SOCIALIST UNITY

My attention has recently been drawn to the following interesting article by the arch-Decent, Marko Attila Hoare, a Director of the Henry Jackson Society. Hoare argues that:

A great struggle is brewing all over Europe and beyond. On the one side stands the liberal order and its defenders, representing the values of secularism, internationalism, cosmopolitanism, pluralism and respect for human rights. On the other stands the forces of reaction, which itself is composed of two rival but essentially similar wings. Extremist Muslims (an unrepresentative minority among the Muslim communities of the democratic West) and certain fellow travellers on the extreme Left represent one wing of the anti-liberal reaction, and assault the liberal order under the banner of anti-Semitism (or ‘anti-Zionism’), anti-Westernism, anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism.

But it is the other wing that is the Western liberal order’s more dangerous enemy – if only because non-Muslims vastly outnumber Muslims, so there is a much larger constituency for this current of reaction to draw from. This current represents the white nativist reaction against the liberal order: anti-cosmopolitan, anti-EU, often anti-secular, but above all extremely nationalist, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant. It is on the basis of hostility to Islam and to immigration that the new far-right is mounting its assault on liberal values and the Western liberal world.

The new far-right is populist; it employs the language of the gutter and upholds the morality of the mob. Anti-Islamic and anti-immigrant prejudice are merely the means by which it seeks to attack the liberal order, but the real target is the liberal order itself. Borrowing from the lexicon of the radical left, it speaks in the name of the ‘people’ and the ‘working class’ – or more revealingly, of the ‘white working class’, whose values it claims to be defending from a decadent liberal elite. It presents anti-racism, religious tolerance and political correctness as elitist values, against which it asserts its own form of moral relativism: it champions racism and Islamophobia among the native white majority – sometimes termed euphemistically the ‘white working class’ – as expressions of a healthy aversion to liberal elites that allegedly are soft on Muslims and allegedly favour immigrants over natives. It repackages the far-right parties’ vulgar, racist voters as noble rebels against multiculturalism.

Into this equation we now bring the Eustonite or ‘Decent’ Left. This political current of leftists and liberals arose in opposition to the left-liberal mainstream’s betrayal of liberal values – a betrayal manifested variously in apologias for Islamist terrorism, sympathy for dictators and ethnic-cleansers and flirtation with anti-Semitism. There is a superficial confluence between the Decent Left and the new far right, in that both arose as critiques of the Western liberal mainstream. But these two critiques are opposites, for whereas the Decent Left criticises the liberal mainstream because it doesn’t uphold liberal values properly, the new far right attacks the liberal mainstream because it does uphold liberal values. The Decent Left wants a better, tougher liberalism; the new far right opposes liberalism altogether.

He makes some interesting points about the new far right, that I wish to later acknowledge. But first let me take issue with Hoare’s characterisation of the “liberal order”. This is necessary in order to rebut his incorrect view that social liberalism is under any threat from Muslims and the left..

It is Hoare’s contention that the values of “secularism, internationalism, cosmopolitanism, pluralism and respect for human rights” represent a coherent body of liberalism and are challenged only by extremists. But if we unpack this a little further we might note that in Britain at least, secularism per se has been a less dominant strand of socially liberal thought than an inclusive tolerance of different forms of religious observance, born out of Anglican latitudinarianism but extended into multi-culturalism. For example, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Williams, is not an enemy of social liberalism, but an intelligent advocate of a consensual and multi-stranded approach towards inclusivity and convergence upon liberal values based upon mutual respect, and empowering choices for those who have twin loyalties to their faith community and to the wider society.

In formal terms, secularism has been remarkable unsuccessful in England, where the Queen is head of the Church, the Church is an established part of the state, and Bishops sit in parliament. However, a generally relaxed attitude of religious tolerance, and the empowering options of civic and non-religious forms of marriage, birth registration and funerals, have restricted the influence of religion broadly to only those who voluntarily wish to follow its teaching, and their children. This has not been achieved by active campaigns for secularism or atheism, but by a civilised muddling along together, where socially liberal values have prevailed because people have freely chosen to adopt them; and where faith communities have adapted, over time, to the dominant consensus.

