I Intend To Escape ......................And Come Back

Two Paradoxes of British Counter-Terrorism

Yesterdays Telegraph had a piece on east London's Abu Basir al-Tartusi, formerly of the al-Ansar Institute in Poplar, who is currently fighting the Assad regime in Syria. You can view his website here.

Duncan Gardham's Telegraph article closed with a quote from a Scotland Yard spokesman:

"Public safety is our priority and we will seek to prosecute individuals who travel overseas in support of terrorist activity in any country. We also recognise the risk that violent extremism poses for vulnerable young people in the UK and we actively engage with communities to tackle this issue". 

It is never a good idea to make threats you cannot keep. Duncan Gardham states 'security sources' believe up to 50 Britons could be fighting in Syria. Does anyone believe the Crown Prosecution Service are going to prosecute 50 British Jihadis? Secondly consider the term 'terrorist activity' in that quote. It assumes that the Assad government is legitmate and that armed resistance to it is terrorism. Yet a succession of British allies appear to be directly supporting that armed resistance. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem has named, to the United Nations, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Libya. He also complained about other nations assisting this rebellion - including the United States and France. We could easily add Britain to this list - £5 million was given by Foreign Secretary William Hague to Syrian rebels in August.  Given the 'non-lethal assistance' the British government is giving the rebels, can we really prosecute British Jihadists for going a stage further?

Secondly, it is amusing, although slightly disconcerting, when police officers adopt the language of social workers. The description of 'vulnerable young people' has always been one of the oddest, and most patronising parts of the Prevent counter-radicalisation strategy. Here, young British Muslims are treated literally like children, at risk from sinister older men who groom them for terrorism. Oddly enough in forty years of conflict in Northern Ireland, no one, on either the Republican or Loyalist side, ever seems to have been 'vulnerable'. We could say a lot of things about the people who were attending Abu Basir al-Tartusi's classes at Poplar's al-Ansar Institute. Vulnerable is not one of them. 

Power, Putin, Pussy Riot and the Patriarch

It seems we can add the Russian Orthodox Church to the depressingly lengthy list of resurgent religions.

On Monday 1 October at 8pm Lucy Ash of Radio 4 will examine the power of the church, and its political and economic influence. If you want to know what Pussy Riot were fighting against - tune in.

Australia Catching Up?

Every Englishman knows that in cultural terms, what we do today, someone in Australia catches up with five to ten years later.

Earlier this week evidence emerged that this trend also applies in politico-religious terms. Here is a picture from the infamous demonstration outside Regents Park mosque in 2006 against the Danish Mohammed cartoons:

And below is a picture from the demonstration in Sydney's central business district on Sunday, against the film 'Innocence of Muslims':

The Aussies are catching up, but as on most issues, are at least six years behind us Brits........

A Morning Devoted To Salman Rushdie

Radio 4 have two programmes on the morning of Monday 17 September devoted to Salman Rushdie.

At 0900 he is interviewed by Andrew Marr on Start The Week, whilst that is followed at 0945 by the first of five extracts from Joseph Anton, the book covering his period in hiding from the 1989 fatwa by the Ayatollah Khomeini. 

You can order Joseph Anton here. I think Rushdie has become rather likeable in recent years, losing that slightly shrill, pontificating side to his personality. I take it this is because the 1980s leftie that sleeps inside so many of us, was knocked out of him by events. Something  understandable if you have millions of religious lunatics wanting to murder you, and their liberal apologists making excuses for them.

Joseph Anton is a rather different man altogether.

The Obsequious Nature of Support For Salma Yaqoob

Salma Yaqoob's resignation from the Respect Party last night brought much nashing of the teeth.

It was genuinely painful for some, especially for a certain type of white male leftie who had given her unconditional support over the years. If a hijab could have icon status, hers would be in the corner of many a middle class living room, placed somewhat strategically above Sunday's Observer and those fading anti-war posters. To see where I am coming from on this, do look at the pained tweets last night from Eddie Truman, Tom Griffin,  Dr Tad or the blogpost of Dr Eoin Clarke.

