Clamp down on imaginary Islamisation, says Torygraph
The Telegraph published an interview with Marine Le Pen, daughter of the French far-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen, and yesterday followed it up with a leader in which they claim that her party is not a suitable model for a British political party, but that there is a danger of a populist party gaining popularity due to anti-Muslim feeling which they claim stems from an “Islamisation that threatens the freedoms of ordinary Britons”.
Apart from Muslim women supposedly trapped in ghettoes, they do not explain how anyone’s freedom is threatened. They claim that the Muslim population has grown by 74% since 2001, based on two Pew Forum reports, one based on the 2001 census and the other not. The second estimate is much less reliable, since not everybody was asked (I certainly was not), although the first is likely to have been an underestimate as not everyone actually put their religion in that census as they did not have to, so the increase is likely to be exaggerated. Furthermore, the last major wave of Muslim immigration happened during the civil war in Somalia, which started in earnest with the ouster of Siyaad Barre in 1991, six years before Labour came to power. How more than a million more Muslims than that arrived after 2001 is not explained. There would have been a natural increase, some conversions, and some arriving on temporary visas and for marriage, but this could not possibly bring in 1.2million people.
They also make various claims about the supposed tendency of Muslims to “support Shari’ah”, based on opinion polls including some solicited by them. Again, these polls are not reliable as they would have been based on a pitifully small sample which, if broken down among the various different Muslim communities in the UK, would have amounted to a mere handful in each population. Still, “supporting the establishment of Shari’ah” does not explain what they actually intend to do, beyond establishing private tribunals to settle marital and (some) business and property disputes, something the law already allowed before Muslims arrived and did not become controversial when any other religious community used it.
They then bring in the matter of the Saddleworth by-election having been triggered by the use of “dog-whistle” anti-Muslim campaigning by Phil Woolas, the winning Labour candidate. Woolas’s offending flyer attacked immigrants generally by linking them to home-grown extremists, who are not immigrants. However, the Telegraph earlier reported that the judge whose verdict led to the by-election found that Woolas’s tactics were an attempt to appeal to “white Sun readers”, which gives a clue as to how the resentment against Muslims is being engendered. For years, particularly since 2006 when Jack Straw made his anti-niqaab comments, there has been a succession of anti-Muslim stories, including claims of Muslims demanding or getting special treatment, claims of terrorist plots that turned out to be exaggerated or non-existent, front-page stories about the tiny Muhajiroun remnant groups, claims of “what Muslims want” based on small-sample opinion polls, and so on. The Telegraph has used the “opinion poll” tactic, while the tabloids have focussed on the other types of stories. Only today, the Sun admitted that its story about al-Qa’ida threatening Coronation Street (?!) was false (there was increased security — which could have been because the producers wanted to avoid story leaks — but no specific threat).
The “special treatment” stories have been a staple of the popular press for decades, and the recent anti-Muslim stories are a convergence with the “dhimmitude” accusations which were a staple of the US right-wing blogosphere after 2001, with every concession to Muslim sensibilities, including by commercial entities to please customers, being presented as one more capitulation, one more victory for the Islamic hordes that were supposedly at the gates. I do not think that those who circulate these stories in the British media really hate Muslims, unlike those right-wing bloggers; I think they are simply amoral, motivated only by money. They have enormous power — consider how the government leapt after they shouted “jump” over undeported foreign convicts a few years ago — and show no desire to use it responsibly. There is nothing to appease by clamping down on Muslims on the basis of these manufactured stories; the papers will simply choose another target. The only thing for it is to clamp down on the profiteers who peddle these stories.
