On Saturday one of my fellow Third Estaters (I’m assuming Reuben) tweeted:

Definitely don’t think the left should be calling for a state van [sic] on the EDL march

Image: lionheartphotography/flickr

While compelling, I think this view is seriously mistaken. Granted, it’s always a good idea to be wary of calling on the State to do anything which limits either civil liberties or freedom of expression, given the countless occasions when it’s proved itself willing to do so in unjustified and harmful ways. And yes, the recent riots have given rise to a volatile political environment in which any number of unpleasantly authoritarian measures are far more politically viable than they were just a few weeks back. Even before the riots concerns were being raised about the criminalisation of political protest, from the anti-royalist demonstrators at the Royal Wedding I linked to above to the UKUncutters arrested at Fortnum and Mason’s in March. You don’t have to be a die-hard liberal defender of the principle of “I disapprove of what you say…” to think that this isn’t a tendency we should be doing anything to encourage.

There are, though, a couple of very important counter-considerations. The first is that banning the Tower Hamlets EDL march wouldn’t exactly be an unprecedented step. The English Defence League has already been banned from holding marches at least three times in the past couple of years – in Luton, Bradford and Leicester. Whether those bans were right or wrong, a ban on the proposed 3 September protest wouldn’t be sliding further down the slippery slope of authoritarianism, just a continuation of the same policy towards the EDL that’s always existed; letting them demonstrate as they please, except when practical concerns about the likely consequences of a march are judged to outweigh the right to freedom to protest – and the second counter-consideration is that in this case such concerns are very well-founded indeed. It’s hardly a secret that EDL demonstrations have a strong tendency to turn violent. How likely is it that an EDL march through a largely Muslim area less than a month after the worst riots the country’s experienced in decades is going to pass off peacefully? (As an aside, I’m well aware there are some on the left, whether they openly admit it or not, who are quite keen on the idea of a ruck with the EDL, but suffice to say that while I’m not such a naïve liberal that I think violence can’t ever be justified when it comes to countering the far right, actively desiring that it occur is stupid beyond belief.)

There are real and pressing concerns about the growth of State restrictions on political protest in the UK, but they pale into insignificance compared to the danger of serious violence if the 3 September march goes ahead. I don’t relish being in the position of calling on the government to shut down yet another political protest, but it’s by far the least worst option.

The Guardian believes uncompromisingly in freedom of expression, but not in any duty to gratuitously offend…Freedom of expression as it has developed in the democratic west is a value to be cherished, but not abused.

Guardian Leader Comment, 4 February 2006, on the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy.

In September 2005, a Danish newspaper published 12 cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Protests and counter-protests were called all over the world, both by those who found the cartoons grievously offensive and wanted them suppressed, and by their opponents who viewed the first group as attempting to quash free speech. Of course, it wasn’t really as simple as that. There were also plenty of people, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, who didn’t see the issue as a simple conflict between the right not to be offended and the right to  free speech, no matter how offensive. That Guardian editorial I’ve quoted is a good example, and one with which I broadly agree. Nothing justifies the actions of those who burned diplomatic missions or participated in violent riots in response to the cartoons’ publishing, but at the same time the decision to publish the cartoons in the first place seemed designed to provoke a reaction, and indeed to have little other purpose. It’s perfectly coherent to maintain that the decision to publish the cartoons was a stupid and gratuitously offensive act, and simultaneously to support the right of Jyllands-Posten and any other newspaper to freedom of expression. In short, having the right to do something does not entail that doing it is a good idea. I have the legal right to swear in front of my grandmother, and would consider any government that tried to take away that right to be worryingly authoritarian, but it doesn’t follow that me doing my best Malcolm Tucker impression the next time I see her can really be said to be an important contribution to the debate about offensiveness and the limits of free speech.

It’s interesting, given the above, to compare reactions to the Muhammad cartoons and to the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” The American Right has been frothing at the mouth about the latter on various fairly dubious grounds (aside from anything else, the plan is for an Islamic cultural centre, not a mosque, to be based two blocks from the Northern tip of the World Trade Centre site, not “at ground zero”). Some of the rhetoric from those opposed to the centre’s construction has been pretty ugly, and some of the people involved in the campaign against the centre’s construction are unambiguously batshit insane Islamophobes. But the response from the liberal left (such as it is in the US) seems to have principally been a rights-based argument, focusing on the Constitutional protection for freedom of religion (set out in the First Amendment) and the trouble is, that’s not really an adequate response. Many of those opposed to the centre’s construction are happy to acknowledge that Muslims have a right to build mosques and cultural centres wherever they like – their argument is that a Muslim cultural centre near Ground Zero is insensitive and in some way offensive (this is a line argued by a number of both Republican and Democratic politicians). This reasoning has been mocked as absurd, most notably on last Monday’s episode of the Daily Show (viewable here until Tuesday – sample quote “Who knew that the First Amendment had the same mantra as Century21 – location, location, location?”), but actually, it’s perfectly coherent. It’s pretty much identical in form to the view I argued for above on the Muhammad cartoons – the right to do something doesn’t entail that it’s a good idea.

