Diane Abbott Has Whip Withdrawn for Claiming Jews, Irish and Travellers Not Victims of Racism?

But she does recognise they were victims of prejudice.

I’ve just seen the headline for a video put up by Sky News, stating that Diane Abbott has had the Labour whip withdrawn. This looks like it’s connected to a story that broke this morning, that Grant Shapps was demanding Starmer take action about her because of a letter she wrote to the Independent. She claimed that although Irish, Jews and Travellers suffered prejudice, they didn’t suffer racism. They were no laws in America demanding that they sit in back of buses, like there were Blacks during segregation. This has caused upset, with Lord Wolfson stating that his ancestors weren’t forced to sit at the back of the bus, but in cattle trucks.

The problem here is that Abbott has made the same mistake Whoopi Goldberg did on the American tv programme, The View, which got her suspended for a couple of weeks. Goldberg confused ‘race’ with ‘colour’, and so asserted that the Holocaust wasn’t racist, as both Jews and Germans were White. In fact, the term ‘race’ has a number of meanings regarding ethnicity, of which skin colour is only one. At one time it also meant lineage and biological sex. Thus, 18th and 19th century genealogists talked about the noble race of such and such aristo, meaning his ancestors. It could also mean a specific nation. One of the great 19th century poets – it could have been Tennyson – talked about the superiority of the ‘Anglo-Norman’ race, presumably meaning English-speaking British. When Count Gobineau founded modern scientific racism in the 19th century, he also talked about what he saw as differences between European races, meaning different European nations.

The Nazi persecution of the Jews was based on race, even though its victims were White. Whereas the Medieval persecution of the Jews was largely based on their religion, the Nazis defined Jewishness in terms of race, so that secular Jews and Christians of Jewish heritage were also persecuted. Karaite Jews were spared, not because they rejected the Talmud, Judaism’s second holy book along with the Bible, but because they were viewed as descending from the Khazars and so racially not Jews.

The persecution of the Gypsies by the Nazis was also racist, and a very strong case could be made out that so is the traditional hostility to the Romany. The Romanies entered Britain in the 15th century. According to the stereotype, they had dark complexions. Romany is one of the Indian languages, and the Romanies’ are believed to have their origins in India’s Rajasthan, from where they moved westward over the centuries.

As for the Irish, they were placed well below Germanic northern Europeans in the 19th century racial hierarchies. I think that Gaels like Gaelic-speaking Irish and Scots were viewed as the most primitive of the Celtic peoples. I did hear that one particular 19th century British racial fanatic even claimed that they were lower than negroes. And Irish people could also be subject to the same prejudices and restrictions as Blacks, as shown in the signs ‘No dogs, no Blacks, no Irish’.

Abbott is certainly wrong to claim that the Jews, Travellers and the Irish weren’t victims of racism, simply because they were White. Her statement that they were comes from the attitude, shared with Goldberg, that only Blacks and people of colour can suffer racism. She and Goldberg nevertheless acknowledge that the Jews, Irish and Gypsies were victims of prejudice and whatever else may be said about the two, they definitely have not denied the Holocaust. Part of the problem is that by defining the hostility Jews and the others faced as prejudice, but not racism, she appears to be denying that it could be as severe as that inflicted on Blacks. This is clearly wrong, as shown through the long history of discrimination, pogroms and expulsions against the Jews, culminating in the Shoah.

But I don’t think that’s the real reason the Tories wanted Labour to suspend her, or Starmer’s willingness to do so. Some of it may be because the Tories are still smarting about the sacking of Dominic Raab, and wanted to take a head of their own. There were several videos posted yesterday by butthurt right-wingers moaning that Raab had been brought down by ‘snowflake’ civil servants and the bar for anti-bullying had been set too low and so on. But to me the main reason is that she’s a prominent left-winger and a close ally of Jeremy Corbyn.

This is about purging the Labour left until the Labour party is as right-wing and neoliberal as the Tories themselves. Abbott’s ignorance and tactlessness over the issue of race merely provided an excuse.

