sic]endlessly saying that ‘the problem is not Islam’, when it is blindingly obvious that in far too many mosques you can find sermons of hate, and literature glorifying 9/11 and vilifying Jews.”

In the 16 July edition of the Spectator Johnson pursued the theme of the religious roots of terrorism: “The Islamicists last week horribly and irrefutably asserted the supreme importance of that faith, overriding all worldly considerations, and it will take a huge effort of courage and skill to win round the many thousands of British Muslims who are in a similar state of alienation, and to make them see that their faith must be compatible with British values and with loyalty to Britain. That means disposing of the first taboo, and accepting that the problem is Islam. Islam is the problem.”

He continued: “To any non-Muslim reader of the Koran, Islamophobia — fear of Islam — seems a natural reaction, and, indeed, exactly what that text is intended to provoke. Judged purely on its scripture — to say nothing of what is preached in the mosques — it is the most viciously sectarian of all religions in its heartlessness towards unbelievers…. we look in vain for the enlightened Islamic teachers and preachers who will begin the process of reform. What is going on in these mosques and madrasas? When is someone going to get 18th century on Islam’s mediaeval ass?”

Johnson declared: “It is time that we started to insist that the Muslim Council of Great Britain, and all the preachers in all the mosques, extremist or moderate, began to acculturate themselves more closely to what we think of as British values…. by way of a first gesture the entire Muslim clergy might announce, loud and clear, for the benefit of all Bradford-born chipshop boys, that there is no eternal blessedness for the suicide bombers, there are no 72 virgins, and that the whole thing is a con and a fraud upon impressionable minds. That might be a first step towards what could be called the re-Britannification of Britain.”

Shockingly, Johnson saw fit to to publish these inflammatory articles in the midst of a racist backlash against the Muslim community (see here and here for contemporary reports by the Institute of Race Relations) during which one victim, Kamal Raza Butt, had been beaten to death.

As Spectator editor, Johnson produced issue devoted to threat of Islam

Johnson’s promotion of rabid Islamophobia at the Spectator wasn’t restricted to his own columns but extended to his role as the magazine’s editor. In November 2005, in response to the wave of riots in the French banlieues, mainly involving youth of North African heritage, he produced an entire issue that was devoted to the threat of Islam. The provocative title, “Eurabian nightmare”, referenced a notorious conspiracy theory according to which the European elites have done a deal with the Arab world to allow unrestricted Muslim immigration to the continent and facilitate the submission of the indigenous population to Islam. This paranoid fantasy was popularised by Bat Ye’or in her 2005 book Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, which provides the same inspiration for Islamophobes that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion does for antisemites.

Johnson commissioned a number of hardline Islamophobic authors — Rod Liddle, Patrick Sookdeo and Mark Steyn — to submit material for that issue of the Spectator. They were only too happy to oblige, even managing to outdo their editor in the anti-Islamic vitriol they produced.

In an article titled “The crescent of fear” Rod Liddle offered the following interpretation of the French riots: “there have been whole legions of pundits wheeled out to offer an explanation. It’s deprivation, a lack of integration, poverty, unemployment, incipient French racism and so on. But the dreaded ‘M’ word has scarcely been mentioned at all; these were ‘young’ rioters or sometimes ‘immigrant’ rioters — they were never Muslim rioters. Islam was almost never mentioned…. It may well be that the motive for the rioting was nothing more than an inchoate grievance allied to youthful exuberance and a penchant for bad behaviour, but it was Islam which gave it an identity and also its retrospective raison d’être.”

Patrick Sookhdeo — a right-wing evangelical Christian who had already been given a platform by Johnson earlier in the year to denounce “The myth of moderate Islam — was brought in to pose the question “Will London burn too?” Sookhdeo thought it probably would. “A book published in 1980 by the Islamic Council of Europe,” he wrote, “gives instructions for how Muslim minorities are to work towards achieving domination of European countries through a policy of concentration in geographical areas.”

He continued: “The Muslim community in France is well on the way to becoming … a state within a state. The only substantive goal still outstanding is the implementation of Islamic law (Shariah) instead of French law. Muslims in France have by and large rejected the concept of the integration of individuals and are working instead for the integration of communities. The same is happening in the UK, where the concept of multiculturalism has long been popular.”

Sookheo explained: “Islam is a territorial religion. Any space once gained is considered sacred and should belong to the umma for ever. Any lost space must be regained — even by force if necessary. Migrant Muslim communities in the West are constantly engaged in sacralising new areas — first the inner private spaces of their homes and mosques, and latterly whole neighbourhoods (e.g., Birmingham) by means of marches and processions. So the ultimate end of sacred space theology is autonomy for Muslims of the UK under Islamic law.”

One Muslim critic rightly described this as “the sort of paranoid conspiracy nonsense which would have its author out of the door of any publication of left or right if Jews were its target”.

Mark Steyn for his part (“It’s the demography, stupid”) predicted that Muslim population growth was preparing the ground for a “Eurabian civil war”. He warned: “One day they’ll even be on the beach at St Trop, and if you and your infidel whore happen to be lying there wearing nothing but two coats of Ambre Solaire when they show up, you better hope that the BBC and CNN are right about there being no religio-ethno-cultural component to their ‘grievances’.”

Steyn was, however, prepared to concede that not all Muslims are the same: “… it’s true there are Muslims and there are Muslims: some blow up Tube trains and some rampage through French streets and some claim Mossad’s put something in the chewing gum to make Arab men susceptible to the seduction techniques of Jewesses. Some kill Dutch film-makers and some complain about Piglet coffee mugs on co-workers’ desks, and millions of Muslims don’t do any of the above but apparently don’t feel strongly enough about them to say a word in protest.”

