MPs are debating on a bill which includes plans for a referendum, to change constituency boundaries and cut the number of MPs from 650 to 600.

Mr Clegg said it would “restore people’s faith” in politics.

But Labour’s Jack Straw criticised the “deeply flawed and partisan bill” over the plans to change boundaries.

The proposed referendum, planned for 5 May 2011, would ask voters if they wanted to switch from the current first-past-the-post for parliamentary elections, to the alternative voting (AV) system- where voters rank constituency candidates in order of preference.

‘New politics’

It was a key part of the coalition deal signed by the Conservatives and Lib Dems in May. Most Conservative MPs, including Prime Minister David Cameron, are opposed to the change, but the party conceded the referendum as part of the power-sharing agreement.

Mr Clegg opened the debate on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, which must be approved in the next couple of months to enable a poll to be held in May.

The deputy PM and Lib Dem leader said the bill was “about the legitimacy of this House” and that MPs had to deliver on a promise for a “new politics” which made the system “fairer” and put people “back in charge”.

He said while there were differences between the Tories and Lib Dems about the AV referendum, the coalition partners “emphatically agree” that “the final decision should be taken not by us but by the British people”.

But several Tory MPs stood up to challenge him about the plans for a referendum. Conservative MP Gary Streeter suggested there was “raging disinterest” among voters on the topic and it would be a “referendum that nobody wants”. He said he feared it would mean an “outright Conservative government” would never be voted in again.

Although Labour backs the referendum, it has threatened to oppose the bill because it also contains plans to “equalise” constituency sizes.

Fewer MPs

The coalition says it is unfair that some MPs need almost twice as many votes to get elected as others because their constituencies have many more registered voters, but Labour says the proposals will disproportionately hurt Labour-supporting areas.

Labour MP Kevin Brennan asked whether plans for constituency changes were included in the same bill as the price of Conservative support for the referendum. Mr Clegg replied that, as they were “two issues that relate to how we are elected to this House”, it had been “natural to bring them together”.

Some Tory MPs also questioned the need to tie the two issues together – because they supported constituency boundary changes but not a referendum on AV.

WHAT IS ALTERNATIVE VOTE?

• Instead of marking the ballot paper with an X for one candidate, the voter can rank all the candidates in order of preference
• If a candidate receives a majority of first-preference votes, they are elected
• If no candidate gains a majority of first preferences, then the second-preference votes of the candidate who finished last on the first count are redistributed
• This process is repeated until someone gets over 50%
• Representatives are still elected for single-member constituencies

Mr Clegg defended plans to reduce the number of MPs from 650 to 600 and to redraw constituency boundaries so they each represented about 76,000 people each, saying it was “patently obvious that individuals’ votes should carry the same weight”.

And he said the number of MPs had crept up so the UK now had the “largest directly elected chamber in the European Union”.

But shadow deputy PM Jack Straw said while the number of MPs had increased by 4% in 60 years, the electorate had increased by 25% and MPs’ workloads had “grown exponentially”.

He said the proposals were nothing to do with the “high ideals” that Mr Clegg had claimed and were instead “the worst kind of political skulduggery for narrow party advantage”.

But he said if the bill was split so the referendum was dealt with separately, Labour would support it.

More than 45 MPs – most of them Conservative – have signed a motion calling for the referendum to be moved to another day, arguing that holding it concurrently with elections to the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and Northern Ireland Assembly, as well as local council elections in some parts of England, could distort the result.

WHERE LARGEST PARTIES STAND ON ALTERNATIVE VOTE

• Conservatives – Most MPs are opposed. David Cameron has said he will campaign against
• Lib Dems – Most MPs in favour although many regard it as a poor substitute for proportional system. Nick Clegg will campaign for
• Labour – Some MPs for change, some against. New leader yet to be elected so unclear what they will do

By holding it then, they say it could lead to different levels of turnout across the UK – favouring one side over the other – as well as “clouding” the arguments involved.

Angus MacNeil of the Scottish National Party also criticised the decision, telling Mr Clegg to “have some respect for elections that will be occurring in Scotland, in Wales and in Northern Ireland”.

But Mr Clegg suggested that holding the referendum on the same date could save £30m and said it was “a little disrespectful” to assume voters could not manage to answer multiple questions on the same day.

MPs are due to vote on whether the bill gets a second reading at around 2200 BST. Labour has moved an amendment saying it should not get one because it includes “entirely unrelated provisions designed to gerrymander constituencies by imposing a top-down, hasty and undemocratic review of boundaries”.

Source: BBC

Chris Bryant, a Labour MP, plans to introduce a ten-minute rule bill to make sex education compulsory in schools. The proposal will be debated on 8 September.

