Handing Out The Songsheet
This week Channel 4 screened a Dispatches investigation called ‘Britain’s Islamic Republic,’ that profiled Islamic Forum Europe, a nasty, unrepresentative group of toytown Islamists trying to subvert local democracy. It must be denounced at once, and I have toured the pro-faith left/Islamist websites to come up with handy, cut-and-paste arguments against Dispatches that commenters can use without having to even watch the documentary. The list below was compiled with help from Inayat Bunglawala, George Galloway and Andy Newman.
1: Well at least Muslims are getting involved in politics and ‘integrating’ like you lot say they should! Honestly! There’s no pleasing some people!
2: The programme featured someone from the Centre for Social Cohesion thinktank. Douglas Murray of the CSC once said something stupid about Muslim immigration. Therefore nothing the CSC says can be of any value or interest.
3: The programme also featured someone from the Quilliam Foundation. The Quilliam Foundation cannot be trusted as it receives government funding (unlike the Muslim Council of Britain which has never received government funding).
4: The programme also featured Labour MP Jim Fitzpatrick who was only doing it because he is scared that George Galloway might take his seat. Fitzpatrick must be some sort of racist, he doesn’t even support segregated weddings!
5: The Muslim reporters, and the Muslim thinkers and secular activists who spoke out against the IFE or have been threatened by the IFE cannot be trusted because they are just ‘Uncle Toms’; hand-picked native informants wheeled out by the authorities. Only Islamic fundamentalists count as pure and authentic Muslims.
6: Okay, the IFE people said some nasty and reactionary things, but Channel 4 could have used the devilry of modern editing techniques to make them sound really bad when in fact they are really good. Anyway, there are Christian and Jewish clerics who say nasty and reactionary things too, and you don’t hear Channel 4 talking about that, do you?
7: Anyway, I think we all know who’s really behind this, don’t we? Don’t we? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more! Eh? Mmm?
8: Anyway, you should shut up or George will sue you for libel! You wouldn’t like that, would you? Let’s keep it friendly, and everything’s going to be just fine.
9: Er…
10: That’s it.
Feel free to add your own in the Shiraz comments!
resistor said,
March 4, 2010 at 10:45 am
‘The programme featured someone from the Centre for Social Cohesion thinktank. Douglas Murray of the CSC once said something stupid about Muslim immigration. Therefore nothing the CSC says can be of any value or interest.’
..and what did Douglas Murray say? Do remind us Max.
sackcloth and ashes said,
March 4, 2010 at 3:36 pm
11. Resistor the Strasserite wanker will crop up with some irrelevant digression.
Sarah B said,
March 4, 2010 at 3:38 pm
I enjoyed the list! But I’d be interested to have (1) unpicked a bit more – can anyone comment further on how to distinguish legitimate activism/lobbying from the subversion of democracy?
maxdunbar said,
March 4, 2010 at 6:20 pm
Resistor
I’ve got no objection to you putting the quote up as you always do.
Sarah
It’s worth reading Gilligan on CiF:
‘I have no objection at all to the IFE engaging in the political process in support of their views – so long as they are honest about them. But I very much object to what they are actually doing: concealing those views to win significant and growing power over their community through democratic, secular parties whose values are diametrically opposed to theirs.
The IFE’s deceit is borne of necessity. For all their claims that any attack on them is an attack on Islam itself, they know that their support among Muslims is small – as shown in our documentary, where Muslim Londoner after Muslim Londoner lined up to express their outrage at the IFE’s presumptuousness as much as at its views. The fact that fully 70% of our interviewees were Muslim should answer any charge that this was an “Islamophobic” programme.’
maxdunbar said,
March 4, 2010 at 6:23 pm
Oh and here is the link
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/mar/04/islamic-forum-europe-dispatches-gilligan
Sarah B said,
March 4, 2010 at 7:53 pm
Thanks – that was interesting – the point about honesty/concealment is, as you say, very telling.
Jenny said,
March 5, 2010 at 3:05 am
here’s some good stuff on the seregated weddings: http://nataliaantonova.com/2009/08/21/jim-fitzpatrick-gender-segregation-and-multiculturalism-as-two-way-street/
Andrew Coates said,
March 5, 2010 at 10:49 am
9) All that stuff about the Jamaat. So they opposed bourgeois Banglesh independence! They opposed ultra-secularists. And it was a long time ago anyway back in 1971.
Sarah B said,
March 5, 2010 at 1:14 pm
Jenny – just looked at that quickly – I do remember feeling uncertain about this matter at the time – if you have been invited in good faith out of hospitality and have been treated in a warm and welcoming way then I think (in the context of a special occasion such as a marriage) it seems a little unkind to walk out. Other contexts, such as political meetings organised by Respect, are different.
maxdunbar said,
March 5, 2010 at 5:54 pm
There’s an argument that he was right to stay and an argument that he was right to leave. The fact that so much was made of the incident doesn’t say anything good about our discourse when it comes to religious practices.
Sue R said,
March 5, 2010 at 10:04 pm
Quite frankly, it reveals a depth of ignorance on the part of Jim Fitzpatrick and all those people who were stunned to fnd out that in London, in this day and age, there are people practicing their cultural norms which are different to our traditional ones! Doesn’t anyone know about the Third World? Hasn’t anyone visited it? I would have gone, and I wouldn’t have left. I think that is rude, you have to accept people for what they are. However, I would dearly love to see the Muslim community modernise or as they might see it, Westernise.
Sarah B said,
March 6, 2010 at 9:44 am
I’ve now watched the programme (which I hadn’t when I first posted here) and I thought it seemed to raise many strong and important points and, although I’ve read some of the criticisms, I’ve found them (mostly) unconvincing. But I suppose something can simultaneously be entirely valid and yet still potentially exacerbate Islamophobia. So perhaps the programme would have been improved by reversing the order of elements – starting with the emphasis on the fact that the IFE doesn’t represent Muslims and is probably having most negative impact on other Muslims. Perhaps repeated close ups of the minarets, random shots of covered up women, and background ‘Islamic music’ when pictures of extremists were shown could also have been dropped.
johng said,
March 6, 2010 at 1:08 pm
For goodness sake wake up:
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2010/03/police-fascists-and-antifascists.html