The term “respect for human rights” is also an incredibly loaded one. It is well worth considering the critique of liberal views of individual rights from within the mainstream, social-democratic tradition of labourism. In R H Tawney’s 1932 book “Equality”, Tawney discusses how Enlightenment concepts of individual liberty were a reaction against the feudal institution of legal estates, where previoulsy individuals had different rights and duties depending upon their social class. Universal rights were therefore counter-posed to rights which derived from feudal estate. That is, liberty was conceived of in terms of abolition of legal privilege, and legal disqualifications

However, as Tawney observed, once the legal impediments to economic enterprise were removed by universalism of individual rights: social and economic inequality would assert themselves so that the rich have power to exercise their economic leverage.

Tawney argued that the greatest form of liberty we should aspire to is the protection of the economically powerless so that they are not compelled to follow the will of the economically powerful.

Liberal parliamentary democracy in the West is a political achievement, but we need to draw two caveats. Firstly that key economic decisions in our society are made by individuals operating in the interests of private corporations who are not subject to democratic control, and within which corporations there is no meaningful democracy. Secondly, stable parliamentary democracy is built upon a cultural presumption that there will be widespread respect for the rule of law, and this has arisen over a long historical period where democratic rights have been acquired by ordinary people struggling for them; these conditions cannot be reproduced overnight, and participatory democracy has to organically grow out of a society’s own experience.

The British state provides little or no protection for the general population to prevent the selfish interests of certain powerful corporations from causing economic and social catastrophe, and as such while it offers individual democratic rights, it does not offer collective democratic constraint of how the most important decisions for our political-economy are made. Again R H Tawney argues that true liberty is the protection of individuals from the selfish exercise of economic power, and that an excessive concentration upon legal equality, and liberty only in the formal political sphere, without a commensurate economic equality can mask the real lack of substantive liberty of those who do not have economic power.

In Britain the law is fair: it will punish both the millionaire and the beggar for stealing bread. Our respect for free speech is also fair: Rupert Murdoch has a right to set up a media empire, but so does every cleaner and shop-worker. Our democratic system is fair: it gives one vote to the unemployed woman in a tower block, and one vote to the CEO of a major investment bank. This is the reality behind “universal human rights”.

Western democracies should not be so smug. A state which offers greater protection for the living standards of the population from the arbitrary power of Capital, may be protecting individual rights more effectively than one which allows individuals to write or say anything they want, but where real political and economic power lies with capitalist corporations, and who will use that power corruptly regardless of its impact to the general population.

The challenge to the liberal values which Hoare lists does not only come from “extremists”, but also from within mainstream social democracy, where there has been a labourist tradition seeking to transcend liberalism, in order to acheive social-justice and equality.

In China for example, where they are overcoming enormous inequality and where there has been little tradition of respect for the rule of law, then the formalities of Western liberal democracy might in fact be a threat to state sovereignty and of economic prosperity, and “democratic elections” could be manipulated by powerful outside forces hostile to the constraints which the Chinese government places upon the power of private capital. It is no coincidence that those most prominent advocates within China of adopting Western style democracy, like He Qinglian, are also strong supporters of Hayek, who wish to see Thatcherite liberalisation of the PRC’s economy.

Because the political and social history is different, then transposing norms and modalities of Western liberalism to China would not lead to the same results. That is not to say that the People’s republic should not aim for the same political liberties that the West enjoys, but it needs to be cogniscent of the social risks, and the political agendas of those advancing rapid “democratisation”; and adopt change at its own pace.

Recognising that the collapse of the USSR and the socialist societies of Eastern Europe saw more losers than winners in those countries does not make you an apologist for dictators. Recognising that the American invasion of Iraq has been a catastrophe for most Iraqis does not make you a sympathiser of Saddam.

The Decent left, like Hoare, mistook the form for content, and mistook the rhetoric for reality. Whatever threat was posed by Islamist extremism in Afghanistan and Pakistan and through the agency of Al Qaeda, and whatever domestic terror was presided over by Saddam Hussein and his Ba’athist thugs; the naked militarist agenda of the American neo-con right offered no solutions, and would deliver only escalation and exacerbation.

So we should take with a large pinch of salt the claim from Hoare that there is a major threat to Western liberalism, which comes from

Extremist Muslims (an unrepresentative minority among the Muslim communities of the democratic West) and certain fellow travellers on the extreme Left [who] represent one wing of the anti-liberal reaction, and assault the liberal order under the banner of anti-Semitism (or ‘anti-Zionism’), anti-Westernism, anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism.

