Indigo Jo Blogs

This evening the American feminist academic Joan Wallach Scott, a professor of social science at Princeton, NJ, gave a lecture to promote her book, The Politics of the Veil (Princeton, 2007) (reviewed in the New Statesman here). The lecture was held at the London School of Economics (LSE), presently part of the University of London, and was well-attended, with both men and women, including quite a few Muslims (although fewer than I expected), in the packed 240-seat lecture theatre. The lecture, and the book, offers an intriguing insight into the "debate" which led to the imposition of the ban.

Continue reading "Review of London lecture on French hijab politics" »

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George Monbiot, in today's Guardian, on the deafening silence of European politicians as Serbia takes the chairmanship of the Council of Europe, the body, entirely independent of the European Union, which runs the European Court of Human Rights: the reason, he says, is that everyone is afraid of having their own human rights record called into question:

But who will cast the first stone? There is scarcely a government that does not have something to hide. The UK, Germany, Italy, Macedonia and even Sweden have been assisting the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" programme, kidnapping people and delivering them to states that will torture them on the US's behalf. Poland and Romania seem to have let the US use secret detention centres on their soil. Austria, Germany and the UK rely on worthless diplomatic assurances to justify handing refugees to governments that torture prisoners. Poland warns that "teachers who reveal their homosexuality will be fired from work". France supports African genocidaires. Spain repatriates unaccompanied children. Ukrainian police torture sex workers and force them to confess to crimes they did not commit. The UK bans peaceful protest and continues to occupy the country it illegally invaded.

Lift a stone to throw at Serbia anywhere in Europe and you will find something unpleasant cowering there. Better to leave it on the ground. The price of being left alone by other states is the tolerance of mass murder. When I discussed these matters with Terry Davis, he admitted that he had "not heard anyone in the Council of Europe suggest any form of action against Serbia as a result of its failure to hand over Mladic". The only action they could take, he claimed, is to expel Serbia from the council. Once you have become a member, you have the right to chair it when your turn comes up. I am not convinced this is true. The council's statute says that a member which has seriously violated human rights and fundamental freedoms "may be suspended from its rights of representation". Surely this could apply to its right to be represented as chairman of the council?

The price of being left alone has been the tolerance of mass murder

Meanwhile, a hard-line nationalist has been elected as speaker of the Serbian parliament.

Update: In today's paper, Terry Davis, current secretary-general of the Council of Europe, defends Serbia's membership, saying that excluding the country would only hurt ordinary people and that the Serbian war criminal, Vojislav Seselj, has taken the same position of opposing Serbian CoE membership.

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This is a shocking story from today's (Tuesday's) Guardian about a new wave of persecution of central Europe's Roma (Gypsy) minority, which has started to take the form of destruction of Roma neighbourhoods and the driving-out of their populations:

Miha Strojan was tending to his sick mother when the mob arrived. Wielding clubs, guns and chainsaws, several hundred villagers converged on the cottage in a clearing in the beech forest with a simple demand. "Zig raus [Gyppos out]," they called in German, deliberately echoing Nazi racist chants. "Bomb the Gypsies." It was the last Saturday of last month, when the mob terrorised the extended family of more than 30 Roma, half of them children, into fleeing their clearing a mile over the hill from the farming village of Ambrus in eastern Slovenia.

Continue reading "Old Europe, new Europe" »

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Technorati Tags: nyamko sabuni, fgm, female circumcision, sweden, islam, muslim women

Islamophobia Watch this weekend drew attention to the Sunday Times' article on Nyamko Sabuni, Sweden's answer to Ayaan Hirsi Ali who scarpered to the USA once doubt had been cast on her grounds for any status in the Netherlands. She is the "integration and equality" minister in the recently elected conservative government, and advocates such policies as adolescent girls being checked for evidence of having undergone genital mutilation, the criminalisation of arranged marriages, no state funding for religious organisations, and that "immigrants should learn Swedish and find a job".

Continue reading "The latest native informer" »

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Feargus O'Sullivan, in yesterday's Guardian, wrote about the various "anti-delicacies" he tasted on his travels in Europe. This is what he found in the Netherlands:

The quintessential Dutch food experience is the FEBO snack automat. These are great walls of heated compartments, all clad in shiny chrome, brightly lit and impeccably clean. Drop a coin in the slot and the door of your chosen compartment flicks open, disgorging some lump of tasteless deep-fried mystery-meat apologetically sweating grease into its cardboard carton. Nowhere illustrates better the Dutch love of scrubbed cosiness and efficiency and their total indifference to the pleasures of the palate. This sense of culinary anticlimax is everywhere in the country. I will never forget buying what I hoped was a spicy pasty in Rotterdam, only to find that it was filled with nothing but white sauce. Likewise the day a Dutch flatmate cooked us what she swore was a delicious traditional dish, then brought in a pan of reconstituted powdered mash, kale and tinned frankfurters. Even the more appealing Dutch treats, such as double-fried chips with mayonnaise, are spoilt by lack of care: the oil for the second frying is often stale, while the mayo is a form of sickly, watery industrial run-off. Thankfully, the Dutch Indonesians have improved things a little by injecting much needed care and spice into the national diet.

Of course, not all Indonesians are Muslims (about 90% of them), but one expects the Moroccans wouldn't find room for a "FEBO snack automat" in a tagine house either.

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From A Fistful of Euros, a report on how Austria's interior minister used media reports and an academic study whose author has yet to draw his conclusions as the basis for accusing Austria's Muslim community of being "unwilling to integrate":

Ah. I think I get it. Someone like the emetic FPÖ goon Andreas Mölzer has his pet newspaper (Zur Zeit) rant about TEH TERRORISTS, and this is duly marked off by the responsible minister’s pet academics as evidence for Mölzer’s policy. But there is much, much worse.

According to her spokesman, “20 per cent of Muslims had difficulties with integration for religious reasons and 25 per cent with the cultural background”. So, obviously 45 per cent of them REFUSE TO INTEGRATE AND MUST BE ELIMINATED! Errr..well. Perhaps if religious and cultural differences were mutually exclusive, that might approach the truth or something akin to it.

There are links to various Austrian newspaper reports, all in German, my command of which is rather rusty.

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