"It's a culture clash": how VoteWatch frames Pakistanis as uniquely guilty of election fraud.

It seem innocent enough, even noble - VoteWatch they call it and it, we're told, does this:

Exposing ballot burglars, reporting on elections, opening-up politics & producing documentaries

What could be wrong with an organisation dedicated to exposing electoral bad practice and to hold the feet of those running elections to the fire? The answer is pretty simple, VoteWatch isn't really about any of this as a quick visit to its website would tell you - just on the 'UK' section of that website we see:

An attack on Labour MP David Lammy's expenses claims

More on David Lammy as they look at whether the hate mail he receives is self-generated

A report on the resignation of the UK ambassador to the USA

A nasty police siege in Peterborough - badged as in the 'Multicultural District'

Gordon Brown attacking Corbyn over anti-semitism

A tenuous link to a convicted vote fraudster describing his nephew in a 'drug fuelled rage'

Eventually we come to a video that says it's a 'guide to the Pickles Report'. And this is where we begin to see the real agenda of VoteWatch and why the Brexit Party (and the right of politics in the UK should be concerned). You can read the Pickles Report (here) and you'll find that it gives a series of proposals for tightening up the administration of of elections and the prevention of illegal and corrupt practices at the polls. This covers the location and management of polling stations, the intimidation of voters, postal voting, personation and the administration of the count. Pickles was critical of the Electoral Commission and strongly supported the use of an easier election petition system rather than that commission.

What Eric Pickles didn't say was that the problem was confined to places with concentrations of Pakistani or Bangladeshi population. Reference is made to concerns raised by people from those communities (over intimidation, family voting - where a man accompanies a woman into the polling booth, and political party access to absent voter lists) as well as to the shocking Tower Hamlets case where the failure of police and Electoral Commission to act was eventually exposed by a private petition. More than anything it was the scale of Lutfur Rahman's electoral fraud that shocked:

Lutfur Rahman was found personally guilty by the court of making false statements about a candidate, bribery, and undue spiritual influence. The court also found Rahman guilty by his agents of personation, postal vote offences, provision of false information to a registration officer, voting when not entitled, making false statements about a candidate, payment of canvassers, bribery, and undue spiritual influence. A finding that corrupt and illegal practices for the purpose of securing Rahman's election, and that such general corruption so extensively prevailed such that it could be reasonably concluded to have affected the result was also returned.

It remains a concern that, in general terms, public authorities are loath to take strong actions in investigating election offences but although Pickles alluded to 'political correctness' as a factor his main concern was that the Electoral Commission set itself up as both rule-maker and policeman. Nor can we dismiss - as my colleagues in Bradford know well - the malign impact of clan and birideri politics in some Asian communities.

It is clear, however, that VoteWatch is not interested in encouraging improvements to the way in which we ensure fair elections but rather to suggest that malpractice is a specific problem for Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities and for nowhere else. Here is a map and graphic showing where the organisation has set up branches and, I assume, an image of the sort of people (South Asians) who are doing the alleged fraud:



So we have an image of South Asian men (plus a child) and a list of towns with large Pakistani or Bangladeshi populations. Returning to VoteWatch's article on the Pickles Report, we find that a good part of it isn't about voting fraud but about the street grooming scandals in Rotherham and elsewhere that did largely involve Pakistani men. Challenged on this apparently racist targeting, Jay Beecher who runs VoteWatch said:

"...voter-fraud is carried-out predominantly by members of the Pakistani community..."

Given that Lutfer Rahman in Tower Hamlets is of Bangladeshi heritage and noting the constant references to street grooming, we can only guess that VoteWatch want us to join the dots and come up with the word 'Muslim'. By inference VoteWatch want us to believe that, were it not for Muslim voters, there'd be no problems with elections. Here's Beecher again:

It's a clash of cultures. Democracy is seen in different forms, with varying attitudes towards it in certain countries. Voter fraud is rife in Pakistan for instance, along with cultural voting, bribery etc. Those methods are now employed over here in the UK

I have some news for Jay Beecher - our laws on bribary, cultural voting, intimidation, impersonation and false registration date back to the nineteenth century when there were at most a couple of thousand Muslims in the UK and none of them from Pakistan because it didn't exist. This handy list of election petitions - filled with bribery, personation, intimidation and general skulduggery - gives a flavour.

This isn't to say that we have no problems with corrupt and illegal practices in our elections - false registration, dodgy nominations, postal voting abuse and personation - or indeed that some of these may be more prevalent in Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities. Rather it's to notice that in the world of VoteWatch all the baddies are brown (or privileged white people too scared of the brown people to act).

