Siding with the Oppressor: The Pro-Islamist Left (pdf) was flagged over on Maryam Namazie’s blog yesterday. It brings together criticisms of many of Harry’s Place own favourite targets: Stop the War Coalition, Respect, George Galloway and UAF for example. There are some great reminders here of just how crap the StWC was and is.
These and other calls for secularism and opposition to Islamism were rejected by the Coalition, which explained that ‘we will have more people on our marches if we do not raise too much politics,’ and that ‘the call for secularism will alienate the hundreds and thousands of Muslims on our marches.’ (p.8)
And – although this is preaching to the converted here – the words of Ramzi Isalam are a useful reminder that this isn’t just a matter of some on the left naively but well-meaningly reaching out to those with horrible views (though with some that may be all it is, to be fair), but of coldly excluding dissenting Muslim and ex-Muslim voices.
OutRage! campaigner Ramzi Isalam, a gay Muslim who came to Britain to avoid being killed by Islamists in Algeria, said Qaradawi is ‘a cleric who provides theological justification for the homophobia of the people who wanted to kill me.’ He asked: ‘Why is the mayor prepared to have a dialogue with fundamentalists like Dr Qaradawi and the Muslim Association of Britain, but not with liberal and progressive Muslims and not with the victims of Islamist repression and dictatorship?’(p. 98)
It’s a really useful report. I do just want to pause on one point:
“In fact, Islamophobia is a political term used to scaremonger people into silence and stop criticism of Islam and Islamism by conflating criticism of religion and belief and of a far-Right political movement with an attack on Muslims.’ (p.47)
This is sometimes the case, certainly, and this publication provides plenty of evidence for this. But given that the word Islamophobia is so often used where anti-Muslim bigotry would work just as well – and anti-Muslim bigotry is tackled effectively in this companion publication which is a great source of information about organisations such as SIOA – I think it would be helpful to qualify that initial assertion about Islamophobia with a ‘sometimes’. This would still be compatible with objecting to the term.