This is a fairy story, not only because (as Hoare himself acknowledges) the social forces represented are marginal, but also because the so-called “liberal order and its defenders” cannot be so neatly distanced from the illiberality of the neo-con project, and the naked big-power politics that forced the Washington consensus upon developing countries, forcing free-market economic liberalisation to the disastrous cost of their populations.

However, for all these criticisms, Hoare seems, (for want of a better word) a decent sort. The Eustonite politics of some who supported the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were, in my view, naïve not wicked; and their commitment to anti-racism, anti-sexism and religious toleration is genuine, not feigned.

Hoare’s observation of new synthesis between some parts of the former Decent left with the new right is therefore significant, as an insider’s judgement:

The blog Harry’s Place provides a forum that brings the two currents of opposition to the left-liberal mainstream together. Harry’s Place bloggers are Eustonite or ‘Decent’ left-wingers, and focus in particular on exposing and opposing radical Islam and human rights abuses in the Islamic world (and elsewhere), and their Western left-wing apologists. However, the comments boxes of this blog attract members of both groups opposing the liberal mainstream: the Decent Left and the new far right. And although the two groups are in principle antithetical, there is a very real danger that this will be forgotten and that a synthesis will be formed, in which case Harry’s Place will have acted as incubator for a monster.

Apart from their common hostility to the liberal mainstream and to Islamists (or to Muslims in general, as the case may be), the Decent Left and the new far right have one other uniting factor: some members of both currents sometimes speak in the language of class, or champion the ‘working class’. But unlike for the traditional left, in this case the language of class is used not to uphold social justice, but on the contrary, to justify ignorance, vulgarity, racism and xenophobia among the white majority, now repackaged as the ‘white working class’. In a new manifestation of moral relativism, any objection to white racism or Islamophobia can be portrayed as elitist anti-working-class snobbery. Just as some will condemn as ‘Islamophobic’ any criticism of Muslim anti-Semitism or misogyny, so others will condemn as ‘elitist’ any criticism of white-working-class racism.

Harry’s Place is a blog in which comments have been posted and left undeleted by the moderators, calling for ships carrying illegal immigrants to Britain to be torpedoed, or equating ordinary Muslims with Nazis, or calling for all Palestinians to be expelled from the West Bank. Leaving such comments undeleted may be justified on the grounds of freedom of speech, but I have come reluctantly to believe that one or two of the HP bloggers are somewhat unwilling to fall out with the far-right commenters who frequent the blog – and by ‘far right’ I don’t mean the actual BNP, but the Muslim-hating, immigrant-hating bigots who are one step away from it.

It is worth reading in full Hoare’s description of his own experience, and of the sexist bullying of Laurie Penny. Penny seems to particularly wind up a number of these people, because she is more talented than she has any right to be, and combines that with having the cheek to be a thoroughly charming and personable young woman.

But perhaps a better illustration of the synthesis of the Decent left and the new right is the case of Harry’s Place pet “intellectual”, a minor academic called Edmund Standing.

Standing has sought to make a name for himself with articles attacking the BNP, and in particular for his farcical report “The BNP and the On-line Fascist Network (PDF)”  written for the Centre for Social Cohesion think-tank, and in his articles for eGov on “Combating the BNP”, here and here.

There is something remarkable about Standing’s analysis of the BNP, as Sunny Hundal points out:

The only time Edmund Standing mentions Muslims with relation to the BNP is when he blames Muslim orgs. Earlier he defended this by saying that the BNP’s issue is still race, not religion. I suppose the fact that most Muslims are brown-skinned folks and can thus be demonised more easily is irrelevant? I suppose the fact there was prejudice in the past directed at Catholics and Jews because of their religion is also irrelevant?

This sort of thinking isn’t just silly and easily dismissed – but it’s ideologically driven. It looks like the aim of people who write this guff isn’t to actually combat the BNP but simply bash the people they dislike (lefties, Muslim orgs). The BNP is simply used as the conduit for that bashing.

As iEngage argues about the CSC report:

“The report catalogues at length the prevalence of anti-semitic material on blogsites of BNP activists and neo-Nazi sympathizers, but the report’s blunder, and it’s a gaping one, is the near absence of mention and documentation of the BNP’s explicit anti-Muslim bigotry.”