Vox Political: 70,000 Indian Mullahs Sign Petition against Terrorism and ISIS

Amid the slew of bad news, this is very optimistic news indeed. Mike put up an article yesterday over at Vox Politcal about a report in the Independent that 1.5 million Muslims, including 70,000 members of the ulema – the Islamic clergy, had signed a petition organised by the Dargah Aalah Hazrat condemning ISIS, al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The people signing the petition were pilgrims attending the Urs festival at the shrine of a local Sufi saint near the city of Ajmer in Rajasthan.

Mike writes

But the truth is, these people could deal the terrorists a far more bitter blow than any air strike. They are taking away the terrorists’ assumed legitimacy.

Daesh wants people around the world to believe that it is an Islamic organisation, and that true Muslims not only should, but will support it.

But here are one and a half million of them – admittedly in India – who won’t accept anything of the sort.

This could cripple Daesh’s recruitment of cannon fodder – or perhaps I mean radicalised fighters. No, cannon fodder is more appropriate.

Read the full article at: http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2015/12/14/70000-indian-muslim-clerics-issue-fatwa-against-terror-groups/

I hope Mike’s right. The ulema are Islam’s religious leaders, and they can play a powerful role in forming Muslim popular opinion, and in providing or denying legitimacy to national governments. The obvious example of this is the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. Even before then, back in the early part of the century, the Islamic clergy were able to mobilise a mass campaign against what they viewed as British imperialist domination. I’ve forgotten the precise details, but part of the grievance was about British economic domination through the tobacco industry. One of the Muslim scholars then denounced baccy as un-Islamic, with the result that nearly everybody in the country stopped smoking overnight. Tobacco profits fell, and the British government had to climb down on that particular point.

I’ve put up several pieces already on how most ISIS fighters actually have only a very superficial understanding of Islam. My guess is that this also extends to a segment of the leadership. Mullah Omar, the spiritual leader of the Taliban, for example, has been reported as having no theological training. Despite the name, he’s not a ‘mullah’, the Iran term for a member of the clergy. At least, he isn’t formally.

As for cannon fodder, my guess is that’s exactly how the upper echelons of ISIS, the Taliban and al-Qaeda regard their followers. The mass use of suicide bombing by Muslims in recent conflicts began with the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran during the Iran-Iraq War. He bought a load of cheap keys, and in a ceremony gave them out to the suicide troops on the front, telling them that they were the keys to the kingdom of heaven. I’m not sure, but I think at least some of the soldiers were young boys. During the war the Iranians were reduced to using kids as young as 14. I know Muslims, who are very unimpressed and disillusioned by this shabby deception on the part of the government.

As for the Taliban, for many liberal and moderate Iranians, they’re a model of exactly the kind of hard-line regime they don’t want in their country. During the elections a few years ago in Iran, Ahmedinijad was attacked by his opponents as wanting to turn Iran into a ‘Taliban state’. John Simpson in his book on Iran makes the point that although the country is extremely authoritarian by Western standards, it’s people still felt they were freer than those of Soviet Russia.

How effective this will be for destroying any spurious legitimacy the Islamists possess remains to be seen. Part of the problem is that there is no overall religious leader in Islam. And Islam, like Christianity and many other religions, is also split into various sects, which can vary greatly on doctrinal issues. Much of the various Islamist movements seem to be a product of, or at least strongly influenced by, Wahhabism, the fundamentalist Islam of Saudi Arabia. This has been lamented by Muslims from nations, whose traditional form of Islam was much more liberal. And there is also the additional problem in that Islamism is a reaction against the official Islam promoted by the state in countries like Egypt. It may well be that the impressionable kids, who most need to take on board the Indian ulema’s message, won’t, because it doesn’t go with the stuff they read coming out of the jihadis’ sites.

This, however, is a major move by popular Islam against the Islamists. It also bears out what one poll reported about the majority of Muslims around the world despising ISIS. Hopefully, it’ll deter some from giving the mass murderers their support and aid.