The sorry truth is that the virus of anti-Semitism has infected the British Muslim community

'It pains me to have to admit this but anti-Semitism isn't just tolerated in some sections of the British Muslim community; it's routine and commonplace. Any Muslims reading this article – if they are honest with themselves – will know instantly what I am referring to. It's our dirty little secret. You could call it the banality of Muslim anti-Semitism.
I can't keep count of the number of Muslims I have come across – from close friends and relatives to perfect strangers – for whom weird and wacky anti-Semitic conspiracy theories are the default explanation for a range of national and international events. Who killed Diana and Dodi? The Mossad, say many Muslims. They didn't want the British heir to the throne having an Arab stepfather. What about 9/11? Definitely those damn Yehudis. I mean, why else were 4,000 Jews in New York told to stay home from work on the morning of 11 September 2001? How about the financial crisis? Er, Jewish bankers. Obviously. Oh, and the Holocaust? Don't be silly. Never happened.
...
The truth is that the virus of anti-Semitism has infected members of the British Muslim community, both young and old. No, the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict hasn't helped matters. But this goes beyond the Middle East. How else to explain why British Pakistanis are so often the most ardent advocates of anti-Semitic conspiracies, even though there are so few Jews living in Pakistan?
It is sheer hypocrisy for Muslims to complain of Islamophobia in every nook and cranny of British public life, to denounce the newspapers for running Muslim-baiting headlines, and yet ignore the rampant anti-Semitism in our own backyard. We cannot credibly fight Islamophobia while making excuses for Judaeophobia.'

I am no fan of Mehdi Hasan, but his piece in The New Statesman is on the money?

So far most of the comments have been favourabpe twards this article but I wonder how long that will last. Here's a few interesting ones:
'Antisemitism isn't restricted to the Muslim community in Britain, or even the Muslim community generally. It is found worldwide, although not always as explicitly stated. It is alive and well among the British Left, sometimes masquerading as criticism of Israel. The same people who fight for the rights of women and minorities seem to adopt a different stance towards Jews.


This piece very much sums up my experiences as a young Muslim from a "progressive" Islamic community, Antisemitism is rife. Muslims are in desperately need to confront this issue but antisemitism is embedded in mainstream interpretations of Islam, unless Muslims are willing to become selective with the Qur'an there really isn't much hope.
My long term boyfriend is Israeli and I fear the day I have to confront my family and the community!

Thank you for writing this, it is really important that people such as yourself speak out on this and I hope you get support from other British Muslims and some recognition from Jewish commentators.

An excellent article
I would add that in my experience, those fighting absolutely the hardest in this country against antisemitism, including Islamist antisemitism, include a large number of British Muslims.
They do this in the face of significant odium, and some receive hate mail and are shunned for this reason.
I'd also add the experience of a friend of mine, organising a demonstration against the National Front in the 1980s. He tried to get some local British Muslim lads involved, and was told:
"Why? We agree with what they say about the Jews".

Unfortunately, things got much worse when islam got into Europe. The first pogroms of jews in europe began in muslim-controlled Spain. There were pogroms against jews in Morocco next. The pogroms by european christians began later, once the Crusades began as a reaction to hundreds of years of islamic war and invasion of christian territory.
It seems highly plausible that the increase in hostility towards jews in europe came from the post-Crusades christians regarding jews as the enemy along with muslims.
The european intelligentsia seem to be unable to exercise critical thought on this matter. The christians must be responsible, and muslim anti-semitism must be whitewashed. So, the wikipedia entry starts off by blaming christians for starting the pogroms in 1096, but as soon as they turn to the actual chronology, it transpires that the pogroms began in Spain and Morocco, almost 100 years earlier.
"In the 11th century, however, there were several Muslim pogroms against Jews; notably those that occurred in Cordoba in 1011 and in Granada in 1066. In the 1066 Granada massacre, the first large pogrom on European soil, a Muslim mob crucified the Jewish vizier Joseph ibn Naghrela and massacred about 4,000 Jews. In 1033 about 6,000 Jews were killed in Fez, Morocco, by Muslim mobs..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
Thus are these myths passed on.

 

 

 

What's sauce for the goose etc.