Islamophobia Watch has pointed out that the Centre for Social Cohesion, which employed Standing to write the report is run by Douglas Murray, author of “Neo-conservatism, why we need it”, and whose own views on Muslims are as follows:

“”It is late in the day, but Europe still has time to turn around the demographic time-bomb which will soon see a number of our largest cities fall to Muslim majorities. It has to. All immigration into Europe from Muslim countries must stop…. Conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board: Europe must look like a less attractive proposition. We in Europe owe – after all – no special dues to Islam. We owe them no religious holidays, special rights or privileges. From long before we were first attacked it should have been made plain that people who come into Europe are here under our rules and not theirs. There is not an inch of ground to give on this one.””

Standing’s views on Islam are just as forthright. He describes the Qur’an in the following terms: “I hope to demonstrate to the reader quite what a divisive, primitive, and insulting book it actually is “; and he condemns ” the hateful attitude it takes towards those who do not accept Islam”, and demands: “how can texts like those I have just cited do anything but instill a negative or contemptuous attitude towards non-Muslims? ”

This is how Edmund Standing explains the turn of the BNP towards Islamophobia:

 “I think of one organisation in particular that claims to speak for British Muslims and has for a number of years now been issuing ‘advice’ to the Government on how to tackle Islamic extremism. It condemns Islamist terrorism but at the same time produces documents demanding vast changes to the way society is run, whether than be in education, employment, or the public sphere in general, while routinely denouncing anyone who dares to question its agenda as ‘Islamophobic’ and ‘racist’.
I think of a group that deliberately fosters a sense of Muslim self-pity and a victim mentality (just as the BNP deliberately fosters white self-pity) at the same time as showing its own very flawed commitment to social cohesion through, for example, boycotting Holocaust Memorial Day.

The disgraceful slandering of anyone who dares criticise Islamist politics, or even specific aspects of Islamic doctrine as ‘Islamophobic’ and ‘racist’ is all too common, not just among Muslim activists but also among large segments of the so-called ‘left’, as is the manipulation of the discourse of anti-racism in an attempt to further an Islamist agenda.

Such false accusations of bigotry and racism have been thrown at perfectly decent and anti-racist individuals, and have the potential to ruin their lives and careers. When the ‘race card’ or in this case the ‘religion card’ is played too often, people start to get fed up. There is a real danger that people are starting to feel ‘well, they’re going to call me racist anyway so I might as well vote for the BNP’.”

So there, we have it, the rise of the BNP is at least partly the responsibility of those uppity Muslims, and what Standing claims is their sense of victimhood and their unreasonable demands.

Standing’s belief that the BNP’s Islamophobia is only superficial populism to hide their real racist and anti-Semitic agenda is also deeply problematic, because it implies that whereas racism and anti-Semitism would be really bad, Islamophobia is not a problem in its own right, and its victims have brought it on themselves.

Harry’s Place still likes to position itself as part of the centre-left, and in so far as there used to be a continuity with the pro-war but social-democratic Eustonite Decents, that may not have been a completely unrealistic description.

However, the rupture between Marko Atilla Hoara and Harry’s Place is symptomatic that the continuum of politics which the Decent left used to represent is itself fracturing, and some of the Decents, like Harry’s Place, have capitulated entirely to the far-right.

Mona Eltahawy recently wrote a substantive contribution to the debate over the banning of the Niqab in France, a measure which she supports

An abridged form of her argument is quoted below, but I urge you to read it in full here. I disagree with her, but her points are serious and worthy of consideration.

Some have tried to present the ban as a matter of Islam vs. the West. It is not. First, Islam is not monolithic. It, like other major religions, has strains and sects. Many Muslim women — despite their distaste for the European political right wing — support the ban precisely because it is a strike against the Muslim right wing.

Some have likened this issue to Switzerland’s move last year to ban the construction of minarets. On the one hand, it is preposterous to compare women’s faces — their identity — to a stone pillar. Minarets are used to issue a call to prayer; they are a symbol of Islam. The niqab, the full-length veil that has openings only for the eyes, is a symbol only for the Muslim right.

