Maddie criticises a Muslim!

May 12, 2007 at 6:54 pm (Anti-Racism, Human rights, Jim D, secularism)

That leading multi-cultural religious person Madeleine Bunting is very tolerant  when it comes to other religious people. After all, she has simpered before a leading “moderate” Muslim cleric whilst he justified suicide bombers , explained why beating your wife was OK (providing it was as a “last resort” and done “lightly”), and explained why homosexuals  should be “punished by God” – whatever that means. Maddie is also on record denouncing the enlightenment and attacking “new” atheism – a term she has just invented in order to explain the popularity of Richard Dawkins’ book ‘The God Delusion’. If you want a good laugh, go to the record of Maddie’s Guardian columns, and read just how breathtakingly intellectually bankrupt her work has been over the years.

A recurring theme in Maddie’s articles is how ‘we’, in the “West”, must be understanding towards Muslim people, and not judge ‘them’ by our own standards. So it came as a surprise to find that our Maddie, in today’s Guardian, was quite critical of a Muslim…

That person was former Hizb-ut Tahrir member Ed Husain, and his opinions that upset Maddie were things like this:

“Controversially, Husain backs Tony Blair’s analysis, downplaying foreign policy. He argues that Islamism – a body of ideas that aimed radically to reform and politicise Islam in the 20th century in order to confront the west – has come to dominate the British Muslim community, which has failed to challenge the proliferation of forms of violent political Islam; British mosques still have links with Islamist movements from the Asian subcontinent and Middle East, and aggressive rhetoric towards the west, Jews, and all non-believers was – and, he argues, still is – embedded in many Muslim organisations”…

…leading her to conclude, with a large dose of patronisation:

“It is as if, just as Husain once swallowed large chunks of Hizb ut Tahir propaganda, he now seems to have swallowed undigested the prevailing critique of British Muslims (what the hell does Maddie mean by that, exactly? Who’s “prevailing critique”? -JD). He has no truck with the idea of Islamophobia, which he dismisses as the squeal of an Islamist leadership pleading special favours; he criticises Asian racism and castigates Muslims “who go back home to get married” and produce “another generation confused about home”. On issues such as segregation he is confident it is the fault of multiculturalism”.

Maddie concludes:

“One suspects the naivity which took him to Hizb-ut-Tahir has blinded him as to how his story will be used to buttress positions hostile to many things he holds dear – his own faith and racial tolerance, for example. A glance at the blog response  to a Husain piece in the Telegraph reveals how rightwing racism and anti-Islamic sentiment are feasting on his testimony”.

So, Maddie: Ed Husain should have kept shtum about the British Muslim “community”‘s anti-semitism, sexism and racism, because white racists can make use of such revalations? And do you, Maddie, regard Ed Husain as a “bad Muslim” for speaking out? This is not such a ridiculous question: the ex-Marxists of the (British) SWP have denounced ex-Muslim leftists as ‘bad Muslims’! They (the SWP) have also called upon women to cover their heads, on demos,  as a mark of respect to Islam!

Anyway: back to Maddie: it seems that beating your wife (lightly, as a last resort, of course) and punishing (in unspecified ways) homosexuals…are OK: but a Muslim criticising Islamic fundamentalism, from his or her own, first-hand experience, is not. It’s noticeable how Muslim (eg: Irshad Manji and Ed Husain) critics of fundamentalism, always get criticised by white “liberals” like Bunting, the “S”WP and the loathsome Norman Finkelstein (who once confirmed to me that he would support the murder of Irshad Manji): these “liberal”scum are not fit to lick the boots of such brave Muslim free-thinkers as Ed Husain and Irshad Manji.