I think June is Pride month over in the Land of the Free, but there seems to be signs that both in America and over here parts of the gay community are turning against it. Some of this seems to be ordinary gay men and women with gender critical views, who feel that the emphasis Pride and the mainstream gay organisations have placed on transgender people and their issues is both dangerous and excludes ordinary gays. There’s a video of the operations manager of the American gay anti-trans organisation, Gays Against Groomers, tearing up the Pride flag saying that it does not represent them or their community. Gays Against Groomers are concerned about the promotion of the transgender ideology among children and its encouragement of them questioning their gender identity. The gender critical gay YouTubers on this side of the Atlantic have similar issues, but they also feel that organisations like Pride don’t represent them because of their focus on trans people. Barry Wall, the EDIJester, put up a video a few weeks ago going through the programme Manchester Pride had put together for their festival. There were plenty of trans-themed events, but far fewer for ordinary gays. Clive Simpson and Dennis Kavanagh of the ‘Queens Speech’ channel had similar complaints about Sadiq Khan’s ideas for London’s Pride festival. Khan had announced that the focus in his city’s Pride festival would be trans people, which left them as ordinary gays feeling marginalised and alienated. They felt the same about all the mainstream gay organisations, declaring that they had been hollowed out and ruined from within. They no longer represented ordinary gays and lesbians. As organisations set up to represent and protect a specific demographic, they were unique in this. The various anti-racist organisations set up to protect and represent Blacks and Asians, for example, still continue to do so. But to them, the gay organisations no longer represented ordinary gays, although Pride and other organisations were still keen to get their money because of the power of the ‘pink pound’.
There also appears to be a feeling that Pride had been taken over by straight people and a revulsion at the appearance of kink. The pair said that it now seemed to be about straight people with fetishes. They didn’t want to go to it because they said they didn’t want to see people wearing dog masks with their private parts on display. And it seems they’re not alone. They mentioned one particular gay rights activist, who had asked her gay audience if they still went to Pride. Many of them didn’t, again complaining that it was no longer the fun event they remembered from previous years, but had had been taken over by kink.
At the same time, it seems to me that the controversy over drag queen story hour is leading to a general backlash against the LGB community in America. There was a video on YouTube the other day of the citizens of one town, Fairview, criticising their local councillors over a Pride event. They didn’t believe it was suitable for children and objected to a drag show that was going to be a part of it. In fact, the event was 18+, so it was very definitely not aimed at children. And while there are good objections to drag shows for children, adults should have every right to see these shows if they so wish. This local controversy appears to bear out the fears of some gender critical gays that the strong promotion of the transgender issue and ideology would lead to a backlash against all gays, regardless of their own stance on the issue.
I don’t know if this is a growing trend, and if it will result in more people turning their backs on Pride. I’ve come across other posts and videos online by gay people saying that they also find Pride too corporate and actually quite oppressive, now that governments and corporations are using it to promote their inclusiveness and welcoming policies towards gays and trans people. I think this is what happens to most formerly subversive or rebellious movements as they become the new orthodoxy and the source of new rules and official attitudes. And against this there are the number of gays, who continue to support Pride and the other gay organisations and their campaigns on behalf of transpeople.
Policy Exchange is one of those wretched right-wing think tanks that has been poisoning British politics for decades. I think apart from the Tories they were also a force influencing New Labour policies. But this is interesting, nonetheless. I found an article from them on their website, ‘White Departure from Inner City Britain Halting’, which cites their research showing that Britain is slowly becoming less segregated. Some of this is from Blacks and other ethnic minorities moving out of the inner cities to the suburbs. But it also shows that the ‘White Flight’ from the inner cities has stopped has stopped and may actually be reversing. This is an important issue. One of the factors behind the Oldham race riots a few years ago was that the very strong separation between White and ethnic minority communities. They lived in separate areas and had little contact with each other, which allowed for the extreme right to spread their noxious ideas. Much of the article comes from interviews with senior politicians done by the widower of Jo Cox, the Labour MP assassinated by a White supremacist. Nevertheless, it also notes that just under two-fifths of Brits say they feel like foreigners in their own country. This has been a strong influence in Whites leaving multiracial and multicultural areas, in some cases along with hostility from the ethnic minority population. A little while ago the New Culture Forum as part of their ‘Heresies’ series posted an interview on YouTube with the author of the book The Demonization of the White Working Class. He stated that working class Whites were being squeezed out of large cities like London by ethnic minorities and the new global rich. The influx of Whites to Black and Asian areas is causing a different set of problems, however. The extract below states that it’s professional White moving into areas like Brixton. This gentrification has provoked Black and Asian resentment as those minorities become priced out of their home areas by these wealthy incomers. The extract I’ve posted here also discusses the implications these demographic changes have for both Tories and Labour. The article, which is part of a longer report against the politicisation of the courts, How and Why to Constrain Interveners and Depoliticise Our Courts, begins:
‘The decline of the White British population in inner city Britain appears to have halted and may even have reversed, according to a new report on ethnic integration and segregation.
The new demographic analysis for Policy Exchange by the Webber Phillips data analytics group confirms that neighbourhood segregation has been slowly declining for most ethnic minority groups as they spread out from inner city heartlands into the suburbs but it also finds that the level of mixing between ethnic minorities taken as a whole and the White British majority is barely moving at all. It is a similar story in schools, with over 40% of ethnic minority pupils attending a school that is less than 25% White British.
This confirms previous trends, but what is new is the stabilisation of the White British population in big cities like London, Birmingham and Manchester. And in some parts of inner city Britain there appears to have been an actual increase in the White British as white young professionals move in and poorer minority residents are driven out by higher rents, think Brixton in south London.
Brendan Cox, the widower of Jo Cox the MP murdered by a white identity extremist and now a campaigner for more cohesive communities, argues that “Britain is on the verge of a diversity boom” yet the issue of integration has been a political orphan with no consistent lobby for it and with neither of the main political parties having a strong incentive to pursue it.
Cox’s analysis is based on anonymised conversations with politicians of all parties including former prime ministers David Cameron and Tony Blair, five former Home Secretaries (Amber Rudd, Charles Clarke, David Blunkett, Jack Straw, Jacqui Smith) and other experts and leaders of ethnic minority organisations. A full list of those interviewed can be found in the report.
One of the former PMs is quoted as saying, “Later in my term I started to feel this was one of the most important issues, that there was nothing more important… The tough questions are schools, housing, immigration, you start with wild enthusiasm then look at the policies that stem from it and say ‘oh christ do I really need to do that.’”
And a former Home Secretary is quoted as saying: “It feels like a poisoned chalice. Long timelines, multi departmental approach and lack of definition about what we mean and controversial policy areas, are all real brakes on strategic action. It’s seen as unclear, potentially messy and with indeterminate benefits.”
Integration only tends to surface in response to terrorism or immigration crises, says Cox, and both of the main Westminster parties have historic legacies or ideological baggage that directs them away from the issue. For the Conservatives, argues Cox, “when it comes to integration and minority communities it’s not simply about fears of being seen as a nasty party but a racist one .”
For Labour, according to MPs interviewed for this report, “the political challenge comes from a political reliance on minority voters in particular areas of the country.” Cox says in theory this might incentivise engagement in integration given high levels of support from minority voters but many community leaders, especially in Muslim areas, are either ambivalent about integration or see it purely through a discrimination and anti-racism lens.