If you want to understand the dynamics of a political party or movement, studying its literature at times of crisis or split is indicative. When the Respect Party split between supporters of George Galloway and the Socialist Workers Party in 2007-8, it was noticeable that every external criticism of Respect that had been made, was seemingly adopted by one of the two wings in the split.
Suddenly Galloway-ites noticed the sinister Leninist practices of the SWP. The SWP discovered the communal tendencies of Respect - in Tower Hamlets where Chris Harman dished the dirt on the curry millionaires and Islamic Forum of Europe figures who actually ran the party, and Birmingham, where a white female SWP'er, Helen Salmon, was blocked from a council candidacy in favour of a slate of men of Pakistani heritage. One of these, Harman noted, had been in the Conservative Party just three months before.

Ultimately for all the talk of how refreshing and revolutionary Yaqoob was - here after all was a woman wearing a hijab who's party supported abortion rights (even if its MP never did) - Yaqoob was at one level a deeply Conservative figure. On the 'community leaders' critics saw as delivering block votes for Respect's Muslim candidates, she wrote:

"The single biggest reason such individuals acquire weight and influence is not wealth, it is reputation". So that's OK then. This 'revolutionary' figure took umbrage on behalf  of all those maligned "It is insulting to our voters and supporters to reduce the prestige which certain individuals have, to some form of patronage or favour they dispense".

Salma Yaqoob was also quick to do that most conservative of acts - to play the race card. Helen Salmon was accused of "having a problem with Asian candidates" - the type of accusation that could be made in seconds, but that could destroy Salmon on the left. When Harman alleged businessmen in Tower Hamlets were using the practice of pocket members (men who are paid to join a party just before selection meetings, in order to vote for a particular candidate) Yaqoob responded with this extraordinary retort:

"Bangladeshi members in Tower Hamlets have already had plenty of experience of condescending white members demanding ID from them as though they were having to pass an immigration entry test".

I don't share the view that a politics minus the above is diminished or deficient.

If this is what Clarke, Griffin and Truman consider 'progressive' politics - I am glad I am on the outside looking in. More seriously, their response is an increasingly common one to Muslim political or politico-religious actors. On the one hand they receive racist abuse and threats from the likes of the English Defence League, on the other they receive its mirror opposite. The submissive, supine, uncritical support of the last century left. The pro-Livingstone wing of the Labour Party was salivating last night at the prospect that Saint Salma may be persuaded to join the Labour Party. And so it continues.

In this world, nuanced, critical responses appear impossible.  I almost feel sorry for Salma Yaqoob this morning. On balance though, our politics are healthier without Respect, and they are probably healthier without her.

(The quotes in this article all came from the 2008 Socialist Resistance "Respect: Documents of the Crisis". Biased as it is towards the Galloway faction, it is essential reading.)

 

The New Religious Lobbyist At Work

Inayat Bunglawara cut his political teeth in the campaign against Salman Rushdie's novel Satanic Verses.

The days of fatwa's and book burning are however long gone, at least for him. Check out this approach to Tom Holland, producer of Channel 4's recent controversial documentary on the origins of Islam.

 

@holland_tom Would u like to meet over lunch or dinner? Eating and meeting always nice!

— Inayat Bunglawala (@inayatb) September 5, 2012

Citizen Khan: A Few Comments

I really enjoyed the BBC comedy Citizen Khan, which had its second episode on BBC1 earlier this week.

As might be expected, the programme has created some controversy, with complaints made to the BBC, and criticism by Muslim academic Leon Moosavi. Yesterday, Birmingham University academic Chris Allen wrote a discerning piece, arguing the programme was neither racist nor Islamophobic - it just wasn't, in his opinion, very funny.

I can't remember who said it (Jerry Sadowitz?) but all comedy is at the expense of someone. That bucket of water in Laurel and Hardy, or the rolling pin in a Carry On film, eventually has to hit someone. In Citizen Khan, the bulk of the jokes hit Mr Khan himself. His pomposity, obsessive social climbing, his inability to relate to any other member of his family, his ability to blunder into embarrassing sexual misunderstandings and the fact he is manipulated with ease by the female members of his household - all whilst resolutely acting as if he is the king of the castle. These staples of comedy should be familiar to anyone who has watched a British sit-com in the last forty years. Citizen Khan may be set in Sparkhill, but remove some of the religious content and it could just as easily be the Smith family in Stockport or the Jones family in Swansea.