Dan Hodges in The New Statesman reports that:

'Conservative party supporters have "placed a bounty" on the head of Ed Miliband's spin doctor Tom Baldwin, following the resignation of Downing Street Communications Director Andy Coulson. According to senior Westminster sources, Tory sympathisers have employed the services of a private investigative agency to explore the background of Baldwin, who was appointed by the Labour leader last December.

Although the investigators were initially recruited prior to the announcement of Coulson's departure, the events of the past week have added to the determination to gather information that could embarrass Ed Miliband and senior members of his staff. "Before Coulson resigned it was business. Now it's personal," said another informed source.'

This is called reporting a story and is fine. However 'The grit in the oyster of the new politics; then reports that:

'"Tom's landing blows and the Tories don't like it," said one Labour insider. "It's no surprise they're looking for ways to smear him."'

So when the Labour party and their tame media friends smear Andy Coulson that is fair but when the Conservatives start to do some digging on Tom Baldwin that is 'smearing' - Well it's a point of view.

Monday catch-up

Some articles found on the web that I think you should read..

1. Boris Johnson on "Why is literacy declining". An excellent article, do read it all, here's an extract:

'I commend an excellent pamphlet by Miriam Gross, published today by the Centre for Policy Studies, in which she examines some of the difficulties with improving literacy in London. She takes aim at some familiar targets of conservative wrath: child-centred learning, by which children are invited to “discover” the meaning of the printed page before them, rather than being taught; the hostility to academic selection that has bedevilled the teaching establishment; the lack of discipline in some schools; the time wasted in considering the “emotional well-being” of the child, rather than good old instruction in reading and writing.

Some of these complaints will no doubt infuriate many hard-working teachers, and some educationalists will be outraged at what they will present as a traditionalist and downright reactionary approach. At the heart of Miriam Gross’s argument is the story of one of the greatest kulturkampfs of the last century. It is like the dispute between the Big-Enders and the Little-Enders, or the war that raged between those who thought Christ was homoiousios and those who thought he was homoousios in his relation with God the Father – except that this argument matters.

Ask yourself what happens when your powerful Daily Telegraph-reader eye skitters effortlessly through this article. What cognitive processes are going on in your head? With incredible speed you are decoding clutches of letters into sounds, in order to identify the words; and those words are being virtually simultaneously converted into sense; and the reason you can do this so fast is that hard-wired into your reading brain is an understanding of how the alphabet generates the 44 sounds of the English language; and the best way to reach that instinctive understanding of how letters make sounds is a system known as synthetic phonics.

That is the system that rescued me after the appalling verdict of my grandmother. I remember going to primary school and sitting cross-legged as the class learned C-A-T, and how each sound helped to make up a word, and after a while I had cracked it; and I find it unbelievable that so many children are not given the opportunity to learn by this simple and effective means.

It was about 100 years ago that the split began, and some educationalists began to argue that phonics was too dogmatic, too authoritarian. It was demoralising for children who couldn’t spell out every word in their heads, they said. Perhaps they should be encouraged just to recognise the words – and so was born the system of “whole word recognition”, intended partly to bolster those who found phonics a strain.

And yet the result, say the phonics proponents, is that children are not being given the basic all-purpose deciphering tools they need. That is why literacy has declined in the past 50 years, they claim, and that is why we face a skills shortage caused very largely by the inability of one million working Londoners to read and write.'

Well said Boris, do you think that the oleft don't want people to be able to read and think for themselves? Do they want people to be reliant on state media (the BBC) for all of their information?


2. All the fuss at the BBC about 'banning the Burkha' in France and the possibility of the same happening here, but not a word about the news that

'Syria has issued a directive banning women who wear full-face veils from attending public and private universities, the state-run news agency Sana reported on Sunday.

...

The full-face veil, or niqab, that is worn by some Muslim women is “inconsistent with the values and ethics of academic traditions,” he said.

The ministry had received requests for the ban from a large number of university students and their families, Sana reported.

The ban applies to women wearing full-face veils, not those who only wear headscarves.'

Any comment on the BBC? Or are the claims that anyone wanting to ban the burqa are Islamaphobic just hot air?

For those confused by the different types of Islamic attire to repress women, here's a handy guide...


3. The FT's Alphaville explains what may be behind the recent cocoa trade

'Et voila, the most rewarding ‘have your chocolate cake and eat it’ trade in all of history may have become the consequence. For, if you have the means to go physically long the commodity and short the paper, you can quite literally have it all.