Compulsory sex-education is a key objective of the pro-abortion lobby – part of its ongoing campaign to use schools as a vehicle for promoting sexual health services – including abortion.  A similar proposal was of course defeated just before the election, when Ed Balls was forced to drop compulsory sex education clauses from the Children, Schools and Families bill.

As a ten-minute rule bill, Mr Bryant’s proposal has little or no chance of becoming law, but it is an important opportunity to establish the mood in the new parliament on the issue.  New rules on sex education could be part of a government bill later in the year.

It is critical to contact your MP and ask him/her to oppose the Bryant bill and any proposal for compulsory sex education. SPUC has produced a briefing on the Bryant bill and the issues it raises to help you in contacting your MP.  Paper copies of our Bryant Bill Briefing are also available from SPUC HQ by telephoning 020 7091 7091               020 7091 7091       or emailing political@spuc.org.uk

Click here to contact your MP online

To subscribe to SPUC’s email information services, please visit www.spuc.org.uk/em-signup. The reliability of the news herein is dependent on that of the cited sources, which are paraphrased rather than quoted. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the society. © Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, 2010

 Frankly, I’m tired of hearing religious bigots running down this country. For all its faults – crap public transport, Nick Clegg popping up everywhere and a national obsession with Simon Cowell – Britain is still one of the most civilised places in the world to live. It’s not Iran, where prisoners are subjected to rape and mock executions; it isn’t Saudi Arabia either, despite Mr Adamus’s downright peculiar belief that we’re more anti-Catholic than the Chinese or the Saudis. (Might I suggest he tries walking along a street in Riyadh carrying a crucifix and a Bible?) The Catholic Church has picked up this habit of dissing secular culture from hardline Muslims, who dislike pretty much the same things: gay relationships, equal rights for women and the freedom to mock religion.

Those of us who aren’t religious conservatives have had to fight every step of the way to create this modern, tolerant, secular Britain, and it’s easy to forget that many of the improvements are very recent. I can just remember the last hangings in British prisons, as well as a time when having an “illegitimate” baby brought shame on a woman and homosexuality was still illegal; even as recently as 10 years ago, when the current Foreign Secretary William Hague was Conservative leader, the party opposed the repeal of an iconic piece of anti-gay legislation known as Section 28.

So it’s good to have this wake-up from Mr Adamus, director of pastoral affairs at the diocese of Westminster, about the need to defend secular values. Mr Adamus launched into his denunciation of modern Britain during an interview with a Catholic news agency, Zenit, that’s said to have close links with the Vatican, and his use of the phrase “culture of death” – an echo of the late Pope John Paul II – identifies him as being on the Church’s conservative wing; it’s code for abortion, euthanasia and capital punishment, three practices traditionalist Catholics lump together even though secular philosophers see distinctions between them. The UK allows abortion (although regrettably not in Northern Ireland where the churches lobbied for an exclusion), but is uneasy about euthanasia and gave up using the death penalty several decades ago.

This latest row has brought into the open what many people suspected in the run-up to a controversial papal visit to Britain; some Vatican officials, it seems, are alarmed by the threat of demonstrations and increasingly regard the UK as a hostile country. A damage limitation exercise is under way – Mr Adamus’s boss, Archbishop Vincent Nichols, has distanced himself from the remarks – but the row comes only two weeks before Benedict XVI is due to arrive in Britain. There’s already anger and unease about the soaring cost to taxpayers of protecting the Pope – many of the functions he will undertake are religious, not political – and now a senior Catholic has exposed a sneering contempt for secular culture.

“Our laws and lawmakers for over 50 years have been the most permissively anti-life and progressively anti-family and marriage, in essence one of the most anti-Catholic landscapes, culturally speaking – more than even those places where Catholics suffer open persecution,” Mr Adamus claimed. In the midst of this contemporary Sodom and Gomorrah, he singled out for special condemnation “permissive laws advancing the ‘gay’ agenda” – equal rights legislation, in other words – and what he calls the “objectification of women for sexual gratification”. I’m not sure what he has in mind – I love Wonderbras, hate lap-dancing clubs – but I suspect I might see pleasure and sexual freedom where Mr Adamus sees objectification.

If that makes me a hedonist, so be it; as long as I’m not harming humans or animals, I can’t see anything wrong in enjoying myself. I’ve always thought it’s a bit rich for Christians to accuse other people of belonging to a “culture of death” when they go in for all those crucifixions, pietas and bleeding hearts – and that’s without getting on to the subject of the early Christian martyrs. It’s a gruesome feature of religious art that Renaissance altarpieces often have a predella showing saints being boiled in cauldrons or having body parts removed; St Agatha, patron saint of bell-founders, got her job as a result of an unfortunate confusion about what she was carrying on a plate in front of her. Now there’s a death cult if ever I saw one.