In other words parts of the left still view integration mainly as a problem of inequality, while the right avoids it out of fear of being branded racist. Cox, however, argues that there are some grounds for optimism. This is partly because the issue of integration and segregation has ceased to be an “us and them” issue and has evolved into an “everyone” issue. A 2021 YouGov poll found that 38% of British people agreed with the proposition that: “Sometimes I feel like a stranger in my own country.” And more than a fifth of people in England say they are always or sometimes lonely.’
As well as getting people to upload videos about their experiences with terrible buses in the area, 38 Degrees also encouraged them to write to their local authorities. I did so, and received this kind reply from the Labour party West of England metro mayor, Dan Norris. Norris explains that they are already considering the franchise system, but this on its own is only part of the solution. The services also need much more funding.
‘Dear David,
Thank you for your email asking the councils in the Combined Authority to discuss introducing bus franchising into the region. I have a great deal of sympathy with what people are saying in the videos the campaign is sending me every day.
People rely on buses to get to work, school, social events and for shopping, and the bus service is not working as well as it needs to. I completely understand that. You are asking for the idea of franchising to be on the table at the next West of England Combined Authority meeting on March 17th. I have said publicly quite clearly that franchising is already on the table and remains under ongoing review. But it’s not a silver bullet, nor is it public ownership.
Franchising campaigners refer to other Combined Authorities like Greater Manchester, which has franchising but also has a tram system which offsets some of the more immediate problems that their bus services are facing. They too are experiencing an acute bus driver shortage, reduced passenger use post-Covid and increased costs of running the services. I am watching closely to see how my good friend and colleague Andy Burnham is addressing these issues in his region. But you will also no doubt have heard recent news reports that the situation with bus services is a nationwide one.
Less money has been invested in West of England bus services than elsewhere. It works out at £20 per head here but £36 in Manchester and £63 in Liverpool.
I am enormously proud to have secured the highest amount of cash nationwide – half a billion – for transport services more widely. I have repeatedly been told by Government that that funding can not be spent shoring up existing services, though, but must be spent on new ideas.
We need innovative thinking to look at the problem and I am confident that between us we can work towards providing the kind of bus service the region needs and deserves.
I understand the goal of your campaign and will continue to consider franchising along with all other suggestions that come forward, because franchising itself would take years to put in place and we need solutions now. Once again thank you for contacting me,
Yours sincerely,
Dan Norris Metro Mayor for the West of England
I don’t know what kind of innovative thinking is required, nor how this can improve services. It looks to me that the government’s strings against using it to shore up existing services prevents their improvement and will prevent the creation of new bus routes. At the same time, it seems that any support for bus franchising or nationalisation is quite tepid. But hopefully I’m wrong and something can be done about this.
I got a round robin email from Starmer yesterday, announcing that he had declared his five missions for building a better Britain in Manchester. He set them out, along with the usual requests for donations. Sorry, not sorry, Starmer – I’m not going to donate. You have my membership fee and that should be enough. It was under Corbyn, when millions joined because of his inspiring, socialist vision. Now you’ve purged the party of those people and driven the rest away through phoney accusations of anti-Semitism designed to placate the Israel lobby rather than do anything against real anti-Jewish hatred. You’ve also lost the contributions of many trade unions because of your anti-working class policies. As a result, you’ve shrunk the party, lost the confidence of ordinary, traditional Labour voters and supporters, and placed it in a dire financial strait. All to ingratiate yourself with the Tory voting right and their press. I am not going to donate until you reverse these policies, and especially not until you readmit and apologise to everyone you’ve smeared as a Jew-hater. And especially to the Jewish victims of the witch hunt.
‘David, this is an important moment for the Labour Party as we prepare for government.
Today in Manchester, I set out how my Labour government will be driven by five missions:
Secure the highest sustained growth in the G7
Build an NHS fit for the future
Make Britain’s streets safe
Break down the barriers to opportunity at every stage
Make Britain a clean energy superpower
I believe that delivering on these five bold missions is how we will restore Britain’s pride and purpose, giving our country its future back.
To do it, we must win the next general election. We must be ready to show the country that Labour will build a better Britain. That there is light at the end of the tunnel.
David, donate to win today:
……
No more sticking plaster politics.
Mission driven government is a different way of doing things. It sets the direction, a clear plan for the years ahead and spells out the fully costed steps to achieving them.
It requires everyone to play their part, in every community, in every part of the country. A real partnership between government, national and local, businesses, trade unions and civil society.
With missions comes greater stability and certainty – instead of a government chopping and changing all the time, blowing with the wind.
Step by step, we will show how each mission will be achieved. So that everyone, in every part of the country, feels that they are moving forward, and that life is getting better.
But without reforming the role of government, we will achieve nothing. That is why Labour must win. Together, delivering on our five missions, we can build a better Britain.
….
Thank you,
Keir Starmer
Leader of the Labour Party‘
Let’s go through them.
Secure the highest sustained growth in the G7.
A good promise, but nothing any other party wouldn’t promise. The Tories promised that Brexit, more cuts to the welfare state and further privatisation would deliver economic growth and prosperity. That hasn’t happened. The only way to do it would be to reverse the Tory policies, including the wage restraint that is pushing so many working people into poverty and starvation. But there are no promises by Starmer how he intends to deliver this mission. Possibly because, like his hero Blair, he intends to take over the Tory policies and try to implement them better.
2.Build an NHS fit for the future
Again, every politico would promise this. The Tories have been doing so, even while privatising it. The madder of them have even stood up in parliament to demand its privatisation quite openly, or the introduction of charges, thus violating its founding principle that it should be free at the point of delivery. Blair did nothing about privatisation, except to push it through even further. The only way to restore the NHS is to reverse its privatisation. But Starmer does not promise that, and I suspect he really wants further private involvement in the health service.
3. Make Britain’s streets safe
Again, a great promise. The Tories cut the number of police drastically, and as a result crime has massively increased. The Labour party seem to be serious about tackling the issue, as a few weeks ago I got another round robin email from them, this time from Angela Rayner, laying out their intentions and including a questionnaire so the party could get suggestions and feedback about their concerns from their members. The seriousness with which they take this mission might be because law and order are a particular concern of the right. But it isn’t just a question of more coppers. It also means launching social programmes to deter kids from crime and tackle some of the underlying causes, which include poverty, lack of opportunities and the glamour of gangsta culture among young men in some communities. The police have also been criticised for apparently being more concerned with appealing to gays through appearing at Pride marches and dressing up as rainbow-coloured bumblebees rather than tackle crime. Some of those making that criticism are gay themselves. Will this also be tackled, while making sure gays are protected, and are confident that they are being protected like every other citizen?
4. Break down the barriers to opportunity at every stage
Again, sounds good, but it’s something that would also come from the Tories despite all the evidence to the contrary. And Blair’s record on social mobility is not good. It was already declining under Major, and stopped completely under Blair. A key method for restoring social mobility would be to start investing in schools and giving them the proper funding to buy equipment, pay teachers a proper wage, and restore state school buildings. And state education would be greatly improved by returning the academies to state or local authority control. But the academies are a failed Tory idea that Blair took over and promoted, so that’s not going to happen.
It also means creating jobs in areas like manufacturing, which have been decimated by the focus on the financial sector, and which have traditionally employed the working class, along with proper work training schemes. Not everyone is suited to academia, and there is quite a high drop-out rate according to friends of mine who worked on such policies. For those in higher education, tuition fees need to be cut, especially for poor and working class students, who are worried about being able to afford their education. Student loans are not good enough. It also means inspiring and opening up the professions to White working class boys as well as other traditionally marginalised and underperforming groups, such as Blacks and women. But I suspect this will be ignored and the traditional exclusive focus on BAME and women will continue, ignoring working class Whites.
