[DEBATE] : War, Islam and veils

[Peter Dwyer]

Jack Straw's veil comments are ammunition for racists




Montage of newspaper cuttings



by Charlie Kimber

The last week has seen a new wave of attacks on Muslims, including  
Jack Straw’s speech on veiled women. What’s behind the latest  
round of Islamophobia?
Is it possible to get the question of racism and Islamophobia more  
wrong than Oldham Labour MP Phil Woolas did last weekend? Muslim  
women who cover their faces with veils, he told readers of the Sunday  
Mirror, can be “frightening and intimidating”. He added that  
Muslim veils could increase racial tensions in Britain.

“Most British-born Muslims who wear it do so as an assertion of  
their identity and religion. This can create fear and resentment  
among non-Muslims and lead to discrimination. Muslims then become  
even more determined to assert their identity, and so it becomes a  
vicious circle where the only beneficiaries are racists like the  
BNP,” he wrote.

So there you have it. Muslims are not victims of racism, Islamophobia  
and fascist violence - they have brought it on themselves.

And this incendiary rubbish is written by the man who is minister for  
local government and community cohesion - with special responsibility  
for race and faith!

The immediate cause of the wave of Islamophobia is the competition  
between politicians of all the major parties to be seen as “tough on  
Muslim extremism” and “tough on terror”.

Having created the conditions for terrorism through the wars in Iraq  
and Afghanistan, Tony Blair and his acolytes have set out to denounce  
their political opponents as “soft” if they do not agree to ever  
more brutal terror laws.

It is not our wars that fuel terror attacks, says Blair, it is the  
evil Muslims in our midst - and those who do not join in the hunt for  
them are equally guilty. On the back of such lies comes the  
succession of terror laws and the elimination of liberties held for  
hundreds of years.

More generally, war has been declared on “extremist Muslims”, a  
concept which grows ever wider. Last August Blair told the Los  
Angeles World Affairs Council that the conflict in the Middle East,  
as well as others involving Muslim “extremists”, revolve around  
“modernisation within Islam” and whether the Western system of  
values can “beat theirs”.

In February of this year Muslims were castigated for complaining  
because they had been insulted by the racist cartoons in Denmark. And  
then in September Pope Benedict XVI launched the latest phase of his  
attack on Islam.

Trigger

Now politicians are scrabbling to be seen as the most vicious  
towards “terror suspects” and the most contemptuous of  
“politically correct” defences of Muslims. And their words are  
taken up by some as the trigger for racist violence.

At Labour’s conference home secretary John Reid trumpeted his  
determination not to be “bullied” by Muslim critics.

A few days later Falkirk’s Islamic centre was set on fire, causing  
£10,000 damage. Bricks and concrete blocks were thrown at cars parked  
in a mosque in Preston and a Muslim teenager was subsequently stabbed  
by the attackers.

Then at the Tory conference, David Cameron used his speech to claim  
he would “smash Muslim ghettos”, as Tory newspapers put it. That  
night Muslims faced petrol bomb attacks in Windsor.

The next day the press worked itself into lather about police officer  
Alexander Omar Basha who had been excused from duty outside the  
Israeli embassy (which he was not actually assigned to).

And Jack Straw launched his attack on the veil. The next day a Muslim  
woman’s veil was snatched from her by a man who shouted racist abuse  
at a bus stop in Liverpool. The 49 year old woman from Toxteth had  
her veil snatched by a tall white man in his 60s.

Have no doubt - this is a serious and accelerating situation in which  
Muslims are defined as potential or actual enemies.

This hysteria has opened the door to coded calls for harsher action.  
Simon Jenkins wrote in last weekend’s Sunday Times that “it is  
reasonable to ask why they [Muslim women who wear the veil] want to  
live in Britain”.

He added, “Those who claim such hospitality owe some duty of respect  
to their hosts, or at the very least cannot complain if the hosts  
object.”

Until recently Labour ministers would generally defend  
multiculturalism. Not any more. Last August, Ruth Kelly, the  
communities secretary, called for a “new and honest debate” on the  
merits of multiculturalism.

In fact this “debate” means prescribing a notion of “British  
identity”, identified by the political establishment and implemented  
with increasing ruthlessness. It defines an “in” and an “out”  
group - with consequences for those deemed unwilling to adapt to the  
norm.

Creed

Look carefully at what Straw said. He described meeting a man and his  
wife who are constituents. She was friendly, polite, respectful, and  
gave off “signals which indicate common bonds - the entirely English  
accent, the couple’s education (wholly in the UK)”.

But he could not reconcile such elements with “the fact of the  
veil,” which made him feel “uncomfortable,” he wrote.

He decided that in future he would ask his female constituents to  
remove the veil when they came to his surgery because wearing it  
made “better, positive relations between the two communities more  
difficult”. A veiled woman could not, for Straw, be “one of us”.

New Labour’s creed of imperialist war and neo-liberalism is in  
trouble. So, as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq turn increasingly  
disastrous, the government seeks to target “enemies” at home. It  
is crucial we stand together against racist attacks and in solidarity  
with Muslims.


http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php?article_id=9891

Dr Peter Dwyer
AIDC,
129 Rochester Road,
Observatory,
Cape Town, 7705.
South Africa.

TEL:    021 447 5770
CELL: 0847694133
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www.aidc.org.za