He continued: “And it’s also true that it’s better to have your Peugeot torched than to be blown apart on the Piccadilly Line. But what all these techniques — and those of lobby groups who offer themselves as interlocutors between bewildered European elites and ‘moderate’ Muslims — have in common is that they advance the Islamification of Europe.”

All of this expressed the same sort of irrational anti-Muslim hatred that inspired Anders Breivik. Yet it here it was, thanks to Johnson’s editorship, in the pages of a mainstream conservative magazine.

Having given further vent to his prejudices against Muslims and multiculturalism in his 2006 Telegraph column on Shabina Begum, Johnson returned to the theme later that year, offering the following advice to the then Labour home secretary John Reid: “Here is the bravest thing he could possibly say. He should say that the real problem in our society, and the reason we have so many disaffected and alienated Muslim youths, is that for a generation he and people like him supported the disastrous multicultural agenda. The reason that 40 per cent of British Muslims would like some form of Sharia law in this country is that the Left has traditionally deprecated British institutions and even the teaching of English. A truly brave John Reid would now publicly grovel to Ray Honeyford, the Bradford head who called for teaching in English and who was vilified and persecuted by the Left.”

Johnson was referring to the controversy over Honeyford’s notorious Salisbury Review article from 1984 in which he claimed to expose “the real educational consequences of the general acceptance of the notion that multi-racial inner cities are not only inevitable but, in some sense, desirable”. Honeyford opined: “‘Cultural enrichment’ is the approved term for the West Indian’s right to create an ear splitting cacophony for most of the night to the detriment of his neighbour’s sanity, or for the Notting Hill Festival [sic]whose success or failure is judged by the level of street crime which accompanies it.” Reporting on a meeting at his school with parents of South Asian heritage, Honeyford wrote: “The hysterical political temperament of the Indian sub-continent became evident — an extraordinary sight in an English School Hall.” He denounced as “totalitarian” the proposals by Black activists that “schoolbooks with a racist content should be scrapped” and that “racist teachers should be dismissed”. This was the man Johnson hailed as a hero.

Unfortunately for Johnson, his promotion of right-wing racist bigotry came back to bite him after his selection as Tory candidate for the 2008 London mayoral election. During the election campaign his Labour rival Ken Livingstone raised Johnson’s response to the 7/7 bombings, to the latter’s considerable embarrassment. During an LBC radio hustings in April 2008 Johnson asserted that, if he had been mayor at the time of the attacks, he would have said “exactly the same” as Ken did in his powerful speech defending London as a multicultural city where different communities lived together in peace and would refuse to be divided by the murderous acts of terrorists.

Ken retorted: “I know what Boris would have said because he wrote it in the Spectator the following week. Very different. I said this is a criminal act by a handful of men. It doesn’t define a faith or an ideology. What you said, Boris, was Islam was the problem…. And the Koran is inherently violent. I actually made certain that we were looking at individuals. You smeared an entire faith.”

Typically, Johnston responded by blustering and lying, angrily accusing Ken of misrepresenting him: “Can I tell you what deep offence I take at that? I think you really traduce what I said. My view is that Islam is a religion of peace and indeed I am very proud to say I have Muslim ancestors. My great-grandfather knew the Koran off by heart, Ken Livingstone, and I really wish you would leave off these kinds of tactics, which demean this race and demean your office.”

Still, Ken’s criticism would have hit home. As would the Standard’s subsequent report that the campaign group Muslims 4 Ken were mobilising their co-religionists to vote against Johnson. The paper warned: “Nearly half a million Muslim voters are being urged to support Ken Livingstone against Boris Johnson in the closing stages of the mayoral election. A year-long strategy to mobilise the Muslim vote for Ken moves into overdrive this week, accompanied by a campaign of vilification aimed at Boris.” The Standard claimed: “A sinister element of the campaign is the effort to portray Boris as a Muslim hater. Websites have been bombarded with selected quotes from his journalism. One, Islamophobia Watch, carries a long list of excerpts from his articles under the heading Back Boris Urges BNP.” It was notable that the Standard made no attempt to deny the accuracy of these quotes.

In the outcome, despite the mobilisation of Muslim voters against him, Johnson did win the 2008 London mayoral election. All the same, he must have realised that belligerent hostility towards Islam and multiculturalism was not a good look in a diverse city with a large Muslim population. As a Tory journalist, Boris had been happy to throw red meat to the right-wing readers of the Spectator and Telegraph by endorsing their prejudices against Muslims. But he was astute enough to recognise that the people of London would never tolerate that sort of behaviour on the part of their mayor.

Johnson suddenly discovers the merits of the city’s multicultural diversity

So in order to consolidate his hold on power Johnson changed tack and for a while presented a much more liberal face to Londoners. He suddenly discovered the merits of the city’s multicultural diversity and made a determined effort to mend fences with the Muslim community. In September 2009 he paid an official mayoral visit to the East London Mosque, where he delivered the following speech:

“Whether it’s in theatre, comedy, sports, music or politics, Muslims are challenging the traditional stereotypes and showing that they are, and want to be, a part of the mainstream community. That’s why I urge people, particularly during Ramadan, to find out more about Islam, increase your understanding and learning, even fast for a day with your Muslim neighbour and break your fast at the local mosque. I would be very surprised if you didn’t find that you share more in common than you thought.