Last year (2018) the Electoral Commission reported:

Of the 266 cases that were investigated, 191 needed no further action. A further 55 were resolved locally with informal advice given either by the police or the Returning Officer. 17 cases are still under investigation or are awaiting advice from the Crown Prosecution Service. We will continue to monitor these.

There has, to date, been just one conviction - for forging signatures on a nomination form - relating to elections in 2018. Even if the Electoral Commission could up its game this does not suggest that there are widespread problems with the administration of elections or with corrupt and illegal practices. Furthermore, half of the 2018 allegations related either to "allegations about someone making false statements about the personal character or conduct of a candidate" or for not including an imprint on a leaflet. And there's no obvious difference in investigations between years with metropolitan council elections (covering more than half of the Muslim population) and those without.

I've gone on at length here because VoteWatch and other organisations that focus on Muslims as peculiarly criminal or strangely 'culturally distinct' represent a real threat to politics on the right. You only need look at what became of UKIP when it turned itself from a centre-right eurosceptic party into an anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim campaign group. With close associations between the Brexit Party and VoteWatch, it seems to me that there's a real risk that its noble cause of securing democracy gets compromised by these links to a campaign saying "Pakistanis are stealing elections - look at Peterborough" despite there not actually being much evidence that this is the case.

VoteWatch link voting fraud with street grooming and use reports of criminal activity by Asian men to reinforce a message that in Beecher's words - it's a clash of cultures. What lies behind this is the worrying - and too widespread - view that, in some way Islam is incompatible with British life and culture. It is this lie that marginalised UKIP and it will do the same for the Brexit Party if it allows Jay Beecher and people like him to set the agenda. What's also important is that my party - the Conservatives - set clear water between the racially-tinged campaigns of groups like VoteWatch and our response to legitimate desires to ensure voting is safe and fair.

....

If Birmingham's a 'jihadi breeding ground' it's not a very good one

Islamist terrorism is undoubtedly a problem. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, the UK's home grown Islamist terrorists nearly all come from with the Muslim community. This means that the largest such communities - Birmingham, Bradford, Luton and so forth - are more likely to produce terrorists.

Here's the Daily Mail:

Sparkbrook has become synonymous with Islamic extremism; one in ten of all Britain’s convicted Islamic terrorists, we now know, have come from Sparkbrook (population 30,000) and four adjoining council wards.

In total, these highly concentrated Muslim enclaves, occupying a few square miles of the city, have produced 26 of the country’s 269 known jihadis convicted in Britain of terror offences.

Over a fifth of Birmingham's population identified as Muslim in the 2011 census - that's about 250,000 people. And they are, as with most immigrant populations, concentrated:






That population - one of England's largest concentrations of Muslims - has produced just 10% of terrorists and the number (26) of those terrorists represents just 0.01% of the population. We should be vigilant, carry on working to prevent and protect, but this really doesn't tell us that Muslim communities are rife with budding terrorists and more than Jo Cox's murderer living on a council estate makes such places riddled with Nazi-sympathising nutters.

Confusing the dominant Deobandi version of Islam in Britian's Kashmiri population with ISIS is wrong, if at times understandable. Deobandi beliefs are very traditional and include very definite views about the role of women (and how they should dress), a reverence for the physical Qu'ran rather than its contents and an increasingly assertive approach to other Muslims who don't adhere to these positions. So when the Daily Mail describes Sparkbrook, it shows a scene that is familiar to anyone from my city of Bradford:

Visit the area and you’ll inevitably pass along Ladypool Road, the neighbourhood’s bustling main artery, at the centre of the Balti Triangle, so named because of the number of curry houses that line the pavement.

The shops are largely Islamic, too. There’s Only Hijab, the Islam Superstore and Kafe Karachi, to name a few. Dotted around Ladypool Road are 22 mosques, dominated by the twin minarets of Birmingham Central Mosque.

None of this suggests that somehow terrorists are being created by the presence of curry houses, hijab shops and an Asian cafe. Yet that is somehow the impression that is given - tens of thousands of perfectly ordinary Birmingham residents being categorised as some sort of problem because a tiny handful of men from that place committed terrorist offences.

The Mail is right to point at the manner in which Labour politicians pander to pressure from Deobandi organisations - Cllr Wazeem Jaffar and the four-year-old in the headscarf is a shocking example of indulging religious fundamentalism. But then the same politicians play a game of community politics unrecognisable to those of us campaigning in the rest of the country. And, yes, this is a problem - from electoral fraud through to grant-farming and favour-mongering - but it is not creating the basis for young men becoming Islamist terrorists.

