Home spun Spin & the house arrests of Azkaban.
international |
rights, freedoms and repression |
other press 
Thursday March 03, 2005 12:02
by iosaf
"bye bye Blair update"
The news that a 16 year old girl has succeeded in a case she started at the age of 14 against her school for limiting her interpretation of Islamic dress, has won at the British courts represented by no less a QC than Mrs Cherie Blair, is being hailed by the party who have done more to stoke islamaphobia than any other, as a victory for civil rights.
This young girl has said she has given "hope to muslim women". Meanwhile, her QC's husband continues to push un-neccesary legislation which flagrantly abuses the ancient liberties at the heart of the British legal system.
And one of his ministers comes under criticism for reminding the community of British Muslim men and women and their children, be they young or adolescent, or university students, or workers, that because the forces of Terror use a "mask of Islam" to hide their purpose and intent, muslims had just get used to being stopped, searched, hassled, accused and suspected.
C/F The Guardian Leader today-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,,1428953,00.html
the UK muslim community has had a different experience of migration, immigration, integration and development to the other three comparative European muslim communities - those of France, Germany and Spain.
At one point in the 1980s it was commonplace to compare the experience of integration of afro-carribean britons with that of the Irish and of asian muslims with that of post war Jews.
Such comparisons are not made (thankfully) now, for the experiences be they of economic success, educational attainment, community building, contribution to society, adherence to traditional cutural or religious values have changed for all those key immigrant groups in the construction and development of a modern multi-ethnic British society. Though at the peripheries of the UK be it in Scotland or NI such negative experiences persist for other complex reasons.
We have thanks to Blair's recent apology to those Irish who served prison sentances of more than fifteen years for crimes they didn't commit, forgotten all about the draconian laws on the statute books to fight terror, which in their day proved quite effective at subverting liberties, stoking a dirty war, dividing and marginalising the Irish migrant community and putting everyone at ease that "peace and justice" were happening.
The British have forgotten that. And so they need now yet more laws, so they can make the same mistakes yet again.
It ought be very apparant that the Blair team, are engaged in a desperate bid to distract attention from their abuses and curtailing of human rights by playing the "hijab" card.
No mention is being made, of the need for an agreed policy on ostentatious religious symbolism, no mention has been made of the need for adolescent males in overwhelmingly ethno or religiously centred communities to grow up learning that "little girls are all the same" made of sugar, spice and all things nice. No thought is being given to the varying routes islamaphobia may develop. This has to be one of the most shoddy psychological operations yet to emerge from the Blair stable. - Perhaps their team isn't up to scratch anymore?
If the Blair team succeed in their continuing bid to concentrate the power of the UK in their hands, or the hands of their namesakes (as witness the recent appointment of the Chief Police officer Sir Blair) then muslim women and men, as christian women and men, as humanist women and men as all Britons will have reasons to cry.
Please call Kate Hoey now.
final link to the passage of the Blair Terror Legislation-
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=68829