12 Jan 2011
Whether it is the almost daily sectarian murders in Pakistan, Asian men in the UK engaged in rape and prostitution, or Islamo-fascist terrorism - Wishart, predictably, reserves her most bitter and banshee screams for Israel as ususal.
Renaud Sarda
If you doubted that Pakistan was well on its way to basket case status, you need only have watched the events following the cowardly murder of Punjabi governor Salman Taseer.
His assassin, one of his own security detail, was showered with rose petals by courtroom lawyers, and subsequent rallies hailed him as an Islamic hero for gunning down a man whose crime was to adopt the cause of a young Pakistani Christian mother of five accused by Muslim women of taking their prophet’s name in vain. The mother was sentenced to hang by a local judge on the hearsay evidence of her fellow villagers.
Compare and contrast the release this week of a noted radical jihadist because of “lack of evidence”, for which read lack of the necessary will to put on trial a man with friends in high and dangerous places.
While we beat our breasts over whether or not Iran will acquire nuclear weaponry, nuclear-armed Pakistan continues to spiral down a route where complicity with terrorism is well established, religious intolerance flourishes, and the political process is punctuated by high profile murders. None of which can be placed at the door of the Muslim religion, whose teachings preach tolerance and warn against the use of violence. But its tenets have been taken in vain and bent beyond recognition by patriarchal misogynists masquerading as holy men.
At this tipping point in Pakistan, already wrestling with natural as well as man-made disaster, British Muslims need to make their voices heard on behalf of those unable to speak out in their own native land for fear of terrible reprisals. Without their input, without their voicing revulsion, the public comments of people like former Home and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw can be dismissed as the cultural imperialism of a white politician with no shortage of skeletons in his own policy cupboard. And without strong Muslim voices, white liberals too are wont to sink into mealy mouthed comment for fear of being labelled racist. But it is not racist to campaign against evil deeds. Taseer’s grieving daughter has commented that her father died as the result of “a hate crime fulled by jihadist fervour….all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” And, for that matter, say nothing.
Currently people are tip-toeing around the subject of the groups of British men of Pakistani origin targeting young white women for under-age prostitution.
Some high-ranking police officers have suggested the ethnic origin of the gangs is irrelevant. And it is, in the sense that there is no shortage of white men involved in the same unsavoury trade. But it’s certainly germane to note that none of the abused girls is from the same community as the perpetrators, just as it is to note that the BNP specialises in skin-headed white neds whose targets are most likely to be brown-skinned. When fundamentalist thugs of any stripe commit crimes, it is crucial that they are named shamed and unprotected by decent men and women who can have no sensible interest in letting that brand of hate poison their children’s futures.
People’s honest anger in the face of criminal activities should not be confused with Islamophobia. After all we’ve had a not dissimilar situation regarding Israel and the Jewish diaspora.
When Israel mounted its vicious invasion of Gaza this time last year, many British Jews courageously condemned the brutality and its horrendous aftermath. Others accused critics of anti-Semitism. A year on we find Israel’s rabidly right-wing foreign minister waging war on human rights groups in his own country and seeking to investigate the funding of bodies pursuing peace and harmonious inter-ethnic relationships. “An evil spirit has been sweeping over the country, and it is our duty to stand up against it,” says Israel’s opposition leader. As it is all our duties.
Whether it’s a hysterical half-baked Imam fomenting terrorism, a loony Christian cleric threatening to torch the Q’uran or any zealot hijacking religion to create mayhem and encourage murder, they need to be called out for what they are.
Diplomatic niceties haven’t cut it. Time for home truths.
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