An article published in The Guardian on January 25, 2012. Please read, share and sign the petition to help keep Luqman Onikosi in the UK. Trigger warning: the comments after this article are particularly harsh for the main part. Please do not read them if you are affected by any…
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The latest article, by Gavan Titley and myself, part of the Guardian’s series on Racism in a Digital Age which includes articles by Gary Younge and Mehdi Hasan. Not long after he was Photoshopped picking crops in a field by Paolo Ciani, a councillor for the rightwing Italian Future and…
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Valerie Amiraux and I published an article on French Presidential elections Socialist Candidate, Francois Hollande’s plan to take the word ‘race’ out of the French constitution. The ful version of the article, reproduced below, was republished by the Les Mots Sont Importants Website. The Le Monde version was entitled, Retirer le mot « race » de la Constitution ne règle rien, and is an edited version of the full article.
Il n’y a aucun doute : la campagne pour les présidentielles 2012 a fait de la diversité culturelle, et en particulier de celle qu’incarnent les musulmans de France, un sujet central des positionnements de tous les protagonistes. Ces dernières semaines, cette agaçante évidence a mué en quelque chose de répugnant à mesure que se sont déployés les tirs croisés d’une véritable guerre culturelle engagée pour sauver les valeurs de la République et protéger les citoyens français.
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.
Comments closedGavan 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
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Gavan Titley and I have published an article on The Guardian’s Comment is Free today stating why we think that the political mainstream is far more involved than we would like to think in the development of Anders Behring Breivik’s idea on multiculturalism and immigration.
Despite the fact that Anders Behring Breivik was not permitted to publicly justify his actions in public on Monday, a scrambling defence of his repertoire of prejudice is already in full swing. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Bruce Bawer, who is quoted by Breivik in his manifesto 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, emphasises his repeated warnings that a rightwing extremist may use violence to address “legitimate concerns about genuine problems”. Bawer blames mainstream politics for failing to address the corrosion of Europe by Islamicisation and multiculturalism, meanwhile The Jerusalem Post cautions that “Oslo’s devastating tragedy should not be allowed to be manipulated by those who would cover up the abject failure of multiculturalism”.
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An article I wrote at the time of the last World Cup in 2006 which resonates with racist nationalism as it is being played with respect to this year’s championship.
What is there left to say about Zinedine Zidane’s already infamous head-butt in the last minutes of the finals of the 2006 World Cup? Articles, blogs and bar room conversation have hashed and rehashed the French captain’s act. He has been damned a traitor and hailed a hero. He has been condemned, understood and forgiven. But the symbolic impact of his charge of rage, his head ramming into the chest of the Italian Matterazzi, “like a bull” (Liberation, July 11), is yet to be fully felt in France.
Many commentators have spoken about Zidane, the son of poor Algerian immigrants from La Castellane in the council houses of Marseille’s Quartier Nord. He is said to be understated, generally humbled by his stardom, unsure of what to do with the adulation that his football prowess has earned him. It is this that endeared him to everyone in France, except of course the supporters of the Front national’s Jean-Marie Le Pen who has repeatedly condemned the make-up of France’s ethnically mixed tricolor national team. The majority even forgive him for not singing the national anthem when it is played at the beginning of matches. He has been, until Sunday’s crucial trespassing, a symbol of all that liberal France hopes for the sons and daughters of the immigrants from the quartiers difficiles (literally the “difficult neighbourhoods of the ill-famed banlieues). He was held up as an example for the kids whose dream it is to become the Zizous of the future: keeping his head down and making a positive contribution to the Republic, rather than burning its schools and jeering at its police.
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