“Muslims are at the heart of every aspect of society. Their contribution is something that all Londoners benefit from. Muslim police officers, doctors, scientists and teachers are an essential part of the fabric of London. Islamic finance is contributing to the economy by changing the way Londoners invest, save, borrow and spend. There are valuable lessons that people of all backgrounds can learn from Islam such as the importance of community spirit, family ties, compassion and helping those less fortunate, all of which lie at the heart of the teachings of Ramadan.”

Some of Johnson’s supporters were not best pleased at this astonishing volte-face. He found himself under attack from Tim Montgomerie of ConservativeHome who repeated smears from Harry’s Place against the East London Mosque and accused Johnson of consorting with terrorist sympathisers. The following month a now defunct right-wing think tank, the laughably misnamed Centre for Social Cohesion (director Douglas Murray), launched an attack on Johnson over his co-sponsorship of Eid in the Square with the Islam Channel, whose CEO, Tunisian oppositionist Mohamed Ali Harrath, spoke at the event. The CSC sought to misrepresent Harrath as a violent extremist.

Basing himself on material supplied by the CSC, Ted Jeory produced a characteristically Islamophobic piece for the Sunday Express (“Boris’s terror link”), while the CSC’s Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens followed this up with an article for ConservativeHome (“Boris fails to tackle Islamic extremism”). Meleagrou-Hitchens complained that the mayor’s actions were “a huge disappointment to those who voted for Boris Johnson in the hope that it would signal a shift away from Ken Livingstone’s policy of engaging with radicals”.

But what did Johnson care? He was facing re-election in 2012 and was quite prepared to perform an ideological U-turn on Islam in order to defuse a potential revolt by Muslim voters. Needless to say, he saw no need to apologise for his earlier statements or explain this opportunist change of line. Like Groucho Marx, Johnson has his principles and if you don’t like them, he has others.

Following his second mayoral election victory Johnson changed tack yet again. He wasn’t planning to stand for a third term, so there was no longer any need to ingratiate himself with London’s large Muslim electorate. Having raised his own political profile during his time as mayor (even if he achieved little else), Johnson’s sights were now set on a return to national politics and a possible leadership bid. The pressure to present a friendly face to the Muslim community, who comprise less than 5% of the population nationally, was considerably reduced. So the liberal mask was thrown off and he reverted to type.

Still, Johnson could understand that simply resurrecting his old “Islam is the problem” rhetoric would be counterproductive. In his response to the murder of Lee Rigby in 2013 the crude Islamophobic rhetoric of July 2005 was replaced with a rather more sophisticated approach. Johnson told readers of his Telegraph column that “we must be clear in our heads that there is no sense in blaming Islam, a religion that gives consolation and enrichment to the lives of hundreds of millions of peaceful people”. Instead he identified the problem as “Islamism”. According to Johnson:

“This is a sinister political agenda that promotes a sense of grievance and victimhood among a minority of Muslims. The Islamists want universal sharia law, and other mumbo jumbo. Above all, they want power over others: and so they prey on young men who feel in some way rejected by society, and they fill those young men with a horrible and deluded sense of self-importance. They tell these people that they are not alone in suffering injustice; that they belong to a much wider group of victims — the Muslims — and that the only way to avenge these injustices is jihad. These Islamist evangelists have no allegiance to the Western society they live in and whose benefits systems they abuse: far from it — their avowed intent is to create a sexist and homophobic Muslim caliphate.”

The idea that there are many different strands of Islamism, most of which reject terrorist violence, was of course completely lost on Johnson. For him, political Islam in all its shades was the enemy. Not only that, but he went on to suggest that even non-political conservative interpretations of Islam are connected to violent extremism. Taking up a recent moral panic over gender-segregated meetings on campus, he wrote: “The universities need to be much, much tougher in their monitoring of Islamic societies. It is utterly wrong to have segregated meetings in a state-funded centre of learning.”

Johnson’s new hard line went down well with the right-wing press. The Daily Mail (“Boris Johnson has attacked Islamists who want to impose ‘mumbo-jumbo’ sharia law on Britain”) was full of enthusiasm, as was the Telegraph (“Universities should stop pandering to Islamic extremists by allowing segregated lectures, Boris Johnson says today”). Johnson must have been delighted. This was just the sort of publicity he needed to boost his support among the Tory rank and file and position himself for a future leadership challenge.

In March 2014, following the sentencing of Lee Rigby’s killers, Johnson returned to the subject of the Islamist threat. He insisted that “we must be firm to the point of ruthlessness in opposing behaviour that undermines our values”, including “Islamic radicalisation”. Probably taking his inspiration from tabloid hysteria about schoolboy jihadis, Johnson warned that “some young people are now being radicalised at home”. There could, he wrote, be “hundreds of children” whose parents were teaching them “crazy stuff: the kind of mad yearning for murder and death that we heard from Lee Rigby’s killers”. Johnson had a solution: the authorities should dispense with “political correctness” and children considered to be under threat of “radicalisation” by their Muslim parents should be taken into care.

Quite what this had to do with the murder of Lee Rigby was unclear, given that both his killers were Muslim converts who had been brought up in Christian families. But Johnson’s proposal met with the approval of the Daily Mail (“Children of Islamist radicals should be in care, suggests Boris: Mayor of London warns hundreds at risk of being turned into fanatics by extreme parents”) and also the English Defence League. While some EDL supporters took the view that the problem would be more effectively solved by expelling the entire Muslim community from the UK, or killing them, there was considerable agreement with Johnson’s plan (“BORIS FOR PRIME MINISTER!”, “He talks sense”, “Long live Boris!”, “Good on you Boris, we need more of you”).