The strains of Islam that promote face veils do not believe in the concept of a woman’s right to choose and describe women as needing to be hidden to prove their “worth.” Salafism and Wahhabism preach that women will burn in hell if they are not covered from head to toe — whether they live in Saudi Arabia or France. There is no choice in such conditioning. That is not a message Muslims learn in our holy book, the Koran, nor is the face veil prescribed by the majority of Muslim scholars.

Europe’s liberals must ask themselves why they have been silent. It is clear that Europe’s political right — other countries have similar bans in the works — does not care about Muslim women or their rights.

But Muslims must ask themselves the same question: Why the silence as some of our women fade into black, either as a form of identity politics or out of acquiescence to Salafism?

Mona’s argument is that the traditions within Islam which require the covering of the face, she specifically refers to Salafism and Wahhabism, are particularly obscurantist minority currents. We could also acknowledge localised cultural factors within traditional Muslim societies where face covering has been common, and which have been elevated to religious significance.

Now I am a little confused by Mona’s distinction between Wahhabism and Salafism, my understanding is that Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab was the founder of the Salafi interpretation of Islam, a literally fundamentalist reading of Islam which regards the practice of Muslim society in the first generations following Mohammed ( Salaf is an ancestor) as being perfect. Wahhabism is usually regarded as the same thing as Salafism.

Wahhabism was a relatively marginal sect confined to around 20% of the population of the Arabian pennsula, but gained importance when the tribal base of the Wahhabi adherent, Ibn Saud, was promoted by British tanks and aeroplanes to consolidate Salafi rule in the new Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Salafism has since gained political prominence as the form of Islam historically projected by the Saudi state as a pan-Islamic alternative to Communism, pan-Arabism and the Shia populism of Iran. But it has also formed the ideological underpinning of opposition to Saudi rule in Arabia, for example through the Committee for the Defence of the Legitimate Rights of the Saudi People (CDLR) which points to the personal corruption, decadence and pro-Western links of the Saud ruling family. The close ideological linkage between the official promotion of Salafism by the Saudi state, and the Wahhabi opposition to the Saud family is personified in the key transitional figure of Osama Bin Ladin; and it explains the linkeage between official Saudi promotion of Taliban rule in Afghanistan, and the anti-American activity of privileged members of the Saudi elite via Al Qaeda, while at the same time Saudi Arabia remains a client state of the USA.

Mona Eltahawy is therefore completely correct to identify a far-right strand within Islamic identity politics, and that some who promote the wearing of the veil are deeply misogynistic.

However, we need to unpack this concept of an Islamic identity a little further.

During a recent discussion of the French ban on this site, Rachel posted a very interesting link to the website “Women Living Under Muslim laws” which made the following quite acute point:

However, lesser known is the fact that particular styles of ‘Islamic’ dress being imposed and adopted often have no basis in the tradition of the country and are being imported from other Muslim contexts to further specific political ends. For example in Sudan (after the coup led by the National Islamic Front in 1989), the “Islamic Dress Law” effectively banned the traditional Sudanese women’s dress (”Toab”) in favour of ‘Islamic’ dress. The Sudanese state successfully imposed this new outfit onto women civil servants by prohibiting any woman dressed otherwise from entering government offices. The new dress code was identical to the Iranian ‘model’ and, in fact, Iran financed the mass production of these uniforms.

It is precisely the invocation of “tradition” and “indigenous values” which blurs the fact that practices and legislations supposed to be “Islamic” are in fact carefully crafted to fit the agenda of conservative Muslim forces.

Where women do endorse particular ‘Muslim’ dress codes as a marker of identity and consciously choose to adopt specific styles of dress in order to assert their own identity - religious or otherwise - this is invariably based on a homogenous model of ‘Muslimness’.

This is a very perceptive point, but to understand the nature of the change, and the implications of such globalised signifiers of Islamic identity, then we need to appreciate the historical background to religious authority in Islam.

Mona says that the requirement for the face-veil “ is not a message Muslims learn in our holy book, the Koran, nor is the face veil prescribed by the majority of Muslim scholars.”

I have referred before to the argument from Abdal-Hakim Murad that Islam is unifying through acceptance of diversity:

“On fiqh, we are substantially diverse [fiqh is the evolving judgments of scholars]. Even in the medieval period, one of the great moral and methodological triumphs of the Muslim mind was the confidence that a variety of madh’habs [schools of law] could conflict formally, but could all be acceptable to God. In fact, we could propose as the key distinction between a great religion and a sect the ability of the former to accommodate and respect substantial diversity.”

