Siding With The Oppressor

Mike L.

The One Law for All Campaign (pdf) was launched on 10 December 2008, International Human Rights Day, to call on the UK Government to recognise that Sharia and religious courts are arbitrary and discriminatory against women and children in particular and that citizenship and human rights are non-negotiable. The Campaign aims to end Sharia and all religious courts on the basis that they work against, and not for, equality and human rights.

For further information contact: One Law for All BM Box 2387 London WC1N 3XX, UK onelawforall@gmail.com www.onelawforall.org.uk

This organization is new to me, but English politics is hardly my strong suit.

They have put out a 62 page pamphlet entitled Siding With the Oppressor: The Pro-Islamist Left. (pdf)

Here is the one page introduction:

Siding with the Oppressor: The Pro-Islamist Left has been written as a companion volume to Enemies not Allies: The Far-Right to highlight some of the individuals and groups on the Left that defend Islamism.

Whilst this report focuses on the most conspicuous examples of the proIslamist Left in Britain – namely Stop the War Coalition, Respect Party, Unite Against Fascism and individuals such as Ken Livingstone and George Galloway – inferences and implications will assist the reader when scrutinising other organisations of a similar nature.

This damning report exposes their agenda and methods, including the use of accusations of racism and Islamophobia and their conflation of Muslim with Islamist in order to defend Islamism (which they see as anti-imperialist force) and Islam (which they view as an oppressed religion) rather than out of any real concern for prejudice against Muslims or the rights of ‘Muslims’ who are incidentally the first victims of Islamism. Challenging this perspective is especially important given its wide acceptance as ‘progressive’ in mainstream society.

Like the far-Right which ‘despises’ multiculturalism yet benefits from its idea of difference to scapegoat the ‘other’ and promote its own form of white identity politics, the pro-Islamist Left also uses multiculturalism to side with the oppressor by viewing the ‘Muslim community’ and ‘Muslim world’ as homogeneous entities thereby ignoring and silencing dissenters. This politics of betrayal sides with the Islamic far-Right and the oppressor.

Any principled point of view must oppose all forms of fascism, including Islamic fascism and side with the countless people, many of whom are Muslim, who are fighting and challenging Islamism here in Europe as well as the Middle East, North Africa and across the world.

I have actually yet to read this pamphlet, which I just now became aware of, but it certainly looks interesting and I very much intend to do so within the coming days.

I just want to give you guys a heads-up because this looks like exceedingly pertinent work.  The point is, of course, that the progressive-left as a movement, when it is not ignoring the rise of political Islam entirely, tends to side with it as we see in the case of someone like George Galloway.

I say this, as any regular reader here would know, not as a right-wing critic of the left, but as a liberal critic of the progressive movement.

{A hearty Tip 'O the Kippa to James Bloodworth of The Independent.}