The important feature of the “can but shouldn’t” argument in this case, however, in contrast to the publication of the Muhammad cartoons, is not that it’s incoherent but simply that it’s wrong. The idea that building a Muslim community centre near the site of the World Trade Centre is offensive just doesn’t hold up. There’s already a mosque (a real mosque, as opposed to a building with an area set aside for prayer) nearer to the ground zero site than the proposed centre, and it’s been there since before the World Trade Centre was even built. Plus the events of September 11 weren’t an attack by Islam on the West in any case – dozens of Muslims were among the victims of the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, and, as can’t be repeated often enough, judging Islam by the actions of the September 11 hijackers is like judging Christianity by the groups which bomb abortion clinics. These are all good reasons for defending the construction of Park51 (to call it by its actual name), and they’re convincing enough without the need to accuse those who hold a different view of being mad or incoherent. There’s a difference between thinking something’s a bad idea and calling for it to be outlawed, and it’s just simplistic to imply otherwise.

In the 1960s and 70s, two ultra leftist groups, the Weathermen in the USA, and the Red Army Faction in West Germany, used the same slogan to clarify the motivation for their violent response to the US invasion of Vietnam: ‘bringing the war home.’

There are two movements we can describe as ‘bringing the war home’ at the moment in the UK. One if the EDL, the other is the Palestine movement. Neither is intrinsically progressive, and both have huge potential. Obviously, however, we have no interest in helping the potential of the EDL, and every interest in furthering the progressive elements within the pro-Palestine movement.

The EDL are indeed the ‘cutting edge of racism’, but this doesn’t mean they are outsiders. Rather, they are exaggerating ideas at the heart of the British state’s war rhetoric. The recent investigations by the Guardian and the BBC have shown clearly that there is (at least for now) a few black and asian supporters among the EDL. The key here is not that the EDL aren’t racist: but simply that skin is no longer the locus of their struggle. Instead, perceptions of Islam (fundamentalist and otherwise), those same perceptions peddled by all three political parties over the years, have taken centre stage. There has been a movement away from skin and towards faith: note the prevalence of crosses, both on the English flags and on necklaces worn by EDL members. And surely this is the same kind of religion-baiting adopted by Richard Dawkins and other populist atheists.

On the other side, the Palestinian movement seems also to be shifting (growing up, perhaps): no longer are there the cries of ‘Allahu Akbar’ outside the Israeli embassy, and anti-Zionist jews are welcome at the demonstrations. Here the locus of struggle is still within the realm of religion, but not exclusively – it still also remains in that of nationality. The cries of ‘Viva Viva Palestina’ are increasingly joined by ‘In our thousands in our million, we are all Palestinians’, and the even more the disturbing ‘from the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free’.

The first of these is a cry of support, the last a promise of revolutionary justice, with a potential for veiled anti-semitism. The middle slogan, however, is one of the creation of a political subjectivity, and one based very much around nationality. Just as the Proletariat, the Indigenous, the Global South or the Multitude are the naming of a global resisting mass, through which a common identity can be formed, so the “thousands and millions of Palestinians” attempts to invoke a mass movement around Palestine. However, here the name is given by a nation. Israel was created in a similar way, through the invocation of a nation as a unifying call for a political movement to support an oppressed people, a call which did create a political subjectivity, one which still survives.

The EDL are similarly attempting to create a political subjectivity around the notion of England, a subjectivity which includes non-white skin, but still supports a base Nationalism. The different levels of capital and power employed by England and Palestine, neither of which are sovereign states, does not make a difference to the nationalism within them. And this is the bringing home of the war, the resort to nationalism as a mode of struggle.

I do find this worrying. No, it’s not something we can easily change and yes, there are more important immediate aspects within the Gaza movement (as I would rather call it) to be addressed. But we shouldn’t abandon the political subjectivities we form for ourselves in order to show solidarity, so I won’t be claiming to be a Palestinian any time soon.

What I think we are doing here is bringing the war home – but not in a useful way, and not in its physically violent form (as the Weathermen did), but in its structurally violent one. And in doing so, we risk replicating the discourse of their war, rather than our own.

With all the furore about a French parliamentary committee recommending a ban on Muslim women wearing Islamic face veils in public, I thought it was a good time to bring up France’s long-standing history of banning items of clothing…

Historically religion isn’t the only area to fall victim to the fashion police in France, sartorial expressions of gender-bending have also been under threat. Apparently there is a still-current law in Paris which prevents French women from dressing like men. Introduced in 1800 by a Paris police chief, the law says it’s only ok for women to wear trousers if they are holding the reins of a horse or on a bicycle.

Although it has lain dormant for years, the law has never been repealed despite many opportunities to do so. There’s still nothing to stop it being enforced – although it would have to be enforced by a policeman as the uniform for Parisianpolicewomen includes trousers (what a winning instance of “do as I say and not as I do” that would be…). I’ve never understood why women who dress as men have traditionally been seen as a moral danger or a bit risqué (even in panto), but men who dress as women are the focus of hilarity on both sides of the channel. It’s a humour I will never understand, much like Benny Hill.

It may seem hilariously archaic now but when the ‘sanscullotes’ law was introduced, a reason was given which we often hear being used in the arguments for banning the veil – fear of displays (or non-displays in the case of the veil) which transgress ‘the norms’ of society. The veil is certainly an affront to the liberal secular view.

European politicians often speak of the veil as making them feel uncomfortable, suspicious or disconnected from the wearer. People who appear visually different evoke an old fear in Western society, particularly those who wear masks or conceal their faces – a mask allows you to lose inhibitions and commit transgressions without fear of being identified. As Shakespeare writes in Measure for Measure – a play where a central character is a woman about to take the veil and become a nun:

“To speak so indirectly I am loath… to veil full purpose.” (Act 4: Scene 6)

We worry about this for practical reasons of security. However, if France were banning the veil for this reason only then hard hats, motorcycle helmets and hoodies would also be banned.