5. Make Britain a clean energy superpower
This is possible. Labour certainly come across as far more serious about this than the Tories, who have consistently opposed it while boasting about their Green credentials. Remember Cameron’s boast that his would be the Greenest government ever? That lasted right up until he got his rear end through the door of No. 10. Then the windmill he had on his house came off, and it was back to promoting fracking.
Will Starmer go the same way? I don’t know. It’s possible. He’s broken every promise he’s made so far, and Blair attracted the same lobbying groups and companies who funded the Tories and guided Tory policy, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the same polluting industries sidle up to Starmer and he goes the same way.
Looking at them, two of the three missions look like they are being seriously tackled by Labour, at least at the moment. But I have little confidence in the rest as this would mean tackling Thatcher and her legacy head on. And that’s the very last thing the Blairites want.
Before I go further, this post is very definitely not aimed at trans people in general. As I’ve said many times on previous occasions, I condemn persecution against people because of their sexuality or gender expression. I don’t doubt that most ordinary trans people just want to get on with their lives in peace. And I am acutely aware of the danger of stirring up prejudice and hatred against sexual minorities. This post is not against them, but against the militant and violent trans rights activists, many of whom aren’t trans, who hurl accusations of fascism against gender critical feminists and their supporters and threaten violence.
Unfortunately, there have been numerous violent and threatening incidents by trans activists. There have been incidents in Spain where feminist protesters have been assaulted and knocked to the ground. This also happened in Britain to Maria MacLachlan of the Peak Trans blog, who was then prosecuted by her attacker for hate speech. The veteran gay rights activist Fred Sargeant was also assaulted and knocked to the ground because of gender critical banners he was carrying at a Pride march in America. A feminist demonstration in Spain was met with such menacing opposition by trans activists that the police ordered the women to go home as they could not protect them. There have also been ugly scenes at Kelly-Jay Keen’s rallies in Britain, including Manchester, where a woman was pushed over a low wall, Bristol and Brighton. At that event, trans activists let off smoke bombs, accused an innocent father of being a fascist and raising a baby fascist, and one was arrested with a bag of 12 knives. Katherine Holdstock, a gender critical feminist, was threatened at her university with a baying mob throwing smoke bombs around.
Many trans activists really do believe that ‘TERFs’ are fascists. I’ve reblogged a video from Peak Trans, in which she discusses this assertion and utterly refutes. No gender critical feminist, as far as I am aware, has ever recommended persecuting trans people, putting them into concentration camps or murdering and experimenting on them like the Nazis did to gay men and women, some of whom would probably today be considered trans, during the Third Reich. But still the accusation keeps being made. MacLachlan filmed her trip to Bristol to hear K-J K speak. At one instant, just as she was leaving, there was a young man solemnly telling the crowd that TERFs were fascists and that their Nazi persecution would start with trans people before being expanded to cover gays and other despised minorities. And yesterday the accusation surfaced once again that gender critical feminists were part of the far right.
It’s a dangerous assertion for trans activists to use. Not just because it’s wrong, but also because it can very easily be turned around against them. They are the people preaching violence and intolerance against their enemies, who refuse even to let their arguments be heard because somehow this makes them unsafe and constitutes violence. But also, because, historically, there was a very strong element of homosexuality and crossdressing within the Nazi party, despite the horrific persecution of gays. The German historian Ludwig Theweleit described this back in the 1980s or so in his book Male Fantasies. This includes passages on events such as the transvestite dances held by the German navy at their base in Kiel. And in 2018 Martin Dammann, another German historian, published a book Soldiers Studies: Crossdressing in the Wehrmacht, which discussed this peculiar phenomenon. The Daily Mail published a review of the book by Sarah Malm ‘His and Herrs: Photos reveal how cross-dressing Nazis loved to wear women’s clothes for fun during World War Two‘ in the 6th November 2018 edition. This began
‘Photographs show soldiers in the German Nazi Army dressing in women’s clothing
Some snaps show them putting on cross-dressing shows for each other while on the front line
Others see them mucking about in women’s underwear, and in some cases also make-up
A series of fascinating photographs showing how German Nazi soldiers would dress up in women’s clothing and put on cross-dressing shows on the front line, has been compiled in a new book.
Artist Martin Dammann had intended to research soldiers’ lives in the Third Reich, and ended up stumbling across a surprising number of amateur photographs of Nazi conscripts dressed as women.
They show Nazi soldiers in everything from bras and dresses to home-made crop-tops and skirts created from blankets.
Cross dressing during times of war was not isolated to the German Nazis, and notably also took place during World War I.
It is thought it served as a way to lighten the mood of soldier life, and to provide entertainment to tired and bored soldiers, a large majority of them heterosexual men starved of female company.’
The article was also illustrated by photos like the one below:
For Brits of a certain age, it’s all very like some of the weird antics of Herr Flick, Von Schmalhausen and Lt. Gruber of the German army in the long-running BBC comedy series ‘Allo, ‘Allo. One of the photos in the article even shows a group of soldiers with their little tank.
The trans militants also resemble fascists in other ways. There’s the superficial one of dress. They dress in ‘black bloc’, which has traditionally been the colour of fascism since the days of Mussolini and the black shirts. Their refusal to debate with their opponents and use of threats and violence instead follows the Futurist dictum that they supported ‘the punch, the slap, as the decisive argument.’ And the particular hostility directed to gender critical women recalls the Futurists’ advocacy of ‘scorn for woman’ in Marinetti’s Founding and Manifesto of the movement. This is very far from the attitude at a transvestite convention in Weston-Super-Mare during the 1980s. That event was covered in the Bristol Evening Post. At least of the attendees said that many men had terrible attitudes to women, which showed their sympathy and solidarity with the opposite sex.
Violence and intolerance from whatever quarter needs to be condemned. We need honest, reasonable debate, not shrill and baseless accusations. And fascistic behaviour can also come from trans activists, claiming to defend persecuted sexual minorities. This has to be condemned along with other forms of hatred and intolerance.
One of the people, whose videos I watch on YouTube, is Barry the EDIjester. He’s another gay critic of the radical trans movement and Critical Social Justice. While I’m very sure he’s Conservative, he has himself taken lumps for his sexuality. In one of his videos, he strongly criticised Stonewall and other contemporary gay organisations for having thrown gay men and women under the bus in order to promote trans radicalism. He asked angrily where they were, when he was held down and beaten for being gay. As with many gay opponents of the trans craze, he is particularly concerned about the way medical transition is being used as a form of conversion therapy, in which homophobic parents bring their children to the clinic to ‘trans the gay away’. He is also deeply worried about the way Critical Social Justice is being taught in schools and universities to indoctrinate young people.
The Jester was in adult education before he lost his post due to raising questions about the trans issue. He now runs what he calls ‘Warrior Teacher’ programmes to train people in spotting and opposing Critical Social Justice. He has posted two videos this week of him speaking to people at a cancel culture meet-up in Manchester. These are ‘Education and Indoctrination – Cancel Culture Meet Up Manchester’, divided into Parts 1 and 2. In the Part 2 video he says some very interesting things about the passing of Clause 28 by Margaret Thatcher and the origins of the gay organisation, Stonewall. It’s at the 38 minutes mark, if you wish to check. While Stonewall takes its name from the riots that broke out in America when the cops raided the Stonewall tavern, its foundation has nothing to do with these events. It was set up to counter Clause 28. This was the legal clause passed by Thatcher’s government to outlaw the promotion of homosexuality in schools. I remember the outrage and fear this law caused when I was at college in 1986/7. People were very much afraid that this would lead to recriminalisation of homosexuality, a fear that was perfectly reasonable given Thatcher’s own strong inclinations towards fascism. But according to the Jester, while Thatcher also meant it as a sop to the Tory right, who did indeed want to recriminalize it, it was primarily aimed at the paedophiles within the gay movement, and particularly at one individual council. He states that it was never enforced, and no libraries were raided.