The confusion that’s been exposed by this latest attack on life-loving secular culture is actually a very old one, namely the pernicious myth that morality resides in sexual behaviour. Sexuality has always been an obsession for Christian churches and the Vatican’s teachings on the subject are so severe that millions of Catholics – including Cherie Blair, wife of the former Prime Minister, who wrote in her autobiography about her contraceptive methods – simply ignore them. At the same time, many non-Catholics have been shocked by the Vatican’s refusal to allow the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV.

Sex does raise questions of morality, if not in the way the Vatican understands them, but there are more important issues on which the moral standing of a nation should be judged. Here’s one of them: when an earthquake devastated Haiti earlier this year, British donations to disaster relief eventually reached £101m. Now that floods have devastated Pakistan, leaving millions of people homeless, the British public has contributed another £42m to the Disasters Emergency Committee. Does that really sound like the response of a nation which is supposedly the “geopolitical epicentre of the culture of death”?

Source: The Independent

Finally as promised, a Special Comment tonight on the inaccurately described “Ground Zero mosque.”

“They came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for me and by that time no one was left to speak up.”

Pastor Martin Niemoller’s words are well known but their context is not well understood. Niemoller was not speaking abstractly. He witnessed persecution, he acquiesced to it, he ultimately fell victim to it. He had been a German World War 1 hero, then a conservative who welcomed the fall of German democracy and the rise of Hitler and had few qualms the beginning of the holocaust until he himself was arrested for supporting it insufficiently.

Niemoller’s confessional warning came in a speech in Frankfurt in January, 1946, eight months after he was liberated by American troops. He had been detained at Tyrol, Sachsen-hausen and Dachau. For seven years.

Niemoller survived the death camps. In quoting him, I make no direct comparison between the attempts to suppress the building of a Muslim religious center in downtown Manhattan, and the unimaginable nightmare of the Holocaust. Such a comparison is ludicrous. At least it is, now.

But Niemoller was not warning of the Holocaust. He was warning of the willingness of a seemingly rational society to condone the gradual stoking of enmity towards an ethnic or religious group warning of the building-up of a collective pool of national fear and hate, warning of the moment in which the need to purge, outstrips even the perameters of the original scape-goating, when new victims are needed because a country has begun to run on a horrible fuel of hatred — magnified, amplified, multiplied, by politicians and zealots, within government and without.

Niemoller was not warning of the holocaust. He was warning of the thousand steps before a holocaust became inevitable. If we are at just the first of those steps again — today, here — it is one step too close.

Yet, in a country dedicated to freedom, forces have gathered to blow out of all proportion the construction of a minor community center; to transform it into a training ground for terrorists and an insult to the victims of 9/11 and a tribute to medieval Muslim subjugation of the West.

There is no training ground for terrorists. There is no insult to the victims of 9/11. There is no tribute to medieval Muslim subjugation of The West. There is, in fact, no “Ground Zero mosque.” It isn’t a mosque.

A mosque is a Muslim holy place in which only worship can be conducted. What is planned for 45 Park Place, New York City, is a Community Center. It’s supposed to include a basketball court. And a cullinary school.  It’s to be thirteen stories tall and the top two stories will be a Muslim prayer space.

What a cauldron of terrorism that will be. Terrorist chefs and terrorist point guards. And truly those will use the center have more to fear from us, than us from them. For, there has been terrorism connected to a mosque. In this country. This year.

May 10th. Jacksonville, Florida. A pipe bomb at the Islamic Center of Northeast Florida. The FBI thinks the man in this surveillance video could be the bomber. It went off during evening prayers, and it was powerful enough to send shrapnel flying 100 yards.

Fortunately the bomber didn’t know where to place it, so the 60 Muslim worshipers were uninjured. If he’d put it inside and not outside they’d have been dead. And you probably would’ve heard about it on the news.  Or maybe not.

Maybe those exploiting 45 Park Place would still shake their fists and decry terrorism by extremists who happen to be Muslim, and never face the shameful truth about our country: As the Jacksonville mosque bombing shows, since Sept. 11, Muslims have been at far greater risk of being victims of terrorism in the United States, than have non-Muslims.

But back to this Islamic Center. Its name – Cordoba House – is not a tribute to medieval Muslim subjugation of Spain. Newt Gingrich has been pushing that nonsense, that “Cordoba” is a Muslim dog-whistle for “triumphalism.”  ”It refers to Córdoba, Spain – the capital of Muslim conquerors who symbolized their victory over the Christian Spaniards by transforming a church there into the world’s third-largest mosque complex. Today, some of the mosque’s backers insist this term is being used to ‘symbolize interfaith co-operation’ when, in fact, every Islamist in the world recognizes Córdoba as a symbol of Islamic conquest.”

