On being told to go home

                                     

I'm an immigrant. I was not born in the UK, my passport says I'm Australian. But I have indefinite leave to remain in the UK, I am married to a British man, I work here, I pay tax here, I vote here. I am a privileged immigrant - I have not been subjected to horrendous racism in the eight years that I have lived here. Of course, I have been told more than once that I'm "the kind of immigrant we like", which is usually code for "white skin, native English speaker, not a Muslim" - that is obviously racist too - but I have never been subjected to the sort of racist abuse that leaves people fearing for their personal safety.

Only once have I been told to go home. It happened a few weeks ago on Twitter (where else?) when I had the temerity to express an opinion on the sorry state of British politics. Some faceless, nameless, gutless individual felt the need to reply to me, saying that if I don't like it here, I can always go back to Australia. The tweet was accompanied by a picture of an angry bloke holding a blue passport. (Spoiler alert: I've had a blue passport my whole life and they're not that exciting...).

But plenty of people get told to go home all the time. It's tiresome, it's repetitive, it's wearing and, above all, it's racist. When the president of the United States uses the "go home, go back to where you came from" rhetoric, it's still racist. The two men who are vying to be the next prime minister, however, were unable to say that Trump's words were racist.

In a particularly pathetic display on BBC Breakfast, Jeremy Hunt said he wouldn't use "the r-word". The r-word? Really? It's one thing to say "the n-word" rather than lower oneself to use a particularly vile racial slur against black people but to reduce a word that was entirely accurate in the context to "the r-word" is pitiful. He then went on to say that he was the father of two half-Chinese children, as if that made everything OK. It doesn't make anything OK. If anything, it makes things worse - if some cretin told Jeremy Hunt's kids to go back to where they came from, would he condemn that person as a racist? Or is it only people we're seeking trade deals from that get a leave pass to be a bigot?

Of course, that was everyone's defence of the mealy-mouthed responses of Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt to Trump's awful comments. It's the Special Relationship! They're our closest ally! We need to do a trade deal after Brexit! Ilhan Omar's a racist too!

A few things: the special relationship predates the Trump administration and it will long outlive his presidency and the premiership of either Johnson or Hunt; trade deals take years to negotiate and a negotiation with the US will almost certainly go on for longer than our next PM is in office; and if a trade deal is done in a hurry, it will not be a great deal for the UK. Trump means it when he says "America first".

And in regard to Ilhan Omar, it is possible to disagree with her position on a number of issues without resorting to one of the oldest racist insults in the book. We should be better than that, but it seems that, increasingly, we are not.

We've reached peak whataboutery when it comes to accusing people of racism, particularly in the Labour and Conservative parties. Anyone who dares call out anti-semitism in Labour is guaranteed to have someone yell "But what about Tory Islamophobia?" at them and vice versa. How about we aim to reach a place where none of it is OK? How about we stand up against racism without trampling on another group which also experiences racism and ensure our own houses are in order before we start deflecting attention to the house across the street?

This is how we've ended up with Katie Hopkins using her supposed support of Israel and Jewish people as sticks with which to bash Muslims, even though she is not above making anti-semitic comments herself and making allusions to a "final solution" or using dehumanising language when it comes to migrants. Hopkins merely picks on a group of people for her own self-promotion and profit. If it's not Muslims, it might be poor people or obese people or people with tattoos or any other group she seeks to demonise in her desperate quest to stay relevant. Any one of us could be her next target and her loyal band of haters will gleefully wave their pitchforks and join in the pile-ons.

It's no coincidence that Trump and Hopkins are in bed together, at least in the online world, with their cosy, bile-laden circle jerk of mutual tweeting.

Trump's comments matter on this side of the pond because many people over here look to him for inspiration, to legitimise their own awful views. We do need to maintain a relationship with the US but it is possible to do this without lowering ourselves to Trump's level. Britain must be better than that if we are at all serious about remaining an influential country, if we are serious about setting an example to the world, if we care about our standing in the global community and, above all, if we truly love this country and the people who call it home.


Photography by Jim Larrison/Flickr 

Nadiya Hussain and the half-baked ideas

"Happily married mother of three deservedly wins baking contest" was never going to fly as a Great British Bake-Off headline. It is naive to think that Nadiya Hussain's hijab, religion or skin colour were going to go unnoticed as she went from strength to strength with a peacock cake, baked nuns, bubblegum frosting, and her final showstopper, a lemon drizzle wedding cake draped in a sari of Union Jack colours. Intentional or not, Nadiya expertly trolled the Daily Mail and the hordes who populate the online comments section with ill-informed blather.

If you held you nose and dived in under the online story that announced Nadiya's win, you'd find people who declared the whole baking contest to be a politically correct and convenient fix, an EU conspiracy, a Jeremy Corbyn conspiracy, and a vehicle for Nadiya to become a celebrity, because apparently she is also a desperate and grasping fame whore.

This was hot on the heels of a ridiculous piece by Amanda Platell claiming that 19-year-old Flora, a young white woman, might not have been eliminated if only she'd baked a chocolate mosque.

But "Nineteen-year-old baker is not quite as good as older, more experienced bakers" does not a good headline make.

Then the Daily Mail got some stick for not putting Nadiya on the front page on the morning after the nation found out that she'd won Great British Bake-Off. In previous years, the white-faced winner was on the front page, but not Nadiya, born in Luton, of Bangladeshi heritage and unashamedly wearing a flour-stained hijab.

And it turned out that some of their readers quite liked Nadiya and were genuinely happy that she won.

What better way then, for the Mail to try and adjust the balance than to commission Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a Ugandan-born, British Muslim journalist, to write a piece saying that Nadiya is the best thing for British race relations in a long time.

This is the same tactic the Mail used when, after weeks of scaremongering about the refugee crisis in Europe, it became clear that people were genuinely horrified by the images of Aylan Kurdi's dead body on a Turkish beach and briefly ran some sensitive, measured coverage on the story. And then it was back to business as usual. The people again become a "swarm".

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's piece was ridiculed for the following quote: "Today her adopted hometown of Leeds is bursting with pride. It was ten years ago this July - the same year Nadiya and Abdal wed - that four bombers attacked London; three of them were raised in or near Leeds."

In the context of the article, Alibhai-Brown goes on to say that Nadiya is not viewed as the unwanted foreigner (well, yes, she was born in Luton...), that she is an example of how integration happens through "natural respect, shared interests and a sense of ease". This is very true but it is still sad that three utterly repugnant bombers that have nothing to do with Nadiya should to be mentioned at all.

Sometimes a baking contest really is just a baking contest.

The broader context is how Alibhai-Brown's column fits into the the Daily Mail as a whole. Online, there was a link on the same page as her column to a stupid piece about the loveliness of Nadiya's husband's skin. If anyone thinks Alibhai-Brown's column is the start of a brave new world for the Mail's coverage of anything related to race or religion, they are naive in the extreme.