He goes on to say that it is the Conservatives who decriminalised homosexuality. The Wolfenden Committee, whose report recommended decriminalisatton, was set up by Winston Churchill. Churchill was probably a homophobe, but he was upset that gay people were being blackmailed for their sexuality. When the vote on it came, Margaret Thatcher voted in favour of decriminalising homosexuality, while Wilson voted against. I can well believe that. James Callaghan, according to the book I was reading on his government, was in favour of it remaining banned, and didn’t like it even being mentioned in front of his wife, in case it might upset her. The Jester stated that the left only latched on to homosexuality as a cause to exploit. This is too cynical. The law repealing the ban on homosexuality was formulated by Roy Jenkins as part of a range of socially liberal legislation, including the removal of the property qualification for jury service. And Jenkins has been hated by the Tory right ever since. One of the particularly bug-eyed Daily Mail writers called him the man who destroyed Britain! Really? Woy Jenkins? I can think of far better candidates for the title of a destroyer of this fair nation, beginning with Thatcher for what her policies have done to the Health Service, public utilities, the economy, the welfare state and the increase in mass poverty. But it actually doesn’t surprise me that the decriminalisation of homosexuality was partly inspired by fears of blackmail. I had wondered about it years ago because of the way gay rights are broadly accepted right across the political spectrum including Conservative institutions like the Beeb. It struck me that one of the reasons it may have been decriminalised was to stop it being used by the Soviets to blackmail senior officials into betraying the country. I think if homosexuality had been something unique to the lower classes, it would probably still be illegal. EDIJester also stated that many gays at the time were behind Clause 28, because it was directed against the paedophiles, who had infiltrated the gay movement and were preventing it from gaining respectability. I’ve heard much the same from Graham Linehan, who has said that gay liberation became popular in the ’80s after they cleaned out the paedophiles. I’ve no doubt the Jester is right about Clause 28 and Stonewall, but even so anti-gay feeling was much stronger in the Tories than on the left, even though the Tories generally had more gay MPs even before Cameron started clearing the homophobes out and promoting openly gay Tory politicos. But if Stonewall really was set up to oppose Clause 28, and that infamous piece of legislation was designed simply to stop the paedophile indoctrination of children, then this does cast real doubt about Stonewall’s suitability to speak respectably on gay issues.
This is absolutely unbelievable. Sarah Phillimore is a lawyer and writer, who has co-authored a report with Harry Miller of the Bad Law Project of a report entitled Transphobia as Security Threat: The Danger of Conflating Political Speech with Violence. This is a response to the three reports into gender critical people declaring that they are terrorists, simply for what they believe. There are three such reports, two of which were written by universities. One was published by Northumbria university, another by one of the Oxford colleges. The reports don’t define one what ‘trans’ is, and neither do they therefore define ‘transphobia’. But it is important, when writing an kind of academic study to define first the subject under discussion. These reports all state that opponents of the trans craze are security risks simply for not believing that trans people are genuine members of the sex to which they have transitioned. Because of this, they are considered to be real Fascists and terrorists.
If gender critical feminists were organising themselves into terror cells to attack transmen and -women, then these reports would be fair. But they aren’t. Phillimore says that she found herself described as a terrorist in one of these reports by Northumbria university. She wrote to the uni inquiring about this, only to get no reply. She later found that she had been put in some kind of email dumpbin or something without anyone telling her. She found out that one of the writers of the report was a Craig McRitchie. This person no longer exists. There is someone, however, called Anne McRitchie, who is evidently the same person through looking through their biography and publications. She feels it was wrong for that fact not to be disclosed. Obviously, there is a problem in the report being written by someone who has a clear personal interest in the issue. Her co-writer, Harry Miller, is a former policeman as well as founder of the Bad Law Project. I think he was prompted to form it after having his collar felt by the rozzers for putting up a tweet against the trans cult. Despite the absence of any terrorist activity from the gender critical crowd, the argument is that they are still a security threat because of the Alpert Scale. This scale states that it all starts with what Phillimore describes as ‘naughty tweets’ and culminates in a full scale genocide. She describes how she has been subjected to abuse and intimidation by trans activists. This includes doxxing, as they have put a picture of the house which she shares with her daughter online. She describes the people responsible for this and other death threats as mentally ill, entitled narcissists. At which point her interviewer, who I think may be gay himself, says that she doesn’t mean all trans people, of course. No, she replies. Trans people should be protected from discrimination and sacking. But it was absurd for men to think that simply putting on a bit of lippy and a dress made them women. And the people responsible for the threats and violence were mentally ill, entitled and narcissistic.
The interviewer states that it’s ridiculous to call the critics of the trans movement, left-wing socialist lesbians, fascists. Phillimore that anti-trans activists are always accused of being far right or the tools of the far right. She and her organisation have been accused of receiving money from the Heritage Foundation. In fact, she got all her money from personal donations and nothing from that particular right-wing group. Yes, gender critical feminists agreed on some issues with extreme right-wing Christians, but were firmly against them on other issues, such as gay rights as a whole and abortion. She also made the point that thanks to these reports about opposition to the trans movement, which simply hold a point a view which most people in this country share, Britain has been referred to the Council of Europe as the most homophobic country, along with the Turkey. This is clearly grotesque and simply wrong.
I am well aware that some of the readers and commenters on this blog don’t share my opinions about the trans movement. I appreciate the comments some of them have made that some of the people criticising the trans rights movement are doing it for their own right-wing agenda, like Matt Walsh and GB News itself. And they’ve also made me aware of a piece on BBC News reporting that transwoman was abused by a mob when she was taken ill and had to be taken away in an ambulance. I will also state once again that I condemn anyone being abused, persecuted or discriminated against because of their sexuality or gender identity.
It is clearly wrong, however, to label someone a security threat like a real far right or Islamist terrorist, simply for rejecting the trans ideology and standing up for women’s sex-based rights. And from what I’ve seen, the overwhelming majority of the abuse and death threats come from trans rights activists, who are often not trans people themselves, at gender critical feminists. You can see some of this in the videos Kelly-Jay Keen has put up of her protests in Manchester and Bristol. These show very aggressive and menacing behaviour from the trans rights activists and their fellow counter-protesters from Antifa. These turn up dressed in black and wearing black balaclavas, waving the Antifa banner and hurling abuse. At the protest in Manchester they tried to push one of the feminist protesters over all a small wall. In Bristol they were dressed exactly the same and accompanied by a contingent from Bristol Anarchist Federation. This crew tried to push through the police cordon. When the protest ended and Keen and her people went off to the pub they followed them, still being unpleasant. And while they didn’t follow them into the pub, Keen’s part were told to move on after a while by the police because the cops couldn’t protect them.
Remember that Keen’s party and her organisation, Standing For Women, are largely, but not exclusively, women. And they were faced by an angry mob in paramilitary guise.