It’s worth remembering that at the time the Parisian law was introduced (shortly after the revolution), women in trousers were seen as threatening to the fragile status quo. The law was meant as a reminder that the promise of egalité of the revolution was only to be extended to the fraternity, not the sorority. Ironically, now the veil stands accused of representing exactly the same kind of sexual inequality. Plus ça change.

Guest post by Carl Packman

Islam is enemy No. 1 of much contemporary criticism, either by the angry EDL men on the street, to new atheists asserting that Islam is incompatible with Enlightenment societies, to critics such as Nick Cohen and David Aaranovitch’s’ with their claims to present Islamic bad boys (and girls) as the real threat to leftist sentimentalities.

But many of the targets taken by the above miss the mark, leaving the perception that Islam itself is the enemy. But this shortfall does not render left wing opposition to Islamism impossible.

It seems at first an odd place to start but our solution here can be found with Freud. At a time of massive vulnerability for European Jews, it would have been easy for many to resign themselves to victimhood and group together under the pretext of their hitherto shared history. However in 1939, between being robbed and forced to emigrate from occupied Vienna by the Nazi’s for being Jewish and partaking in one of the disciplines they referred to as ‘Jewish science’ (psychoanalysis), Freud decided to pursue the subject of the historical arrival of monotheism (which he attributes to Moses’ being an Egyptian priest of Akhenaten, and not, as is commonly assumed, his being originally Hebrew). As such, in a letter he told Arnold Zweig “Moses created the Jews” and, in his last substantial book Moses and Monotheism stated that “it was not God who chose the Jews … but Moses”. Matthew Sharpe, author of the book Slavoj Žižek: a little piece of the real noted that ‘Freud did not attempt to restore or reassert the ‘purity’ of Judaism against its detractors. He offered a demonstration that Moses, Judaism’s law-giving Father, was already impure: an Egyptian stranger’ (p. 246). By doing this, Freud observed that everything we thought we knew about Jewish history grounded inaccurately. Freud enjoyed the benefit of achieving two things, firstly producing a philosophically adept justification for the mental utility and historical genesis of monotheism (for Freud, monotheism revealed the end of object worship, and the beginning in belief in the absent, an astonishing mental accomplishment), and secondly undercutting everything the Nazi’s thought they knew about Judaism, even if this was to undercut the knowledge of the Jews themselves. And after all there is no better tool for defeating critics than to show that everything they know is wrong.

The way in which to utilise this tool for Islam is clear. In order to undercut criticism of Islam from the unpalatable voices, while maintaining an opposition to Islamic fascism, one must champion Islam’s alternative, forgotten or disavowed history, and then ask questions as to why this has been disavowed, and by whom.

Professor Ali A. Allawi in his LSE seminar In Search of Islam’s Civilisation noted that political Islam post-1976 (a time of relative freedom in Iraq he states) disavowed its ethical dimension, preferring to appease the status-quo by being rules based and not ethics based. A compulsion for corruption soon crept in to fill the gap, attempting to predicate itself on purely Islamic measures. The relationship between Islam and capitalism, for example, had to overcome some treacherous boundaries with regards to what was ethically sound in the religious system. The result being that Islam dressed elements usually frowned upon – the banking system for example – into palatable products (halal banking). Ironic, really, that what Allawi situates as the genesis of Islamism – rules based Islam and not an ethics based Islam – was the attempt to forge an Islamic version of a model many would attribute to US-styled capitalism. Strange to think that the Middle Eastern anti-Imperialist movement might have been grounded by a sly attempt to create capitalism with an Islamic face.

The events of the 1970’s in the Middle East changed Islam in a way that has not been significantly altered ever since (which is rather hard to accept given the severity of events that have since taken place, but what I mean is simply Islam has continuously been on the defensive since the seventies – after Iraq/Afghanistan nothing has changed, only maintained), and it is worth remembering this point when promoting a counter-hegemonic version of Islam, though this merely satisfies the political body of Islam. Where are we to address Koranic issues? Crucial information should be sought from Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, Sudanese liberal reform figure and believer in a version of progressive Islam, expressed in his book “The Second Message of Islam”. For Taha, we should be reminded that the Koran had been revealed in two locations, firstly in Mecca where Muhammad and his followers were minorities, and in Medina where the city was brimming with Jews and Pagans. During his verses in Mecca, Muhammad promulgated a “peaceful persuasion,” whereas in Medina the verses are filled with rules and intimidations. The Medinan verses, the first message(s) of Islam, were directed to a whole community of early believers and not Muhammad alone, according to Taha. These messages were a sort of ‘historical postponement’ as George Packer puts it in his New Yorker article on Taha. It was the Meccan verses, the second message of Islam that would represent, for Taha in his revisionism, the perfect religion, an acceptance of equality and freedom that, in seventh-century Arabia, Muslims were ready for. This provided his grounds for a progressive Islam, or at least a return to Islam in its truest form, since disavowed in its Medinian emphasis on rules based Islam.