I don't begrudge Alibhai-Brown for writing her piece for the Mail. If most writers are honest, especially liberal ones, they'd happily take the opportunity to write an opinion piece for the Mail, to attempt to be a Trojan horse in the midst of some frequently awful content. I'd let the Mail run this or anything else from my blog if they paid me. I'd write something fresh for them if they paid me too.

But none of this makes the Mail immune from criticism about its past or present content. In a free press in a country with freedom of expression, the Mail can print what it likes but that does not mean nobody should call them out either.

And in the midst of all the noise, one person has been forgotten despite her lovely face being everywhere. The one person is Nadiya herself. She might not want to be hoisted onto a pedestal as the poster girl for integration, especially given she has lived her whole life in Luton and Leeds. She might just want to go back to baking amazing cakes. And if that is the case, we should let her do that in peace and quit trying to politicise her.



Image by Karen Arnold

To the jihadi brides: Stop being so stupid and come home

Honestly, I just want to give Shamima Begum, Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana one of my tough-love-cut-the-shit-and-get-your-act-together talks.

Something like this...

Shamima, Amira, Kadiza, you are three intelligent teenagers. You have everything going for you. You have been doing well at school. You have families who love you. You are not homeless. You have enjoyed the financial and educational advantages of growing up comfortably in Britain. And now you are throwing it all away to be "jihadi brides".

Do you have any clue what you are letting yourself in for? Being a jihadi bride is moronic. It sure as hell isn't romantic. Do you think you will be marrying handsome warrior princes like some sort of warped extremist Disney movie? Do you think you will have a choice in the men you marry? And once you are married to these repugnant men, do you think you will have choices about things such as when you have sex, how many children you have, whether or not you have to do tedious household chores, what you can wear, whether you can leave the house, what books you read, what you can see online, what music you listen to, who you can talk to?

You won't have any more choices. You will be silenced. You will become invisible. You will never reach your full potential. You will have no freedom of movement or speech or expression.

You will be marrying men who think women are inferior, who are profoundly anti-education, who use rape as a weapon of war on other women, who think that beheading people and burning people alive are perfectly acceptable things to do.

You will be marrying into a form of extremism that bears no resemblance to the lovely Ahmadiyyan Islamic community in my neighbourhood. The people who attend the mosque in my neighbourhood conduct themselves magnificently with their commitment to education for all, to working with the people of Merton rather than against them, to volunteer for a wide range of charities, to condemn and reject violence, to welcome non-believers as friends into their mosque, to be a part of Britain.

If you come home, you could be part of multicultural, positive Britain. You could join the people who seek to unite rather than divide our communities.

But instead you have chosen to be a part of an evil force that thrives on hatred, that depends on people hating all Muslims, that seeks to undermine everything great about living in Britain.

Here in Britain, you are able to go to school without fear of being shot. You can go on to university, again without worrying that some lunatic will gun you down for daring to be educated. You can marry for love. You can have a career. You can be a mother. You can drive a car. You can travel. You can vote. You do not have to marry the revolting men who are doing their best to make the world a horrific place. You can come home and appreciate how good you have it here in Britain.

I was once your age. And at that silly, wonderful age, I thought I knew everything and that the ridiculous things I did in 1992 were very clever and sophisticated. Like you, I did well at school but I was not a grown-up and neither are you. I am sure you think you are being very clever, daring and heroic. But now I am old enough to be your mothers and I look at the three of you and despair. I have more than 20 years life experience on you. I can see what you are doing and I can see how ridiculous you look.

It'd be easy for me to sit here in judgement of your families, to wonder out loud how the hell they didn't notice something was up. After all, fleeing the country to marry terrorists is an outrageous form of teenage rebellion. It makes sneaking into pubs, smoking a sly cigarette behind a bus shelter or wearing a parental non-approved outfit seem pretty pathetic. Teenagers are good at hiding stuff from their parents, especially their internet browsing history. There is not much to be gained by slagging off your very worried parents.

Governments, airports and airlines will look into how they can stop girls like you from leaving the country to do something as stupid as become a jihadi bride. Your legacy will not be one of religious heroism, exemplary devotion or piety. Your legacy might be something truly pitiful such as new regulations for unaccompanied minors travelling out of British airports. It will be on par with the regulations that require us to hand over nail clippers and 110ml tubes of toothpaste at airports after we've removed our shoes and belts. They will be the kind of regulations that are dubious in their effectiveness and cause people to irrationally curse all Muslims when they are trying to get on a plane to Alicante. For that you deserve a slow hand clap. You will help breed more stupid hatred.

So come home.

There is still hope for you. I believe in redemption and rehabilitation. I do not believe you should be locked up for life if you return to Britain. I believe that you are still young enough to build lives that do not involve joining a terrorist organisation. You three have taken teenage rebellion to a whole new level but you can still come back from this ridiculous path you've all taken.

Or can you?

I am not sure where any of you are right now, or who you are with, or whether you are safe. If you ever read this, I will be amazed. You may find yourselves in appalling situations very soon, unable to escape marriages to men who condone rape and murder. Your freedoms will be lost, your voices will be rendered silent.

But if any of you happen to read this, if you are not already entrenched in marriages that are about propagating violence, if there is any way any of you can turn around, please do so. You will not regret it.



Photo by ColinBroug

After the Charlie Hebdo murders, what now?

There it is. One of the cartoons that has caused at least 12 people in the office of Charlie Hebdo to lose their lives today.

For those who can't read French, it is a cartoon of the leader of IS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and the words simply say: "Best wishes, by the way. To you, al Baghdadi," and he says: "Especially to your health!". One wonders how weak one's beliefs are if they feel the need to shoot 12 people over such a statement.

Yet for this and other similar cartoons, two cowardly murderers who didn't have the balls to show their moronic faces stormed the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine and opened fire.

And the response to this latest act of terrorism, this latest attack on free speech, is the same old, same old. There's the usual blaming of every Muslim on the planet, the usual calls for moderate Muslims to speak out (which every moderate Muslim/agnostic Muslim/lapsed Muslim I know, and plenty I don't know, do all the time, over and over again, and I really do not know how much more they can do...), the usual plaintive calls for better understanding among all people of the world, the usual pointing out of violence by non-Muslims...

In short, we really don't know what to do.

You don't have to dig too deeply in the comments section of an online news story about, say, burqas to find people saying that France has the right idea on this issue, even those who may otherwise think France is a seething den of sinful socialism. The European Court of Human Rights upheld France's right to ban the burqa last year, a law that has been in place since 2010. France also bans all outward signs of any religion in all government schools. None of this stopped today's disgusting, terrifying events. Equally, Australia, the UK, Spain and the US do not ban the burqa and do allow outward symbols of religion to be worn in state schools and these countries have all experienced the deadly evils of warped Islamic extremism as well.

On top of all this, reports abound of French Jews are leaving their country because of a rise in anti-semitism, including violent attacks on people and synagogues. In 2013, a record 3,270 French Jews immigrated to Israel, a 63% increase from 2012.