Those “Muslim conquerors” are a figment of Mr. Gingrich’s lurid imagination.  In Spain, in Cordoba, though the Muslims established multi-cultural, non-denominational institutions of learning, they were under constant attack from Christians, and from a series of internal all-Muslim Civil Wars. The Muslims lost Cordoba, and the Christian church they transformed into the “world’s third-largest mosque complex?” It was turned back into a Christian Cathedral. In the 13th Century. And it has been that, ever since.

And is there not a logical extension to Mr. Gingrich’s conclusions about Cordoba and “triumphalism?” Virtually every church, every synagogue, indeed every mosque built on this continent stands where a Native American lived, or died, or was buried, or saw his world — his religions included — wiped out. By us.

What are we then, Mr. Gingrich? And by the way, a point Mr. Gingrich has not even whispered as he has shouted fire in a crowded theater—when the historical implications of Cordoba were made clear to the backers of this project, the property developer, Sharif Gamal, changed the name. They already compromised. 

“We are calling it Park 51 because of the backlash to the name Cordoba House,” he told the Financial Times. “It will be a place open to all New Yorkers and that is a very New York name.” A very New York name. Like “Ground Zero.” Except this place — Park 51 — is not even at Ground Zero, not even ‘right across the street.’ Even the description of it being “two blocks away” is generous. 

It is two blocks away from the northeast corner of the World Trade Center site. From the planned location of the Setp. 11 memorial it is more like four or even five blocks. You know what is right across the street? I went there yesterday, to refresh my sense of the World Trade Center, in which I worked nearly 30 years ago. 

At Church and Veezy, so close that the barbed wire of Ground Zero obscures its spire? St Paul’s Chapel. Been there since 1766, where Washington went the day he was inaugurated, where the first responders came for relief nine years ago. You know what’s also closer to Ground Zero than this Muslim Community Center? Church of St. Peter — at Church and Barclay Streets.  As the sign says, New York’s Oldest Catholic Parish. 

People hear “Ground Zero Mosque” and they think Mecca in the backyard and a loud call to prayer and they take umbrage. 

“We got no more than a few inches of skin and a couple of pieces of bone. Ground Zero is the burial place of my son,” said Joyce Boland at the public hearing about the Center. “I don’t want to go there and see an overwhelming mosque looking down at me.” 

I honor her pain, and her fear, but Mrs. Boland has nothing to worry about. Unless she walks directly to it, she’ll never see it. This is what you see from where the Center will be. Another non-descript building across the street. This building and others like it will block views of the Trade Center, and views from the Trade Center. 

It certainly will stand out on the north side of Park Place, but amid the canyons of lower Manhattan, it’ll just be a distinctive building that if you happen to wander down a side street near the Trade Center, you might see. You know what you’ll see there now? This. The Burlington Coat Factory, abandoned since 2001 when the landing gear from one of the planes fell 90 stories and went through the roof. For nine years nobody’s been willing to buy that building, just to knock it down and build a new one. 

It sold for four million 850 thousand dollars. In New York City real estate, that is spare change.
And you know why it’s spare change? Because — walk around Ground Zero any day of the week and it’s packed, with tourists and our version of pilgrims. But walk two and three blocks away and… not so packed. Not packed at all. 

Empty stores. Boarded-up windows. Nine years later, and two and three blocks from the action and it’s a ghost town. What was that about government not getting in the way of private business? What was that about letting the private sector spur new jobs in blighted areas? Oh, and what was that about Iraq? 

Why did we go into Iraq, again? I don’t mean the real reasons or the naked vengeful blindness that enabled the forging of a non-existant connection between Iraq and 9/11. I mean, the official explanation. To free the world — and especially Iraq’s citizens — of the tyranny of Saddam Hussein. That’s its supporters’ defense of the invasion, to this day. Well, who lives in Iraq? Muslims. 

I hate to reveal this to anybody on the Right who didn’t know this, but when they say Iraq is 65% Shia and 32% Suni you do know that Shia and Suni are both forms of the Muslim religion, right? 

We sacrificed 4,415 of our military personnel in Iraq to save Muslims, and there are thousands still there tonight to protect Muslims, but we don’t want Muslims to open a combination culinary school and prayer space in Manhattan? 