Examples of Taha’s revisionist spirit can be found in today’s Iran; one particular person held in high regard is Grand Ayatollah Sanei who recently called Ahmadinejad’s presidency ‘illegitimate’ and ‘against Islam’. He is outspoken on matters such as the prohibition of nuclear weaponry in Islam, equal status for women (which, surely, must include not banning them for being too good at motor car racing), equality for non-Muslims and well known for issuing a fatwa against suicide bombing. Another well known example is Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montarezi, recently described in the New York Times as ‘an adversary the state has been unable to silence or jail because of his religious credentials and seminal role in the founding of the republic.’ He too questions use of the term Islamic government when it is referred to the one in his homeland.

What might initially be problematic about this counter-hegemonic revision is that it seeks to find the best in Islam and disavow the bad bits. The question remains; are the bad bits Islam’s problem? The answer is of course yes, but the way around it is not to simply bracket what is good and bad Islam, but, rather, what is and is not Islam. What has been said about Freud’s work on Moses is that it is largely speculative. Where the Islamic counter-hegemonic history does not fall short to this problem is that it has legitimacy both in its textual revision, and in its ethical methodology (that is to say both historically and practically).

Why might this be helpful for critics of Islamism? Simple, what Freud did show with his work on Moses is that the enemy cannot have reasonable grounds of criticism without a reasonable understanding of their enemy. By restoring a lost history for the Jews, Freud was able to throw off course Nazi criticism of Judaism. Equally, the way in which we are legitimately allowed to criticise Islamism is by taking a fuller understanding of what Islam actually is. This is where cohorts of New Atheism, particularly Sam Harris in his book The End of Faith, fall short. His arguments tend to perceive the true expression of Islam to be in Islamism, and very often purposefully conflates the two, describing good Muslims as not practising their religion to its proper end. Another example in Michel Onfray’s book The Atheist Manifesto, he waxes that ‘Islam is fundamentally incompatible with societies that arose from the Enlightenment’. How do these criticisms stand up with the ideas printed above? They describe an Islam that is rules based, which itself has erroneous groundwork, and so are by no means prepared for the counter-hegemonic history of Islam, which is not merely equal in its legitimacy to fundamentalist Islam, but rather destroys any legitimacy fundamentalist Islam claims to hold.

Carefully applied, the counter-hegemonic history of Islam may well be the vital tool needed for the left to maintain their opposition to Islamic fundamentalism, enemies of Islam who conflate Islam with Islamism, and portions of the left who sing about moral relativism with their fingers in their ears.

Walking through security at Portcullis House, the fabulously expensive building standing adjacent to the Houses of Parliament, is a bit like going through any airport anywhere in the world. But making your way through the spacious courtyard, past green trees and sun-dappled water features under the enormous sparkling glass dome towering overhead, you could be forgiven for thinking that this is still the seat of power of a great empire. The man I’m here to see, however, is one of the country’s most vocal critics of imperialism. George Galloway rises from his computer to shake my hand as I enter his office. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he says. I remind him we met once before when he came to destroy a pro-war American politician at the Cambridge Union many years ago. “You’re far too young to say that,” he laughs.

Born in 1954, Galloway joined the Labour Party at the tender age of thirteen and has been a Member of Parliament since 1987. His strident opposition to the Iraq war, describing Bush and Blair as wolves and calling on British troops to disobey orders, led to his expulsion from the party in 2003. “His comments were disgraceful and wrong,” Tony Blair said. But Galloway has never been one to lie down in the face of his enemies. The following year he formed a new left-wing anti-war party, Respect, and in a stunning victory overturned a Labour majority of over 10,000 to oust Blairite Oona King in Bethnal Green and Bow. Since then, however, Respect has suffered a disastrous split, whilst Galloway has found himself having to fend off a barrage of media criticism for his famous decision to appear on Celebrity Big Brother in 2006. With a general election just months away, I ask George Galloway what he thinks his chances are of holding his seat.

“Well I’m not standing again in Bethnal Green and Bow,” he tells me. “Because I promised last time that I’d stand only once and if the people elected me, the next MP for the constituency would be a Bengali.” It’s a straight fight between Labour and Respect in Bethnal Green and Bow, Galloway explains, and with both parties selecting a Bengali candidate, his promise looks set to be kept. “For the first time, the Bengali community will have a member in the House of Commons and that’s something I’m particularly proud of.” Galloway has instead chosen to stand in the neighbouring Tower Hamlets constituency of Poplar and Limehouse. “We have a fighting chance of winning both seats,” he says. Galloway also believes Respect has a chance of breaking through in Birmingham – where the party came a close second in 2005 – and of Salma Yaqoob becoming the first ever Muslim woman MP. “If we could pull those three off, I could retire a happy man four years later.” Respect was founded in 2004 as a coalition seeking to bring together the disparate strands of perhaps the greatest mass movement in modern political history. In practice, what emerged was an alliance between George Galloway, a few prominent anti-war activists and the Socialist Workers Party. In 2007, for absolutely no reason that seems at all relevant, the party split in half and the SWP walked out. I ask Galloway if the split has harmed Respect’s chances of achieving the breakthrough he hopes for. “I don’t know if it’s damaged our electability. Certainly not if we do win three seats. Even having one seat in 2005 was almost unprecedented. It had been 60 years since a left of Labour party last won a seat in Parliament in 1945. And in the same constituency by the way.” Galloway has to admit, however, that the split has definitely affected the party’s power outside of Parliament. “The departure of key activists and leaders has weakened us. About half the members left.” I ask Galloway how many members Respect still has. “I don’t have the exact figure,” he says. “It’s a small number of thousands.”