So, yeah, there are problems in France, just as there are problems globally with people struggling with the basic concept of live and let live.

Fighting poverty and ensuring everyone has access to education are important actions in the fight against extremism. But plenty of educated, affluent people have gone on to be jihadis.

We really don't know what to do.

I will share the Charlie Hebdo cartoon, although this isn't some heroic act of courage on my part. I fully expect to make it home safely tonight without being targeted by a lunatic over this blog as I anonymously walk to the tube station. I will continue to support the right to freedom of speech, freedom of expression and a free press. But I've always done this, as have so many people everywhere, and still this shit happens.

But we cannot go on censoring ourselves, censoring those with whom we disagree, wanting to ban all the things that might offend us, deliberately trying to be offended instead of ignoring that which one might find offensive, seeking to police humour, and squashing satire along the way.

I am not going to pretend I have all the answers to this one. I don't. I am not sure who does or if anyone does.But I have just seen scenes from Paris appear in my newsfeed. It's a large gathering in France's gorgeous capital city of a diverse group of people gathering in solidarity with Charlie Hebdo and, as a result, with journalists everywhere. A similar gathering is about to start in London. This is moving, important stuff and to scoff at such gatherings is to be, quite frankly, a bit of a dick.

I will end this blog post with an abridged version of my friend Luke Thornhill's Facebook status. As a sports journalist, he is thankful that the only backlash he gets in his line of work is the odd accusation of bias against a sporting team or a tweet from an angry fan, but that does not make him any less of a champion for a free press.

In a world where we really don't know what to do, Luke's resolution and subsequent actions in response to today's events sure as hell beat doing nothing at all.

I have decided to be a bit more Muslim-like and give more of what would loosely be termed as zakat. The Big Issue seller in Hull was the first beneficiary, with a cuppa and sandwich to go with his tip in return for his wares, I hope that the perpetrators of this attack die a little bit more inside on the coals of hell when they realise they're helping turn me into a better person, and that today I did it by adopting a pillar of Islam and supporting a magazine which exercises its freedom of speech in such a brilliant way. Peace be upon you.



  

The siege mentality...

The gunman is dead. Two hostages are dead. The idiocy started up within minutes of the story breaking. It was horrible to watch it unfold from my sofa in London, the unthinkable happening in the city where I spent almost a decade misspending my twenties, the city where my father grew up, and where we spent school holidays with much-loved grandparents.

There was a heart-stopping moment when the news channels announced that hostages were taken in a cafe in Sydney's Martin Place. My sister works in Sydney's equivalent of London's Square Mile. Was she one of the people who decided to have a coffee at that particular awful moment? The relief when she texted me to say she was safely in her locked down office was safe was only trumped by the text she sent to let me know that she and her colleagues were safely evacuated with a police escort and she was on her way to pick up her kids.

But when the world is gripped by a siege that went on for hours, you soon realise it's not just about you and yours, no matter how personally affected you feel by the day's events.

Inevitably, there was misreporting, rampant speculation and general bullfuckery. Was that an IS flag being held up in the window by terrified hostages? Was the gunman a member of IS? Had he planted a bomb? Had he threatened to behead anyone? The ridiculous Daily Telegraph newspaper outdid itself in fanning the flames of hysteria by rushing out a 2pm edition with the moronic "DEATH CULT CBD ATTACK" front page headline with a picture of the gunman.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott wasn't doing too badly at his press conference until he felt the need to mention the budget. It is one thing to urge people to carry on as normal, to not let extremist fools dictate how we live our lives. It is quite another to use the press conference about a genuine matter of life and death to chuck in some propaganda about the economy.

And then plenty more people shared the photo of the gunman, giving whatever the hell he was trying to represent the oxygen of publicity. Or they took selfies, gurning away, as close to the cafe as the police would allow them to be. Instead of simply going home. Or they blamed every Muslim on the planet for what was unfolding on TV and online.

The best possible outcome would have been for none of the hostages to have lost their lives and for the gunman, Man Haron Monis, to be arrested  and properly questioned. It looks as if he was a lone wolf rather than a member of some highly organised terror cell. We may never know the full story because he is now dead and whatever information he had has died with him.

What we do know is that Man Haron Monis was disorganised, his demands were incoherent, and hostages were able to escape. He was ham-fisted terrorist. A fool. A deeply disturbed individual who wrote revolting letters to the families of dead soldiers. Last year, he pleaded guilty to harassment charges and was sentenced to 300 hours community service.

Man Haron Monis had been indicted as an accessory to the murder of his ex-wife and as of yesterday, he was on bail after being charged with sexual assault relating to an allegation from 2002. Between 2000 and 2002, he had been charged multiple times with similar offences. If any good is to come out of the horrific events of the past 24 hours, it may behoove NSW Police to look into how they handle sexual assault cases. Is a lack of resources affecting prevention? It could well be that this hate-filled bellend should have been off the streets years ago. Again, we will never know. Changes to the bail law in the state of New South Wales may also come under review as this appears to have led to Monis not being remanded in custody before trial despite his record.

It may also be that he had untreated mental health issues. This is not about making excuses for a killer. It is about creating a place where mental health issues are addressed in a timely manner, regardless of who you are and what your illness might drive you to do.

And in the midst of this, a hashtag emerged - #illridewithyou - a means of reaching out to Sydney's Muslim community, to break down the culture of fear, for people to not panic on public transport just because someone who might be a Muslim gets on board, to make it known that people are not blaming a complex religion made up of 72 sects.

Obviously, world peace won't be achieved via a solitary hashtag but it can't hurt either. To promote a place where people are free to practice whatever religion they please or none at all, to promote a place where people don't judge their fellow passengers on public transport, to promote a place where people do not feel alientated - that is all good.

It is a reminder that Sydney does not need to descend into idiotic race riot chaos, as happened in Cronulla in 2005. It is a reminder that responding with the same hate and anger that led Man Haron Monis to storm a cafe yesterday won't achieve anything constructive.

It is a reminder for us not to be brutes.






Photography by Sean Riley

The niqab and the Plimsoll line of modesty

Has anybody who is currently exercising a disproportionate vomit of rage over the niqab ever actually spoken to a woman wearing one? Do they know personally of any niqab-wearers? Have any of their rights actually been violated because of a niqab?

While a woman who is forced to wear a niqab is having her rights violated on a daily basis, every woman who wears whatever the hell she likes, whether it's a niqab or a bikini, is not. That is the basic starting point for not advocating a ban on the niqab, except for genuine reasons of security and identity, such as airports and courtrooms. In airports in Muslim countries, women who wear the niqab have to show their faces at passport control, usually to a female member of staff. It's not as if there is some bizarre rule in other countries that allows veiled women to board planes sight unseen.

The first time I saw a woman in a niqab, I was 15, on holiday in Malaysia. The woman was shrouded from head to toe in grey with only her eyes peeking through a slot and a really thick pair of glasses. It all seemed comical and I found it almost impossible not to laugh. I'd never seen a woman dressed like that in rural Australia.