From the beginning of this nation we have fought prejudice and religious intolerance and our greatest enemy: stupidity, exploited by rapacious politicians. It’s just 50 years now since Americans publicly and urgently warned their country-men not to support a Presidential candidate because he was a Roman Catholic. He would boww to the will not of the American people, but the Pope. He would be a “Papist.” He would be the agent of a foreign state. 

His name was John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Despite the nobility of our founding and the indefatigable efforts of all our generations, there have always been those who would happily sacrifice our freedoms, our principles, to ward off the latest unprecedented threat, the latest unbeatable outsiders. Once again, at 45 Park Place, we are being told to sell our birth-right, to feed the maw of xenophobia and vengeance and mob rule. 

The terrorists who destroyed the buildings from which you could only see 45 Park Place as a dot on the ground, wanted to force us to change our country to become more like the ones they knew. What better way could we honor the dead of the World Trade Center, than to do the terrorists’ heavy lifting for them? And do you think 45 Park Place is where it ends? 

The moment this monstrous betrayal of our America gained the slightest traction, the next goal was unveiled. ‘No more building permits for any mosques in this country,’ brayed a man from the euphemistically-named “American Families Association.” Of course, he said, maybe the permits could be granted if the congregation quote “was willing to publicly renounce the Koran.” 

“They came first for the building permits.” But back to Downtown. Does the name “Masjid-Manhattan” mean anything to you? Let me take you, in conclusion, to 20 Warren Street. Not much to look at. Not from across the street Not from up close. That open door is the only thing that distinguishes it from the rest of the grill-fronts of the neighborhood. 

That, and the yellow sign there. “Entrance To Islamic Center.” It’s in the basement. It is a Muslim house of worship. Masjid-Manhattan. It lost its lease in a larger building down the street, two years ago. The new facility is so small that only about 20 percent of worshipers can use it, at a time.  But “Masjid-Manhattan” opened in early 1970. Four blocks away, the World Trade Center opened, in December 1970. 

The actual place that is the real-life equivalent of the paranoid dream contained in the phrase “Ground Zero Mosque,” has been up and running, since before there was a World Trade Center, and for nine years since there has been a World Trade Center. 

Running, without controversy, without incident, without terrorism, without protest. Because this is America, dammit. 

And in America, when somebody comes for your neighbor, or his bible, or his torah, or his Atheists’ Manifesto, or his Koran, you and I do what our fathers did, and our grandmothers did, and our founders did you and speak up.
 Source: MSNBC

Sunday,  29th August, 9.30 pm

For immediate release

End Domestic Flights Now !

Demonstrations in London and Manchester,  Saturday 4th December

Protestors will gather to demand an end to domestic flights at City Airport, London at 11.00 am and at Manchester Airport at 4.30 pm.  A “train not plane” brigade of activists will travel between the two events by bus and train. They will spread the message through the sreets of London from an open-top bus travelling from City Airport  to Euston, where they will board a special carriage for Manchester.

Schedule for the day :

11.00 am  Demonstration outside the main entrance to City Airport, London, begins.

12.00 noon  Speeches outside City Airport – including  John Stewart (leader of the succesful anti-Heathrow expansion campaign), Murad Qureshi (GLA member, Labour) and  Darren Johnson (GLA member, Green Party).

12.15    “Train not plane” brigade bus leave City Airport on open-top bus, bound for Euston.

1.40 pm  “Train not plane” brigade take special carriage on the train to Manchester.

3.50 pm “Train not plane” brigade arrives at Manchester Piccadilly station.

4.30 -5.45 pm  “Train not plane” brigade join demonstration at Terminal 3, Manchester Airport.

Phil Thornhill from Campaign against Climate Change said “As unprecedented flooding devastates Pakistan, record temperatures stoke raging wildfires around Moscow and torrential downpours cause landslides that kill thousands in China  – its time we got serious about the escalating threat from climate change before its too late. And we’re not getting serious about reducing climate-destabilising emissions until we get to grips with the their fastest growing source. Aviation symbolises the high-emission lifestyles of the developed world that are threatening billions, especially in the most vunerable communities, around the world. We can start to get to grips with the growth in aviation by illiminating the shorter journeys that can be made in other, less carbon-intensive, ways. This is the time to show we’re getting serious with aviation, serious with unnecessary high emissions, serious with climate change – serious, in other words, with the greatest threat facing humanity.”   

Anne-Marie Griffin, Chair of ‘Fight the Flights’ said: “An end to unnecessary domestic flights for trips which could be taken by train, would have a hugely positive impact on the residents around London City Airport. Not only would they experience less flight noise and pollution from City Airports’ domestic flights, but also from those heading to Heathrow. Travellers taking the train instead of the plane could help improve the lives and health of thousands of Londoners.”

