I was invited to a conference to launch the Alternative Leveson Inquiry into Islamophobia in the media on the 9th of January 2012.

An “alternative Leveson inquiry” is being set up by an Islamic TV channel in order to investigate the way in which British media report on Muslim and Islamic affairs.

The Islam Channel is planning to appoint a judge with an independent panel of assessors – just like Leveson – to carry out the inquiry.

Its springboard was a public opinion poll which found that people believe the media are responsible for “whipping up a climate of fear of Islam in the UK.” The poll, by ComRes, was published in July, the month in which the Leveson inquiry was instituted. According to its findings, people are twice as likely to say the media is to blame for Islamophobia (29%) than far-right groups (13%), or Muslims themselves, whether abroad (14%) or in the UK (11%).

The Alternative Leveson will examine the possible causal effect between media coverage and social attitudes towards Muslims. It will also assess any links between media coverage and subsequent government policy. It will ask editors and journalists to give evidence along with people who believe they have been victims of prejudiced media coverage.

One reporter who might well be asked to appear is Richard Peppiatt who told the Leveson inquiry that his former paper, the Daily Star, published anti-Muslim propaganda.

An initial meeting to discuss the establishment of a panel will be held on Monday afternoon at the Islam channel’s headquarters in the City of London .

The channel, launched in 2004 is broadcast in English by satellite (channel 813) and broadcasts across Europe, the Middle East and north Africa. It is owned by Mohamed Ali Harrath, a refugee from Tunisia who, following the Arab spring, returned to his country for a visit in February after 21 years in exile.

Gavan Titley and I wrote in The Guardian that Shortly after the end of the Stephen Lawrence trial, Abbott’s remarks are being used as a chance to restore white victimhood.

Read more on The Guardian website

Finally, after 18 years two of the killers of Stephen Lawrence have been found guilty. Too little, too late perhaps but an important day for justice for the victims of racism.

Franklyn Addo is a talented black teenager from London who is making a name for himself as a rapper and has been lauded in the liberal press for getting into Cambridge. He wrote in The Guardian on Monday to set the record straight. He did not choose to study sociology at the LSE instead of Cambridge because he wants to stay close to a music scene (these days it’s all online, duh!), but because academically the LSE meets his needs better. He is undoubtedly a bright guy and I one for one am delighted he has a passion for sociology. It’s a pity then that he had to say this:

People from deprived areas must assess their way of thinking and begin to understand that society is becoming increasingly meritocratic and that anything is possible with hard work.

Would his personal achievement be any less commendable if he were to admit that because he had luck and good guidance on his side that he has not been a victim of institutionalised discrimination? Just because he has not, does not mean it does not exist. There are at least a few good sociologists at the LSE who will hopefully put him to rights!

Stolen from the brilliant Steve Bell

So David Cameron has been given Marine Le Pen’s blessing. As the new head of the racist French party, the Front national, she says,

It is exactly this type of statement that has barred us from public life [in France] for 30 years… I sense an evolution at European level, even in classic governments. I can only congratulate him.

Marine Le Pen is right to point out that what used to be beyond the pale, is now acceptable speech. White Europeans everywhere are now ‘daring’ to say what they always thought about black people, migrants, and Muslims having been given the go ahead by their politicians. As Seumas Milne points out in the The Guardian, Cameron’s anti-Muslim racism is nothing new: “much of the ground for Cameron’s neocon turn was laid by Tony Blair and New Labour – and politicians such as Phil Woolas, who unsuccessfully tried to play the Islamophobic card to save his skin.”

In fact, this brave new world where, finally, Europeans can ‘call a spade a spade’ unites the right and the liberal (and many on the progressive) left. It comes at a very particular moment in the history of racism. Racism, ever chameleon-like, has always adapted itself to the political context in which it has been present. The status quo idea of our neoliberal age, with its stress on individualisation and personal responsibility, is that we are post-race. Past racisms have been accounted and even apologised for. If anyone continues to cry racism, it is because they have been unwilling to pull their socks up and avail of the opportunities that an overly tolerant, even guilt-ridden, society has thrown at them at every turn. Indeed, the real racism is that of illiberal minorities who refuse to assimilate – sorry ‘integrate’ – into our western way of life, and, so the story goes, benefit from the same freedoms as the rest of us. By making this ‘choice’, minorities – Muslims especially – dig their own graves. It is up to us to take the brave step and put an end to it.

So far, so familiar perhaps. However, what might put Cameron over the edge and unite him very much with the overt racism of a party like the Front national, is his explicit reference to white racism and his contrast of it to the practices (he didn’t quite say ‘racism’) of non-whites. To have overtly drawn the colour line, is indeed to place Cameron firmly in the camp of those who wish to score political points with those for whom crass racism still has significant political purchase. At least we know where he stands, which is more than can be said for the two-facedness of his Labour predecessor’s, has-been like my old University-mate Liam Byrne, whose racist policies during his stint as immigration minister I have blogged about before.