I may have evolved somewhat since then. I regularly spoke to women in niqabs when I lived in the UAE. The first time, I was in a Dubai bank and was served pretty quickly thanks to the ladies' queues they often have in banks there. I mentally noted that I'd never actually spoken to a woman with only her eyes showing and, at first, I had a ridiculous urge to speak louder as if her eyesight was somehow sharper than her sense of hearing. Then I realised she could hear me just fine, she was perfectly helpful, and I got on with my day.

On another occasion, I spoke at length to a veiled woman in an estate agent's office in Abu Dhabi. I have no idea what her job was - she was more interested in learning about Australia - but she had a big glass office. After talking for a while, I stopped noticing the black cloth across her face and my imagination filled in the blanks as to what her face might have looked like. Suddenly, the muezzin rang out, she excused herself to pray and then continued the conversation without missing a beat.

Even though a niqab hides a major part of a woman's identity from the wider world, every woman behind the niqab is a human being with her own story as to how she came to be wearing such a garment. I completely understand why people find it confronting, weird, scary but as soon as we start banning it from public life, we create a new series of problems.

For women and girls who are forced by husbands, fathers and brothers to wear the niqab, a ban will make them even more invisible. Women who are under this kind of awful male control would be at risk of not being allowed out in public at all by the men who have appointed themselves their guardians. While many feel it is not ideal for women to be walking the streets or attending educational institutions with only their eyes on show, at least they are out in public, they are accessing education and engaging with other people. If these women were stopped from working or studying or leaving the house at all by the men in their lives, they may disappear without a trace. If any of these women want to get help to escape domineering family members, a law that means they may be kept indoors is not going to help.

Which brings me neatly to the bigger picture of abuse of veiled women. It is easy to imagine the glee and dancing in the street by readers of The Sun if a niqab ban ever became law. But it won't do a damn thing to help women access domestic violence assistance, to come forward to report abuse or to leave awful family situations. It's a simplistic response. Plenty of women who are not wearing niqabs struggle to come forward to report domestic violence or leave horrible relationships. Why would it be any easier for a woman who is made to cover her face by a male relative and lives in the fearful shadow of an awful interpretation of Islam?

In France, the niqab is banned but no woman has been prosecuted for wearing one and no man has been prosecuted for forcing a woman to wear one (although it is perfectly reasonable to pass a law against forcing women to do anything against their will). The laws don't appear to have done a damn thing to stop abuse towards Muslim women either in their own homes or by members of the public.

If the niqab is banned, will this clear the way for the banning of the hijab or the abaya too? For other items of religious clothing? What about Roman Catholic nuns who still wear the long enclosure veil? And if you're the kind of idiot who likes to slag off women in "revealing outfits" and you also rail against Islamic clothing, where do you draw the line at either end of the modesty spectrum? Is there some sort of dual Plimsoll line of modesty whereby there is too much coverage at one end, because it is a Muslim thing, and then too little coverage at the other end because you think a woman looks like a slut?

Whenever a law is passed that dictates what women can wear, whether it forces them to cover up or not, nobody really wins.



Image courtesy of Steve Evans

The tragic hopelessness of Yemen

There is no excuse for what happened to Rawan that awful day. None at all. She was eight years old. Her parents married her off to a 40-year-old man in Meedi, her Yemeni hometown.

He raped her. That is the only word for such an act.

To call the night she was raped her "wedding night" is completely inappropriate. A wedding night is a time for joy, happiness, fun, for two people who consented to be together to enjoy each other and to make a positive start to their married life. This was a night devoid of any of that love or joy.

The internal injuries she suffered as a result of this rape killed her. He raped and murdered her. And her parents are culpable too. All three of them, and anyone else who facilitated the marriage, be it a celebrant, wedding dress seller or caterer, all have blood on their hands.

To call Rawan a "bride" is to reinforce the notion of a bride as a piece of property whose feelings, opinions, hopes and aspirations simply do not matter.

The death of Rawan cannot be explained away by "cultural differences". The rape and murder of a child is not acceptable. Not in any country or culture or religion. 

It is easy to blame all of Islam for the death of Rawan. But the story broke because of brave villagers in the town of Meedi. Local tribal chiefs tried to cover the story up and a journalist was warned off but outraged villagers spoke out and the journalist prevailed.

Kuwaiti bloggers also helped get Rawan's story wider exposure, especially in the western media. This also took considerable courage. Kuwait, despite having perhaps the most progressive media laws among the Arabian Gulf states, is still not exactly a bastion of press freedom. It is certainly easier for Kuwaiti activists and journalists to speak out against other countries than it is for them to criticise their own leaders. And Kuwaiti newspaper Al Watan deserves kudos for reporting the story - sadly, the story was conspicuous by its absence from The National and Gulf News in the UAE, and the Saudi Gazette in Saudi Arabia.

But on top of the warped interpretation of Islam that made even one person think it was OK for Rawan to be married off to a 40-year-old man, the horrific situation has arisen, as ever, from bigger problems. The UN released a report in January which chronicles the shocking extent of Yemen's poverty, healthcare and education issues.

Consider these figures:

1. Of Yemen's 24 million people, 10.5 million lack sufficient food supplies and 13 million have no access to safe water and basic sanitation.

2. Nearly 14% of Yemeni girls are married before the age of 15 and 52% before the age of 18.

3. According to Human Rights Watch, many Yemeni girls are kept from school when they reach puberty.

4. Yemen is ranked a lowly 154 on the UN Human Development Index.

5. Yemenis spend an average of 2.5 years at school.

6. Mortality rates for those aged under five are at 66 per 1,000 live births.

7. Adult illiteracy is at 37.6% for both sexes and at 60% for women.

8. There are 68.1 births per 1,000 girls aged 15 to 18.

9. The maternal mortality rate is at 210 deaths per 100,000 live births.

Yemen is broken. Its education system is verging on non-existent for many, especially girls. The country's healthcare is beyond appalling and Yemen is not blessed with the oil and natural gas that has boosted the economies of many of its neighbours. Education is an essential element of any country's fight to overcome poverty - there are plenty of other Muslim countries where education rates, especially among women, are high and these countries are prospering, so it is simplistic to simply blanket-blame religion.

Poor education levels beget poverty and poverty begets oppression and desperation. Rawan's parents would have saved a lot of money by marrying her off at such a young age, avoiding the costs of feeding, clothing and educating her, and gained a windfall in the form of a dowry. But this does not excuse the fact they failed horrifically to protect their child.

Campaigners in Yemen have been pushing for a law that makes 15 to be the minimum age for marriage. The current law allows for girls of any age to be married but bans sex with them until they are "suitable for sexual intercourse" - but this isn't clearly defined. In that context, a minimum age of 15 seems positively progressive.