But quite apart from this diversity of interpretation, Mona is wrong to invest so much significance to only the Quran, as a source of Islamic doctrine. The nature of Islamic authority is distributed, not centralised; and in addition to the formal sources of doctrine, the Quran [the book] and Sunnah [the practice of the prophet], the traditions of the communities, ijma, are a source of Islamic law, because in the Hadith of Muhammad, the prophet says that “My community will never agree upon an error”. This supports both adaptablity as social mores change, and also diversity, as customs exhibit variation across the Umma.

The dispersed nature of authority within traditional Islamic society also encouraged a duality whereby rural, tribal Islam encouraged localised holy-men, often with hereditary status, who would provide ritual authority and often sanctify tribal customs with religious aura; this contrasted with the more scholarly authority of the urban community of the educated ulama . It is therefore inherent within the structure of traditional Islamic society that the religious scholars of the ulama should challenge the elevation of localised customs to religious status, and that the social nature of religious law should be subject to reevaluation as society changes and evolves.

The modern creation of a pan-Islamic model of dress and custom is founded upon this capability within Islam to give religious significance to local customs, but it is also a product of a bruising encounter between traditional Islamic practice with modern Western individualism and political nationalism, which led to the universalisation of local practices as the signifiers of an emerging ideology of Islamic identity; overlapping but distinct from religious Islam.

Thus Syed Abul A’ala Maududi, the father of modern political Islam, and the founder of the Jamaat-e-Islami political party was not an Islamic scholar in the traditional manner, but a journalist, who developed an ideologically based and conservative individual interpretation of Islam.

He opposed both British rule but also Indian indendence, arguing that Muslims should have no national identity except their religion, and created a form of political nationalism founded upon religious differentiation. It is significant that Jamaat-e-Islami was founded by Muslims without religious training in opposition to the traditional Islamic scholars of the Ulama, who had come out in favour of the Indian National Congress. Jamaat argued that a Hindu dominated India would merely swap the oppression by the British for oppression by Hindus, they therefore envisaged Islam as analogous to a nation, and not as it had traditionally been regarded as a pan-national, religious community. Nevertheless, Jamaat is not a simple phenomenon, and as well as promoting a politicised Islamic identity, it also argues for self-improvement through the attainment of Islamic ideals of behaviour, and has proven itself highly adaptable and multi-faceted as a political movement.

Traditional Muslims societies enjoyed diversity because Islam was a religious ideology that grew up in the segmented political-economy of semi-arid pastoralism, and gave a uniting system of belief to mediate the interactions between different cultures.

In contrast, the modern creation of a pan-Islamic identity is more analogous to the projects of nation building where shared signifiers of speech, culture, custom and habit are melded to become differentiators whereby those who self-identify with the collective consciousness of the community can distinguish themselves from those who do not.

This explains the phenomenon where some Muslim women who enjoy a cultural heritage where veil wearing is not traditionally practiced, nevertheless adopt veil wearing here in Britain, as a signifier of their Muslim identity. This is therefore both a question of religious freedom, but also an expression of a politicised identity, often in reaction to perceived Islamophobia, and the valueless consumerism paraded by our shallow, celebrity-obsessed Western culture.

It would be foolish to deny that there are sometimes elements of coercion and compulsion by some men over how women should dress, but women are also conscious agents creating their own identity, and both women and men are equally susceptible to forming an attachment to religious and political ideas, and following the attendant cultural signifiers.

What is more, choices are not made in isolation, and both subtle and unsubtle pressures operate in communities for people to conform, and these pressures towards conformity often are strongest when they operate at the unconscious level. Women may choose to wear the veil out of conviction, they may do so because they are compelled, or they may chose to do so because they wish to demonstrate their allegiance and conformity to the community that makes up their circle of friends and family.

So Mona Eltahawy is not wrong to identify a right wing strand among political Islam. But she is wrong to identify all women who chose to wear a veil as acquiescing to Salafism.

The creation of political Islam has its roots in creating a form of collective identity analogous to nationalism, and depending upon the context that collective identity is contested between progressive and reactionary interpretations. The political pan-Islamism of the Fanonist and semi-Marxist, Ali Shariati, is quite distinct from the reactionary pan-Islamism of Sayyid Qutb.