Robbie Gillett from the ‘Stop Expansion at Manchester Airport’ coalition said “There are currently around 38 flights per day between Manchester and the London hubs.  Airlines such as Flybe who promote these domestic flights are encouraging airport expansion and threatening the stability of the climate in order to line their own pockets. These flights are the most unnecessary of all and should stop immediately.”

Notes for editors .

The ‘End Domestic Flights Now’ Day of Action has been organised by the Campaign against Climate Change together with “Fight the Flights” and SEMA (“Stop the Expansion of Manchester Airport” ), the two groups fighting the expansion of London City and Manchester airports, respectively.

Contacts

Campaign against Climate Change  www.campaigncc.org , info@campaigncc.org,   02078339311

Fight the Flights      www.stoptheflights.com   fighttheflights@yahoo.co.uk    07984300558
SEMA   www.stopmanchesterairport.org.uk   info@stopmanchesterairport.org.uk

Phil Thornhill, National Coordinator Campaign against Climate Change,  phil@campaigncc.org   07903316331

Robbie Gillet, Stop the Expansion of Manchester Airport,  robbiegillett@googlemail.com   07746711667

Anne Marie-Griffin, chair Fight the Flights,  fighttheflights@yahoo.co.uk  07984300558

Alan Haughton, Fight the Flights, alan6012@hotmail.com,  07905156922

August 29, 2010 — Since the rise of Pim Fortuyn in 2002, Islamophobia has played a central role in Dutch politics. Geert Wilders and his Freedom Party have now emerged as a threat to all progressive forces. There is no point in trying to change the subject and hoping the danger will pass; Islamophobia has to be confronted head on. But intelligently – knee-jerk defences of anything a Muslim says or does will definitely not help.

To be clear: in the Netherlands today Islamophobia is the main form taken by racism. It has nothing to do with criticism of Islam as a religion. If Wilders and his followers say that not one more Muslim should be allowed into the country, they don’t mean that Moroccan and Turkish Christians and atheists are welcome. “Muslim” is for them simply a convenient epithet for “those other people”.

And it has proved to be an extremely effective epithet. Without Islamophobia, Fortuyn would never have succeeded in becoming the champion of resistance to the coalition of the Labour Party and the liberal parties that governed the Netherlands from 1994 to 2002. Without the assassination of filmmaker Theo van Gogh, just after the big trade union demonstration on Amsterdam’s Museum Square in 2004, it would have been harder to make the unions accept a poor compromise on the issue of early retirement. Without his rabid attacks on Muslims, Wilders would never have managed to become the main voice of resistance to the European Union. There is almost nothing the left can achieve in this country any more without settling accounts with Islamophobia.

At the same time we have to acknowledge that Islamic fundamentalism exists and is a problem – although the danger it poses to the Netherlands is being ridiculously exaggerated. The millions of Dutch people who say they are afraid an Islamic state will be established in Europe have completely lost their sense of proportion. Fundamentalism doesn’t even have much support among people of Muslim immigrant origin. Every survey shows that Dutch Muslims are hardly any more religious than Dutch Christians, that the rate of mosque attendance is low and declining, and that the number of ex-Muslims and non-practising Muslims is increasing.

However terrible Islamic fundamentalism may be for its individual victims – above all women – it is a fallacy to treat right-wing Islamophobes and Islamic fundamentalists as equivalent threats in the Netherlands today. Both qualitatively and quantitatively, the Dutch far right is the greater danger. No fundamentalist imam is ever going to become Dutch prime minister; unfortunately we can’t be sure that the same is true of Wilders!

The left may even sometimes join in a demonstration – in solidarity with Palestine, for example – where Islamic fundamentalists are also present. We shouldn’t be afraid to do that, though we should take care that our slogans don’t get mixed up with theirs. But we should avoid demonstrating alongside Wilders supporters at any price.

The “Muslim threat” is in fact the equivalent in the Netherlands today of what the “Communist threat” was about 50 years ago: a bogeyman that serves as a pretext for a right-wing, repressive political climate.

Hegemony

What we mustn’t lose sight of, however, is the fact that left-wing and Islamic currents are competing for hegemony among radicalising youth of non-Dutch origin. Even though people of Muslim origin will never become a majority of the Dutch population, they are a growing proportion of young people, of the population of the big cities and of the working class. If the left is to climb out of the deep pit it’s in now and win a majority of society – and that must remain our goal – we need a base under people of non-Dutch origin as well as among people of Dutch origin.

Unfortunately the left is not doing well among young people of Muslim origin. Left-wing immigrant currents like DIDF (Federation of Turkish Workers in the Netherlands) and KMAN (Committee of Moroccan Workers in the Netherlands) are significantly weaker than they were 20 years ago. These groups did not play a prominent role in the protests against the Israeli attack on Gaza, for example. An Islamic current like the PPMS, by contrast, did.