But it's not enough. As long as Yemen is a poor nation, as long as it struggles to achieve even a basic modicum of democracy, as long as the country's problems are dismissed as being "because of Islam" or are ignored by feminists who think it is more important to complain about wolf-whistling or lads' mags, as long as foreign aid is both distributed corruptly and condemned as a waste of money, as long as we all throw our hands in the air at every level, from the personal to the governmental, and believe nothing can ever done, Rawan's story will just be one of many.

* For advice on what you can do at personal level, check the Plan UK website.


   

Channel 4's Ramadan bonanza

As far as manufactured outrages go, this one was entirely predictable. Channel 4 announced plans to broadcast the call to prayer throughout Ramadan, the holy month of the Islamic calendar, which starts today. The plan is to have a three-minute broadcast around 3am when fasting begins and a 20-second broadcast for the other four calls to prayer throughout the day.

The usual suspects freaked right out. Here are some of their choice whines...

"RAMADAN IS BEING FORCED DOWN OUR THROATS!"

No, It's not. Watching Channel 4 is not compulsory. If you don't like it, nobody is compelling you to watch it.

"THE CALL TO PRAYER WILL BE INTRUSIVE!"

Really? You're planning on getting up at 3am every day during Ramadan to watch a three-minute call to prayer broadcast? And even if you did happen to be watching TV at the time, you can always change the channel if you're genuinely offended.

As for the other four broadcasts, they're 20 seconds long. Twenty seconds. Most TV commercials go on for longer than that and they are generally deeply annoying and stupid. Are you really so suggestible that a 20-second call-to-prayer broadcast is going to cause you to instantly embrace Islamic extremism? If there was a 20-second advert on instead of the call to prayer, would you feel compelled to rush out and buy whatever was being offered?

"I don't need a jasmine-scented electronic air freshener but that damn telly-box told me to buy one so I'm off to the shops!"

Frankly, if you are that suggestible, you have bigger problems than Channel 4.

"CHANNEL 4 IS JUST PANDERING TO A MINORITY!"

Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realise every single thing on every single TV channel had to cater to the majority. On that basis, there has been so much pandering happening on our TV screens. Friday Night Dinner is a sitcom about an English-Jewish family - why no outcry? After all, Jews only make up 0.5% of the population in England and Wales. The multi-cultural Albert Square of EastEnders is broadcast twice five nights a week as well as a weekend omnibus. Surely that is political correctness gone mad, no? What about the contestants from Big Brother or The Apprentice who aren't white Brits? Are they there for the purposes of pandering too? Ah. I get it. You think they're pandering to a minority that you don't like. It's all clear now!

"CHANNEL 4 IS JUST DOING IT FOR THE PUBLICITY!"

Well, obviously, they want the publicity. No shit, Sherlock. The powers-that-be at Channel 4 want people to watch their programmes, to talk about their programmes (#averybritishramadan trended on Twitter for them last night) and for businesses to buy the advertising space between the programmes.

Channel 4 is a commercially funded business that has not-for-profit status so it reinvests revenue back into programme development. It is independent of government. Your taxes are not paying the salaries of whoever is producing the call to prayer broadcasts. As such, Channel 4 has no obligations to British taxpayers.

They obviously want to produce programmes that might make money and if lots of people watch programmes like A Very British Ramadan in between Channel 4's usual offerings of jaw-dropping documentaries, re-runs of Come Dine With Me, Sarah Beeny restoring houses in varying stages of pregnancy, and the pus-filled fun of Embarrassing Bodies then so be it. Who knows? You might even learn something.

"BUT WILL CHANNEL 4 DO THE SAME FOR CHRISTMAS? BRITAIN IS A CHRISTIAN COUNTRY!"

Seriously, if you turn on your TV any time from about mid-November onwards and you don't know Christmas is coming, I don't think I can help you. Go away.

Free speech, extremism and kneejerk reactions

There is nothing wrong with questioning British foreign policy in relation to Afghanistan. Expressing the sentiment that the current government does not care about us is not an outrageous point of view either. Anyone in Britain who holds either of these opinions should be free to express them peacefully.

Of course, if anyone expresses such views and brutally murders someone in broad daylight while doing so, they should be arrested, tried and, if found guilty, punished accordingly.

As Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale lie in hospital and await being declared medically fit to face questioning in relation to the death last week of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich, plenty of people are exercising their right to free speech to speculate, comment and generally attempt to put the world to rights. In the midst of this noise, there have been calls to ban religious extremists from being interviewed on TV. Yes, because such measures were so effective in stopping the IRA during the 1980s...

And who are we defining as religious extremists anyway? Is this definition only limited to Muslims in Theresa May's utopia? What about conservative Roman Catholics who believe all abortion is murder? Are they extremists too? Or Westboro Baptist Church, whose members routinely declare that "God hates fags"? Should their views be banned from broadcast?

Kirsty Wark's panel discussion on Newsnight last week, in which she grilled Anjem Choudary on whether he condemned the killing of Drummer Lee Rigby has been roundly condemned for giving him a platform to air his views. But all Choudary did was talk in circles and show a politician-like talent for not giving a straight answer to any question. Just as every time EDL members open their mouths, they remove any doubt that they are simplistic, hateful racists with no real answers to any problems facing modern Britain, Choudary similarly condemned himself with his own absurd words.

Choudary looked ridiculous and, in contrast, the comments from Julie Siddiqi, executive director of the Islamic Society of Britain, and Shams Ad-Duha Muhammad, director of Ebrahim College, were measured and intelligent. Muhammad was not afraid to say that it is perfectly reasonable to oppose British foreign policy and condemn the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby.

And then my Twitter feed filled with comments from America questioning why we're not all armed here. These people are free to criticise from afar just as I am free to respond to their claims and assertions. There were the usual armchair heroes who declared they would have shot him dead or wished the woman who bravely took the time to reason with the suspects shot them instead. It's too easy to ignore the simple fact that because nobody was packing a semi-automatic or automatic weapon, we did not end up with a mass shooting in Woolwich last week.

Given the horrific events took place right near a school, this is one of the few good things to come out of such an awful tragedy. The only shots fired came from armed police who incapacitated both suspects rather than killing them outright. As a result, the potential to glean further information about their motives and activities has not died with them. More arrests have been made in relation to Drummer Rigby's murder, and a fair trial can take place, which is a better outcome than summary executions in the streets of London.




Image courtesy of www.kozzi.com

So, I visited my friendly local mosque...

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a ridiculous piece in the Daily Mail, where David Goodhart, a writer with a book to peddle, portrayed Merton, the borough where I live, as some sort of hateful war zone where immigrants, especially Muslim immigrants, were not integrating. I did not recognise the Merton Goodhart wrote about and I was appalled - although not especially surprised - that the Daily Mail readily published something with rubbery use of stats and blatant lies.

As a result of this original blog post, I wrote a follow-up post and another post when David Goodhart responded over Twitter. And then I was invited to visit the mosque which formed the central theme of Goodhart's disgust for the "polite apartheid" that he claimed was going on in Merton. The Baitul Futuh mosque was not, as Goodhart claimed, built to replace a dairy and steal local jobs. There was a seven-year gap between the dairy closing down and mosque construction starting. In the seven-year gap, the old dairy site became a magnet for drug-related crime. Now there is a mosque on the site, this is no longer the case.