In discussing the threat of Islamist terror - and there is a threat - we need to get away from the from the idea that mainstream Islam in the UK is promoting that terrorism. We should remember, and perhaps Birmingham is a good place to do this, that throughout its existence the IRA exploited sectarian sympathies and enjoyed the support of some Catholic priests. But this didn't make the rest of the Catholic population of England and Ireland complicit in the IRA's murder and terror. Islamist terror groups are no different, they exploit Muslim grievance (just as those Birmingham Labour councillors exploit the same grievances) and find some sympathetic voices. But what comes across most strongly is that so few - a tiny group - Muslims from Birmingham get involved in the world of Islamist terrorism.

....

When is not a ban a ban? Trump and the Muslims

During the presidential election campaign Trump was clear he wanted to 'ban' Muslims from coming to America. So it should not be a surprise to anyone that, early in his presidency, Trump has enacted tighter controls on immigrants coming to the USA from a specified list of countries that just happen to be overwhelmingly Muslim. It's not a 'ban' but extreme vetting and it's not a Muslim ban because not everyone from the countries in question if a Muslim.

Having got that out of the way, we need to appreciate that the intention - pretty much a stated intention - of the Executive Order is to prevent Muslims entering the USA. Now it's true that lots of big Muslim countries aren't included in the list, either because of Donald Trump's historic business interests or else because the seven selected countries were those excluded from the US 'visa waiver programme' in 2015 (or maybe some other reason nobody has thought of yet). For what it's worth, I suspect these were the Muslim countries where the law allowed Trump to enact an executive order in the manner he did.

This, of course, suggests that we will see further attempts to control the entry of Muslims into the USA - although it is likely that this will be couched in terms of terrorism rather than religion. There are over 3 million Muslims in the UK so, regardless of the stuff about terror, trying to ban Muslims places potential limits on the freedoms of UK citizens. We are right to criticise Trump's Executive Order but equally right to do so in a measured, directed manner that does not compromise other UK interests - not least the significant trading relationship with the USA.

Lastly, we should avoid the appeal of seeing Trump's purpose in terms of some sort of sinister anti-democracy conspiracy. The evidence so far is that, horrible though it might be, what you see with Donald Trump is what you get. It will be painful but it does seem that Trump's campaign rhetoric wasn't, as we've complained about all these years, mere rhetoric but was him actually saying what he intended to do in government. There is no coup.

So those folk complaining about the description of this action as a 'Muslim ban' - 'it's not a ban and it doesn't mention Muslims' they shout - are wrong. Trump's intention is absolutely that of banning Muslims. We know this because he said so. And all that's happened is the US law and constitution are making it hard for Trump to do what he said he wanted to do - ban Muslims. It may not be a ban but that is its intention. It may not mention Muslims but they are its target. It is, de facto, a Muslim Ban or at least an attempt at one.

....

It's not so long since we held the same views as Muslims about gay rights

****

However, when asked to what extent they agreed or disagreed that homosexuality should be legal in Britain, 18% said they agreed and 52% said they disagreed, compared with 5% among the public at large who disagreed. Almost half (47%) said they did not agree that it was acceptable for a gay person to become a teacher, compared with 14% of the general population.

A great deal will be made of this finding. Some of it from bone-headed pundits will be straightforward 'bash the muslims' stuff but there will be more considered discussion along the lines we've seen from Trevor Phillips - 'Muslims aren't integrating'. Now there are a couple of comments to make here - firstly the conservative Muslim position on homosexuality isn't really much different from that of many Christians and Jews. I'm pretty sure that a survey of African Christians in the UK would provide a very similar result.

The second point is that we forget just how far we - both as a society and as individuals - have changed on the issue of homosexuality. In my lifetime we've moved from a society where homosexuality was illegal to one where we welcome gay marriage and have begun to wrestle with the question of transgender and 'gender fluidity'. Many people are still uncomfortable with homosexuality - just the other day I was told of someone still estranged from his family because he 'came out' some thirty years ago. And let's remember that in the 1980s polls told us well over half of people questioned thought gay people shouldn't be employed as teachers.

It has taken decades for us - at least formally through our laws if not always socially - to recognise that homosexuality is perfectly normal. And for many of us the personal journey is just as important - we've moved from 'condemn the sin but love the sinner' to deciding that being gay isn't a sin at all. Not everyone has made that journey but I'm confident that the coming generations - regardless of their parents' faith or ethnicity - will make that journey to tolerance faster than we did.

In the meantime we need to understand the difficulties faced by gay people growing up in Muslim communities (or for that matter those conservative Jewish or Christian communities) and be prepared to support both communities and gay people. Here's a quote from a poignant article by a gay Muslim:

That's why so many gay British Muslims choose to stay in the closet. This leads to a secret double life with dark consequences, such as the gay Muslims living in straight marriages. I’ve seen countless examples of marriages built on a bed of lies, frustration and the unrelenting pressure to conform. It’s not just the closeted individual that suffers. There’s a knock-on effect for the next generation of children who end up finding out that their parents’ marriage isn’t at all what it seemed.

It's only a few decades since this was true for the English so if we start sounding off about how Islam is 'medieval' or prejudiced let's remember that we were just the same a short while ago (and plenty of us still are). Our first task is to help those who want to live an open, happy life not to attack their community or the faith of their parents.

I live in Bradford and have, on several occasions, questioned whether the Council's - and by inference, the City's - agenda and 'action plan' around equality and equal rights is too geared towards matters of race and race quality to the exclusion of other concerns, in particular gay rights. It's not that there's nothing done at all - there's plenty of great work going on - but that we seem too one-eyed on these issues. Perhaps it's time to change the emphasis a little - in the interests of those gay people struggling in the dark within orthodox faith communities in our city?

....

Islamist terror is about political power not faith - which is why we must help Muslims defeat it

Eduard Steinbrück, Die Magdeburger Jungfrauen

Then was there naught but beating and burning, plundering, torture, rape and murder. Most especially was every enemy bent on securing much booty. When a marauding party entered a house, if its master had anything to give he might thereby purchase respite and protection for himself and his family till the next man, who also wanted something should come along. It was only when everything had been brought forth and there was nothing left to give that the real trouble commenced. Then, what with blows and threats of shooting, stabbing and hanging, the poor people were so terrified that if they had had anything left they would have brought it forth if it had been buried in the earth or hidden away.

In this frenzied rage, the great and splendid city that had stood like a fair princess in the land was now, in its hour of direst need and unutterable distress and woe, given over to flames, and thousands of innocent men, women and children, in the midst of a horrible din of heartrending shrieks and cries, were tortured and put to death in so cruel and shameful a manner that no words would suffice to describe, not no tears to bewail it… (from a personal account of the sacking of Magdeburg on May 20, 1631)

It's terrible. It's terrible wherever it happens. It was terrible when some young Irishmen blew up a pub in Birmingham. It was terrible when Brigate Rosso kidnapped and murdered Aldo Moro. Terrible when Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhoff murdered their way across German politics. It's terrible when a young woman blows herself up on a Tel Aviv bus. Or some young men do likewise on a tube train. And it was terrible when eight young Arabs machine-gunned their way across Paris last Friday.

The terror isn't simply because of the guns, the bombs, the violence. The terror is that it could be you or I sat there on the restaurant terrace, on a bus heading for a day's work, or letting our hair down at a rock concert. The effectiveness of terror is how close to home it is - and no-one knows this better than the innocent residents of middle eastern countries as suicide bombers target crowded markets, busy streets filled with outdoor cafes and even beaches.

We ask why? What possible purpose does this serve - the terrorists are facing any existential threat, this isn't a matter of kill or be killed. Yet they choose to commit foul acts of violence against the innocent to make a political point, to play a part in some deranged strategy dreamt up by persuasive maniacs (albeit persuasive maniacs safely ensconced elsewhere - it wasn't Gerry Adams who planted that bomb in the Mulberry Bush back in 1973 and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi wasn't in Paris wearing a vest of explosives last Friday).

A simple and common response - we've seen it a thousand times over the past couple of days - is to say that somehow the terrible murders in Paris are a direct consequence of foreign policy decisions, that the ideology of Islamist violence would not exist had Bush and Blair not invaded Iraq, had France to taken part in air strikes against Syria. As if there is either excuse or justification in murdering people having a glass of wine at their favourite restaurant because you disagree with their government. Just as the IRA had no political justification for killing 21 people and injuring over 300 more on that day in 1973, the Islamists who rampaged through Paris had no political - let alone religious - justification for their murderous destruction.

Terrorists have agency. The decisions or actions of others do not - and never have - forced them to engage in acts of violence. The murders on Friday were a matter of choice - those men chose to arm themselves, chose to drape themselves in high explosive, chose to target unarmed people having a good night out, and chose to murder them. They were not made to do this by Tony Blair, Binyamin Netanyahu or Francois Hollande - they chose. And this choice was part of a political campaign not an act of defence or the consequence of vengeance. The leaders of ISIS want power just as all political leaders want power - but those Islamist leaders reject democracy and prefer violence as the route to that power. It's not about defending Muslims - after all most of the people killed by ISIS are Muslims - nor is it about protecting Muslim lands.