And I think some of the trans rights activists are mentally ill. Not just to post death threats and dox people simply for holding a different belief than their own, as unfortunately this seems all too common amongst some denizens of the internet. What makes them appear mentally ill to me is the constant assertion that there is a trans holocaust going, or that if they don’t get their way and are allowed into all women’s spaces, such a genocide will begin. Well, there was no trans holocaust going on ten or so years ago when this phase of trans activism started and it isn’t going on now. In the past few years only three trans people were murdered and none were killed last year. Obviously, that’s three trans people too many, but it’s not the systematic mass murder which constitutes a holocaust or genocide. When one of the trans activists who asserted that there is a trans holocaust was confronted about it, they stated that it was only just beginning.
And it isn’t just the threat of arrest and imprisonment of gender critical feminists that is in jeopardy here. These reports set a precedent for the state to arrest and imprison people as threats to the state simply for opinions that have traditionally fallen outside the definition of terrorism.
And this means such reports are danger to everyone’s freedom of belief.
This is why I believe they should be firmly rejected, whatever your personal stance on the trans issue.
Ed Hussain, Among the Mosques: A Journey Across Muslim Britain (London: Bloomsbury 2021)
Ed Hussain is a journalist and the author of two previous books on Islam, the House of Islam, which came out in 2018, and The Islamist of 2007. He’s also written for a series of newspapers and magazines, including the Spectator, the Telegraph, the Times, the New York Times and the Guardian. He’s also appeared on the Beeb and CNN. He’s an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and has been a member of various think tanks, including the Council on Foreign Relations. The House of Islam is an introduction to Islamic history and culture from Mohammed onwards. According to the blurb, it argues that Islam isn’t necessarily a threat to the West but a peaceful ally. The Islamist was his account of his time in Hizb ut-Tahrir, a militant Islamic organisation dedicated to restoring the caliphate. This was quoted in Private Eye, where a passage in the book revealed that the various leaders Tony Blair appealed to as part of his campaign against militant, extremist Islam weren’t the moderates they claimed to be, but the exact type of people Blair was trying to combat. Among the Mosques continues this examination and critical scrutiny of caliphism, the term he uses to describe the militant to set up the caliphate. This is an absolute Islamic state, governed by a caliph, a theocratic ruler, who is advised by a shura, or council. This, however, would not be like parliament as only the caliph would have the power to promulgate legislation. Hussain is alarmed at how far this anti-democratic ideology has penetrated British Islam. To find out, he travelled to mosques across Britain – Dewsbury, Manchester, Blackburn, Bradford, Birmingham and London in England, Edinburgh and Glasgow in Scotland, the Welsh capital Cardiff, and Belfast in Northern Ireland. Once there, he goes to the local mosques unannounced, observes the worshippers, and talks to them, the imams and other local people. And he’s alarmed by what he sees.
Caliphism Present in Mosques of Different Sects
The mosques he attends belong to a variety of Islamic organisations and denominations. Dewsbury is the centre of the Deobandi movement, a Muslim denomination set up in Pakistan in opposition to British imperialism. Debandis worship is austere, rejecting music, dance and art. The Barelwi mosque he attends in Manchester, on the hand, is far more joyful. The Barelwis are based on an Indian Sufi preacher, who attempted to spread Islam through music and dance. Still other mosques are Salafi, following the fundamentalist brand of Islam that seeks to revive the Islam of the salaf, the Prophet’s companions, and rejects anything after the first three generations of Muslims as bid’a, innovations. But across these mosques, with a few exceptions, there is a common strand of caliphism. The Deobandi order are concerned with the moral reform and revival of Muslim life and observance, but not political activism, in order to hasten the emergence of the caliphate. Similar desires are found within the Tableegh-e Jama’at, another Muslim revivalist organisation founded in Pakistan. This is comparable to the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Christianity, in that its method of dawa, Muslim evangelism, is to knock on lax Muslims’ doors and appealing to them become more religious. It’s a male-only organisation, whose members frequently go off on trips abroad. While the preaching in Manchester Central Mosque is about peace, love and tolerance as exemplified in the Prophet’s life, the Barelwis themselves can also be intolerant. Mumtaz Qadri, the assassin of Salman Taseer, the governor of the Punjab, was a member of the Barelwi Dawat-e-Islami. He murdered Taseer, whose bodyguard he was, because Taseer has dared to defend Pakistani Christians accused of blasphemy. Under strict Islamic law, they were gustakh-e Rasool, a pejorative term for ‘insulter of the Prophet’. The penalty for such blasphemy was wajib-e qatl, a mandatory death. Despite being tried and executed, Qadri is regarded by many of the Pakistani faithful as a martyr, and a massive mosque complex has grown up to commemorate him. In his meetings with various imams and ordinary Muslims, Hussain asks if they agree with the killing of blasphemers like Taseer, and the author Salman Rushdie, who had a fatwa and bounty placed on his life by the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran for his book, The Satanic Reverses. Some of them give evasive replies. One imam even defends it, claiming that Rushdie deserved death because he insulted love, as represented by Mohammed and Islam. A Muslim female friend dodges answering by telling him she’s have to ask her husband.
In the mosques’ libraries he finds books promoting the Caliphist ideology, denouncing democracy, immodest dress and behaviour in women, who are commanded to be available for their husband’s sexual pleasure, even when their bodies are running with pus. Some are explicitly Islamist, written by Sayyid Qutb and his brother, the founders of modern militant Islamism. These mosques can be extremely large, serving 500 and more worshippers, and Hussain is alarmed by the extremely conservative, if not reactionary attitudes in many of them. In many, women are strictly segregated and must wear proper Islamic dress – the chador, covering their hair and bodies. The men also follow the model of Mohammed himself in their clothing, wearing long beards and the thawb, the long Arab shirt. But Hussain makes the point that in Mohammed’s day, there was no distinctive Muslim dress: the Prophet wore what everyone in 7th century Arabia wore, including Jews, Christians and pagans. He has a look around various Muslim schools, and is alarmed by their demand for prepubescent girls to wear the hijab, which he views as sexualising them. Some of these, such as the Darul Ulooms, concentrate almost exclusively on religious education. He meets a group of former pupils who are angry at their former school’s indoctrination of them with ancient, but fabricated hadiths about the Prophet which sanction slavery, the inferior status of women, and the forced removal of Jews and Christians from the Arabian peninsula. They’re also bitter at the way these schools did not teach them secular subjects, like science, literature and art, and so prepare them for entering mainstream society. This criticism has also been levelled Muslim organisations who have attacked the Darul Uloom’s narrow focus on religion. The worshippers and students at these mosques and their schools reject the dunya, the secular world, and its fitna, temptations. One Spanish Muslim has immigrated to England to get away from the nudist beaches in his home country. And the Muslim sections of the towns he goes to definitely do not raise the Pride flag for the LGBTQ community.
Hussain Worried by Exclusively Muslim Areas with No White Residents
Hussain is also alarmed at the way the Muslim districts in many of the towns he visits have become exclusively Muslim quarters. All the businesses are run by Muslims, and are geared to their needs and tastes, selling Muslim food, clothing, perfume and literature. Whites are absent, living in their own districts. When he does see them, quite often they’re simply passing through. In a pub outside Burnley he talks to a couple of White men, who tell him how their children have been bullied and beaten for being goras, the pejorative Asian term for Whites. Other Whites talk about how the local council is keen to build more mosques, but applications by White residents to put up flagpoles have been turned down because the council deems them racist. Hussain objects to these monocultures. Instead, he praises areas like the section of Edinburgh, where the Muslim community coexists with Whites and other ethnicities. There’s similar physical mixture of Muslim and non-Muslim in the Bute area of Cardiff, formerly Tiger Bay, which has historically been a multicultural cultural area. In the mosque, however, he finds yet again the ideology of cultural and religious separatism.