The Daily Mail rallies the Tory rank and file in support of Johnson

Having re-established his right-wing credentials at the expense of the Muslim community, Johnson then secured his selection as parliamentary candidate for the safe Tory seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip. So he would have been well placed to contest the Tory leadership in the event of a poor showing by the party in the 2015 general election. Unfortunately for Johnson, against most predictions the Tories managed to secure an overall parliamentary majority in that election. David Cameron’s position was apparently secure and Johnson’s leadership plans had to be put on hold. Then, when Cameron did resign in 2016 after losing the EU referendum, Johnson’s leadership campaign was torpedoed by his friend and ally Michael Gove. Now, following his own resignation as foreign secretary in protest at the government’s proposals for a softer Brexit than Tory hardliners favour, Johnson’s leadership ambitions are back on track, so it was predictable that he would return to his old right-wing populist rhetoric against Muslims. He has no doubt calculated that a UKIP-lite combination of hard Brexit and Islamophobia will play well with the Tory grassroots.

It is uncertain how all this is going to unravel. The Daily Mail has been rallying the Tory rank and file in support of Johnson, depicting him as the innocent victim of a “witch hunt”, while the bookies now have him vying with Sajid Javid as favourite to become the next Tory party leader. Johnson’s immediate political future hinges on the outcome of the investigation his party is currently conducting in order to establish whether disciplinary action should be taken against him. Fellow Tories who want to see Johnson dealt with appropriately might be advised to draw the party’s attention to his long record of Islamophobia, as detailed in this article. The “letter boxes” and “bank robber” comments were not some isolated gaffe. When it comes to inflaming public opinion against Muslims, Johnson is a repeat offender.

Bob Pitt blogs at https://medium.com/@pitt_bob

Source:  Al Jazeera

The circumstances may strike a chord with us today. But this was London at the height of the Great Depression, when gangs of black-shirted fascists brought fear and violence to immigrant communities, and one violent, dramatic day of barricades and riots would become mythologised as the Battle of Cable Street.

On October 4, 1936, the charismatic leader of the British Union of Fascists (BUF), Sir Oswald Mosley, set out to march 5,000 of his uniformed Blackshirts from the Tower of London to the heart of the immigrant communities of the East End. In the mid-1930s, the borough was mostly Irish and Jewish [PDF]. Today, it is home to London’s largest Muslim community.

It was to be a triumphant march for Mosley and his fascist legions. The aristocratic former Member of Parliament would march through London and then fly straight to Berlin to marry the famous socialite (and fervent Nazi) Diana Mitford. Their wedding would be at the home of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, with Adolf Hitler as the guest of honour.

Max Levitas, now 101 years old and still living close to Cable Street, was there on October 4, 1936, with his brother and father. They stood with tens of thousands of Londoners packed into the narrow streets of the East End, waiting behind police lines and improvised barricades.

Eighty years on and sitting in his modest home on nearby Sidney Street, Max recalls one of the most dramatic yet often overlooked days in 20th century British history.

“We had to stop Mosley and his fascists. We had to ensure these racists could not terrorise the people and march through the East End,” says Max.

“There were huge crowds. Everybody was shouting: ‘C’mon lads, we’re going to go out and stop them. They want to march – we’re not going to let them.’ We stood together; we fought back,” he recalls.

A fight against European fascism

In 1936, fascism was on the ascendency in Europe. Civil war had just broken out in Spain. In Britain, the Daily Mail newspaper, whose proprietor Lord Rothermere was an early admirer of Italy’s Benito Mussolini and Hitler, had carried a front-page headline proclaiming, “Hurrah for the Blackshirts”.

The Daily Mail editorial, written in 1934 by Lord Rothermere himself, eulogised Mosley and his fascist movement of some 40,000 men as the powerful alternative to the weak democrats who had failed in the face of the Great Depression, stating: “The new age requires new methods and new men.”

Rothermere’s admiration for the BUF cooled as they got involved in violence and civil unrest. On that October day, 80 years ago, Mosley’s BUF was still on the fringe of British politics. But fear and paranoia were in the air.

Posters pasted to walls all over London proclaimed the march through the “Jew-ridden and communistic” streets of Stepney and Whitechapel. The Blackshirts had already brought violence and intimidation to the narrow dockside streets, crowded with immigrant Irish dock workers, who had fled poverty and famine in their native land, and a huge Jewish population, recent refugees from the Tsarist pogroms and upheaval in Eastern Europe.

On the day of the march, the response was the mobilisation of the immigrant communities of the East End, together with British trade unionists and leftists, to stand against Mosley with barricades, bottles, bricks and fists. Figures for the crowds who opposed the Blackshirts vary dramatically, but historians agree that it was in the many tens of thousands.

“Irish dockers, Christians, Jews, socialists, union men, communists. We all joined together to fight,” says Max.

Mosley had official permission to stage his demonstration. But the thousands of policemen, including many on horseback, swinging batons as they charged the crowds, could not force a path through the barricaded streets.

And in what has been celebrated as a rare, if not unique, victory against European fascism before the Second World War, the people of the East End stopped the British Blackshirts in their tracks, forcing Mosley – who had been giving the Nazi salute from his open-topped Rolls-Royce limousine – to beat an ignominious retreat.