And because these terrorists have agency - they act out of choice not compulsion - the rest of us have every right to respond. And I assume this is the basis for Hollande's describing last Friday's terror as an act of war against France. That statement - just as with George Bush's 'war on terror' words after 9/11 - is one of intent. But one that - if the past fourteen years are a guide - requires us to be very clear about who the enemy in this war might be. And, in doing this, it is necessary to have the support of Muslims - those Muslims who are as shocked, scared and angry about ISIS as the rest of us. I'm not talking here about the governments of Muslim countries but about those millions of ordinary Muslims who hate ISIS just as much as many non-Muslims.

The problem is that this engagement seldom happens. To be sure, if you talk to a Muslim he or she will tell you they reject terrorism, loathe the terrorists and don't believe that the murderers are truly Muslim. But if you ask for their support for actions to defeat the terrorism - especially if that includes some form of military action - the response is 'no'. It's almost as if there's a preference for putting our head in our hands and hoping against hope that it will all end. The problem is that, as too many Muslims discover, the cost of doing nothing is abuse and hatred. You can choose to call it 'islamaphobia' but it's grounded in the belief that those who yell 'Allahu akbar' as they machine-gun innocent folk sun-bathing on a Tunisian beach are Muslims.

And so long as this situation persists, so long as young men and women decamp to Syria to join ISIS, so long as terrorists blow up innocents in a Beirut rush hour because they're the wrong sort of Muslim, many non-Muslims will still look on in horror asking how anyone could claim it's a 'religion of peace'. There's a job resisting this but that's not the only job, for unless the distinction is made between Islam and the warped creed of Islamism those non-Muslims will remain distrustful of Muslims and Islam.

At the top of this article is a description of how the army of the Catholic League destroyed Magdeburg - just one of the atrocities in Europe's last great religious war. This is, as it were, intended to make the point that we can come to live peacefully alongside those whose faith or race is different from ours. But to achieve this it's necessary to learn Europe's lesson that, so long as religion and government are one and the same, there is no chance of peace. Yesterday, writing on The Spectator blog, British Muslim doctor, Qanta Ahmed said this:

The repugnant creed of the Islamic State is certainly related to Islam – but it is also inimical to Islam. The scenes in Paris will shock Muslims world over; indeed, when we Muslims hear of gunmen shouting “Allahu akbar” before committing the very acts of murder explicitly prohibited by the Koran, our repugnance is joined with a sense of desecration. To assert that this Islamism is un-Islamic is not a kneejerk response to the atrocities we saw last night, and so many times around the world. It is the only conclusion that can be drawn after serious consideration of its principles.

To win this war it's not enough to beat ISIS militarily. Nor can we win without defeating the men who would visit death on shoppers in Kenya, villagers in Nigeria and diners in Paris. And the war isn't a war against Islam but, I hope, a war to defend Islam from those who would use it - as with Christianity in 17th Century Europe - as a route to power and to the imposition of a violent totalitarian death cult. To win the war with ISIS - however it is conducted - requires Muslims everywhere to show why Islamism is a rejection of their faith. For it is - in truth - as much your war as it is ours.

....

Respect - playing with sectarian fire...

****

There are a couple of by-elections going on at the moment in, what might be described as urban seats - Rotherham and Croydon North (where I was educated - not that this has anything to do with what follows). And my dear friends in the Respect Party are standing in both seats.

I can't comment on the Croydon election - although you can never know with Lee Jasper - but in Rotherham, Respect have parachuted in Yvonne Ridley, former journalist and famous Muslim convert. All good politics I guess. But then we get a glimpse at the literature - in a reprise of the recent Bradford West by-election we see a blatant and disturbing appeal to sectarianism:

"The RESPECT Party Britain's only party that openly embraces Islam..."

 "...they (the Labour Party) are also going into pubs and clubs behind our backs and attacking Muslims, Asians and Muslim immigrants in particular."

"...we would remind you the last time the Muslim/Asian community voted to elect a Labour MP from Rotherham (he) set up an Israeli support group the so-called 'Labour Friends of Israel'."

"We have set up a database of Muslim/Asian families to make sure your voice is heard..."

This is what Respect have brought to Bradford and what they propose for Rotherham - divisive, insensitive, racist and sectarian politics. Less of a problem in Rotherham when the Muslim population is less that 15% of the electorate but the fact that this unpleasant sectarianism exists at all should be a cause for concern.

In the end there is little difference between the message pumped out here to young Muslims and the message that the BNP, EDL and National Front target at white working class communities. It's 'them' that cause your problems - vote for us because we're on your side against 'them'.

In Bradford we got a glimpse of this divisive approach at the last Council Meeting - motions on "islamaphobia" and questions attacking Israel. We sit quietly while JUST West Yorkshire - supposedly a 'racial justice' charity - churns out a stream of sectarian 'research' (using funding from those naive idiots at Joseph Rowntree) aimed at supporting this sectarian Respect agenda - indeed the leader of the Respect group on Council is a trustee of this "charity".

