I managed to get to the WCPI “One Law for All” rally in Trafalgar Square yesterday afternoon, and as others had advised me it would be, it was tiny after all. I took some pictures and posted them to Flickr, and they clearly show that the demo was poorly attended: about 100 under the entrance to the National Gallery. There was an awful lot of “No Shari’ah” sloganeering - a lot of clichés about Shari’ah and comparisons of it to what is practised in Iran, and they concentrated overwhelmingly on Muslim arbitration panels rather than the Jewish panels which have been established for a lot longer.
Most of the speakers were members of the WCPI “Central Committee”, including Maryam Namazie, Fariborz Pooya, Bahram Soroush and Shiva Mahbobi. The latter was actually introduced as a member of said committee, but actually all four were; it begs the question of why the views of a small Iranian Marxist sect should be important in the debate over religion and state in the UK. I also wonder if any state they managed to establish in Iran would be much less repressive than the present régime, given that police states tend to recycle their old enemies’ secret police forces (this happened in both Iran and Russia); I had coined the slogan “Shari’ah, yes, Stasi, no” in case we managed to mount a counter-demo. AC Grayling, a popular philosopher, and Terry Sanderson of the National Secular Society, spoke as well. I wonder if they knew who their friends were.
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A damp squib but remember that as time advances then more socialist / far left movements against Islam will emerge worldwide. Hatred of Islam by the far left goes back decades. After all the Soviet communists detested Islam and made proactive efforts to eradicate it from their territory. The fact that most modern day socialist / far left movements are dominated by atheists and humanists means that the mechanism is already in place for them to go on the rampage against Islam when it finally clicks how incompatible the two creeds are in practice.
Jazakallah brother for sacrificing your time and covering this event - they would have us believe that hundreds were there from across the political spectrum.
‘Maryam Namazie’ - her name is loaded with religious and Islamic connotations LOL.
Ahmadi: Yes, I have always wondered why an avowed atheist has a surname which means someone who prays. Perhaps she should change it to Na-namazie.
If only we could get Maryam to go off on a rant about Jewish panels in public, we could seal her political doom. The press would obliterate her.
“I have always wondered why an avowed atheist has a surname which means someone who prays.”
We don’t have much choice about our names and it’s less bother not to change them unless you’re a bit obsessive about them. A surname doesn’t mean anything- it may have with the first person to have it, but not any more.