‘A myth partly based on reality’

The 80th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street will be marked with a series of events this October, and the streets in which the clashes took place are today marked with many commemorative plaques and signs as well as one of London’s biggest street murals.

However, while it remains a shining moment for the British Left, some, such as Daniel Tilles, a historian and specialist on British fascism in the 1930s, believe the events have been mythologised over time.

“There is a myth but it is partly based on reality,” says Tilles.

“On the day itself, it was a great victory for the anti-fascists, who greatly outnumbered the Blackshirts and stopped them from marching through the East End of London.

“But Mosley’s deliberate aim had been to provoke counter-violence to what was a lawful demonstration. In a way, he got exactly what he wanted. It allowed him to portray what happened as immigrants, aliens, violent communists stopping British citizens from exercising their lawful right to demonstrate.

“In the months after Cable Street, British Jews suffered far greater violence, intimidation and abuse than they had beforehand, So Cable Street unleashed this wave of anti-Jewish violence and abuse and gave the fascists a boost in popularity.”

Tilles says that those who opposed the fascists in Britain learned important lessons from Cable Street: that it was better to organise politically, to infiltrate the far-right groups, gather intelligence and deny them the “sense of victimhood” that came with confronting their actions with counter-violence.

“Just like Mosley in his day, the far-right today thrive off that sort of conflict; it gives them media attention, it helps them to sustain this victimhood narrative, and when it’s ethnic minorities, Jews in the 30s or Muslim communities today, violence helps them to reinforce that narrative and the prejudices these groups want to exploit and spread,” he adds.

Fiyaz Mughal is the founder and director of Faith Matters, a charity which works for interfaith understanding and against radicalism in Britain and in countries including Pakistan, Egypt and Syria.

Mughal also believes that Cable Street has important lessons for those combating racism and radicalisation today.

“I’ve been involved in anti-racism for 15 years or more, but I’ve been aware of Cable Street from a young age. It has always resonated with me, as a person who is of a minority who came to the UK,” he says.

Mughal has recently set up Tell MAMA UK – a social-media based service which records and highlights racist incidents. And he says he has seen a “very sharp spike” in hate crimes, intimidation and abuse based on religion and ethnicity since the Brexit vote.

“It is impacting greatly on Muslim communities such as those in the East End. And the main type of Islamophobia reported there are comments made from passing cars to Muslim women. We have also had far-right groups such as Britain First demonstrating there,” he says.

“The level of fear within Muslim communities has risen rapidly. Those being targeted most are Muslim women, because the way they dress makes them visible. It is causing fear and resentment. You have today, as you did in the 1930s in the same area, different communities becoming isolated, becoming fearful.

“And when people are isolated and fearful, when they believe they are being victimised, there is the danger of some becoming more open to the message of those who want to radicalise.”

Mughal believes that there are important lessons to be learned from the violence in the East End in the 1930s.

“They are pretty clear. We have given, as a society, extremist groups the opportunity to promote hatred and intolerance,” he says.

“Cable Street shows us that we cannot stand by. We must work extremely hard, be proactive, use intelligence gathering, outreach into communities, devote resources and support for those being targeted, to combat extremism on all sides.

“What the events of 1936 did was rouse people and ensure that they focused on using many ways to isolate and fragment the far-right. We must do the same with all extremist groups who would threaten us today.”

For the British fascists of the 1930s and those who opposed them, Cable Street was in many ways the high-water-mark of street violence and confrontation. Oswald Mosley did get married in Berlin, but was jailed at the start of World War II and faded into obscurity afterwards.

The Irish and Jewish communities mostly left the East End in the post-war era, to be replaced by new immigrant communities, from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Somalia and the Far East. The streets themselves are also changing quickly today as gentrification takes hold.

However, with racism and Islamophobia on the rise across London and the UK, it seems the tensions and dangers of 1936 still echo through the decades.

Source: The Canary

No woman in a burqa (or a hijab or a burkini) has ever done me any harm. But I was sacked (without explanation) by a man in a suit. Men in suits missold me pensions and endowments, costing me thousands of pounds. A man in a suit led us on a disastrous and illegal war. Men in suits led the banks and crashed the world economy. Other men in suits then increased the misery to millions through austerity. If we are to start telling people what to wear, maybe we should ban suits.

Bravo. Of course, Stewart is not really suggesting that we should ban suits. He is pointing out that appearance and attire do not determine a person’s actions. Meanwhile, his comment simultaneously shifts the crosshairs away from a scapegoated minority and towards the real architects of the economic crisis – the powerful elite.

At the time of writing, Stewart’s screen-grabbed comment has attracted nearly 3,000 Facebook shares and 5,000 likes.

Last week, Nice police forced a woman to remove some of her clothing after a controversial ban on the burkini in some French towns. Shared over 100,000 times, the physical reality of the authoritarian move struck a chord with many. In response to the killings of 86 people on Bastille Day, Nice has banned clothing that:

overtly manifests adherence to a religion at a time when France and places of worship are the target of terrorist attacks

But, as Stewart’s comment in the Guardian explains, clothing is, evidently, not the reason extremist attacks happen. Whether Tony Blair was wearing a suit or a hijab is irrelevant. What matters is that he took Britain to a war that led to the deaths of up to a million Iraqis, on false pretences.

So, do we ‘polish’ society to appease Islamophobes through banning religious clothing? Or do we address the underlying conditions that provide fertile ground for violent extremism?