The Treatment of Women
He is also very much concerned about the treatment of women, and especially their vulnerability before the sharia courts that have sprung up. A few years ago there were fears of a parallel system of justice emerging, but the courts deal with domestic issues, including divorce. They have been presented as informal systems of marriage reconciliation. This would all be fine if that was all they were. But the majority of the mosques Hussain visits solely perform nikah, Muslim weddings. Under British law, all weddings, except those in an Anglican church, must also be registered with the civil authorities. These mosques don’t. As a result, wives are left at the mercy of Islamic law. These give the husband, but not the wife, the power of divorce., and custody of the children if they do. Hussain meets a battered Muslim woman, whose controlling husband nearly killed her. The case was brought before the local sharia court. The woman had to give evidence from another room, and her husband was able to defeat her request for a divorce by citing another hadith maintaining that husbands could beat their wives.
London Shias and the Procession Commemorating the Deaths of Ali, Hassan and Hussain
Hussain’s a Sunni, and most of the mosques he attends are also of that orthodox branch of Islam. In London, he attends a Shia mosque, and is shocked and horrified by the self-inflicted violence performed during their commemoration of the Battle of Karbala. Shias believe that Ali, the Prophet’s son-in-law, was the true successor to Mohammed as the leader of the early Muslim community. He was passed over, and made a bid for the caliphate, along with his two sons, Hasan and Hussain, who were finally defeated by the Sunnis at the above battle. This is commemorated by Shias during the month of Moharram, when there are special services at the mosque and the jaloos, a commemorative procession. During the services and the processions, Shias express their grief over their founders’ martyrdom by beating their chests, matam, faces and whipping themselves. They also slash themselves with swords. All this appears to go on at the London mosque, to Hussain’s horror. He is particularly disturbed by young children beating their chests and faces in the worship the night before, and wonders how this isn’t child abuse.
Separatist Attitudes and Political Activism in Mosques
He is also concerned about the political separatism and activism he sees in some of the mosques. They don’t pray for the Queen, as Christians and Jews do, but there are prayers for the Muslim community throughout the world and funeral prayers for Morsi, the former Islamist president of Egypt. He finds mosques and Islamic charities working for Muslims abroad, and activists campaigning on behalf on Palestine, Kashmir and other embattled Muslim countries and regions, but not for wider British society. Some of the worshippers and Imams share his concern. One Muslim tells him that the problem isn’t the Syrian refugees. They are medical men and women, doctors, nurses and technicians. The problem is those asylum seekers from areas and countries which have experienced nothing but war and carnage. These immigrants have trouble adapting to peace in Britain. This leads to activism against the regimes in the countries they have fled. Afghan and Kurdish refugees are also mentioned as donning masks looking for fights. Some of the worshippers in the mosques Hussain attends had connections to ISIS. In London he recalls meeting a glum man at a mosque in 2016. The man had toured the Middle East and Muslim Britain asking for signatures in a petition against ISIS. The Middle Eastern countries had willingly given theirs. But an academic, a White convert who taught at British university, had refused. Why? He objected to the paragraph in the petition denouncing ISIS’ enslavement of Yazidi and other women. This was in the Quran, he said, and so he wouldn’t contradict it. This attitude from a British convert shocked the man, as usually objections to banning slavery come from Mauretania and Nigeria, where they are resented as western interference. And in another mosque in Bradford, he is told by the imam that he won’t allow the police to come in and talk about the grooming gangs. The gangs used drugs and alcohol, which are forbidden in Islam and so are not connected to the town’s mosques.
Islamophobia against Northern Irish Muslims
But Islam isn’t a monolith and many Muslims are far more liberal and engaged with modern western society. Going into an LGBTQ+ help centre, he’s met by a Muslim woman on the desk. This lady’s straight and married, but does not believes there’s any conflict between her faith and working for a gay organisation. And in reply to his question, she tells him that her family most certainly do know about it. He meets two female Muslim friends, who have given up wearing the hijab. One did so after travelling to Syria to study. This convinced her that it was a pre-Islamic custom, and she couldn’t find any support for it in the Quran. She also rejected it after she was told at university that it was feminist, when it wasn’t. In Belfast he visits a mosque, which, contrary to Islamic custom, is run by two women. The worship appears tolerant, with members of different Muslims sects coming peacefully together, and the values are modern. But this is an embattled community. There is considerable islamophobia in Northern Ireland, with Muslims sufferings abuse and sometimes physical assault. One Protestant preacher stirred up hate with a particularly islamophobic sermon. Many of the mosque’s congregation are converts, and they have been threatened at gun point for converting as they are seen as leaving their communities. Travelling through Protestant and Roman Catholic Belfast, Hussain notices the two communities’ support for different countries. On the Nationalist side of the peace walls are murals supporting India and Palestine. The Loyalists, on the other hand, support Israel. But back in London he encounters more, very modern liberal attitudes during a conversation with the two daughters of a Muslim women friends. They are very definitely feminists, who tell him that the problem with Islam, is, no offence, his sex. They then talk about how toxic masculinity has been a bad influence on British Islam.
Liberal Islam and the Support of the British Constitution
In his travels oop north, Hussain takes rides with Muslim taxi drivers, who are also upset at these all-Muslim communities. One driver laments how the riots of 2011 trashed White businesses, so the Whites left. In Scotland, another Muslim cabbie, a technician at the local uni, complains about Anas Sarwar, the first Muslim MP for Scotland. After he left parliament, Sarwar left to become governor of the Punjab in Pakistan. The cabbie objects to this. In his view, the man was serving just Muslims, not Scotland and all of its people. During ablutions at a mosque in Edinburgh, he meets a British army officer. The man is proud to serve with Her Majesty’s forces and the army has tried to recruit in the area. But despite their best efforts and wishes, Muslims don’t wish to join.
In London, on the other hand, he talks to a modern, liberal mullah, Imam Jalal. Jalal has studied all over the world, but came back to Britain because he was impressed with the British constitution’s enshrinement of personal liberty and free speech. He believes that the British constitution expresses the maqasid, the higher objectives Muslim scholars identified as the root of the sharia as far back al-Juwaini in the 11th century. Jalal also tells him about al-shart, a doctrine in one of the Muslim law schools that permits women to divorce their husbands. The marriage law should be reformed so that the nikah becomes legal, thus protecting Muslim wives with the force of British law. And yes, there would be an uproar if prayers for the Queen were introduced in the mosques, but it could be done. Both he and Hussain talk about how their father came to Britain in the late 50s and early 60s. They wore three-piece suits, despite the decline of the empire, were proud to be British. There was time in this country when Muslims were respected. In one factory, when a dispute broke out, the foreman would look for a Muslim because they had a reputation for honesty. The Muslim community in these years would have found the race riots and the terrorist bombings of 7/7 and the Ariana Grande concert simply unbelievable. Had someone told them that this would happen, they would have said he’d been watching too much science fiction.
Muslim Separatism and the Threat of White British Fascism
Hanging over this book is the spectre of demographic change. The Muslim population is expected to shoot up to 18 million later in the century and there is the real prospect of Britain becoming a Muslim majority country. In fact, as one of the great commenters here has pointed out, this won’t happen looking at the available data. If Scotland goes its own way, however, the proportion of Muslims in England will rise to 12 per cent, the same as France and Belgium. For Hussain, it’s not a question of how influential Islam will be in the future, but the type of Islam we will have. He is afraid of Muslim majority towns passing laws against everything the Muslim community considers forbidden. And as politicians, particularly Jeremy Corbyn and the Muslim politicos in the Labour party treat Muslims as a solid block, rather than individuals, he’s afraid that Muslim communalism and its sense of a separate identity will increase. This may also produce a corresponding response in the White, Christian-origin English and Brits. We could see the rise of nationalist, anti-Islam parties. At one point he foresees three possible futures. One is that the mosques will close the doors and Muslims will become a separate community. Another is mass deportations, including self-deportations. But there are also reasons to be optimistic. A new, British Islam is arising through all the ordinary Muslims finding ways to accommodate themselves within liberal, western society. They’re doing it quietly, unobtrusively in ordinary everyday matters, underneath all the loud shouting of the Islamists.
The Long Historical Connections between Britain and Islam
In his conclusion, Hussain points out that Islam and Britain have a long history together. Queen Elizabeth I, after her excommunication by the Pope, attempted to forge alliance with the Ottoman Sultan. She succeeded in getting a trading agreement with the Turkish empire. In the 17th century, the coffee shop was introduced to Britain by a Greek-Turk. And in the 8th century Offa, the Anglo-Saxon king of Mercia, used Muslim dirhams as the basis for his coinage. This had the Muslim creed in Arabic, with his head stamped in the middle of the coin. Warren Hastings, who began the British conquest of India, opened a madrassa, sitting on its governing board and setting up its syllabus. This is the same syllabus used in the narrowly religious Muslim schools, so he’s partly to blame for them. During the First World War 2.5 million Muslims from India willingly fought for Britain. Muslim countries also sheltered Jews from the horrors of Nazi persecution. He’s also impressed with the immense contribution Muslims gave to the rise of science, lamenting the superstition he sees in some Muslim communities. He really isn’t impressed by one book on sale in a Muslim bookshop by a modern author claiming to have refuted the theory that the Earth goes round the sun.
To Combat Separatism and Caliphism, Celebrate British Values of Freedom and the Rule of Law
But combatting the Muslims separatism is only one half of the solution. Muslims must have something positive in wider mainstream society that will attract them to join. For Hussain, this is patriotism. He quotes the late, right-wing philosopher Roger Scruton and the 14th century Muslim historian ibn Khaldun on patriotism and group solidarity as an inclusive force. He cites polls showing that 89 per cent of Brits are happy with their children marrying someone of a different ethnicity. And 94 per cent of Brits don’t believe British nationality is linked to whiteness. He maintains that Brits should stop apologising for the empire, as Britain hasn’t done anything worse than Russia or Turkey. He and Imam Jalal also point out that the Turkish empire also committed atrocities, but Muslims do not decry them. Rather, the case of a Turkish TV show celebrating the founder of the Turkish empire, have toured Britain and received a warm welcome at packed mosques. He points out that he and other Muslims are accepted as fellow Brits here. This is not so in other countries, like Nigeria and Turkey, where he could live for decades but wouldn’t not be accepted as a Nigerian or Turk. And we should maintain our country’s Christian, Protestant heritage because this is ultimately the source of the values that underlie British secular, liberal society.
He also identifies six key values which Britain should defend and celebrate. These are:
The Rule of Law. This is based on Henry II’s synthesis of Norman law and Anglo-Saxon common law, to produce the English common law tradition, including Magna Carta. This law covers everyone, as against the sharia courts, which are the thin end of an Islamist wedge.
Individual liberty. The law is the protector of individual liberty. Edward Coke, the 17th century jurist, coined the phrase ‘an Englishman’s home is his castle’. He also said that ‘Magna Carta is such a fellow he will have no sovereign’ It was this tradition of liberty that the Protestant emigrants took with them when they founded America.
Gender equality – here he talks about a series of strong British women, including Boadicea, the suffragettes, Queen Elizabeth and, in Johnson’s opinion, Maggie Thatcher. He contrasts this with the Turkish and other Muslim empires, which have never had a female ruler.
Openness and tolerance – here he talks about how Britain has sheltered refugees and important political thinkers, who’ve defended political freedoms like the Austrians Wittgenstein and Karl Popper.
Uniqueness. Britain is unique. He describes how, when he was at the Council for Foreign Relations, he and his fellows saw the Arab Spring as like Britain and America. The revolutionaries were fighting for liberty and secularism. There was talk amongst the Americans of 1776. But the revolutionaries didn’t hold western liberal values.
Racial Parity. Britain is not the same nation that support racists like Enoch Powell. He points to the German roots of the royal family, and that Johnson is part Turkish while members of his cabinet also come from ethnic minorities. Britain is not like France and Germany, where Muslims are seen very much as outsiders.
Whatever your party political opinions, I believe that these really are fundamental British values worth preserving. Indeed, they’re vital to our free society. On the other hand, he also celebrates Adam Smith and his theories of free trade as a great British contribution, because it allowed ordinary people and not just the mercantilist elite to get wealthy. Er, no, it doesn’t. But in a book like this you can’t expect everything.
Criticisms of Hussain’s Book
Hussain’s book caused something of a storm on the internet when it was released. The peeps on Twitter were particularly upset by the claims of Muslims bullying and violence towards Whites. There was a series of posts saying that he’d got the location wrong, and that the area in question was posh White area. In fact the book makes it clear he’s talking about a Muslim enclave. What evidently upset people was the idea that Muslims could also be racist. But some Muslims are. Way back c. 1997 Yasmin Alibhai-Brown wrote a report for the Committee for Racial Equality as it was then on anti-White Asian and Black hatred and violence. Racism can be found amongst people of all colours and religions, including Muslims.
People were also offended by his statement that in the future there could be mass deportations of Muslims. From the discussion about this on Twitter, you could be misled into thinking he was advocating it. But he doesn’t. He’s not Tommy Robinson or any other member of the far right. He’s horrified by this as a possibility, a terrible one he wishes to avoid. But these criticism also show he’s right about another issue: people don’t have a common language to talk about the issues and problems facing Britain and its Muslim communities. These need to be faced up to, despite the danger of accusations of racism and islamophobia. Tanjir Rashid, reviewing it for the Financial Times in July 2021, objected to the book on the grounds that Hussain’s methodology meant that he ignored other Muslim networks and had only spoken to out-of-touch mullahs. He pointed instead to an Ipsos-Mori poll showing that 88 per cent of Muslims strong identified with Britain, seven out of ten believed Islam and modern British society were compatible and only one per cent wanted separate, autonomous Muslim communities. It’s possible that if Hussain had also travelled to other towns where the Muslim population was smaller and more integrated with the non-Muslim population, he would have seen a very different Islam.
Intolerant Preaching Revealed by Channel 4 Documentary
On the other hand, the 2007 Channel 4 documentary, Undercover Mosque, found a venomous intolerance against Christians, Jews and gays being preached in a hundred mosques. A teacher was effectively chased out of his position at a school in Batley because he dared to show his pupils the Charlie Hebdo cartoons in a class on tolerance. He is still in hiding, fearing for his life. Hussain cites government statistics that 43,000 people are under police surveillance because political extremism, 90 per cent of whom are Muslims.
These are vital questions and issues, and do need to be tackled. When I studied Islam in the 90s, I came across demands in the Muslim literature I was reading for separate Muslim communities governed by Islamic law. This was accompanied by the complaint that if this wasn’t granted, then Britain wasn’t truly multicultural. More recently I saw the same plea in a book in one of Bristol’s secondhand and remaindered bookshops, which based its argument on the British colonisation of America, in which peoples from different nationalities were encouraged to settle in English territories, keeping their languages and law. It might be that the mullahs are preaching separatism, but that hardly anybody in the Muslim community is really listening or actually want the caliphate or a hard line separate Muslim religious identity.
