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Weekly Worker 559 Thursday January 13 2005

Divide and rule

Kenan Malik Are muslims hated? Channel Four, January 8, 6pm

One of the conventional wisdoms on much of the anti-war left today is the belief that since 9/11 British muslims have been the victims of a new and unprecedented level of discrimination. Just as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been presented as an attack on muslims across the world, so the ‘war at home’ has created a new phenomenon in British society - islamophobia, the hatred of Britain’s muslims.

Muslims are now regarded as the most harassed and oppressed group in Britain, their plight similar in certain ways to the oppression that catholics have faced in Northern Ireland. This has, therefore, supposedly made necessary the urgent need for a ‘electoral front’ between the British left and muslim organisations.

Indeed, it is now commonplace for groups like the Socialist Workers Party to even tag others on the left ‘racist’ and ‘islamophobic’ in the same breath if anyone dares urge caution in accommodating to muslim groups over issues like women’s and gay rights. The differences the left has with muslims about these forms of oppression, so the argument goes, should not get in the way of forming a single party with islamic forces.

Eighteen months ago, SWP leader John Rees wrote: “The revolutionary left is secular and atheist. But it also defends the equally important principle of freedom of religious worship - especially for those who are under attack by the government and the right wing” (Socialist Worker July 26 2003). Absolutely correct. Yet at the October 2004 Respect conference, the SWP’s Chris Bambery denounced those like the CPGB who advocate secularism - so great is the threat to British muslims from islamophobes (akin to the oppression faced by Jews in the 30s perhaps), that to call for secularism was to play the islamophobic game ourselves, he implied.

As an antidote to this type of analysis, Channel Four broadcast at the weekend a programme titled Are muslims hated?, a polemic made by Kenan Malik, once a leading member of the now defunct Revolutionary Communist Party. Malik’s basic thesis is that islamophobia is a myth, a device used by certain muslim groups to stifle criticism of islam and impose self-censorship on those who might dare to criticise or just question some of the beliefs and practices of British muslims.

As evidence in support of this thesis, Malik contrasted the much higher and far more intense level of attacks on British Asians in the 80s and 90s than takes place today on this section of society, whether muslim or non-muslim. Since 9/11 there has been no qualitative change in this situation, he said.
Furthermore, Malik cited evidence from official statistics to show that the claims made by muslim groups that the level of police harassment has reached astronomical levels is false. Blacks (Afro-Caribbeans) remain five times more likely to face stop and search harassment than are Asians, who have to endure ‘only’ 7% of such searches. Even in relation to stop and searches arising from the Terrorism Act of 2001, according to Malik only 15% of searches have taken place on muslims - not 95%, as claimed by one muslim interviewee in the programme.

This illustrated one of the problems with the programme - there are obvious limitations in relying too much on interpretations of official statistics. More seriously, the fact that the programme was only 30 minutes long meant that, in some ways, it was a rather ‘light’ contribution to the debate surrounding islamophobia. This is not to criticise Malik, a committed anti-racist who has written at length in articles and books about these issues, but is to simply recognise the limitations of the format.

It might have been interesting had Malik compared the position of British muslims with, for example, muslims in France, who have faced reactionary attacks from the Chirac government over the wearing of the hijab in schools. He might also have explored the nature and extent of the ideological attack on Britain’s muslims in the media.

Quite clearly muslims are under attack from some sections of British society. The ravings of Nick Griffin and Robert Kilroy-Silk indicate that those on the hard right of politics clearly seek to exacerbate tensions.

Even in sections of the ‘respectable’ broadsheets, islamophobia has clearly risen to the surface. For example, last year in The Sunday Telegraph, a writer using the pseudonym of Will Cummins was permitted to go on at length about the particular evil of islamic theology and politics. Equally clearly, since the ‘war on terror’ identifies islamist terrorism as its primary target, there can be no doubt that muslims, or those perceived to be muslims, will be and are being disproportionately hit by the state’s repressive measures - not only stop and search, but detention without trial, banning orders, deportations, etc.

This should not mean, though, that communists ought to reject Malik’s core argument that the level of islamophobia is being deliberately exaggerated. Since 9/11 the Blair government has been at pains to insist that there is no general crusade against islam, whether at home or abroad. Indeed the British government has insisted that it is ‘listening to the concerns’ of muslims. It points to the promotion and extension of faith schools, including the proposal to create state-funded islamic schools.

Moreover, the recent announcement that the government is intending to make incitement to religious hatred a criminal offence is at least partly aimed at winning back the votes of British muslims. Such reactionary policies show how easy it is for our ruling class to jump into bed with the minority religious establishment, as well with the Anglican church.

One can quite easily reach the conclusion that the position and status of islam is being strengthened by the government, not weakened. You do not have to overlook the special privileges of the Church of England to identify that Blair is seeking to elevate the role of mainstream religious institutions, whether christian or non-christian.

Indeed this is nothing new. Since at least the 1980s the establishment has fostered the reactionary ideology of multiculturalism. In an attempt to deal with the resistance to the racism dished out to immigrants in post-war Britain, governments ushered in a divide-and-rule approach which sought to encourage ‘leaders’ of ethnic minority groups to cooperate with the authorities in policing their ‘communities’. To facilitate this process government funds were used to entice usually self-appointed ‘community’ leaders, who, naturally, came typically from the most affluent and conservative sections.
Inevitably this tended to produce competition for such funds amongst different ethnic groups, each claiming special status. The state’s official tick-box anti-racism had the effect of splitting the working class into various ethnic categories - white, Irish, Asian, black British, West Indian, Jewish, Bengali, Chinese, Vietnamese, Somali, etc - and near endless sub-divisions thereof, often on a religious basis. It is the leaders of the mosques, gudwaras, etc that take the cheques handed to ‘the community’ by local authorities and have access to the corridors of power.