Since we began the “war on terror” in 2001, terrorist attacks have soared by 6500%, according to data from the US state department. Analysis from journalist Paul Gottinger showed a direct trend between US military intervention and increased terrorism. 74% of terror casualties happened in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan or Nigeria in 2014. US air strikes or military occupations were undertaken in all of these countries except Nigeria in that year.

Let’s take heed of Stewart’s lesson in his Guardian letter. Restricting freedom of expression through clothing will solve nothing. A tiny minority of Muslims are retaliating violently to Western imperialism and staggering global inequality. This does not mean we should ban their clothes.

On the flip side, just because the underlying socio-political causes of extremism are perpetrated by politicians, like Blair and Bush, it does not mean we should ban their suits. It means we should vote in people better equipped for the job.

Source: New York Times

Fifteen towns in France have issued bans on the full-body swimsuit worn by some Muslim women and nicknamed the “burkini,” citing public order and security concerns. According to the ordinance in Cannes, “Beach attire that ostentatiously displays a religious affiliation, while France and places of worship are the target of terrorist acts, is likely to create risks to public order.”

How do pants, a long-sleeve shirt and a head covering made of swimsuit material threaten public safety?

According to France’s prime minister, Manuel Valls, the suit is part of “the enslavement of women.” In a newspaper interview, the mayor of Cannes, David Lisnard, said: “The burkini is the uniform of extremist Islamism, not of the Muslim religion.”

These explanations may seem ludicrous, but Mr. Valls and Mr. Lisnard perfectly summed up the two contradictory public order rationales that European courts all the way up to the European Court of Human Rights use when dealing with Muslim women in religious garb. According to Europe’s highest court of human rights, Muslim women in head scarves and burqas are simultaneously victims, in need of a government savior, and aggressors, spreading extremism merely by appearing Muslim in public.

The jurisprudence reflects a perspective deeply ingrained in the French conception of Muslims and Muslim religious garb. To the extent that these French politicians were calculating their legal risk when banning burkinis, they had to know the European Court of Human Rights, which has routinely affirmed lower courts on these issues, would be on their side if they cited public order concerns.

The same rationale has been used to deny a schoolteacher the right to wear her head scarf in the classroom, and to bar a university student from sitting for an exam while wearing a head scarf.

Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights is the key provision, and it lays out a broad conception of “the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion” in the 47 member states of the Council of Europe; this includes the right of a person “in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance.” However, a further clause allows for exceptions — limits on the manifestation of belief as “necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.”

Unfortunately, the European Court of Human Rights has shown time and again that a challenged state can satisfy these exceptions largely in the strength of unsubstantiated stereotypes (the notion of a burkini as a type of jihadist “uniform” comes to mind). One reason member states get away with this is the court’s consistent deference to national officials and judges — tipping the balance in favor of the government and against the plaintiff.

This deference has been institutionalized by the makeup of the court, since each member state gets one judge on the bench, and the court always includes the relevant national judge when it hears a case, either as a seven-judge chamber or a 17-strong “grand chamber.” (Recent Muslim religious-clothing cases have gone to the grand chamber.)

States also benefit from the court’s “margin of appreciation” doctrine, which gives wide latitude to member countries on issues of cultural identity, particularly in religious liberty cases. In the case of Muslim religious claims heard at the court, sweeping generalizations and unreasonable fears have often taken the place of rigorous legal reasoning and sound evidence.

The jurisprudence has been consistent over years. In 2001, in Dahlab v. Switzerland, the court held that for young pupils, seeing their teacher in a head scarf could be coercive because “the wearing of a head scarf might have some kind of proselytizing effect.” Since the wearing of a head scarf, the court found, “appears to be imposed on women by a precept which is laid down in the Quran,” that made the custom “hard to square with the principle of gender equality.” The court ruled that a woman in a hijab could not deliver “the message of tolerance, respect for others and, above all, equality and nondiscrimination that all teachers in a democratic society must convey to their pupils.”

In the 2005 case Sahin v. Turkey, the court addressed a religious liberty claim by a woman prohibited by the Turkish government from sitting for a university examination while wearing a head scarf. The court reiterated its reasoning from Dahlab, explaining that upholding the ban helped promote gender equality. It also furthered Turkey’s interest in “fighting extremism.” Here again, the woman in religious garb was simultaneously a victim and a threat.

In 2014, the court decided S.A.S. v. France, a case challenging France’s 2010 law banning face-covering veils, including the niqab and the burqa. Despite the far broader application of this ban, the court’s grand chamber upheld it on even squishier grounds than public safety. It ruled that banning the burqa helped preserve “the conditions of ‘living together.’ ” In other words, a woman wearing the burqa in public infringed the “rights and freedoms of others” who might be offended by it.

The same twisted logic is at play in the French ordinances against the burkini. To an American spectator, such bans probably appear a blatant restriction on religious liberty, or liberty generally, but what is striking is that the European jurisprudence upholding them speaks in the language of human rights. By couching prejudice and fear in the language of Article 9 exceptions, the court in effect uses human rights laws to limit human rights.

Source: The Guardian

When she was finally allowed to play we all went to watch her to support her and what she was wearing was totally inappropriate for a sports uniform – a skivvy, tracksuit pants, and her hijab, totally unsuitable for any type of sport. She looked like a tomato she was so red and hot!

So I went home and went looking for something that might be better for her to wear, sportswear for Muslim girls, and I couldn’t find anything, I knew there was nothing in Australia. It got me thinking because when I was a girl I missed out on sport – we didn’t participate in anything because we chose to be modest, but for my niece I wanted to find something that would adapt to the Australian lifestyle and western clothing but at the same time fulfil the needs of a Muslim girl.