Conclusion
I do believe, however, that it is an important discussion of these issues and that the sections of the book, in which liberal Muslims, including Hussain himself, refute the vicious intolerance preached by the militants, are potentially very helpful. Not only could they help modern Muslims worried by such intolerant preaching and attitudes, and help them to reject and refute them, but they also show that a modern, liberal, western Islam is very possible and emerging, in contradiction to Fascists and Islamophobes like Tommy Robinson.
I’ve started reading Ed Hussein’s Among the Mosques, his account of his journey through Muslim Britain looking at its culture, differences, and values. He did so by going to the mosques and other Muslim cultural and religious centres in Dewsbury, Manchester, Blackburn, Bradford, Birmingham, Cardiff, Belfast, Edinburgh, Glasgow and London. While there, he met and talked to ordinary local people as well as the worshippers at the mosques, hearing their views and concerns. It was met with a storm of controversy when it came out because he talked about the conversations he’d had with Whites,, who’d suffered from racism, bullying and assault from Muslims in their areas. This was angrily denied, and a people went on Twitter to claim that the area he was talking about wasn’t Muslim but a posh White district. But the critics were talking about a different area from that visited by Hussein, and the book states this. The controversy seems to show the inability of some on the left to deal with the reality of anti-White racism by ethnic minorities.
But I don’t think the book does present a biased image of British Islam. Yes, in some areas, such as Dewsbury, the Islam practised – Deobandi – is austere and based on a theology of cultural separatism, in which Muslims are called to create and maintain a separate cultural and religious identity in preparation for the emergence of the caliphate. In other areas and mosques, the preaching and observance is more relaxed. Manchester’s Central Mosque is Barelwi, a sect based on the teachings of a 13th century Indian Sufi preacher. Their worship includes music, song and dance and the imam’s address was about interfaith tolerance as shown by Mohammed’s example.
Hussein writes
‘The imam continues to develop his theme of the need to change and improve ourselves based on our love for the Prophet. He encourages us to study the life of the Prophet Mohammed and how he acted towards people, even his enemies. Each time his name is mentioned the congregation again kiss their thumbs. The imam talks about the Prophet’s compassion, his kindness to his enemies, his message of co-existence with the Jews, Christians and pagans in seventh century Medina.
‘Are we such model citizens? Do we make our Prophet proud? he asks rhetorically, raising his hands with an exaggerated shrug like an Italian.
He quotes:
‘Qad ja’akun nur. Certainly a light has come to you.
That light is the prophet and the Qur’an, asserts the imam. ‘Are we radiating this light? Do our neighbours and friends in this country see us as carriers of love? The Prophet is shifa, he is healing. Has he healed our lives?’ (p. 46.) This isn’t that far from the various Anglican and other Christian clergymen in this country also preaching about the need for tolerance and love to heal ‘broken Britain’.
Earlier in the chapter he meets with a Muslim woman, Faiza, and her husband, who has come to the meeting as a chaperone as Muslim women may not meet strange men unaccompanied. She wears the niqub, and tells Hussein that she has reported three of her work colleagues to the HR department because they think she’s an extremist for doing so. She also talks about how the Muslim community in Manchester has been misrepresented thanks to the wretched suicide bomber at the Ariane Grande concert.
”One of the suicide bombers, Salman Abedi, was from a mosque in Didsbury here in Manchester,’ Faiza explains, adding in exasperation: ‘We have almost seventy mosques in this city. Yes, twenty-nine innocent kids died. And over a hundred were injured. For what crime?’ she shrugs. ‘One suicide bomber – one salafi – caused the incident, but what about the hundreds of Muslim taxi drivers who immediately took the injured to hospital? The drivers didn’t charge for this, but just offered their compassion and help. And why do we forget all the Muslim doctors and nurses at the hospital>’ Faiza is speaking passionately but intelligently.’ (p. 38). Elsewhere in the chapter he describes how all the mosques in the area condemned the bombing, but this wasn’t reported in the press coverage. And other Muslims tell him that they tried to warn the authorities six times about Abedi but were ignored. It’s a familiar story I’ve heard about other Muslim extremists – the congregation at the local mosque were worried, and attempted to alert the authorities only to be ignored.
I haven’t finished the book yet, but it seems to me that Hussein is trying to present a fair picture of British Islam. Islam, like most other religious, isn’t a monolith but composed of a number of sects, which may differ considerably in their theology and practise. Indeed, the title of one book we had in the library at College on Islam was The Sectarian Milieu. There are serious issues and challenges from some of the more austere sects, which reject mainstream cultural values and integration. And Muslims are like everyone else – human beings -, and so may have their own prejudices and biases. And some are no doubt racist thugs and bullies, just like some Whites.
These issues have to be squarely addressed, not denied, or distorted so that all British Muslims become tainted due to the actions of violent extremists. If we don’t do this, then it’ll be left to the real bigots and Islamophobes like Tommy Robinson and the EDL.
Stop the War Coalition sent me this email this afternoon giving the details about the protests they’ve organised up and down the country as part of a day of action tomorrow, Saturday 25th June 2022.
‘International Day of Action – Tomorrow
Tomorrow is the International Day of Action for Peace in Ukraine. It also coincides with Armed Forces Day and the NATO Summit in Madrid where global leaders will discuss upping the alliance’s ante in response to Ukraine.
That means we must step up our campaign too. Tomorrow is the anti-war’s opportunity to get out onto the streets and say loud and clear No To War & No To NATO.
The British government has taken one of the most aggressive and belligerent positions on the conflict. Britain is pouring arms into Ukraine and is training Ukrainian troops. Boris Johnson has twice flown to Kyiv to pour cold water on any prospect of peace negotiations. Our focus has to stay on shifting British government policy and opening up prospects for a negotiated end to the war.
In London we are holding a protest tomorrow outside the Ministry of Defence.We will be there from 2:00-4:00 pm. Do join us.
We have a great line-up of speakers including: Mohammad Asif, Director of Afghan Human Rights Foundation; Alex Gordon, President of RMT; Lindsey German, Convenor StWC; Andrew Murray, Vice President StWC; Roger McKenzie, Liberation general secretary; Kate Hudson, CND general secretary; and musician Sean Taylor.
And, it’s not just London… The anti- war movement is growing all over the UK. We have a record number of groups up and down the country organising on a local level, from Dorset to Manchester, Sheffield to Shrewsbury!
Get along down to your local event. Find the FULL list and details by clicking below.
We are asking all groups to report back on how it went. So please do send us pictures and a few sentences about your Day of Action by emailing us back so we can include yours in our roundup.
Their email also discusses a new pamphlet available from the Coalition against NATO’s aggressive eastward expansion. This helped to provoke Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, although that certainly doesn’t it excuse his invasion.
‘NATO; A WAR ALLIANCE – NEW PAMPHLET!
Get your pamphlet – newly updated for 2022 today.
The events of 2022 have put the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and its policies under the spotlight more than at any time in the post-Cold War period. The brutal invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces in February forced many to reflect on the effect of NATO’s aggressive eastward expansion. Though it does not excuse Russia, there is no doubting that it has contributed to the current dangerous situation the world finds itself in.
Featuring contributions from Andrew Murray, Lindsey German, Kate Hudson, Chris Nineham, Carol Turner, Matt Willgress and Jenny Clegg.
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