In an interview with The Third Estate in June, Mark Steel told me that the feud in Respect was about nothing that anyone can work out. It has often seemed to me that whilst the left sits on the steps of the amphitheatre shouting splitters at each other and arguing about what society should look like after the revolution, it is failing to speak to ordinary people about the everyday issues that affect their lives. I ask Galloway how he would explain the split to voters who care about social justice and jobs and housing, but have little interest in sectarian squabbling. “With respect to you, and I don’t mean at all to be offensive, I wouldn’t care to explain it to anyone,” Galloway says. “I think that the arcane disputatious nature of the far-left in Britain is of interest only to the cognoscente and the cognoscente already know the reasons.” Galloway pauses as his phone rings. Sorting out a quick bit of business in ten seconds, he apologises before continuing. “For the rest of the public, Respect was always me, Salma Yaqoob, Ken Loach and so on, and it still is. So we’d rather go forward than look back.”

Respect, of course, will not be standing in every constituency at the next general election. “There are 649 seats, that’s beyond any small party of the left. We will be standing in more seats than just those three, but they’re the target seats.” In the constituencies where Respect is not standing, Galloway explains that they will back other progressive candidates. “Brighton, for example, where Caroline Lucas is standing for the Green Party and has a real chance of winning. I expect that we would support her, we haven’t made final decisions on these constituencies yet. Similarly Peter Tatchell is standing in Oxford, we would probably support him. There may be one or two other places where we would support a left, anti-war candidate.” I ask Galloway – who has branded the three main parties as “Tweedle-Dee, Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee and a half” – whether he would call for a vote for Labour to keep the Conservatives out, and am genuinely surprised by the firebrand MP’s response. “We definitely want the Tories to be defeated, so for the most part that would mean that we ask people to vote Labour.” It was understandable that Respect backed Ken Livingstone against Boris Johnson in last year’s election for London Mayor. But would Respect really ask people to vote for an arch New Labourite who voted for the war? “Most of them are arch New Labourites who backed the war, so we wouldn’t be able to have that as a hard and fast rule. It’s unlikely that the worst of the war criminals would attract our support, but we wouldn’t be able to use who voted for the war entirely as a yardstick.”

It’s surprising to hear Galloway say this – not least because he is Vice President of Stop the War Coalition and perhaps the most outspoken critic of New Labour’s neo-conservative foreign policy in the country – but because in June he called for an immediate election, arguing that the current Parliament is “utterly bereft of credibility.” I ask him if it’s possible that a Labour defeat at the next election could help bring back the party he once called home. “No, I don’t,” he says. “In any case, it would be too high a price to pay. The Tories will be a catastrophe for ordinary people in Britain, for the working people, the poor, the old, the sick, the disabled. So I want to see them defeated.” Galloway has to concede, however, that that’s not very likely. “Looking at the opinion polls, reading the runes, it would appear that the Tories are on course for a big victory. And if that happens, then we’ll have to see what happens to the Labour Party that I spent almost forty years in.”

Labour’s abandonment of the left goes part of the way towards explaining the success of Respect. But it is Blair’s utter betrayal of British Muslims, incensed by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which explains why so many Labour voters in East London and Birmingham have turned to Respect. Not least because of Galloway’s standing amongst Muslims. When housemates on Celebrity Big Brother were asked to rank themselves in order of fame, he mused: “If we’re talking worldwide fame, I’m most famous. Virtually every Muslim in the world knows who I am.” Whether or not that’s true, George Galloway has done perhaps more than anyone else in the country to help politicise marginalised Muslim communities, introducing to them left-wing politics as an answer to racism, Islamophobia, imperialism and neo-conservatism. But there’s another, more reactionary, current amongst Muslim communities that seeks to present itself as the sole representative of Islamic identity. I ask Galloway if Respect could do more to challenge religious fundamentalism and social conservativism amongst the communities it represents? “No,” he says, “I think the first part of our agenda is big enough. The question of social conservatism within Muslim communities is a matter for them largely.”

It’s a contentious point, and one that many on the liberal left will disagree with, but Galloway has never been afraid of courting controversy. In 1994, he flew to Iraq to meet Saddam Hussein in an effort to prevent war and end the sanctions which were bringing further immiseration to the Iraqi people, saluting their courage, their strength and their indefatigability. More recently he has spoken out in support of Ahmedinejad in Iran following the disputed elections, attacking the protesters as class enemies and drawing a comparison with opposition to Chavez’s reforms in Venezuela. But despite the similarity in their anti-imperialist rhetoric, is it really fair to compare the ultra-conservative, fundamentalist Ahmedinejad with the democratic socialist Chavez? “I’m not sure that Chavez would describe himself as a democratic socialist,” Galloway says. “But I do think the comparisons between them are stark. Not just in their international rhetoric, though that is a very significant thing for me, but in terms of their social base. The social base of Ahmedinejad is the poor masses; the enemies of Ahmedinejad are the English speaking, highly-educated, well-off elite. I’ve been several times to Venezuela, and that’s exactly the polarisation that exists there.”

Galloway concedes that Ahmedinejad is not a socialist, whilst Chavez is. But both, he argues, are populists. “I do think you can measure a man by his enemies, and both have the same enemies. My main interest in Iran is that is should remain an independent country and not a puppet of the West like virtually all of the Muslim countries already are, and to that extent I’m glad that Ahmedinejad won over Moussavi who, whether he liked it or not, was riding a wave of people who wished to see the return of the Pahlavi dynasty and who wished to see Iran as an outcrop of the United States. And I’m sure that he did win.”

It’s an uncomfortable prospect, that the left must lend its tacit support to tyrants opposed to Western imperialism, and even though Galloway has described Ahmadinejad’s denial of the Holocaust as “a disgrace”, I ask him, if the enemy of my enemy must always be my friend? “No,” he says. “That’s why I could never line up behind the dictatorship in Burma. It’s anti-American, but I could never say that that enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

Nevertheless, Galloway tells me that Ahmedinejad is the president of an important country and we’ll just have to accept it. “Iran is much more important than the sort of knuckle-dragging ignoramuses in the British media have realised. Its geo-political position is strategically significant, it has a very young population, it has an ocean of oil and gas and soon will have a nuclear power industry, famously as we know.” It is for these reasons that Galloway argues Iran must be treated with more respect. “Ahmedinejad is the president, that’s why he was speaking at the United Nations a fortnight ago, there’s no point in second guessing other people’s choice of their leaders. I believe strongly that every people have the right to choose their own leaders and not have them chosen by their adversaries.”

It’s a position to which Galloway has remained consistent throughout his opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But with violence surging in Afghanistan, what is the answer to the country’s problems now? “The opposite of what we’re currently doing,” he says. “The war is doomed, it cannot be won. No one has successfully occupied Afghanistan, not even Alexander the Great, and Bob Ainsworth definitely isn’t Alexander the Great. No matter how many soldiers they pour in there, they’ll never pour as many in as the former Soviet Union did. That occupation failed as this one is bound to.” Galloway believes that a negotiated withdrawal is inevitable. “It’s better that that starts now rather than later. Many more people will be alive, the radicalisation of the Muslim world, which is a real danger, will be lessened, we’ll be able to spend the money we’re burning in Afghanistan on our own people at home, and we’ll begin to defuse the tensions that exist in our own country between Muslims and non-Muslims.”

But withdrawal brings with it its own dangers, not least the possibility of the Taliban returning to power. I ask Galloway what he thinks will happen to Afghanistan? “The first thing I need to say, and it’s a contentious point, is that it’s none of our business what happens. British people, after several hundred years of empire, have become used to the idea that we have some right, maybe even some duty, to determine what happens in other people’s countries. I never believed that and I certainly don’t believe it now when we’re an almost bankrupt set of islands off the coast of mainland Europe. The days when the building you’re currently in ruled a quarter of all the world’s population are gone. Hallelujah!”

That’s not to say that Galloway is unconcerned with the future of Afghanistan. “I have interests in that country as a British citizen and they are this: that it must not be a base for those who wish to harm me, us, our country and our legitimate interests.” However, he believes that it is important to separate the pan-Islamist al Qaeda from “Johnny Afghan who just wants foreigners out of his country.” These, he argues, were never the same thing. “Insofar as there’s an al Qaeda presence in Afghanistan, it was we who sent it there, paid for it, armed it, glorified it, paraded it at the Tory conference and at Ronald Reagan’s Republican national convention, called them Mujahedeen and all that you know. To punish the Afghans for al Qaeda when we sent it there, is double jeopardy.” Instead Galloway wants to see a negotiated outcome with the Afghan forces to ensure that the country is not used as a base to harm Britain and its legitimate interests. “I can’t guarantee that Afghanistan will be a lovely place if the foreign armies withdraw, but I can guarantee it will never be a lovely place if they don’t.”

There are many far-from-lovely places in the world that Galloway is concerned about, but perhaps none more so than Palestine. He recently returned from a convoy to break the Israeli siege of Gaza, the occupied territory which would form part of any future Palestinian state. But, I ask him, is a two-state solution really the best way to achieve justice for the Palestinian people? “I’m pleased that Hamas and Fatah have signed a unity agreement,” he says. “I hope it works. The division within the Palestinian ranks has been catastrophic for them and for those of us who support them from the outside, as I have been doing now for almost 35 years of my life. As to what the final outcome is, this is really a matter for them.” Galloway says that if the Palestinians decide on a two-state solution then he, as a supporter of their cause, must accept that. “My own personal view, however, is that Palestine is too small, the issue of the refugees too great, the topographic and demographic cleansing that has occurred has been too extensive. The building of the wall, the ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem, the building of the settlements, which are really cities, have all been too extensive to make the separation of this small piece of land into two viable states realistic.”

Galloway is keen to point out that he does not support sectarian countries. “When Mandela was asked by the Boers at the end of Apartheid if they could have the Orange Free State as a white state, he said that he didn’t believe in white states or black states, only democratic states. One man, one woman, one vote, one government and everyone equal under the law. And if I believe that in South Africa, why should I change it for Palestine?” Instead he would like to see a democratic state, where everyone is equal, where all the existing inhabitants have the right to live, and all the people who were driven from the land have the right to return. “One state between the river and the sea is by far the best solution.”

In the meantime, Galloway believes that the convoys he is leading to Gaza to bring aid to the Palestinian people are crucial acts of defiance and solidarity. “I’m leading another one on the 6th of December to arrive on the 27th, which is the anniversary of the war. I think that these attempts to break the blockade are the most urgent priority for solidarity organisations around the world. We can march here, and protest here, and hold public meetings, but they make little difference.”

Somehow I didn’t expect George Galloway – the firebrand activist and unremitting radical who has always spoken his mind even when his opponents don’t like what’s on it – to say any different. His has always been one of the loudest voices for change and he has never lacked the courage of his convictions. I thank him for his time and make my way back through the courtyard and the green trees and sun-dappled water features under the enormous sparkling glass dome: the seat of power of an almost bankrupt set of islands off the coast of mainland Europe. On my way home, I pass Brian Haw, whose protest, like Galloway’s, will continue unabated till the people in power take notice.

http://www.georgegalloway.com/

“He thinks we’re all bloody bourgeois” scoffed Austen Ivereigh, as he puffed on his Montecristo in a trendy bar in King’s Cross, whilst reading aloud David Broder’s response to yesterday’s Strangers Into Citizens demonstration. “This looks like it was written thirty years ago,” he chortled to himself. Ivereigh is a founder of the Strangers into Citizens campaign, and seems to be a staunch reformist. In many ways I don’t think Broder’s piece goes nearly far enough, although it certainly seems to be along the right lines. The issues that this protest brought up have significance above and beyond the immediate violence of the current immigration system, as they also reflect and comment on the government’s policies with regards to minority communities living in England. Broder is certainly correct to take apart the nonsense of a one-off amnesty at the expense of having a thought-out ideological positional praxis on the structures of oppression that face refugees and asylum seekers.

The issues of minorities and the structural violence of borders are intimately connected; the way our government treats asylum seekers and refugees is subsumed in a wider context of the way that they treat minority groups. Whilst they consistently claim to value diversity and cohesion, the reality is that government policies have actually increased segregation, whilst undermining the fight against oppression both directed toward and within these communities. It is worrying that the Strangers Into Citizens campaign fully buys into this rhetoric uncritically. One of the most interesting documents on this issue in recent years was produced by Women Against Fundamentalism and Southall Black Sisters as a submission to the Commission on Integration and Cohesion (of which the first ten pages are most relevant to this debate.) It states,

We are concerned about the wider underlying … that it is the immigrant communities as opposed to the settled communities that need to be ‘integrated’. This implies that immigrant communities are somehow malfunctioning cultures whose values are intrinsically opposed to the so called ‘British’ way of life. New Labour politicians such as Blunkett, Brown and Blair, have often referred to the values of human rights, democracy and fair play – the basis of a shared British culture. Immediately the assumption is that there are a set of fixed and given (unchanging) ‘British’ values that are superior and to which all those who enter the country must subscribe.

And goes on to say

The Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act of 2002 was preceded by a white paper entitled ‘Secure Borders, Safe Haven: Integration with Diversity.’ The assumption being that internal stability can only be guaranteed if the borders of the country are policed to prevent the influx of (undesirable) migrants and refugees. Immigration and asylum laws and polices have provided the basis for racism to flourish at an institutional level and on the streets.

This reified version of Britishness, somewhat reminiscent of Goodness Gracious Me’s The Coopers (Kapoors) and Robinsons (Rabindranaths) was present in a more pernicious version during the Strangers Into Citizens rally through the waving of the Union Jack, and the singing of God Save The Queen (not the Sex Pistols version.) Of course trying to get a bunch of impoverished immigrants and Catholics to sing this bollocks en masse wasn’t exactly successful, but that was hardly a surprise. I noted that only the first verse was sung, and the “O Lord, our God (the Anglican one?), arise. Scatter her enemies, and make them fall (how relevant to our recent colonial past.) Confound their politics, Frustrate their knavish tricks (what was that about valuing diversity?) On Thee our hopes we fix, God save us all (save to mention who does or doesn’t believe in redemption)” was omitted. The point being that this wasn’t just some silly little concession to try to get the Tories to agree with them, but rather that this treatment of Britishness is completely in line with the politics of Strangers Into Citizens. Such assimilation at the expense of cultural identity would seem rather to turn citizens of the world into strangers.

The speeches, too, failed to combat the structural problems with the government’s treatment of minorities as a whole. Time was given to the leader of the Muslim Council of Britain, an organisation WAF and SBS describe as “ha[ving] its origins in the sectarian Islamic politics of Pakistan and Bangladesh” and “claim[ing] to represent British Islam [but] has compromised the agenda on preventing extremism.” Other speeches were given to religious leaders who had nothing to say on politics above and beyond the affirmation that we were all people, God’s children to some of them, and one can assume all of God’s children have the right to be British without needing to acknowledge that such “Britishness” has been predicated on hundreds of years of colonialist oppression which continues (of course alongside hundreds of years of legacy of the Magna Carta that is slowly but surely being dismantled.) If only the Union Jack could be redeemed such that it could be value-free. If only our anthem requested that we “unite the human race” rather than “scatter enemies and make them fall.”

Maybe Ivereigh was correct in saying that Broder’s response sounded 30 years old. I personally think it may be worthwhile going a little further back to have a look at Trotsky’s work on the “Transitional Demand“. I know any reader is probably thinking “Oh no! He’s going to go all dogmatic on us now”, but rather than offering some kind of bizarre non sequitur of a defence of the Soviet Union, I just feel that Trotsky’s pamphlet on this matter offers a bit of conceptual clarity to the opposition of the No Borders movement and Strangers Into Citizens.

Trotsky’s concept of the transitional demand is that of a demand that could be met under capitalism but would not be without further consequences on the path to socialism (and I strongly believe that it is only in socialism that we’ll see the abolition of the structures that oppress refugees, asylum seekers, and minority groups.) the ‘transitional demand’ is counterposed with the “minimal demand” of reform. It is easy to map these two onto the two sides of this argument: Strangers Into Citizens maintains the nation, maintains the borders, maintains the structures that asylum seekers endure, whereas the No Borders campaign comes with the ideological baggage of an effective internationalism. On this very issue, Trotsky writes, ‘ ”Defense of the Fatherland?” – But by this abstraction, the bourgeoisie understands the defense of its profits and plunder.’ Strangers Into Citizens do this too with their economic arguments for the regularisation of those without status, rather than an analysis that cuts to the heart of oppression and racism. But Trotsky is not against reform though, as he says we should not “discard the program of the old “minimal” demands to the degree to which these have preserved at least part of their vital forcefulness.” But we should “carry on this day-to-day work within the framework of the correct actual, that is, revolutionary perspective.”

It is fair to say that the left has often failed to work effectively within communities, and certainly has less success that church based groups. That is something for the left to work on, but I do not believe that this failure is a consequence of a failure in the politics of the left. Talking to people at yesterday’s event, many felt themselves to be in much more agreement with the “no borders” slogans. The point is that whilst organisations like the Citizen Organising Foundation may be good at getting people out on the street, that is far more a reflection of their extremely competent community work than the soundness of their politics. The crowd at yesterday’s event was a very interesting one, in that it was the true grassroots of the city, but the politics of the organisers was flimsy at best. We have much to learn but also much to add to this movement if strive to make change permanent rather than a one-off amnesty bought in exchange for the future.

Merseyside Police have ruined the academic career of a young muslim student.

This has totally changed what I have learned about this country and my time here,” he said. “They are clearly identifying Muslim students. It’s a big insult … The first thing I will do is leave this country as soon as possible. The police officer said your country [Pakistan] is not secure but I still prefer to live there. I love my country.”

Irrelevant of what you think of the police, the war on terror, or Islam this is clearly an impressively cack-handed action by Merseyside Police. They storm onto University campus, terrify students, and arrest and innocent man at gunpoint. I refuse to believe they could not have handled this differently.

This all happened in a part of the city I spend a lot of time in, and in fact I think I was about 100 yards away when it happened. The wider impact it will have on the student body and population shouldn’t be overestimated. Yesterday I sat in that exact spot waiting to meet someone, and overheard several conversations. The one that chilled me to the bone was a student commenting: “As far as I’m concerned he’s a terrorist until proven otherwise.”

Combine this with the events of last week, and faith in the police ought to be dropping like a stone.

Have you condemned attacks on British Troops yet today? Better get it done soon, maybe round the water cooler or during lunch. You don’t want to be seen as an extremist now do you? This would be funny if it wasn’t so pernicious. The new government guidelines for defining extremists are reported to include the following:

People are extremists if:

• They advocate a caliphate, a pan-Islamic state encompassing many countries.

• They promote Sharia law.

• They believe in jihad, or armed resistance, anywhere in the world. This would include armed resistance by Palestinians against the Israeli military.

• They argue that Islam bans homosexuality and that it is a sin against Allah.

• They fail to condemn the killing of British soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan

This is breathtakingly stupid. It involves the co-option of both the words Sharia and jihad to mean something utterly different from the understanding of most Muslims (when the local Muslim scholar who I work with in anti-war campaigns signs off emails with references to jihad, he does not mean ‘armed resistance’, unless I’ve gravely misunderstood what we are planning). It seems to place demands on Islam that it does not place on any other religion – Or are we suggesting there’s a direct continuum between Christian homophobes and terrorism too? It operates an extremely elastic definition of extremism, which feeds into the idea that all Muslims are some sort of fifth column.

To see these distortions at work it’s worth looking at this piece of scaremongering rubbish (apologies to our thousands of readers outside the UK). Notice the way in which scenes of the riots at the end of the Gaza protests are elided with meetings of Al-Mujaharoun– Young, angry about Gaza and being penned in by overzealous cops outside the Israeli embassy? Why that must be because you hate Western values. There’s a particular cringing scene where a Muslim guy explains to the film maker that he doesn’t like him, with a slight raised voice and animated gestures. This is apparently evidence that this place is a factory of hate. Finally, notice the bizarre use of shots of big public screens in Liverpool and Manchester, because, don’t you see, they are IN OUR CITIES! All of this is added together to create a picture that holding certain positions on sexuality and the middle east must mean holding a set of other beliefs, and will lead to terrorist attacks and hate crimes.

These proposals smack of a quite amazing ignorance, and in practice would have to operate in one of two ways. Either everyone who fails to condemn attacks on British troops or advocates armed resistance would become an extremist. This would, of course, include people like me and most of the far left. It would also include many academics and moral philosophers, for whom the legitimacy of occupation, war and resistance are serious debates, for example the really-very-moderate Ted Honderich’s position on Palestine (don’t forget, it’s failure to condemn, not support that is the issue). It would include huge sections of the Irish community (for reasons Salman alludes to below). Finally, it would include most of the political establishment, who are more than ready to support armed resistance when it suits.

The other option is to apply these standards only to Muslims and their associated organisations. I shouldn’t have to tell people how objectionable both these options are.