So I sat down on my lounge room floor and designed something. I looked at the veil and took away a lot of the excess fabric, which made me nervous – would my Islamic community accept this? The veil is supposed to cover your hair and your shape, you just don’t shape anything around your body. But this was shaped around the neck. I thought, it’s only the shape of a neck, it doesn’t really matter.

Before I launched it I produced a sample with a questionnaire to find out what people would think – would you wear this? Would this encourage you to be more active? Play more sport? Swim? A lot of people in my community didn’t know how to accept this, but I developed it commercially and made a good business.

The burkini came to everyone’s attention when Surf Lifesaving Australia introduced a program to integrate Muslim boys and girls into surf lifesaving after the Cronulla riots – they had a young Muslim girl who wanted to compete in an event. She wore a burkini.

After September 11, the Cronulla riots, the banning of the veil in France, and the international backlash that came with it – about us being the bad people all because of a few criminals who do not speak on behalf of Muslims – I really didn’t want anyone to judge girls wearing these. It’s only a girl being modest.

It was about integration and acceptance and being equal and about not being judged. It was difficult for us at the time, the Muslim community, they had a fear of stepping out. They had fear of going to public pools and beaches and so forth, and I wanted girls to have the confidence to continue a good life. Sport is so important, and we are Australian! I wanted to do something positive – and anyone can wear this, Christian, Jewish, Hindus. It’s just a garment to suit a modest person, or someone who has skin cancer, or a new mother who doesn’t want to wear a bikini, it’s not symbolising Islam.

When I named it the burkini I didn’t really think it was a burqa for the beach. Burqa was just a word for me – I’d been brought up in Australia all my life, and I’d designed this swimsuit and I had to call it something quickly. It was the combination of two cultures – we’re Australians but we are also Muslim by choice. The burqa doesn’t symbolise anything here, and it’s not mentioned in the Qur’an and our religion does not ask us to cover our faces, it’s the wearer’s choice to do so. Burqa is nowhere in any Islamic text. I had to look the word up, and it was described as a kind of coat and cover-all, and at the other end you had the bikini, so I combined the two.

This negativity that is happening now and what is happening in France makes me so sad. I hope it’s not because of racism. I think they have misunderstood a garment that is so positive – it symbolises leisure and happiness and fun and fitness and health and now they are demanding women get off the beach and back into their kitchens?

This has given women freedom, and they want to take that freedom away? So who is better, the Taliban or French politicians? They are as bad as each other.

French police make woman remove clothing on Nice beach following Burkini ban

I don’t think any man should worry about how women are dressing – no one is forcing us, it’s a woman’s choice. What you see is our choice. Do I call myself a feminist? Yes, maybe. I like to stand behind my man, but I am the engine, and I choose to be. I want him to take all the credit, but I am the quiet achiever.

I would love to be in France to say this: you have misunderstood. And there more problems in the world to worry about, why create more? You’ve taken a product that symbolised happiness and joyfulness and fitness, and turned it into a product of hatred.

Also, what are the French values? What do you mean it doesn’t combine with French values, what does that mean? Liberty? You telling us what to wear, you telling us what not to do will drive women back into their homes – what do you want us to do then? There will be a backlash. If you are dividing the nation and not listening and not working towards something you are naturally going to have someone who is going to get angry. If you are pushing people away, and isolating them – this is definitely not a good thing for any politician to do, in any country.

I remember when I first tested the burkini. First I tested it in my bathtub, I had to make sure it worked. Then I had to test it by diving in it, so I went to the local pool to test that the headband would stay put, so I went to Roselands Pool, and I remember that everyone was staring at me – what was I wearing? I went right to the end of the pool and got on the diving board and dived in. The headband stayed in place, and I thought, beauty! Perfect!

It was my first time swimming in public and it was absolutely beautiful. I remember the feeling so clearly. I felt freedom, I felt empowerment, I felt like I owned the pool. I walked to the end of that pool with my shoulders back.

Diving into water is one of the best feelings in the world. And you know what? I wear a bikini under my burkini. I’ve got the best of both worlds.

Source: Stop the War Coalition

The killing of the two men in the borough of Queens was condemned as a hate crime from the local Muslim community in Queens, with local members of the Islamic community blaming Donald Trump, accusing him of stoking Islamophobia. Akongi was carrying about $1,000 in cash that was not taken during the shooting, police reported. Oscar Morel, 35, has denied charges he shot and killed the Muslim cleric and his assistant.

These events strike a chord as my beautiful father Mohammed Saleem was murdered on the streets of the UK just over 3 years ago. The police were reluctant to call this a hate crime, too. They investigated every other motive but hate crime – the most obvious possible motive, was not initially investigated. When we confronted West Midlands Police about our concerns with the investigation, we were shocked to discover that they were not even considering hate crime as a possible motive.

Dad was a practising Muslim and he enjoyed the serenity he found in his faith. It encompassed how he lived his life. Dad was keen to advocate education, he would often say there was no point in being a Muslim if one did not educate themselves because without good prospects a person could not fully support their family. Tragically, he was singled out and murdered on the very road he had lived on for over 30 years, having worked so hard to provide for his family. It ultimately transpired that the motive for his murder by a Ukrainian neo-Nazi was because he was brown and dressed like a Muslim.