On my visit to the mosque, I learnt about its construction - part of the old dairy was used to build the minaret , the building is clad in elegant, self-cleaning marble, light enters the part of the mosque where women pray via walls created from the same material used at Chelsea's home ground - oh, and it didn't cost British taxpayers a penny to build.

The mosque shares its car park with a nearby college and the college uses large rooms in the mosque to hold exams. This is not just an example of the mosque integrating with the community, but an example of the mosque actually helping save the taxpayers money - allowing use of the mosque for exams means the college does not have to fork out for expensive building works. Why anyone would disapprove of this is a mystery to me. There are no reports of students leaving the mosque after an exam as extremists or under pressure to convert to Islam. It is a lovely, quiet building - I can see why it'd be a more pleasant place to do an exam than a cold school hall.

Bushra, a woman I consider to be my newest friend, showed me around the mosque. Having visited mosques in the Middle East and Turkey, I was mindful of dressing respectfully and wore a long top over loose jeans and I had a scarf draped around my shoulders. I asked if I should cover my hair with the scarf when I entered the mosque but was told this was not necessary. If I had've been asked to cover my hair, I would have done so without complaint. Equally, I wouldn't walk into a church wearing a bikini and I'd ask someone to leave my house if they turned up wearing a "Keep calm and carry on raping" T-shirt - it's about showing respect to your hosts.

As we entered the main part of the mosque, we removed our shoes and Bushra talked animatedly about Islam and in particular about the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. It is the 73rd sect of the Islamic world and many adherents of this sect have sought safety in Britain because of persecution by other sects, especially in Pakistan. Unlike other sects, the Ahmadiyya community believes the messiah was Mirza Ghulam Ahmed, who lived from 1835-1908. Bushra explained that Ahmad was dismayed by fanatical Islamic beliefs and championed a religion of peace and justice. He spoke against religious bloodshed and recognised the nobility of teachings by Abraham, Zoroaster, Moses, Jesus, Krishna, Buddha, Confucius, Lao Tzu and Guru Nanak.

It would appear Ahmad was a man ahead of his time - he did not like the drive towards fanatical Islam in the 19th Century and it is hard to imagine he'd be thrilled by events such as the 9/11 and 7/7 terror attacks, the current Israel-Palestine situation or the fighting that has gone on between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland for that matter.

As Bushra told me, the concept of "jihad" is rooted in one's personal struggles rather than a desire to destroy other people. Suicide bombers should not be considered true Muslims as the Islamic view of suicide is much the same as that of many Christian faiths.

As such, I am quite sure that when I visited the Baitul Futuh mosque, I was not entering a dark and terrifying den of extremism. I am confident that there is no secret south London branch of al Qaeda operating from this mosque. I did not feel any pressure to become radicalised or to convert to Islam. Instead, Bushra and I drank tea, ate cake and samosas, and chatted for hours about the mosque's work, especially with secular charities, about the role of women and about life in general.

It was easy to relate to the reluctance of women at the mosque to pray alongside the men, given the head-down-bottom-up position for prayer - it's not a position I'd be thrilled to do in front of a group of men either. And while the men of the mosque have a group for the over-40 age group, the women do not because, quite simply, plenty of women were not keen to admit to being over 40.

Bushra told me about how her marriage was arranged, but not forced. Consent by all parties is important and, having met her husband at the mosque, it is clear that their marriage was not a case of forcing two people together with little in common. Arranged marriage was a way to meet someone with whom she could build a life - it is all too easy to judge this concept from the outside looking in. But Bushra pointed out that online dating isn't really any different - it is just another way to try and match yourself up with someone with whom you have stuff in common. Which makes sense. You can be very specific when you go trawling dating websites, right down to height and eye colour, just as an arrangement is about meeting certain criteria. Having a future husband/wife checklist is as universal as women not wanting to point their bums in the air around men or admit they are older than 40.

It reminded me of a conversation I had with Zara, the wonderful Muslim woman who used to clean my apartment when I was a spoiled expat living in Abu Dhabi. She told me that all most people want is peace and to live a peaceful life with their families. While families can take many forms, including your circle of friends in many cases, Zara's point was that underneath it all, people are not that different wherever you go.

The Baitul Futuh mosque is open to everyone. You don't need to make an appointment, you can simply turn up and someone will happily show you around without judgement. I said that it was similar to being able to walk into an open church and it was interesting that Bushra said she wasn't sure if she would simply enter a church. I'd never considered it from that perspective before - just as non-Muslims may be unsure about whether they can walk into a mosque and take a look around, plenty of Muslims are probably equally uncertain about whether they can walk into a church.

If you scoff at the idea of visiting a mosque, if you still believe that all Muslims are terrorists and simply believe every word in the Daily Mail, you are part of the problem. And if you are peddling the "Britain is a Christian country!" line, you'd better be as willing to show Muslims around your church (you do go to church, don't you?) as Bushra was to show me around her mosque.

David Goodhart responds!

Well, this is interesting... David Goodhart has responded to my last two blog posts, where I can be found criticising his ridiculous portrayal of the borough of Merton, in particular a distorted view of the impact of the Baitul Futuh mosque on the community, and a reflection on the response to the blog post.

I invited him to respond and this is what he shot back with over Twitter:

@David_Goodhart
@georgialewis76 happy to reply to Ranting person though the single FACTUAL criticism of me is wrong. Merton is 48 per cent white British.

Good. Fine. So why did Goodhart not include this stat in his article with a source? I asked him this and challenged him as to why he used generalisations about white people throughout the article. He uses the word "white" without any nuance using lines such as "The white population has more or less shuffled along the bench and allowed others to sit down" and "Poorer working-class whites are doing worst of all in Merton."

This attracted a response from Goodhart that basically asks me to buy his book, which is plugged at the end of the original Daily Mail article:

@David_Goodhart
@georgialewis76 I did include lots of footnotes in the book that the extract is taken from - perhaps read that and then complain

I told him that any relevant stats should be sourced in the article. That would be good journalism. There is no reason why someone at the Daily Mail couldn't have edited the article to cite sources. Indeed, Goodhart could have requested this before publication - the article is an extract from a book he is desperate to sell. The only footnote to the article is a line about how much the book costs and how to buy it.

Aboo Salik, tweeting as @aboosalik weighed in with:
@David_Goodhart how many factual criticism do you need? "Replacing the dairy which provided jobs for few hundreds" "when it was closed for 7-10 years and was the local crack den? Or small elite being invited to the mosque."

I'd also love to hear the justification for this part of the article, in which Goodhart creates the false impression that the mosque builders kicked out the dairy and caused hundreds of workers to be sacked and conveniently leaves out the fact that there was almost a decade between the end of the dairy and the start of the mosque.