For what it’s worth, Unite Against Fascism have started a campaign against Cameron’s attack on multiculturalism. It is at the very least a start against a long and perhaps, in the short term at least, futile battle.

We need ‘a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular liberalism.’

David Cameron has announced that the ‘doctrine of state multiculturalism’ has encouraged different cultures to live separate lives. He went on to say that, while we are quick to condemn white racism (really?), we are ‘too cautious’ when someone who isn’t white holds ‘equally objectionable views’.

Has Cameron been reading Christian Joppke’s Veil: mirror of identity? I presume not. However, both these privileged, white men are making the same argument: it is necessary to be illiberal and to curb the rights of ‘different others’, would be ‘separatists’ and ‘extremists’ in order to protect the greater good of liberalism, or what Cameron called ‘our values’.

He said it himself: we need ‘a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular liberalism.’ Adding to the doubts Cameron patronisingly expressed with regards Egyptians’ capacity for democracy this week, his comments on multiculturalism display all the racist assumptions of a ‘Schmittian liberal’ elite fearful of its own demise, yet determined to hold on at all costs to the fiction of their superiority. In that they still holds the reins of power, the news for those on the receiving end of their built-up liberal muscles is not good.

Excerpt published on the Muslim Council of Britain site

Ours is a righteous cause,” says Stephen Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) of the English Defence League, “Alright, OK,” replies Jeremy Paxman, anchor of BBC2′s flagship news programme Newsnight, “A lot of people are worried, I believe you.

The decision to invite the EDL to appear on Newsnight on February ahead of the its march on Luton planned for February 5, touted as the “the biggest demonstration in its 18-month history” according to The Guardian, was ill-informed. Those interested in engaging in the ‘no platform’ debate may do so. However, what was more striking about the Newsnight appearance was Paxman’s ultimate inability to counter the incendiary, anti-Muslim statements tripping off Lennon’s tongue. Inability or unwillingness?

Although Paxman countered Lennon’s characterisation of Islam as a religion or culture that promotes violence, rape, pimping, and homophobia, by asking whether this is representative of Muslims as a whole and suggesting that a minority among all communities engages in these activities, he makes no attempt to decouple the link between something being called ‘Muslim culture’ and violence, sexism and homophobia. Anyone sympathetic to the notion that Muslims are more likely than any other group to be responsible for such behaviour would not have ended the programme believing that there might be another side to the story. The reason for Paxman’s ineffectualness is not, I believe, because he is actually an Islamophobe but that there is a convergence between the EDL’s position, as expressed by Lennon, and general public consensus which is based on the position espoused by political leaders. The common sense is that there is something that is intrinsic to Islam (and hence Muslims – although the two are far from being the same) which leads them to be more sexist, homophobic or violent than the rest of the population.

This is classic racialization: stereotypes about a particular group of people (often clumped together in a homogenising mass that ignores the internal differences among them) are naturalised and made to stand for them. We are thus no longer able to see Muslims without perceiving the stereotypes about them that abound. The debate I participated in on Wednesday night at the Brighton Dome was a case in point. The majority of the panel and the audience was against the proposal that EU countries are right to ban the wearing of religious symbols (75% of the audience polled) and thought that the bans were actually about Islam per se rather than religions in general. Nonetheless, the representative of the Humanist Society, Peter Cave, represented the belief that in fact represents the majority in society at large – that allowing the wearing of the burka, for example, is a slippery slope towards honour killings and forced marriages. In other words, a simple choice to dress according to a particular interpretation of religious belief was linked directly to the ability to kill another human being. Needless to say, as indeed Paxman was meekly attempting to point out on Newsnight, if this type of argument was made about another group in society, it would not go down as easily. Kudos therefore to the audience at the Dome for largely rejecting it!

Both Lennon and Paxman are mired, therefore, in the contemporary logic that discursively separates between racism and the objection to practices associated with a racialized group; in this case, Muslims. A postracial agenda that relativises the significance of racism and increasingly portrays it as ‘reversed’ – enacted by minorities against an embattled and cowed white majority – has become entrenched. It is within this hegemonic consensus that attacks on Muslim people of the vile nature expressed by Lennon become banalised and palatable: there is, nothing, it is argued unique to Muslims that mean they deserve greater protection against slur and attacks of this kind. Postracialism artificially puts everyone on an equal footing by discounting the relevance of colonialism, racism, immigration, and the contemporary civilizational discourse that pits Islam against the West. Muslims, in this vision are not only responsible for more of the violence in society, but their status as a minority group has afforded them unjustifiable protection; it is time now to unveil (pun intended) them and their true intentions.