One thing Jerry Sadowitz certainly did say was that it is dangerous to leave certain groups of people, be they a religious or racial group, out of comedy. What does it tell us about our society if a particular group is left out of a section of our social discourse, permanently? I would not want to live in such a society, and I suspect, deep down, neither would many others.
Over 20 years ago I saw Jerry Sadowitz play Wolverhampton Polytechnic. Part of his routine concerned the ever younger family members he had been served by in his local Asian corner shop - one day he was convinced he would go in and be sold a packet of cigarettes by an embryo. For a moment the crowd hesitated (Wolves Poly was a pretty left-liberal place from 1988-91) then the audience roared with laughter. They were mature enough to realise Sadowitz was not some Bernard Manning figure solely disparaging one section of the community he knew nothing about - he was observing, in a exaggerated way, a small part of all our lives.

And that is what Citizen Khan tries to do. Leon Moosavi argues the programme reinforces stereotypes about Asians and Muslims to an non Asian audience. That remains to be seen. But if British Asian comedy writers observe humour in the Muslim community (or any other community) who are we to say they cannot articulate that?

Ultimately - if it is funny, it works. And I suspect enough people, from a range of backgrounds, will find Citizen Khan works.

I've Told You A Million Times, Don't Exaggerate

I carry no brief for President Obama, but this is ludicrous, and not untypical of a strand of Islamist discourse that is very rarely comented upon. And never, in my experience, commented upon by UK academics:

When NATO killed millions of Muslims, Barack Obama laughed & danced, but when White men killed Sikhs he issued this PR: whitehouse.gov/the-press-offi…

— Syed Adeeb (@syedadeeb) August 7, 2012

The Worst Definition of Secularism Yet?

Jean-Yves Camus is a researcher at the French think tank IRIS.

A columnist on Hope Not Hate magazine, Camus' debut in Issue 1 of Hope Not Hate back in March saw him examine the rise of Marine Le Pen of the Front National, and her attempts to repackage the party founded by her fascist father. In France the rise of Islam over the past three decades has arguably been even more controversial than it has in the UK, due to French concepts of laicite - a historical form of secularism that seeks to keep religion out of the state. 

Camus should be well placed to explain this to English readers, and how (allegedly) the French far-right has begun to make use of this concept for its own aims. Instead, Camus writes of Ms Le Pen:

"Unlike her father, Marine Le Pen focuses on Islam much more than the old French colonial and anti-black and anti-Arab racist stereotypes. Also she opposes Islam in the name of secularism, a very French concept that is hostile to religions having an influence on people's minds. Traditionally promoted by the Left, this has been taken up by the FN (and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and the Swiss Oskar Freysinger) as a way of promoting Islamophobia in a subtle way".

Two problems here. Firstly it is not hard to see how others will use such an analysis to contaminate secularism per se. Follow UK Islamists like Mo Ansar on Twitter, and that is already part of his game.  Secondly what is Camus talking ablout when he offers the definition of secularism that he does - what else is religion for other than to influence people's minds? Is it supposed to influence people's shoulders or their feet instead?

Lets hope Camus' original meaning has been somehow lost in translation.

 

Terrorism Researchers: Remember Your Script Today

As the trial of Anders Breivik reaches a conclusion in Oslo, it is important that academics and analysts remember their script over the next few days.

Breivik's turn towards terrorism was influenced by racist and Islamophobic discourses. We must therefore counter these, in order to ensure no more Breivik's emerge. Jihadist actors like Toulouse gunman Mohamed Merah are not influenced by discourses within Islam, and are certainly not religious actors. To counter such currents, we need to change our foreign policy and to fight racism.

As you were.

Pictures of Masonic Jewels

A few months ago I was briefly in possession of a small collection of what are known as Masonic Jewels - the medals of a former Freemason from the United Grand Lodge of england and a member of a similar body - the Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes.