Aboo Salik then goes on to win the internet when he invites Goodhart to get involved with a charity event in Milton Keynes that the mosque is helping. Just in case he is busy that day, Aboo Salik also suggests that Goodhart could possibly make a donation. After all, the multiple charities that will benefit from the event do indeed include those that help poor people, including the "poor white people" Goodhart mentions in his article. And failing that, Aboo Salik also tells Goodhart he is welcome to visit the mosque at any time. Surely that would be a good thing, no?

The invitation to visit the mosque is sincere. Surely, in the interests of fair journalism, the Daily Mail would be interested in a follow-up piece after Goodhart failed to mention the mosque's work for secular charities in his original article. After all, this is a newspaper that cannot get enough of follow-up articles by people such as Samantha Brick tackling the big issues of being too attractive for this cruel world.

At the time of writing, Aboo Salik had emailed Goodhart an invitation to visit the mosque and to attend the mosque's charity events. Goodhart is now considering the invitation. I will be visiting the mosque on April 12.

A postscript to the manufactured Merton mosque outrage

The response to my last blog post on a ridiculous Daily Mail story about the mosque in the London borough of Merton has been very heartening indeed. Multiple residents of Merton, the borough in which I have happily lived for the last two years, have told me how ridiculous they found the Mail's attempt to portray Merton as some sort of hotbed of racial tension. Nobody who communicated with me after my blog post recognised the Merton David Goodhart tried to sell us in an article cynically timed to coincide with news on immigration changes announced this week.

As well as an overwhelmingly generous response from people who attend the Baitul Futuh mosque, non-Muslims also shared with me their acceptance of the mosque and their complete rejection of the suggestions in the article that the mosque has somehow created what Goodhart appallingly called a "polite apartheid."

Goodhart wrote that the mosque - the largest in Europe so therefore an instant catalyst for ragefits by Daily Mail disciples - "replaced" a dairy that employed hundreds of local people. Except there was a seven-year gap between the dairy closing and the mosque building work commencing. Merton residents who have lived there for longer than I have told me that after the dairy closed, the abandoned site attracted drug-related crime. It was not a pleasant part of the borough and the mosque gave that end of Morden (for Morden is just one part of the borough - not that you'd know that from the article...) a new lease of life and a new and interesting community.

The worshippers of the Baitul Futuh mosque are from the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community and their slogan is "Love for all, hatred for none." The worshippers perform a wide variety of charity work in Merton. I have been visited by a mother and daughter from the mosque who were collecting for the Save The Children charity, a non-sectarian organisation. The mosque has also raised money for the Queen's Jubilee charities, they hold regular blood donation drives, hold clean-up days to remove rubbish from the streets and joined other community groups in 2005 in a campaign to save and sensitively redevelop a popular local park. This is not the work of a group that refuses to integrate with the wider community. Indeed, attempts to stir up anti-mosque feeling by the National Front in 2002 were rejected by local residents and it was peacefully inaugurated in 2003.

My blog post has been tweeted to David Goodhart and I welcome his response to my critique of his attempt at journalism. He has, at the time of writing, not responded. It could well be that the published article is the result of the original copy going through an extreme editing process, as happened to many people who have written for the Mail in good faith and not recognised the story that has been published. But even extreme editing with an obvious agenda does not excuse Goodhart describing Merton as a "polite apartheid."

It was also heartening to not get trolled by UKIP, EDL or BNP types as a result of my blog post. The closest I received to a negative response was a bizarre tweet with a link to a horrific "honour" killing that took place in a Muslim family in Mitcham. Yes, Mitcham is part of the borough of Merton and "honour" killings are completely inexcusable, but there is no evidence that the Baitul Futuh mosque supports such crimes or that the family involved even attended the mosque.

Since writing yesterday's blog post, I have met via Twitter some very friendly people from the mosque - it turns out that one of my new virtual friends uses the same butcher that I do. In a fine example of cross-cultural integration, this is the very friendly Muslim butcher who has joked with me about using wine with his meat - his lamb mince and my red wine-laden moussaka are a winning culinary combination.

Soon these Twitter friendships will move from the online world to the real world. On April 12, I have been invited to visit the mosque and I look forward to this opportunity.



Photo by Fin Fahey

The Merton mosque and the manufactured outrage

I try not to share links from the Daily Mail website because that is what they want - clicks galore to keep the advertisers happy, regardless of the nonsense the articles regularly peddle. But I am making an exception for a particularly bizarre article in Mail this week written by "leading liberal commentator" David Goodhart (although he identifies as "post-liberal" on his Twitter account). This is because it paints an absurd picture of the London borough of Merton, where I live, and the article needs serious analysis.

Just as Andrew Pierce, an openly gay man, regularly writes pieces for the Mail opposing such things as marriage equality, it would appear that Goodhart is a liberal whom the paper has decided is OK and therefore he can be used to further agendas. The pitiful "OMG, the Muslims are taking over and white people are becoming extinct!" agenda is the one Goodhart is helping push, whether he realises it or not. This becomes increasingly obvious as you read what Goodhart has to say about the Baitul Futuh mosque.

The Baitul Futuh mosque, the largest in Europe with a capacity to accommodate more than 10,000 people, is like a rage lighting rod for the average Daily Mail reader. As Goodhart tells us, the mosque "dominates the neighbourhood." Sure, it's a big building, but the edifice that truly dominates this neighbourhood is the unfeasibly ugly council building which looks like row upon row of broken, rotten teeth looming above the library. For those who are offended by the mosque, the very sight of it is blocked by repulsive council offices as you stand at the Morden tube station.

Goodhart then appeals to the Daily Mail reader's yearning for a bygone (read: whiter...) era when he tells us that mosque "replaced an Express Dairies bottling plant which provided a few hundred jobs for local people and lots of milk bottles - an icon of an earlier, more homogenised age."

In the mind of the Mail reader, this screams: "THE EVIL MUSLIMS CAME TO A NICE, BRITISH BOROUGH AND TOOK BRITISH JOBS AWAY!"

Except the dairy closed in 1992 and the mosque was inaugurated in 2003.

In an insult to anyone who suffered under apartheid in South Africa, Nazi Germany or segregated America, Goodhart says that in Merton "a polite apartheid reigns, an accommodation rather than an integration." He then goes on to tell us that "the white population has more or less reluctantly shuffled along the bench and allowed others to sit down." Honestly, he is making my innocuous middle-class neighbourhood sound like a place that requires the activism of a terrifying white equivalent of Rosa Parks.

The white rage continues as Goodhart tells us that Merton's minority population as risen from 10% in 1980 to more than 50% today and the primary schools "which were still majority white as recently as 2003 - are now 64% ethnic minority."

Except, according to the last census, this is crap. Of the 20 wards that make up Merton, all of them have white ethnic groups in the majority - ranging from 57.12% in Longthornton to 87.21% in Lower Morden. The overall average for all the wards is 75.23% of people in white ethnic groups.

