Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

"Two Million Terrorists" for Britain

Carol G. | 30.10.2006 17:15 | Anti-racism | Education | Gender | Terror War

The director of the Muslim Council surveys the size of Britain's fifth column.

In the past two weeks Britain has been gripped by a public debate about the niqab, or black head-to-toe veil worn by some Muslim women. The debate was sparked by an article written by Leader of the House of Commons Jack Straw for the Lancashire Telegraph, the newspaper of his Blackburn constituency, in which he reflected that it would be appropriate for Muslim women to reveal their faces when seeing him in his surgery (local Parliamentary office.)

He embellished his comments by adding, in a television sound byte, that he would not mind the whole garment being abandoned altogether. In the same time period of this statement, Aishah Azmi, a teacher’s aide at Headfield Church of England School in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire decided to take her school to a tribunal for asking her to remove her veil when talking to pupils.

The issue was brought to a head when Muhammed Abdul Bari, Director of the Muslim Council, was quoted in the current issue of The Jewish Chronicle warning that Britons would wake up to “two million terrorists and 700,000 in London alone” if the “demonisation of Muslims” did not cease. If one actually takes this statement apart, it suggests that an open and honest discussion about the pros and cons of the long black garment in British life means British people are “demonising” Muslims. No one has said Muslims are dangerous because they wear the veil. But Dr Abdul-Bari uttered something counterproductive by telling us all that, yes, all 100 percent of British Muslims actually do want to blow us all up – because a very British discussion is enough to create mayhem in our streets from Penzance to John ‘o’ Groats.

This discussion has proliferated across the nation and has become even more heated since Salman Rushdie joined the fray and said, “The veil sucks.” People made jokes about “veil” also spelling “evil.” Angry young women are appearing on various British television and radio programmes expressing their determination to remain covered. The atmosphere on last week’s BBC “Question Time” was incendiary. On “Any Questions” an intimidating Inayat Bungalawala, deputy head of the Muslim Council of Britain, complained about MPs and other discussing the veil issue at all, but was reminded by Anne McElvoy, Editor of The Evening Standard, that Britain is a dynamic democracy.

On “Question Time” a very angry young Muslim woman shouted at an audience member not to tell her how to dress in Britain. No one on the panel bothered to remind this lady that if any of us walked into a Muslim country with a Christian or Jewish Bible, or with a passport with an Israeli stamp, we would be expelled or arrested (or worse). Daniel Pearl, the Islamophile journalist who only wanted to find out what motivated shoe-bomber Richard Reid was beheaded because the Pakistani kidnappers found out he had an Israeli father. Most Muslim countries are Judenrein (Jew-free) – and not too nice to Christians, either. The journalist Ann Leslie remarked on BBC News 24 that in Muslim countries she respected the dress codes even though she loathed walking in blistering heat in the highly impractical “bin liner.”

When the Danish cartoon demonstrations occurred in London in February

(one demonstrator wore a full suicide belt), the slogans on posters were threatening to the extreme. Inasmuch as the British media portray Israel, Zionists, and Jews with daily disdain and caricature them in grotesque cartoons, one would expect to see Jews threatening mayhem. It just doesn’t happen. Frankly, if four Jewish men had blown up tube stations and a bus and four more had been apprehended a fortnight later with unexploded bombs, one cannot imagine the Jewish community by the wildest stretches of anyone’s imagination proliferating on television and radio demanding that “demonisation” be curtailed. Nor could one imagine the British government going into paroxyms of hand-wringing, as it did after July 7, 2005, and bending over backwards to create “bridges to an alienated community” had Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, or Christians perpetrated carnage in London's streets.

During the IRA atrocities, the voice of Jerry Adams was actually muted out on British television. Irish Catholics were not storming onto the airwaves demanding that criticism cease. If anything, I remember Irish workers in my locale being utterly appalled by the IRA and desperately trying to maintain a low and respectable profile.

I have been thinking long and hard about the “veil” issue. Britain is a nation steeped in tradition. All one has to do is watch Trooping the Colour, or sit through the Royal British Legion Service of Remembrance at the Cenotaph and Royal Albert Hall to realise that this is a culture built on centuries of a common cultural heritage. That British people criticised my dress sense when I first came to these shores because I wore garish American t-shirts is a signpost of this adherence to tradition. Conversely, the Britain I came to in 1976 was also a swinging, rocking country with a fashion and popular music industry that was dazzling the world. The nation that brought the rest of us the Beatles, Mary Quant, Twiggy, the Rolling Stones, and The Who did not seem to me a future home for burkhas and mad mullahs.

My own tradition and upbringing would place the niqab in the realm of bizarre. Imagine growing up in a big American city in the 1960s and 70s, where the only image of a person dressed from head to toe with slits for their eyes was that of the terrifying Ku Klux Klansmen and women. In postwar city centres, the only people who wore black head coverings with slits for their eyes were violent criminals. In the opening sequence of Woody Allen’s “Radio Day,s” two robbers are raiding a house wearing balaclavas.

Imprinted on my psyche and on that of millions of people who lived through the agony of the Munich Olympics siege was the image of the PLO terrorists in black hoods with slits for their eyes. They butchered the Israeli Olympic athletes in a manner I am too decent to describe here, but for years I would jump if I saw a person in even a simple black scarf or woolly hat.

This is not to be interpreted as “the veil is like a KKK gown,” or that women in niqab are about to slit one’s throat. Notwithstanding a slight tremor in my stomach because of past new reports of suicide bombers disguised as women, I have often had pleasant chats with veiled women in my heavily Muslim London neighbourhood and on our buses. However, Muslims have to appreciate that some of us who have grown up in swinging, dazzling Western environments are taken aback by the sight of women in what we see as “demeaning” garments. A neighbour told me she will never forget her goddaughter hiding behind her in terror and whimpering when she tried to take her up Edgware Road to Burger King. They were surrounded by literally hundreds of women in niqab. It was summer, when the exodus from the Middle East occurs, and the little child was merely reacting to a sight that was utterly alien to her short life experience.

The clash of Western and non-Western values and imagery may be witnessed by the statement this week by an Australian cleric that scantily-clad women are akin to fresh meat ripe for beasts of prey. Australian outrage rapidly followed, led by Prime Minister John Howard, who rightly interpreted this to mean that rape should be expected by women in revealing clothes.

My late mother wore a beautiful uniform as a member of the Women’s Army Corps. I have pictures of my elegant grandmothers from the 1920s. My life experience has never included veils, burkhas and niqabs. This does not make them bad.

As I publish this essay the sentiment across much of the United Kingdom is that Muslims have got to open their hearts and minds to the depth of feeling Britons have about the way we look and dress in daily discourse. The anger and aggression on British Muslim websites and on television and radio programmes is frightening, does not endear the community to the other 58 million Britons, and is completely unlike the behaviour of any minority that has ever made its way to Britain.

Enoch Powell predicted that we would suffer “rivers of blood” if Afro-Caribbean immigration continued. There were indeed the Tottenham and Brixton riots, and racial harmony has not been a comfortable ride, but Caribbean Britons have never blown up tubes and then demanded special privileges in a Christian country steeped in certain inalienable traditions. Today’s Muslim minority should swallow hard, count to ten, and make room for the traditions of Britain with graciousness and dignity.

Carol G.

Comments

Display the following 3 comments

  1. The Issue is Not the Religion — Innocent Bystander
  2. What? — Smelly Scrote
  3. carog and innocent bystander — 7799
Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech