Stephen Pollard: Appeasing the mob? That ain’t kosher

2014/08/22 Leave a comment

Pollard has a point:

In response to those protesters outside Sainsbury’s Holborn branch calling for a boycott of its Israeli goods, the manager ordered his staff to clear the shop of all its kosher goods. Clearly the manager is not the brightest spark in the firmament, since kosher produce — which is the only food observant Jews are allowed to eat — is not the same as Israeli produce which is simply food produced in Israel. The kosher produce in the shop was apparently made in the UK and Poland, and had never been near Israel.

It’s easy to imagine what went through the manager’s mind: “Israelis, Jews – heh, they’re all the same. Let’s just get rid of this stuff pronto and keep the protesters happy.” According to the witness whose Facebook posting of the empty shelves revealed the story, a staff member then defended the move, saying: “We support Free Gaza.”

…. Some hapless Sainsbury’s spokesperson issued a statement saying that the company was “an absolutely non-political organisation,” and went on: “It was an isolated decision made in a very challenging situation.”

Challenging. What a wonderful word that is, designed as a catch-all to excuse all sorts of inexcusable acts. So – given how challenging things are in Iraq at the moment – presumably Sainsbury’s will be removing all halal goods from its shelves because Islamic State is slaughtering Yazidis. No? You mean Sainsbury’s does not believe all British Muslims should be punished for the actions of a foreign body with which they have no connection?

Mistakes happen. But the way they are dealt with is usually more indicative of the way an organisation is run. And Sainsbury’s is refusing even to investigate the incident.

Stephen Pollard: Appeasing the mob? That ain’t kosher

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The Guardian view on Gaza and the rise of antisemitism | Editorial | Comment is free | The Guardian

2014/08/12 Leave a comment

The Guardian’s take on increased antisemitism in relation to Israeli government actions:

It should not need saying, but it does: people can be as angry as they like at the Israeli government, but to attack a synagogue, threaten children at a Jewish school, or throw a brick through the window of a Jewish grocery store is vile and contemptible racism. It cannot be excused by reference to Israeli military behaviour. The two are and should be kept utterly distinct.

Some may counter that that is impossible, given the strong attachment of most Jews to Israel. But this is less complicated than it looks. Yes, Jews feel bound up with Israel, they believe in its right to survive and thrive. But that does not mean they should be held responsible for its policy, on which some may disagree and over which they have no control.

Nor should they be required to declare their distance from Israel as a condition for admission into polite society. We opposed such a question being put to all Muslims after 9/11 and, though the cases are not equivalent, the same logic applies here. This is a test for those who take a strong stance in support of the Palestinians, but in truth it is a test for all of us.

The Guardian view on Gaza and the rise of antisemitism | Editorial | Comment is free | The Guardian.

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The Difficult Work Of Measuring Anti-Semitism In Europe | FiveThirtyEight

2014/08/11 Leave a comment

Good piece on the challenges of collecting hard reliable data, in the absence of police-reported hate crimes (which both UK and Canada do), particularly with respect to social media:

Social media is one factor that complicates comparisons over time. One in 6 of the incidents this year through June were abusive comments on social media, a forum that scarcely existed a decade ago.

Rich said CST [UK’s Jewish Community Security Trust] sets a high bar for counting an anti-Semitic post on social media: It must have been reported to the group, and must originate from or be directed to someone in the U.K. “We’ve had to think quite a lot about how to develop processes for dealing with this,” Rich said. “Potentially the number of anti-Semitic tweets and Facebook comments could completely overwhelm our incident reports and make them completely meaningless.”

Groups like CST help supplement government statistics on hate crimes, which are inconsistently kept in the European Union. Only five of the 28 EU countries, including the U.K., have comprehensive data on racist crimes and hate crimes against Jews, Muslims and Roma people, according to a December analysis by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, or FRA.

“FRA has reiterated the necessity for EU member states to improve their data-collection methods,” Katya Andrusz, a spokeswoman for FRA, said in an email. “The agency has also called for member states to take measures to increase trust in the police and other authorities, as the two big challenges in gauging the extent of anti-Semitism are underrecording and underreporting, i.e. even when countries have the mechanisms in place to note the number of anti-Semitic incidents taking place, most victims don’t report them.”

Many of the articles about the rise in anti-Semitism cited a 2012 online survey of Jews in eight EU countries, conducted by FRA, finding that 2 in 3 respondents said anti-Semitism is a problem in their country. The survey, though, was the first of its kind, so it can’t say whether European Jews were reporting more anti-Semitism in 2012 than they had before. FRA is considering conducting another survey in several years. “There are preliminary plans to do another one, precisely for the reason you say” — i.e. that there is no trend data, Andrusz said. She added, “It’s impossible to say whether anti-Semitism is statistically on the rise in the EU, as the data simply doesn’t exist.”

The Difficult Work Of Measuring Anti-Semitism In Europe | FiveThirtyEight.

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Behind British Minister of Faith Sayeeda Warsi’s Resignation Over Gaza | TIME

2014/08/07 Leave a comment

Good article in Time about the dramatic resignation of Sayeeda Warsi, the former UK Minister of Faith, over the UK government’s approach to the crisis in Gaza.

Warsi, as the article and her frequent speeches and interventions, played a significant and positive role in the ongoing UK debates about Muslims, integration and radicalization:

At first glance, one might assume that this story is simply “Muslim minister resigns over U.K. support for Israel.” Warsi is, after all, the first Muslim to serve in so high a position, and soon after her resignation, she called for an immediate arms embargo against Israel in an interview with the Huffington Post UK.

But that’s almost certainly too simplistic an understanding of what happened. Warsi has built her professional career on a foundational principle that religious and historic divides do not necessitate irreconcilable divisions or violence. She made it her mission to help create a government that, as she often said, would “do God” and advocate for faith’s place in society. That meant working for people of all faiths. She spoke out against Islamophobia and worked to make sure British government was inclusive for Muslims. In 2012 she let the U.K.’s largest ministerial delegation to the Vatican. Last year she came to Washington, DC, to speak out against the global persecution of Christians. One of her main goals was to encourage the international community to develop a cross-faith, cross-continent commitment to protect Christian minorities. Religious persecution, she told me at the time, is the biggest challenge of the 21st century. “It is about working up the political will,” she said. “It is about getting some consensus, it is about politicians being prepared to take on these difficult challenges.”

Her personal faith story is also one that bridges divides often thought to be unbridgeable. She is the daughter of Pakistani immigrants and grew up in a Muslim family with a blended theological background that included both Shias and Sunnis. “We were taught to respect and love other faiths as much as we loved our own, and I suppose, you know, quite strong teachings that you can only truly be a Muslim if you also are Christian and Jewish before that, that actually Islam is just an extension of the other faiths and it has been a process where various books have been revealed at various times,” she told me. “I don’t see there is a collision course between people of faith, I actually do think it is instinctively based up on the same values.”

Her whole story is rooted in commitment to a higher calling. It makes her decision to resign is all the more dramatic, and it sends a strong statement that political will requires moral courage. “I always said that long after life in politics I must be able to live with myself for the decision I took or the decisions I supported,” she said in her resignation letter. “By staying in Government at this time I do not feel I can be sure of that.”

Behind British Minister of Faith Sayeeda Warsi’s Resignation Over Gaza | TIME.

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‘Home Children:’ Don Cherry had personal connection to honoured children’s group

2014/08/02 2 Comments

One of the relatively less known stories in Canadian history (the Government did do a relatively minor commemoration when I was at CIC and the speech by Senator Gerry St. Germain, a former home child, was particularly moving):

About 118,000 British children — one was Cherry’s maternal grandfather and war vet, Richard Palamountain — were shipped to Canada between 1869 and 1948 to work as indentured farm hands and domestic servants.

The abuses many suffered in Canada were horrific. One of them, Arthur Clarkson, who arrived as a nine year old, was horsewhipped and made to live in an unheated barn, almost costing him his frostbitten lower limbs.

“It’s really heartbreaking to hear some of the stories. These kids were actually slaves,” Cherry told The Canadian Press.

“They had to sign something for so many years and most of them didn’t know what they were signing.”

Almost every one of the home children in Canada at the time — about 10,000 — signed up to serve during the Great War that began 100 years ago, including Cherry’s grandpa. More than one-thousand died in action, most at the bloody battle at Vimy Ridge. Many had no one to mourn them. Others died without notification to their relatives.

Don Cherry had personal connection to honoured children’s group.

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Young Brits join the jihad in Syria

2014/07/31 Leave a comment

Good overview in Macleans of the UK “terror tourists” but situating this in the broader context of Mid-East societies:

Terrorism, however, has been a real threat in the U.K., with the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland in the latter half of the 20th century and, more recently, the 2005 attack in central London, where suicide bombers killed 52 people. That led to the creation of the 2006 Terrorism Act; a new offence concerned “preparatory acts” of terror.

The changes were controversial. Tayab Ali is a solicitor whose clients include a number of British citizens who have been accused of terrorism. He believes the 2006 legislation “has the tendency to prosecute people who might be angry and expressing strong political views, but who don’t have any real ambition of participating or supporting terrorism in any way.”

Barrett, the former MI6 officer, understands how bewildering it must be to young men who hear about the humanitarian crisis in Syria and want to act. In June, U.S. President Barack Obama proposed funding “moderate” Syrian rebels at the same time the U.S. and its allies were warning nationals not to join the same groups. “It’s very confusing indeed,” Barrett sighs. But, in the end, “the threat of the returning fighter is a small one, compared to the threat of a complete destabilization and destruction of social cohesion in the Middle East.”

Young Brits join the jihad in Syria.

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Multicultural Britain: Conviviality The Sociological Imagination

2014/07/30 Leave a comment

Sadia Habib on a number of initiatives demonstrating a more open approach to multiculturalism than often mentioned in the media in the #ShareRamadan social media campaign:

Yet in spite of the politicians and the mainstream media falling short in highlighting examples of how British people experience multiculturalism amongst their friends, colleagues and family, there are glimpses of good that prove that difference and diversity are respected. There is much going on that contradicts this spiel that multiculturalism has failed. Here comes in social media democracy that allows the spread of stories illustrating the significance of small-scale social interaction between diverse Britons of diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds. One such example of Gilroy’s concept of conviviality in action is #ShareRamadan, which shows British people engaging in social practices that are beyond the confines of giving lip-service to tolerance and civility.

Ramadan 2014 is part-way through, and an interesting project aiming to #ShareRamadan with non-Muslims has been trending on social media. Those taking part in #ShareRamadan have been providing video logs of the experience of the fasts that British Muslims are experiencing this lunar year. Non-Muslims are getting to know first-hand how it feels to not eat or drink in daylight hours, and have been waking up at Suhoor time to eat a pre-dawn meal, and then breaking their fast with Muslim friends at sunset (around 9.40pm for most some parts of Britain). Throughout the world the lengths of the fasts vary according to the time of the Fajr and Maghrib prayers, with the fasts in Brazil and Australia being relatively short compared with Iceland and Britain. The Guardian online has provided a space for user-generated content where contributors from all around the world are sharing their photos and tales about Ramadan.

Multicultural Britain: Conviviality The Sociological Imagination.

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UK: How I Passed the English Cricket Test – Kenan Malik

2014/07/29 Leave a comment

Kenan Malik on Britishness and belonging:

Craft a statement. Teach a lesson. Politicians may be the only people in the world who imagine that the creation of identities, or the forging of a sense of belonging, can be reduced to such simple formulas.

What most public debates ignore is the complexity, elasticity and sheer contrariness of identity. Whether personal or national, identities can never be singular or fixed because they are rooted largely in people’s relationships with one another — not merely personal but social relationships, too — and such connections are always mutating.

…. My parents were of a generation that accepted racism as part of life. I was of a generation that challenged it, politically and physically. We confronted far-right thugs, organized street patrols to protect black and Asian families, and stood up to police harassment. And this inevitably shaped our sense of who we were.

My generation did not think of itself as “Muslim” or “Hindu” or “Sikh.” We wanted to be seen as British. When Britain told us, “You don’t belong,” we responded both by insisting on our Britishness and by identifying with those who challenged British identity. Such is the contradictory character of belonging.

… Today, things are different. Neither racism nor racial violence has disappeared, and hostility to immigration has become a defining feature of British politics. Yet the savage, in-your-face racism that marked Britain a generation ago is, thankfully, relatively rare. The nature of Britishness has changed, too. No longer rooted in ideas of race and empire, it is defined as much by diversity as by jingoism. National identity is being recast in a host of new debates, from the fractious question of Scottish independence to the fraught relationship with the European Union.

Blacks and Asians have long since become an accepted part of Britain’s identity, as well as its sporting tapestry. And I have dropped my “anyone but England” attitude. I, too, now feel the pain of penalty shootout defeats and the rare joy of cricket match victories. Yet, if I am now willing to wave the flag at a cricket field or in a soccer stadium, I will not necessarily do so in all contexts. I may be tribal about sports, but I am not patriotic about Britain.

Unthinking, irrational support for one team over another is an essential part of the experience of sports. Patriots wish us to be equally unthinking in our attachment to the nation in every arena, from culture to war. The myth of nationalism is that “Britishness,” just like “Frenchness” or “Americanness,” comes as a single package. But identity does not work like that.

There are many aspects of British life that I admire, and many that I despise. I only have to visit a London street market to be reminded how open Britain is to foods and goods and influences from all over the world; I only have to stand in line in passport control at Heathrow Airport to remember how deep the suspicion of foreigners runs. Many British traditions resonate with me; many I find abhorrent. This is the nation that produced the Levellers and the Suffragettes, radical movements that helped shape the world; it is also a nation that still clings to a monarchy and the unelected, feudal House of Lords.

Many non-British traditions, too, have helped shape my views, values and ideals. To erase this complexity with the myths of patriotism is to diminish the very meaning of belonging.

How I Passed the English Cricket Test – NYTimes.com.

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Multiculturalism, Britishness, and Muslims | openDemocracy

2014/07/19 Leave a comment

A somewhat (over) lengthy piece by Tariq Madood on British multiculturalism and Islam, but nevertheless interesting and rich in its reflections:

The Islamic-modernity argument counters by positioning the sharia not as a body of unchanging law, but as a set of ethical principles with legal conclusions that apply only to specific places and times and thus have to be continually reinterpreted; the effect is to place the ethical over the legal and the political see Ziauddin Sardar, The Future of Muslim Civilization [Mansell, 1987] and Tariq Ramadan, Western Muslims and the Future of Islam [Oxford University Press, 2005. This is an example of how scholarship can draw on extra-European heritages and reinterpret them in a context of a democratic citizenship.

As Muslims’ discussion of these matters develops, and as their discourse becomes an integral part of British debates, one positive effect could be that a broader range of Muslim voices or civic participants are able to contribute. Such a development would reflect a healthy internal variety among Muslims as within any group, part of which is that different individuals or members will want to locate themselves variously across the representational landscape secular, religious, close to government, distant from political parties. That, after all, is true integration; new groups should have similar opportunities to old groups and do not need to conform, or feel obliged to conform, to a special “minority” perspective.

These discursive and institutional processes have two implications. The first is that an increasing acceptance that Muslims can politically organise “as Muslims” without any sense of illegitimacy – in raising distinctive concerns or having group representation in public bodies, for example – means allowing them to choose the paths they think appropriate at different times, in different contexts and for different ends.

The result will be a democratic constellation of organisations, networks, alliances and discourses in which there will be agreement and disagreement, in which group identity will be manifested more by way of family resemblances than the idea that one group means one voice.

The second implication is that where there is “difference” there must also be commonality. That commonality is citizenship, a citizenship seen in a plural and dispersed way. There is no contradiction here, for emphasising and cultivating what we have in common is not a denial of difference – it all depends upon what kind of commonality is arrived at, something that cannot be taken for granted. Difference and commonality are not either-or opposites but are complementary and have to be made – lived – together, giving to each its due.

More than that, commonality must be difference-friendly, and if it is not, it must be remade to be so. This does not mean as a corollary weak or indifferent national identities; on the contrary, multiculturalism requires a framework of dynamic national narratives and the ceremonies and rituals which give expression to a national identity. Minority identities are capable of generating a sense of attachment and belonging, even a sense of a “cause” for many people. If multicultural citizenship is to be equally attractive to those people, it needs a comparable and counterbalancing set of emotions; it cannot be merely about a legal status or a passport.

A sense of belonging to one’s country is necessary to make a success of a multicultural society. An inclusive national identity is respectful of and builds upon the identities that people value and does not trample upon them. So integration is not simply or even primarily a “minority problem”. For central to it is a citizenship and the right to make a claim on the national identity in the direction of positive difference.

Multiculturalism, Britishness, and Muslims | openDemocracy.

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Mothers the latest weapon in U.K.’s fight against terrorism

2014/07/15 Leave a comment

Another UK initiative to reduce radicalization and extremism:

Now British police are hoping to tap into that mother’s instinct to protect her children. In April, they launched an unprecedented program to encourage Muslim women to contact authorities if they suspect their loved ones are planning to travel to Syria or have already gone.

Women are often best placed to intervene, says deputy assistant commissioner Helen Ball of the Metropolitan Police, one of three senior female police officers running Britain’s counterterrorism operations.

“This is very much about prevention and protection,” says Ball, who devised the program. “It is women who . . . notice a change in behaviour very quickly. We want women to feel confident to come forward, whether it is to police, or a community member they trust or a school teacher.”

Such initiatives — from the benign to the extraordinary — are being taken by governments as they struggle to reduce the number of western Muslims joining the war in Syria for fear they return to cause carnage on the streets of their homelands.

On Tuesday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder called the issue a “global crisis in need of a global solution.”

“The Syrian conflict has turned that region into a cradle of violent extremism. But the world cannot simply sit back and let it become a training ground from which our nationals can return and launch attacks,’” Holder said in a speech to Norwegian diplomats and national security officials in Oslo.

… But as Einas Deghayes [mother of an extremist killed in Syria] insists, it is often the mothers who are the last to know what their children are up to.

Mothers the latest weapon in U.K.’s fight against terrorism | Toronto Star.

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