They belonged to my former neighbour and reflect a little snatch of history - especially that of the Second World War and post-War colonial period. In a way those days never really leave us - one of the jewels is marked Cyrenica - a part of Libya that is again associated with demands for independence. The other locations - Oman, Cyprus, Iraq and Egypt all reflect RAF postings in the dog days of empire.

I post one of my pictures below, and the rest are to be seen, with my other collections of photographs, lower down the page on the right hand side.

Oh - and for all the conspiracy theorists that pass through this site - no I am not a Freemason.

Pawn To H6?

I have just finished David Edmonds and John Eidinow's history of the 1972 world chess championship match in Reykjavik between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky, appropriately entitled "Bobby Fischer Goes To War". 

It is hard not to feel slightly disturbed by Fischer, and that is being generous. Spassky emerges as a gentleman who acquiesces to most of the challenger's demands to simply allow the game to proceed, and who should really have walked out when, 2-0 down in the match, Fischer demanded to play the vital third game in a closed room. At times it is tempting to imagine that the Soviet report which concluded Fischer was a psychopath may even have had a grain of truth. 

In between the obsession with Jews, Communists and religious mania, what was in Fischer's mind? Living in Germany in the 1980s he spent time with the German grandmaster Michael Bezold, who states:

"He was obsessed with a game in the 1960s, and the question was whether or not to move the pawn to h6. This was the only question. And he said he'd been analysing this game for more than thirty years, and he couldn't figure out whether its better to play h6 or not. It was fantastic."

Anyone who has ever been fanatical about anything will either recognise themselves in that quote, or be blown away by its intensity. 

Edmonds and Eidinow were able to find to assemble a remarkable series of interviews for their study, from Cold War warriors such as Henry Kissinger to Spassky himself. Perhaps not surprisingly they did not obtain one with Fischer himself, who died this year, an exile from the United States. The first in what may be a series of new biographies, by Frank Brady, is scheduled to appear early next year. Whether this work will build on Edmonds and Eidinow's research into Fischer's family background (which interestingly was both Jewish and Communist!) remains to be seen. 

Reaching Out In Hackney?

An interesting insight into how local government increasingly empowers religious organisations and institutions in Hackney. 

On Friday I had three photocopied sheets of paper put through my letter box from Hackney Homes. These advised me I could attend a housing outreach surgery at Suleymaniye Mosque on Kingsland Road. Two hour surgeries are held on the last Friday of each month. 

Why anyone on my estate would wish to use this service is hard to see. Firstly the Mosque is further away than the Neighbourhood Office, indeed you would have to walk considerably further, in the opposite direction, to reach it. Secondly an outreach surgery will not have access to the full range of staff and services that the Neighbourhood Office does, or the free telephone line to report repairs. 

So what is the point? Well, in management speak such actions 'tick a box' and allow Hackney Homes to state that they are positively engaging with the community. For the mosque, which is also known as the UK Turkish Islamic Cultural Centre, it raises their profile, puts them in the Council's good books and gives them an elevated status over secular institutions in the same community. To quote from the mosques summary on the Hackney Council website:

"The centre aims to relieve distress, sickness and poverty amongst the Muslim community and aims for the advancement of Islam."

Should Councils be reinforcing the prominence of religious institutions in their communities? Many will say not. The problems that can occur when one institution is chosen, and countless others are not, should be obvious to all. Secondly I am all for relieving sickness, distress and poverty amongst everyone, but fail to see how the advancement of Islam does this. Indeed a glance at those societies where Islam is the dominant form of governance suggests greater sickness, distress and poverty than here in the West. And that is without even going into the position of women in those societies. 
Should Hackney Homes be working with an organisation that seeks the 'advancement of Islam'? It is certainly ironic that the Turkish state was predicated on the belief that progress and advancement could only come from reducing the role of religion in government, yet here in the UK the opposite process now seems to be actively encouraged! 

As for myself, the last time I heard from Hackney Homes was at the end of May, when they wrote to me with regards to a housing issue I raised. They aimed to send me a proper reply by 3rd June. Over three weeks later, I'm still waiting. Perhaps they could try some outreach in my direction one Friday?