You can gather contango yield (which is attractive in a low interest rate environment), whilst also speculating on the appreciation of the underlying price.'

The rest of the article I found somewhat tricky to digest, unlike some decent 80% cocoa chocolate.


4. The New Statesman attacks the left's latest 'right wing' hate figure - Michael Gove - for daring to criticise the left-wing BBC for being biased. I think my view of the BBC is well enough known to not repeat again!


5. News Biscuit report that:

'Prime Minister David Cameron led condemnation of tributes to ‘a dangerous self-pitying sociopath with a persecution complex,’ found on the Facebook fan page ‘Gorden Brown u Ledgend’.

The man, known affectionately to his admirers as Mopey, is described on the social networking site as ‘a gent’, ‘the iron chancellor’ and ‘a really a nice bloke once you get to know him’, in contrast to the more widely accepted image of a man who emerged seething with resentment from a long spell of incarceration inside 11 Downing Street and immediately went on a rampage to settle scores.'

The logical problem with this article is are there really any people who 'admire' Gordon Brown and think he is ‘a really a nice bloke once you get to know him’; I thought the consensus was that he was a total git.

"Action is urgently needed" - yes that's the message

The BBC report the findings of an opinion poll and they are not happy...

"The number of British people who are sceptical about climate change is rising, a poll for BBC News suggests.

The Populus poll of 1,001 adults found 25% did not think global warming was happening, a rise of 8% since a similar poll was conducted in November.

The percentage of respondents who said climate change was a reality had fallen from 83% in November to 75% this month.

And only 26% of those asked believed climate change was happening and "now established as largely man-made".

The findings are based on interviews carried out on 3-4 February.

"It is very unusual indeed to see such a dramatic shift in opinion in such a short period," Populus managing director Michael Simmonds told BBC News.

"The British public are sceptical about man's contribution to climate change - and becoming more so," he added.

"More people are now doubters than firm believers." "

Of course this being the oh so 'warmist' BBC the message they would like you to take from this is not that the people aren't as dumb as the BBC and IPCC would like them to be but that this is indicative as being a serious problem.

"The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs' (Defra) chief scientific adviser, Professor Bob Watson, called the findings "very disappointing".

"The fact that there has been a very significant drop in the number of people that believe that we humans are changing the Earth's climate is serious," he told BBC News.

"Action is urgently needed," Professor Watson warned.

"We need the public to understand that climate change is serious so they will change their habits and help us move towards a low carbon economy." "

The passage that really got to me was this one:

"During the intervening period between the two polls, there was a series of high profile climate-related stories, some of which made grim reading for climate scientists and policymakers."

So "grim reading for climate scientists and policymakers", are facts not important? Should the truth have been suppressed in the interests of 'policy'?

Meanwhile a journalist Mehdi Hasan writing in the New Statesman wonders

"Why is our public service broadcaster giving credence to climate conspiracy theories? "

He does this by quoting Sunny Hundal's Guardian piece that includes this line that is so far removed from reality that I had to do a double-take:

"After watching last night's Newsnight, I can only come to one conclusion: the BBC has become this country's most pernicious climate-change-denying media outlet in the UK."

Class war - New Statesman style

Peter Wilby in this week's New Statesman comments on the MPs expenses scandal and brings it all back to class, well this is the New Statesman.

"If we must have grasping representatives, I prefer those who charge for the mundane things you or I may buy, such as lavatory seats, hanging baskets, saucepans and £3.49 bottles of Tesco wine – and who care enough to use bath plugs rather than let water go to waste – to those who charge for moats, paddocks, chandeliers and horse manure. When they go to the hustings, Labour MPs should point out their expenses are those of the decent working class, while Tories charge toffs’ expenses."

"decent"? I think not.

As I have predicted before, the next general election campaign is going to be nasty as the cornered Labour party fight dirty.

Official Secrets Act prosecution

I read that the New Statesman magazine has a scoop regarding a Foreign Office official, Derek Pasquill, who has been charged with six counts under the Official Secrets Act. Apparently "this case is said to follow the publication in the New Statesman, the Observer and in a pamphlet by the Policy Exchange think tank of a series of articles highlighting damaging and dangerous government policy. These included an expose of British acquiescence in the secret and illegal “rendition” by the United States of terrorist suspects, and various revelations about government policy towards radical Islam."

All interesting stuff, this could be a big story in the days to come if the BBC don't ignore it, that is.