These people are not interested in integration, in tolerance or in peace. Respect and its allies are set on stirring up discontent in these communities, in finding demons where there are no demons and in dividing one group of Yorkshire people from another.

After a dozen years of building cohesion in Bradford it is distressing to see Respect attempt to tear that work down. And to see them spread this damaging message in Rotherham

....

Morality, booze and political correctness on campus - welcome to London Met

****

Some people think alcohol is "immoral"? Or so says the man who runs London Metropolitan University:

The vice-chancellor of London Metropolitan University is considering banning the sale of alcohol in some parts of the institution's campus because a "high percentage" of his students consider drinking to be "immoral".

Now let's consider some other things that a devout Muslim might consider "immoral":

Homosexuality -  "When a man mounts another man, the throne of God shakes."
Extra-marital sex -  "Muslims are advised to behave in a way and avoid circumstances that could potentially result in extra- or pre-marital sex"
Eating bacon - plus many other haraam (forbidden) foods and food preparations

I'm guessing that our vice-chancellor isn't about to ban gays or sex from his campus - let alone bacon! So why is he picking on alcohol? There's a clue in his comments:

Malcolm Gillies (our vice-chancellor) said he was "not a great fan of alcohol on campus"

We're getting there now - this is a man who likes a ban, who wants to control. Perhaps?

Or maybe it's a marketing ploy for a university struggling to fill its courses so has chosen to target. You see most of the university's muslim students are women and:

"...can only really go to university within four miles of home and have to be delivered and picked up by a close male relative"

So much for liberation! "Have to be delivered..." - what sort of world do we live in where we think that is an acceptable, healthy attitude towards women? Yet our vice-chancellor would change the rules for everyone to accommodate such an attitude!

.....

General Specific - thoughts on Islam and society

****

"O mankind! We created you from a male and a female and made you into nations and tribes that you may know and honor each other (not that you should despise one another). Indeed the most honorable of you in the sight of God is the most righteous." Koran Chapter 49, Verse 13

Yesterday evening’s therapeutic visit to the Club finished with an enjoyable interaction – OK, dear reader, spat – with the neighbour. About Muslims. Or more importantly about General Specific.

The contention is clear – because it says somewhere in the Koran that non-Muslims have to be killed, therefore all people laying claim to being a Muslim subscribe to this and are a threat to our peace and democracy. Now, for the purpose of what follows, I am taking the existence of the offending chapter as a given. In truth I don’t know whether or not such a passage exists, what its context might be and how those who concern themselves with such matters interpret the chapter’s meaning.

My problem with all this is pretty simple. And to illustrate this I will make use of a book I have read – the Bible. Now you all know that the bible says that adulterers should be stoned to death:

If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her; Then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city. (Deut 22: 23-24)

Now, I’m pretty sure that if I bob along to talk to Cullingworth’s vicar (I think we have one now they’ve rebuild the new vicarage on the site of the nice one they knocked down), he will not be saying that your typical Cullingworth adulteress should by lined up in the Rec and bricked to death. While there may be subscribers to the Old Testament view – perhaps in the wackier outposts of American fundamentalism or in one of the nuttier African churches – I can say with some confidence that almost all Christians reject the requirements of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, at least in respect of stoning.

It’s all right, I’m ahead of you! The Koran also prescribes lapidation as the punishment for adultery and, as we know, in some Muslim countries such punishment is used – most notably and recently in Iran. So perhaps I was wrong in last night’s debate? Perhaps all Muslims do subscribe to the absolute, inviolable truth of every word within the Koran? I do not know but I am sure that those arguing that specific examples – a stoning case, a bearded mullah calling for jihad in a grainy video or a leaflet handed out by over-enthusiastic students – indicate a general position are no better informed.

It may be the case that all ‘proper’ Muslims subscribe to this view. But that makes it tricky for the many Muslims who find the prescription of stoning and the calls for endless, eternal, violent jihad something less than appealing. I do not believe that the good men and women I encounter – some devout Muslims, others Muslim by culture and tradition if rather lax in their practice – are engaged in some lurid conspiracy to destroy freedom and democracy. And I am encouraged by some Muslim writers:

Moderate Muslims aspire for a society – a city of virtue -- that will treat all people with dignity and respect. There will be no room for political or normative intimidation. Individuals will aspire to live an ethical life because they recognize its desirability. Communities will compete in doing good and politics will seek to encourage good and forbid evil. They believe that the internalization of the message of Islam can bring about the social transformation necessary for the establishment of the virtuous city. The only arena in which Moderate Muslims permit excess is in idealism.