It is important to understand the degree to which the politics of Muslim identity has received an enormous stimulus by the Western war on Iraq and Afghanistan, the hypocrisy of the West over Israel, and the daily experience of misunderstanding, hostility and fear which surrounds Muslims in the West. When a community feels itself under siege then it is more likely to retreat into the comfort zone and clutch at those differentiators which define its borders. There are of course also a minority of Muslim women whose family heritage is from parts of the world where veil-wearing is quite normal, and they may choose to do so for cultural and non-religious reasons.

In so far as the creation of signifiers of a pan-Islamic identity is a process of religious evolution in a globalised world, then this is an entirely benign phenomenon consistent with religious choice and freedom.

Where the promotion of veil-wearing as a normative signifier of adherence to Islamic identity is also informed by politicised Islam, then we need to be clear that such a development is a contested one within Muslim society itself. Certainly the authority of many religious scholars of the Ulama tends towards the celebration of diversity rather than uniformity, and most Muslim women do not wear a niqab, nor do all Muslim women wear a hijab. There is a tendency of convergence for many Muslims in the West towards the dominant dress codes and values of our wider society.

For that minority of women who chose to wear a Niqab, then we should respect their freedom to do so, and for the few who are cooerced into wearing it, then a state ban to cooerce them in the other direction does not empower them, but traps them between two cooercions, and may result in some women becoming literally imprisoned in their homes.

We also need to understand that the politicisation of Islam itself occurs in a particular context of Islamophobia and imperialist wars in Muslim lands. This is what sometimes inbues a religious colouration to a political phenomenon, at the same time that it makes religious adherence inherently political for some Muslims.

The way to address the negative aspects of religious observance, whether from Islam, Christianity or any other religion is to provide people with choice so that they are not forced into a polarised test of loyalty between their faith and their acceptance into wider society. If we do that then gradually the process of choice tends towards convergence.

If our society increased its acceptance of Islam as a welcome part of our cultural mix, if we withdrew from the war in Afghanistan, and our government promoted a just peace in Palestine, and if we accepted the rights of Muslim communities to follow their faith as they see fit, while simultaneously offering full acceptance to women whether they chose to either wear or not wear the veil, then the situation will become less polarised, and the issue will eventually melt away through evolution.

hey France, ban this!

Salma Yaqoob defends a woman’s right to choose.

Yaqoob, who does not wear a burka, defends the use of the veil, as she debates with Tory MP Philip Hollobone after he calls for them to be banned in public.

Camila Batmanghelidjh from charity Kids Company also joins in the debate.

Broadcast Tuesday 13th July, on BBC1’s Daily Politics programme.

by Liam MacUaid

This is unbelievable. The French Parliament, on the eve of Bastille Day, voted 335 in favour of preventing Muslim women wearing a full face covering veil in public. There was only 1 dissenter . Le Monde reports that the new law was strongly supported by the right. The gutless Socialist, Communist and Green Parties while being “resolutely opposed” to the wearing of the niqab and the burka abstained. The Socialist Party’s big objection was that the legislation is a “gift for fundamentalists”. Maybe. Mostly it’s a gift for every racist Islamophobe in Europe.

Anyone who chooses to wear a face covering on religious grounds now faces a fine of 150 Euros or a citizenship course. The law does not come into effect until spring 2011 to allow a period of “pedagogy”.

As if there were not enough there’s a year in prison and a fine of 30 000 Euros for anyone forcing a woman to wear a veil, a penalty which is doubled if the “victim is a minor”.

This bit of legislation is ostensibly to “liberate” the 2000 women in a country of 60 million who cover their faces. The one thing that is absolutely certain is that this law will encourage many thousands more women to start covering up as their way of telling the state that it has no right to tell them what they should or should not wear.

The Daily Mail and the English Defence League will be cracking open the champagne tonight.

CONFERENCE: Saturday June 5

Speakers include:

Daud Abdullah Muslim Council of Britain  • Tony Benn president Stop the War Coalition  • Mohammed Ali Islam Channel  • Anas Al-Tikriti British Muslim Initiative  • Moazzam Begg former Guantanamo Bay prisoner  • Lindsey German convenor Stop the War Coalition  • Muhammad Habibur-Rahman vice-president Islamic Forum of Europe  • Kate Hudson CND  • Imran Khan solicitor  • Dr Robert Lambert former head of Scotland Yard’s Muslim Contact Unit  • Jeremy Corbyn MP   • Nina Franklin vice president NUT  • Seumas Milne journalist  • Peter Oborne journalist  • Salma Yaqoob Respect Party

Muslims are under attack in this country as never before. Government policies and the media have created an atmosphere in which all Muslims are portrayed as reactionary and anti-western.