There are people on the left who don’t think this is so terrible. Those young Muslims are against the government, against Wilders and against Zionism, just as we are, they say, so we can perfectly well be allies. But that’s sophistry. Our differences with fundamentalists about women’s and LGBTI emancipation are not secondary issues. No just society is possible if over half the population is denied equal rights or if people aren’t free to love as they choose.

And there are other areas where we have unbridgeable differences with fundamentalists. Islamic politics offers no future to people in the Netherlands. An Islamic state is impossible in this country (fortunately); a return to the “pillarised” politics in which Dutch politics and society were divided along religious lines is a recipe for division and stagnation; and a Salafist withdrawal from secular democracy would rob a big share of the Netherlands’ working and poorest people of their political voice and their social rights.

In short, a politics based on religion leads nowhere…

Ramadan

… as the controversy in Rotterdam around Tariq Ramadan made clear.

From the moment the city signed its contract hiring Ramadan as a consultant on immigrant affairs, failure was guaranteed. Because in doing so the city government was simply turning the Islamophobic positions of the previous administration, dominated by the right-wing Liveable Rotterdam party, upside down. Both Liveable Rotterdam and its centre-left successors viewed Rotterdammers of Moroccan and Turkish origin above all as Muslims. For Liveable Rotterdam they are as such suspect; for the Labour Party and Green Left they have to be “integrated” as Muslims.

You don’t have to be an enemy of Tariq Ramadan, still less of his religion, to conclude that someone who doesn’t speak Dutch and has no profound knowledge of the Netherlands is not qualified to help people become fully equal citizens of a Dutch city.

The upshot is that virtually every political current in Rotterdam has managed to alienate Rotterdammers of Muslim origin. The Labour Party and Green Left managed to do it by acting as if Ramadan represented all those Rotterdammers, and then sacking Ramadan in a humiliating way when they became convinced that he was an electoral liability. The fact that these two parties of neoliberal business-as-usual still win many votes among immigrants is a reflection of the lack of self-respect among political figures and organisations representing people of non-Dutch origin. As for the Socialist Party (SP), which as the only anti-neoliberal party has more to offer, it has been repeatedly equated in this affair with Liveable Rotterdam.

This image of the SP is in part the fault of the media. A year ago, when Ramadan’s contract was renewed, the SP city council delegation made clear it they didn’t give much weight to the charges of sexism and homophobia against Ramadan; they simply didn’t think his fee was a useful investment of taxpayers’ money. And again when Ramadan was sacked, the SP said it didn’t think that his connection with the Iranian government-funded PressTV was so terrible. By ignoring the SP’s statements, the media gave a distorted picture of the political landscape.

The SP can however be reproached with not expressing more repugnance at the Islamophobia of Liveable Rotterdam and the right-wing liberal People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (WD) and at the opportunism of the centre-left parties in city government. Unfortunately, the SP’s low profile against Islamophobia is not surprising from a party that expresses such vehement objections to “ethnic politics”. It was also simply negligent of the SP not to say that sacking Ramadan from his chair at the Erasmus University (which he was given at the same time the city hired him as a consultant) was an impermissible assault on academic freedom.

The Erasmus University faculty members who took a public stand against the university’s breach of its contract deserve high praise, all the more because they made clear that they did not necessarily share Ramadan’s opinions. Would that all of Ramadan’s defenders on the left had been as sensible. Even if the man has been treated unjustly, that is no reason to treat him as a progressive hero. Yes, he’s smart, eloquent, elegant, an effective critic of Israel and of the war in Afghanistan, a proponent of Muslim participation in democratic politics, and a legitimate interlocutor within the global justice movement – but he’s not part of the left.

A glance at his website shows that in France in 2007, despite his justified criticisms of the presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, he had hardly anything good to say about any of the candidates of the left (and he commented on them all). The only candidate he expressed admiration for was the centrist François Bayrou. Moreover, Ramadan’s criticisms of Sarkozy didn’t stop him from later dedicating one of his books to the right-wing politician. And we don’t even need to mention his negative opinions on homosexuality.

Lessons

This tragic business shows that the left is still at a loss in dealing with Dutch people of Muslim origin. It is time to go back to first principles.

There needs to be room on the left for people of every religion and no religion, for people who do and don’t wear crosses, for women who do or don’t wear headscarves. And the left should be more open to spirituality in general – an area in which we have something to learn from believers. With the general atomisation of society, the Dutch left has too often forgotten that transforming society requires sacrifices and a willingness to put oneself at the service of one’s fellow human beings. People who have a spiritual motivation for their political commitment should be able to be open about it.

