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Monday: 09/10/06
At least with hard man John Reid it was
man to man hand to hand fighting.
The latest New Labour witch-hunter to
come out kicking Muslims, Jack Straw, has resorted to picking on women
and a pretty ugly sight it is too. While he might now wish he'd drawn
a veil over his disturbing preoccupation with his female constituents
clothing he has unmasked how frenetically the Dutch auction in
anti-Muslim rhetoric in Britain is proceeding.
Tabloid frenzy feeds Government ministers who feed the tabloids and
the resulting toxicity fuels the kind of firebombing of isolated
Muslims in places like Windsor where this week the Medina Dairy was
attacked. A pre-pogrom atmosphere is being created in Britain and too
few progressives are standing up against it.
Imagine if a minister in the US dared to instruct the Amish how to
live their lives; railed against their unwillingness to act, think,
live, dress like the majority around them?
Imagine a demand to the Orthodox Jewish residents of Stamford Hill
that they must end their "separateness", cut their locks, get out of
their "ghettos"? That Sikhs should abandon their turbans?
Inconceivable of course, yet that is exactly what is being demanded by
Straw, and, less noticed, by David Cameron last week of Britain’s
beleaguered two million Muslims.
Britain is often described as a secular country. It is not. It has an
established church the head of which is the head of state (come to
think of it all concerned have a prediliction for unusual headgear
themselves).
What on earth is tolerant or secular about demanding of religious
people that they should amend their religious observance to suit those
who don’t share their beliefs? No politician least of all one elected
serve his constituents has any right to prescribe a dress code to
those to whom he is beholden for his very role in life. This
breathtaking arrogance would never be tried by anyone about any other
group than
Muslims. This Islamophobia is the secularism of fools.
Less than 10,000 women throughout the country wear the Niqab - the
veil covering all but the eyes. By singling them out in this way for
ruthless attention by the Richard Littlejohns, the John Gaunts, the
gutterscribes of the Daily Express and the News of the World, Straw
has committed a cowardly attack on an already fretful minority of a
minority. At the risk of prescribing a dress code myself; he should
put a big sock in his foul mouth and stop whipping up trouble between
the different groups in this already fragile polity.
On Sunday many people gathered to commemorate the 70th anniversary of
the great battle of Cable Street. On that day progressive people of
all kinds rallied to protect the significant minority of immigrants in
London's east end against the strutting Jack boots of a domestic
Fascism one of whose very arguments was against the very "separateness
of the Jews who lived there. Their very garb, unusual diets, habits of
living in close proximity to each other was a standing affront to the
beefeating Englishness of the Moselyites.
Leave the Jews alone was the response of the best of the British left.
Let them eat dress and live as they want. It is a call that should be
echoed today. About today’s whipping boys. Today’s immigrants; the
Muslims.
George Galloway MP
Bethnal Green and Bow Constituency Office
9 Club Row
London E1 6JX
020 7613 5225
www.georgegalloway.com
www.respectcoalition.org
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