Now this writer may be a lone voice in the wilderness but what we read more accurately reflects what I see and hear from those Muslims I meet. Indeed that same writer has written this encouragement to progress:

In my opinion, Muslims can modernize without de-Islamising or de-traditionalising. India and Japan have shown that societies can modernize without losing their traditional cultures. Muslim societies today have to distinguish between Islam and culture, retain their Islamic essence and reform dysfunctional cultural habits that hinder development, progress, equality and prosperity.

Muqteder Khan is no more the voice of Islam than is Osama Bin-Laden but his writing demonstrates that there is a pluralism of thought within Islam. And that we cannot take a passage from the Koran and from that extrapolate that every Muslim subscribes to a literal interpretation of that passage – any more than we can for Christians or Jews.

When some young men – acting, as they thought, in the interests of Islam – crashed planes into the World Trade Centre, I was sat in a Bradford Council Executive meeting (in the days when we had an all-party executive) discussing the response to Bradford’s riots of 7th July 2001. The link between the two events – while only slight – was not lost on us. We were discussing how better to involve and integrate a large Muslim community while, through an act of terrorism in another country, some other Muslims set up a huge wall between good men like my neighbour and the City’s Muslim community.

However much I point to the good Muslims and argue that you cannot go from the specific to the general, my good neighbours will point to the twin towers, to the bombs of July 2007 and to the stories of stonings and such. And they will say: “explain that then?” And I will be at a loss for words unable to understand how a faith that speaks so clearly of justice and peace can, at the same time, contain some who promote such barbarism, injustice and violence?

....

Wednesday Whimsy: The Moon is more useful than the Sun

I had planned writing a piece on the Mullah Nasruddin for some while. Partly because I think that our understanding of Islam is so cruelly coloured by the austere extremism of Deobandi and Wahhabi interpretations but mostly because the stories – the jokes as they are so often described – bring back memories of childhood. I remind myself of my father who would use the stories in his speeches to council and who would – at the drop of a hat - launch into a Nasruddin anecdote or make some sweeping Cantona-esque statement such as “They show you the women - and then try to sell you the clothes!".”

On one level the stories are simply jokes and can be treated as such but there is a depth to them that belies merely chortling. Think for a moment on this:

"Once, the people of The City invited Mulla Nasruddin to deliver a khutba. When he got on the minbar (pulpit), he found the audience was not very enthusiastic, so he asked "Do you know what I am going to say?"The audience replied "NO", so he announced "I have no desire to speak to people who don't even know what I will be talking about" and he left.

The people felt embarrassed and called him back again the next day. This time when he asked the same question, the people replied "YES"

So Mullah Nasruddin said, "Well, since you already know what I am going to say, I won't waste any more of your time" and he left.

Now the people were really perplexed. They decided to try one more time and once again invited the Mullah to speak the following week.

Once again he asked the same question - "Do you know what I am going to say?" Now the people were prepared and so half of them answered "YES" while the other half replied "NO". So Mullah Nasruddin said "The half who know what I am going to say, tell it to the other half" and he left!"

Just a joke or something more? Many of the Nasruddin stories are about getting people to think for themselves rather than merely taking the opinion of the “Mullah” as gospel. Again, this is not a regular view we have of Islam – we seem to take it as a religion of absoluteness, unquestioning, stark, definite, without nuance. Yet most Muslims will be more familiar with Nasruddin’s jokes than with the writings and saying of great preachers, imams and Islamic scholars. And as is often the case with these things, the quiet, slightly irreverent, jokey little stories provide a better guide to the outlook of most Muslims that the rather scary, beardedness that is paraded before us by those who would frighten us into compliance.

Whatever. I just like the stories – indeed the titles are often enough to bring a smile and raise a question. So I leave you with this…

“The Moon is more useful than the Sun”

Think about it and enjoy!

Muslim leader calls for ethnic profiling.

***

You read that right - in today's Telegraph it is reported the Iqbal Wahhab a "leading Muslim businessman" and Government advisor...

"...urged the Government to introduce the controversial policy of 'passenger profiling' - singling out particular groups for security checks at airports or other transport hubs - in order to combat the threat posed from Islamist extremists.

"The stakes are too high to worry about my individual rights," he said. "What about the right not to be bombed?"

Now isn't that a good idea?

....

BNP strongest in places with large muslim populations? Er...nope.

***

Various folk have been going on about how the BNP are strongest in Muslim areas. The very lovely Al Jahom quotes Melanie Philips saying that these racist prats are strongest...