Multiculturalism divides the migrant working class, which had often been imbued with militant and secular traditions, into a myriad of rival ethnic and religious groups, who are encouraged to celebrate their ‘differences’ and ‘diversity’. But this policy has not been without its contradictions for the establishment. Inequality and poverty have not gone away for the poor of these communities and tensions have exploded in several British cities between whites and British Asians, including muslims. Increasingly, moreover, muslim protest takes the form of demanding that ‘cultural differences’ are taken into account by government. Hence the government’s willingness to acquiesce further with demands for muslim schools and so on.

Multiculturalism must be seen in the context of the British state’s ideology of official anti-racism, embraced by all the main parties. Racism no longer suits the purpose of the establishment (even if it still remains a very real experience for many non-whites). Previously the alleged ‘inferiority’ of subject peoples was used to justify colonial conquests. Today, with the empire long dismantled, a rearticulated national chauvinism is a much more useful weapon.

This anti-racist national chauvinism aims to cohere the whole population, irrespective of religion or skin colour, around the interests of British capital, defined in opposition to the interests of ‘outsiders’. But modern bourgeois anti-racism, despite its aim of domestic stability, can be just as divisive as was its racism. Its ‘positive discrimination’, imposed from the top, serves to pit different ethnic groups in competition for jobs and resources. We are meant to approach the state as ‘ethnic’ supplicants, not something leaders of British islam are hostile to.

Moreover, the aim of state anti-racism is to unite us negatively on the basis of nationality. It encourages workers to turn against the ‘threat’ of asylum-seekers, who are told to stay where they ‘belong’. Blair wants to keep them out not because of their race or ethnicity, but because by and large they are working class and poor.

The bourgeoisie strives to cohere the entire population around its national chauvinist consensus. It aims to win ideological hegemony over every section of society - every class, every national, religious and ethnic group. It eschews racism, not because it innately believes in equality and toleration, but because leaving a large and growing section of the citizen population outside the imagined community of the nation is at present antithetical to reconstructing the unity directed against outsiders.
Thus, ironically, the current crisis of relations between the Blair government and British muslims can be located in the official anti-racist ideology. This ideology encouraged muslims to emphasise their muslimism and empowered the imams and the mosques. So it is not difficult to understand why a breakdown of relations has taken place. With Blair’s stance on Afghanistan and Iraq being almost as hawkish as that of president Bush, it is easy to appreciate, and indeed wholeheartedly share, the anger of many British muslims to imperialism’s cynicism and brutality.

Moreover, just as the British state’s ‘anti-terrorist’ measures against the IRA and other republican groups in the 60s, 70s and 80s inevitably victimised large sections of the Irish population as a whole, both in the Six Counties and Britain, so its drive against al Qa’eda and islamist terrorism will, just as inevitably, hit the muslim population. True, just as the imperialist war in Iraq is not a war against islam, neither is its ‘war on terror’, or the outrageous infringements of civil liberties that are part and parcel of it, wholly or mainly aimed at muslims. But it is certainly clear that muslims will bear the brunt.
Yet that does not mean we should not be wary of the motives of certain muslim groups when they raise the accusation of islamophobia. Some of the self-appointed leaders of islam actually want British muslims to be the ‘new Irish’ - that is, that they should constitute the most oppressed section of British society. Not only does this give them the opportunity to take greater control of their communities, as muslims close ranks. It also provides them with the justification for demanding further concessions from the state for their religion.

Malik’s arguments, therefore, should not be dismissed. No doubt they will be met with stony silence or derision by sections of the left. This is not simply because of Malik’s political history - the RCP was frequently the bête noire of many a leftwing group. One of the functions of calling others on the left islamophobic if they challenge the conventional wisdom about muslims is that this immediately closes down the debate, islamophobia being regarded as a variant of racism.

Yet much of this left, from Ken Livingstone to the SWP, have ironically drunk in much of the multiculturalist agenda. Livingstone has directly sponsored it; whilst the SWP’s most frequent complaint about government policies is that they are not multiculturalist enough.

Indeed, if we look at the SWP’s wooing of muslims in recent times, it is, strangely perhaps, not completely different to the approach taken by the mainstream political parties. Instead of viewing the muslim ‘community’ as being multi-layered and diffuse, the SWP, in practice if not yet in theory, pretends it is one homogeneous bloc and thus ignores the tensions within it - tensions to do with age, gender, etc, but above all with class.

No wonder the SWP attempts to go straight to mosque leaders or seek to deal with reactionary groups like the Muslim Association of Britain. Thus the SWP abandons its duty to those oppressed from within the islamic community - be it those who are the victims of misogyny and homophobia or workers who are exploited by muslim bosses.

This is why Respect was an accident waiting to happen. It has been tortuous to watch SWP leaders make concessions on long-cherished principles such as secularism and abortion. No doubt in the run-up to the general election it will have to perform further acrobatics, particularly on the question of the proposed law on incitement to religious hatred. Will it insist that Respect should oppose this reactionary legislation curtailing free speech? Or will it seek to reach a fudge on the issue to keep its coalition together?

After all, wouldn’t it be ‘islamophobic’ if the SWP opposed such a law?

Cameron Richards

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