Young Muslims in particular are subject to surveillance in colleges, schools and mosques in the name of combating “extremism”. Those who exercise their right to demonstrate peacefully have been subject to arrest and heavy sentencing.

Meanwhile, the racist “defence leagues” have been focussing their attacks on Muslim communities, with provocative marches in towns and cities inciting racial hatred and bigotry.

From its founding in 2001, Stop the War has been committed to combating racism. We recognise that Islamophobia is a direct consequence of the “war on terror”. We believe it is vital that the anti-war movement acts in conjunction with other campaigns and organisations to stem its tide.

The Stop Islamophobia: Defend the Muslim Community conference on Saturday 5 June, organised by Stop the War and the British Muslim Initiative, will bring together a wide range of opinion united in concern over the escalating demonisation of Muslims in our society.

buy tickets here

Read more about the aims of the event here

Organised by Stop the War Coalition and British Muslim Initiative
Supported by CND, Cordoba Foundation, Federation of Student Islamic Societies, Islam Channel, Islamic Forum of Europe, Islamophobia Watch, London Muslim Centre, Muslim Welfare House, National Union of Journalists, North London Central Mosque, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Unite

Top Conservative Peer, Baroness Warsi, launched a bizarre attack yesterday on Muslims, claiming that she did not want to see more Muslim members of parliament. Speaking at a dinner in Yorkshire in honour of the president of Kashmir, the Conservative shadow minister for community cohesion said:

“one of the lessons we have learnt in the last five years in politics is that Muslims that go to parliament don’t have any morals or principles.”

Belgian lawmakers pass burka ban, from BBC

Belgium’s lower house of parliament has voted for a law that would ban women from wearing the full Islamic face veil in public.

The law would ban any clothing that obscures the identity of the wearer in places like parks and on the street. No-one voted against it.

The law now goes to the Senate, which is also expected to approve it. It would then become law by June or July.

The ban would be the first move of its kind in Europe.

Only around 30 women wear this kind of veil in Belgium, out of a Muslim population of around half a million.

The BBC’s Dominic Hughes in Brussels says MPs backed the legislation on the grounds of security, to allow police to identify people.

Other MPs said that the full face veil was a symbol of the oppression of women, our correspondent says.

The ban would be imposed in all buildings or grounds that are “meant for public use or to provide services”, including streets, parks and sports grounds.

Exceptions could be made for certain festivals.

Those who break the law could face a fine of 15-25 euros (£13-£27) or a seven-day jail sentence.

The Muslim Executive of Britain has criticised the move, saying it would lead to women who do wear the full veil to be trapped in their homes.

Respect Party candidates have welcomed the decision by the Labour Party to suspend its parliamentary candidate for South East Cambridgeshire, John Cowan, following his comment that he would not want any of his children marrying a Muslim, but have criticised that party for its role in fuelling suspicion and stereotypes against Muslims.

Respect candidate for Poplar and Limehouse, George Galloway said:

‘Despicable as John Cowan’s comments are, they are certainly no aberration as the Labour Party would have us all believe. Voters in Tower Hamlets will recognize clear echoes with recent attempts by Labour’s Jim Fitzpatrick to present the seating arrangements at a Muslim wedding as indicative of some sinister Islamic threat. If it’s not good enough for Cambridgeshire why should it be good enough for the East End ? Fitzpatrick should have been thrown out.

Instead the people of Poplar and Limehouse are being asked to give their blessings to his actions by returning him to parliament. Only a vote for Respect is a vote for consistent opposition to bigotry from every source.’

Abjol Miah, Respect candidate for Bethnal Green and Bow said: ‘It is good that the Labour party candidate and former Liberal Democrat member John Cowan has been suspended. Sadly Labour has done much to fuel an atmosphere of growing intolerance in which such prejudices are on the increase, with Muslims all too often demonized against the backdrop of the ongoing so-called “war on terror”.’