Postracialism masquerades under the guise of equality to deliver the most pernicious form of racism, one that is purposefully disingenuous. Lennon’s discourse, and Paxman’s easy capitulation to it, demonstrates how widespread an acceptance of the postracial agenda has spread. The EDL talks the talk of equality and diversity, integrating the language of tolerance and inclusivity: everyone who abhors what Muslims are purportedly doing to British society – Sikhs, Hindus, Jews and gays included – are welcome to join. What acceptance of this discourse and the fact the EDL does have prominent members of all of these groups do is to dismiss the degree to which a certain form of racism has today become compatible with a commitment to diversity and tolerance.

While theorists of ‘culturalist racism’ in the 1980s and 1990s, such as Martin Barker and Verena Stolcke, were taking note of how far right-wing parties were using the language of multiculturalism to make them more politically palatable, the current status quo is slightly different. The EDL’s diversity-speak emerges from contemporary racial arrangements: diversity and exclusion complement rather than oppose each other. Under current arrangements, representing a certain form of acceptable, or ‘good diversity’ (not rocking the boat, being secular – or at least not Muslim, shedding the excesses of your ethnic particularism…) can be painted as acceptable. However whoever diverts from the, albeit ever-changing, script of ‘good diversity’ quickly falls into the category of ‘bad diversity’ (the religious, the radical, the angry, the economically useless, etc.). Where you are on the spectrum can change (Muslims were not construed as a particular problem prior to 1989), and that is the convenience of racism today: it is essentially drawn up around shifting inclusions in and exclusions from ‘good diversity’. However, the lip-service paid to diversity itself shields us – the EDL included – from being condemned as racist because, it is suggested, one need only reject ‘bad diversity’ and become ‘good diverse’ subjects for the spotlight to be taken off. The fact that the dividing lines between good and bad are constantly being redrawn is rarely drawn attention to, but it is this that should make us wary of the postracial agenda and its utility in facilitating the persistence of racism.

As the Con Dem government in the UK bring in draconian cuts to public services including slashing the higher education budget by 80%, cutting funding to the arts and humanities by 100% and increasing student fees to £9,000 a year, students as young as 13 are fighting back. A third day of action has been called for November 30th. I am watching as a new generation springs into action and it gives me hope. Watch this video. The speaker is 15 years old and he should be an inspiration to us all.

Nick Griffin was right about one thing: Churchill would have felt at home in the BNP.

The appearance of Nick Griffin, leader of the British Nartional Party, on BBC Question Time on October 22, 2009 has led to massive debate across the UK. Those in favour of freedom of speech advocated for Griffin to be allowed on the programme in the interests of exposing him. Those opposing said that there should be no platform for fascists and that Griffin and the BNP would only benefit from the publicity, no matter what was actually debated. I agree with the latter position and have always done so. Rare words of sense were written by Gary Younge in the Guardian reminding us that the other panelists, in particular Jack Straw, as the representative of New Labour is as guilty (if not more so) of encouraging racism in Britain as Griffin, especially considering Straw’s incendiary 2007 remarks on the niqab and the direct link between this and rising Islamophobia.

The panelists on Question Time were literally falling over themselves to show themselves to be tolerant and non-racist in the face of Griffin’s blatant racism. However, the mechanisms they chose to do this by resorted to the tried and tested recourse to patriotism (critiqued by Paul Gilroy in There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack with regards the Anti-Nazi Leagues in 1987).Griffin was asked to comment on his statement that “If Churchill were alive today, his own place would be in the British National Party.” This led to outrage expressed by the other panelists who accused the BNP of hijacking Churchill as its own. But the uncomfortable truth is that Griffin is right: if Churchill were alive he would share the beliefs of the BNP because he did so in his day. It is a delusion to think that Britain fought the Second World War because it oposed racism. Churchill, in particular, was a eugenicist, having drafted the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913, the only law on eugenics to be passed through the British parliament (albeit never out into effect).

Griffin said on Question Time that “Churchill in his younger days was extremely critical of fundamentalist Islam.” Whereas it may not have been called that in Churchill’s day, according to winstonchurchill.org:

Churchill’s view was reinforced by his experiences as a young British officer serving, and fighting, in Arab and Muslim lands, and in South Africa. Like most of his contemporaries, family and friends, he regarded races as different, racial characteristics as signs of the maturity of a society, and racial purity as endangered not only by other races but by mental weaknesses within a race. As a young politician in Britain entering Parliament in 1901, Churchill saw what were then known as the “feeble-minded” and the “insane” as a threat to the prosperity, vigour and virility of British society.

“The improvement of the British breed is my aim in life,” Winston Churchill wrote to his cousin Ivor Guest on 19 January 1899, shortly after his twenty-fifth birthday. A fuller account of his abhorrent beliefs can be read here.

Suffice is to conclude that a reversion to British patriotism and dubious figures such as Churchill as a means of tackling the abhorrence of the far-right has and will never be sufficient. Having been said, it is hardly surprising that this – along with blatant anti-immigration one-upmanship – was the only tactic employed by the Griffin pathetic QT co-panelists (with the exception of the only non-politican, Bonnie Greer).