In that case, however, believers and non-believers need to have a common basis for discussion and action. Once arguments like “I believe because God says it” or “I do it because God commands it” – about abortion, poverty or anything else – are admitted in politics, rational debate becomes impossible. Discussions on the left should be about interests, values, facts and analyses, not about theology.

This doesn’t mean that the left should be a space of uniformity, in which we are all citizens and perhaps workers and nothing else. The left needs to be as diverse as society at large – and we have a long way to go in this respect. Like women and men, people of non-Dutch origin and people of Dutch origin, gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, queers and many others, believers should be at home on the left.

[This article was written for Grenzeloos (magazine of the Dutch section of the Fourth International) and the translation comes from Europe solidaire sans frontieres. It also appeared on http://liammacuaid.wordpress.com, from where this text was taken.]

Venue: 

Charlotte Square Gardens

Tariq Ramadan is no stranger to controversy. The Swiss born and based academic has been on the receiving end of strong criticism from within and ouwith Islam for a number of years. His appearance at the Edinburgh International Book Festival was an opportunity to discuss his most recent book, What I Believe, a response to some of those comments.

Ramadan has produced some twenty seven books already, but What I Believe is his attempt to define what it means to him to be both Muslim and European. He described Islam as a ‘controversial topic’ – yet it’s difficult to understand why this should still be so. There has, after all, been a Muslim presence in Europe for thirteen hundred years; long enough, one might think, for novelty and suspicion to have worn off. Chair Stuart Kelly asked if the undeniably remaining suspicion was due to ignorance or to malice. Ramadan responded that Islam continued to be seen as ‘other’, and one has to admit that there’s still more than a hint of superiority in the attitudes of the pale majority to the quaint beliefs of the brown people.

For Ramadan, the struggle is largely one to rediscover the meaning of the words we use – real dialogue is only possible once we understand what each of us means. Kelly pointed out that Europe has been in long retreat from exposure to the reality of religious experience.

The ‘Orientalism’ of the late Edward Said exposes ways in which ‘the other’ has been constructed, especially in European and secularist terms. Ramadan emphasised the need for genuine respect between peoples as opposed to toleration, which demands no change on the part of those who tolerate, whereas respect requires us to consider our own position and our attitudes to others.

Questions from the audience were as thoughtful as Ramadan’s arguments – the multiplicity of Muslim practices while holding fast to the tents of Islam cause puzzlement, but ought to be seen in relation to the differing strands of Christianity and Judaism.

The issue of representation of the Prophet was raised (in the context of cartoons published some time ago in Denmark and of material satirising Christian belief). Ramadan pointed out that the issue was in reality diplomatic rather than religious; it was the Danish government’s refusal to accept representations from Middle Eastern states which were inflated, leading to street protests.

The separation of media and government in the West is still poorly understood in parts of the Muslim world. Ramadan saw such differentiation as imperative for the health of our common future.

A final question raised the issue of Qu’ranic textual criticism, still highly controversial despite some 30 years of practice. Ramadan could only stress its importance within his own Reformist tradition. Dialogue in numerous areas continues, and it can only be hoped that it will continue in an atmosphere of respect.

“The Future of Islam For Muslims In The West” was held on Saturday 28 August as part of the Edinburgh International Book Festival

Sarah Sayeed, a Pakistani student, misses the communal aspect of fasting back- home. “In Pakistan, the whole country fasts and most restaurants are closed during the day. At maghrib (sunset when fast is broken) time, there is pin-drop silence in the streets; later they are full of people selling food. Most shops also have ‘Ramadan special offers’ during the month. It’s the best place to be.”

In contrast, Zahra-Al-Katab, of mixed parentage (Arab-Scottish), admits that her own community lacks a sense of togetheness during the month. On the other hand, she welcomes the positive reactions of non-Muslims. “People are accepting our fasts definitely. A lot of people don’t like to eat in front of me when I’m fasting which is nice. It just shows they care.”

A firm faith in the message of God and understanding of Ramadan’s core message also help Muslims stay on track. “Once you realise that you are fasting for yourself and not for others, you strive to do your best,” says Salif. Sheema. She adds that even the long fasts during summer months are not enough to detract from her faith. “I strongly believe that fasting is very good for our health in the long run and if we fast for Allah He will give us courage and strength.”

Successfully completing the fasts results in a great sense of achievement, something A-level student Najaf Raza looks forward to. She explains: “It’s a time where you resolve to improve yourself, and this starts with instilling some discipline and showing yourself you can do anything, you can even go a whole day without eating or drinking. It’s an empowering experience.”

Source: Muslim News