The way we were treated by West Midlands Police demonstrated that not enough has changed since the Stephen Lawrence inquiry. The suspicion of the police, the surveillance we had placed on us and the Coroner’s failings in the judicial process left us with a very bitter taste. Much more needs to be done to address these failings. We found the police complaints process disorganised and confusing. Our complaints were ignored by the IPCC and time limits on responses were not met.

We need to address the pressing issue of Islamophobia and its increase over the last few years, much of which has been instigated by right-wing politicians and media on both sides of the Atlantic. Muslims should be embraced and respected like every other person in an inclusive society. We are human beings just like everyone else.  The media has to stop this hate fuelled reporting and our judiciary needs to review its processes around dealing with cases of hate crime, particularly when there is sustained targeting of people because of their identity.

My dad was an educated man who loved and respected this country. The brutal terrorist murder of my father, of the imams in Queens and of so many other Muslims around the world need to be recognised and addressed as Islamophobic hate crimes whenever they occur.

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Source: The Guardian. Salma Yaqoob, author of this article, is a former Birmingham city councillor. She is also head of the Birmingham Stop the War Coalition and a spokesperson for Birmingham Central Mosque.

It wasn’t so long ago that black people were viewed with suspicion and labelled as “muggers”. Today, Muslims are associated with “grooming” when the biggest grooming scandal has been in the Catholic church. To blame a whole race, ethnic or religious group for the actions of a few is racism – and this is what the Muslim community now faces. The Chilcot inquiry may have vindicated the millions of people, including Robin Cook, who opposed the Iraq war, but Muslims like myself who expressed concern about government policy will no doubt continue to be vilified as unpatriotic or even as extremist sympathisers.

The most chilling aspect of all this is that a whole industry has been created to promote Islamophobia and anti-Muslim prejudice. I was shocked to see a report showing that $206m (£159m) was spent on promoting hatred of American Muslims, and now wonder how many British Islamophobes are being funded by political groups or organisations?

Both the Brexit and London mayoral campaigns contained some ugly dog-whistles to Muslims – and some foghorns too, including from the prime minister. It seems there is a race to the bottom on who can be seen to be “toughest” on Muslims. Lynton Crosby has made a career out of it.

It is not only those engaged in politics like myself, London mayor Sadiq Khan or Baroness Sayeeda Warsi who receive abuse. The promotion of hatred and fear has been mainstreamed to the extent that there is now little outcry when a mosque is attacked, or when kids come home crying after being taunted for their faith, or when an elderly man like Mohammed Saleem is murdered. One recent survey suggested a 326% rise in anti-Muslim hate crimes in 2015.

Every Muslim I know has a story to tell. We are resigned to being blamed and vilified for the actions of any Muslim anywhere in the world. No matter how often we denounce the horrible atrocities carried out by some fanatics, we are still associated with them. No matter that this is as unfair and ridiculous as associating all white Christian men with Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik because he claimed to act as a Christian, or blaming Christianity itself for the genocidal actions of Radovan Karadzic because he described his war against Bosnian Muslims as “holy”.

As a child growing up in the 1980s, the racism and rejection faced by my parents’ generation were fables from the past. I could not then have imagined a world where hate crime against Muslims in the west would be increasing, not decreasing. Western Muslims have been portrayed as the enemy within for most of my children’s lives. Let me be clear – I still feel Britain is the best place to live. I have faith in its people, if not always in its leaders. I take hope from the great anti-war movement and the Equality Act, and comfort in the self-deprecating humour, the general agreement that queuing is the polite and decent thing to do, and of course, Marmite.

But yet again, we are faced with the “hijab/niqab/veil” debate, where the wardrobe choices of a tiny minority of women is invested with the power to undermine western culture and civilisation itself. Never has this debate taken into account nuns or Orthodox Jewish women, who also choose to cover themselves.

This summer the burkini has been banned in Corsica, Cannes and Villeneuve-Loubet. My sister-in-law returned from a family holiday in Alicante in Spain and related how local residents tried to prevent her swimming in the pool, even going to the trouble of organising a public meeting because her costume was “too covering”. Police had to intervene, proving that even on holiday there is no respite from the hysteria. Our very own Ukip has now also called for a ban on the veil.

Theresa May began her premiership with a promise of making Britain a country “that works for everyone”. A recent House of Commons women and equalities committee report highlighting the discrimination that Muslim women face in the workplace is welcome. It shines a spotlight on a reality that up until now has too often been ignored.

So let’s hope May’s pledge will lead to a rethink of the government’s Prevent strategy, which is helping to promote suspicion of all Muslims and cause prejudice within communities. A human rights group has warned that Prevent risks being counterproductive, as children as young as four are being wrongly identified as having been “radicalised” simply because of the way they pronounce words or wear their clothes. When my son’s school referred a group of Muslim pupils to the police for being on a WhatsApp group – without even contacting their parents – my son suffered sleepless nights. He also asked me if he would be safe if he stopped being a Muslim. The irony is that Prevent fosters the very climate of division and fear in which extremism grows.

While coverage of the Labour leadership contest descends into bizarre conspiracy theories, the contest is providing an opportunity for some debate of this important issue. The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has been refreshingly outspoken in his criticism of Prevent and its impact on Muslim youth. Owen Smith is a strong supporter of Prevent, and calls for more resources to be poured into the scheme, claiming it will foster better community relations in Britain.

Nadiya Hussain’s Great British Bake Off triumph is a great example of what integration looks like. But her experiences of anti-Muslim prejudice should be a wake-up call to all British politicians.