"...in areas of high Pakistani and Bangladeshi concentration — but significantly, not where there are concentrations of Indians. Strikingly, BNP support actually falls away steeply in Afro-Caribbean areas."

The evidence for this is an old Manchester University study that (quite crucially) contains no current psephological data relying instead on an old Ipsos-MORI poll and a literature search.

All this suits the agenda of folk like Melanie Philips who want us to believe it's all about Muslims but while that is a big element the statement above is false.

1. The BNP's biggest success has been in the London Borough of Barking & Dagenham where they won 12 seats in 2007

2. Other areas where the BNP has performed well include Rotherham, North West Leicestershire, Nuneaton and Barnsley. None of these areas (perhaps with the exception of Rotherham) have large Muslim populations.

3. The BNP's first breakthroughs - in Bradford, Oldham & Burnley did reflect a response to rioting in largely Muslim areas. But since this time the BNP has declined in these areas.

We can keep sticking our fingers in our ears and singing la-la-la if we like but I take the view that simply saying; "it's muzzies innit" doesn't stack up - that is a factor but has to be set against a host of others like housing policies, unemployment, a crap Labour government and a dreadful bunch of lying MPs.

Finally the BNP will not get 5% of the popular vote come the general election and their best performances are unlikely to see them exceed 15%.

Oh and Melanie, where is Nick Griffin going to stand at the General Election? Oh yes...Barking - right bang in the old NF East London heartland.

...
Update: This link - in the comment below - is interesting (although it doesn't answer the question) in that it maps non-white population against BNP membership.

Afghanistan: so what's changed?

I have been re-reading Meyer & Brysac’s wonderful “Tournament of Shadows” – a breathtaking gallop through the “Great Game” and the contest for central Asia between Britain and Russia. I doing so I’ve come across three quotations that say so much about our present entanglement in Afghanistan that I thought I’d share them with you:

The first is attributed to Dost Mohammed the Afghan ruler ousted by the British in the (ultimately disastrous) 1st Afghan War:

“We have men and we have rocks in plenty but we have nothing else”

So why were we there? For sure it was not to serve in any way the interests of the Afghan people. And has anything changed?

The second quote is from Sir Henry Rawlinson, warrior scholar, Tory MP and leading advocate of the “Forward School”:

“In the interests then of peace; in the interests of moral and material improvement, it may be asserted that interference in Afghanistan has now become a duty and that any moderate outlay or responsibility we may incur in restoring order in Caboul will prove in the sequel to be true economy.”

Rawlinson’s concern (and how familiar this sounds) was that Afghanistan contained “…a machinery of agitation…” ideal to act on the “…seething, fermenting festering mass of Muslim hostility in India.” Put simply we should take action in Afghanistan to protect ourselves from violence and terrorism – now where have I heard that said?

Which brings us to the third quotation which comes from Sir John Lawrence – Viceroy of India in 1863 and the advocate of what his detractors called “masterly inactivity” over the perceived threat from central Asian and Afghanistan in particular.

“I am firmly of the opinion that our proper course is not to advance our troops beyond our present border, not to send English officers into the different states of Central Asia; but to put our own house in order by giving the people of India the best government in our power, by conciliating as far a practicable, all classes and by consolidating our resources.”

So there we have it – Afghanistan contains nothing of strategic interest yet some promote the fear of the Muslim mob while others argue that good government at home will manage that problem and that involvement only begets violence and division. Nothing has changed?

How often are our assumptions about Muslim women challenged?

I went to Cullingworth Surgery this morning to see the doctor. Don't do this too often as it usually leads to a massive rant about the uselessness of the appointments system and the idiocy of NHS bureaucracy. Today was different.

Leaving aside making us poorly folk wait outside in the pouring rain for ten minutes, everything went smoothly - went in asked for appointment and got one for 8.30am with Dr Khan. And here starts the real story of the visit.

Dr Khan is new - to me at least - and I was quite taken aback on entering the consulting room to find that the Doctor was not only Muslim but quite obviously a Muslim woman. I guess I should register for consciousness-raising sessions or something but I think it fair to say that for me (and I'm sure most of you reacted this way) the words "Doctor Khan" provide the image of a charming, well-spoken, probably bearded man.

The lesson I take from this is to take a fresh perspective on obviously Muslim women and not to assume that they are necessarily seen as either inferior or oppressed just because they wear a head covering and modest dress. This is not really any different from those women I remember at mass who wore a mantissa or the nice Jewish ladies in North Leeds with their tidy wigs - covering one's head is a cultural norm not an expression of female submission.

This goes to show that a woman can go through university, medical school and further training and still retain her Muslim identity & belonging. I suspect there is a lesson in this for all those peddling anti-Muslim myths and for a fair few Muslim men too!