There's no real explanation from Goodhart as to why a white majority (which exists even though he says it doesn't) is a good thing or how this awesome whiteness is defined. Ever the generous soul, Goodhart says that because there's no one dominant minority in Merton, this "helps to make the changes feel less threatening." Well, that's a relief then. We can't have the white people freaking out at all this multiculturalism.

And, like all good attempts to manufacture outrage, there is a paragraph to which any sane person would say: "So what?". Goodhart "reports" that at a park near the station, on a sunny day (not that we've had a sunny day for a while so God knows when he did this particular piece of stellar research...) "the place is usually full but divided along ethnic lines: large groups of Pakistani women picnicking with children, Polish guys drinking beer, young Indian men playing cricket, Africans playing basketball."

What would he prefer? If the Pakistani women and their kids had a beer with Poles before joining in a vigorous game of basketball with the Africans? Did he ask all these people how they felt about life in Merton? Is he certain all the cricket players were Indian, for cricket is very popular in Pakistan and Sri Lanka too? Hell, is he even sure all these people were born outside the UK?

Moving swiftly along, Goodhart inadvertently destroys one of the Daily Mail's favourite immigrant myths when he writes that "several of the more entrepreneurial communities, such as the Indians and Tamils and Iraqi Kurds, create jobs". So they create jobs, contribute tax revenue and aren't claiming benefits. Good to know!

But Goodhart concludes this line with the mournful "but they invariably go to members of their own community." Much like a lot of white people do, I would imagine.

Not content with passing off random observations in a park on a sunny day as fact, Goodhart plays another Daily Mail trump card - the fear of immigrant crime. He tells us that "some minorities import historic feuds." Instead of providing any real crime stats or interviewing anyone from the local police to back up this portrayal of Merton as a hotbed of racial tension, Goodhart tells us: "Orthodox Muslims in the area are suspicious of the Ahmadiyans [who worship at the Baitul Futuh mosque]; Tamil youths fight among themselves, as do Somalis; and the historic black (Caribbean and African) versus Asian antipathy is also played out on some streets."

Then Goodhart jumps off on another tangent and tells us that "economically, many minority Mertonites are doing pretty well in their enclaves." ("Enclaves  being Daily Mail-speak for "ghetto") He points out that it's the Indians and Chinese who are "doing best at school and in jobs, closely tracked by Koreans and Tamils" and, like the rest of the UK, "the white British are somewhere in the middle." I'm sorry if anyone is offended by people from ethnic minorities getting an education but this does not stop white kids from striving to do well at school. Are all white families failing to put a high value education for their kids? Surely that is a stupid stereotype on par with everything else Goodhart has spewed forth in this sad article.

Finally, Goodhart manages to quote someone, albeit anonymously, when a hairdresser tells him: "We don't like it, but we don't have much choice, do we?" of a "Muslim hair-cutter" who opened a shop two doors along. No, sweetheart, you don't have much choice - it's a free market economy. Offer your customers good service and good value and you'll probably stay in business. Would she say the same thing if a spate of Christian salons opened in Merton?

Then, after saying that the Ahmadiyans who worship at the big mosque are "model immigrants in many ways" and pointing out that they are grateful to live safely here and that they took out advertisements on London buses congratulating the Queen on her Diamond Jubilee, Goodhart goes on to quote another nameless resident. He describes him as "White Heritage Elder Male" and he was at a Merton council focus group when he said: "We've lost this place to other cultures. It's not English any more."

It is not clear what exactly parts of English life are now denied to White Heritage Elder Male as a result of all these immigrants. Goodhart didn't elaborate. Did he even bother to ask White Heritage Elder Male any hard questions after the focus group was over?

Is this gigantic mosque is causing the erosion of Christianity in Merton - that favourite measure of Britishness of the Mail? Probably not. Like the ethnicity question in the last census, the religion question revealed that a majority of residents in every ward identify as Christian. From a still-high low of 54.59% in Graveney to 74.36% in Lower Morden, it would appear that Merton is not on the verge of mass conversion to Islam.

Goodhart lectures us, saying that local political leaders "have no choice but to celebrate the new diversity." That'd be the diverse people who have has created jobs, opened businesses, paid taxes, not claimed nearly as much money in benefits as the Daily Mail would like us to believe and do such heinous things as have picnics, play cricket, drink a few beers and shoot hoops in the park on a sunny day.

The article then comes out with the usual argle-bargle about how we should be proud to be British. Goodhart, despite the earlier nonsense, even says that "very few British peoploe think you have to be white to be part of this." Good. Then why so much dishonest blather about white people being in a minority and losing their culture then?

Bizarrely, he concludes with the story of local Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh's father who arrived in Britain in the 1940s to work as a labourer. He married an Irish nurse, they had two daughters both did well with one becoming an MP and the other becoming General-Secretary of the Labour Party. Goodhart writes sentimentally as he tells of the father watching one of his daughters become a baroness and muttering under his breath: "Only in England... Only in England."

He says that he was "not technically correct - these things happen in other places, too - but they happen here far more than we admit and it's time our national story reflected them."

Right. So he concludes that our national story should reflect the achievements of immigrants? Or does he mean only white immigrants? It's hard to tell from such a flabby, directionless article what he is driving at with that conclusion. Is he trying to claw back some liberal credibility at the end? Is he trying to paint a completely false picture of the multicultural neighbourhood in which I love to live? Whatever the case, all this article has achieved is (at the time of writing) 571 reader comments, most of which indicate Goodhart succeeded in peddling more Daily Mail immigrant myths. Well played, sir.Well played...





Photo courtesy of sarflondondunc

What does Nick Griffin have in common with Paris Hilton and sharia law?

Congratulations, Nick Griffin. With just two mindless tweets you have managed to align yourself with not only a bigoted bed-and-breakfast owner but also noted airhead, Paris Hilton and sharia law.

Griffin, leader of the far-right British National Party and a Member of the European Parliament, yesterday tweeted the address of the gay couple, Michael Black, 64, and John Morgan, 59, after they won £3,600 in damages after Christian bed-and-breakfast owner Susanne Wilkinson told them they could not stay in one of her double rooms because of her religious beliefs. The couple will be donating the damages money to charity.

In response to this sane ruling, Griffin felt the need to tweet the following from his now-suspended Twitter account:

"A British Justice team will come up to [the couple's address which I am not going to share because I am not a colossal twat] and give you a... bit of drama by way of reminding you that an English couple's home is their castle. So No to heterophobia!"

Wow. So not only did Griffin reveal the address of two private citizens, he did so with the purpose of making a threat. Yes, he reckons a "British Justice team" (complete with capes and underpants over tights, I hope...) will come over and give Black and Morgan "a bit of drama". As pathetic as his BNP lynch mob sounds, it is still a threat as well as an invasion of privacy. And then he claimed that this whole sorry affair was a case of "heterophobia." So he truly believes the rights of oppressed, hard-done-by heterosexuals across Britain are going to be threatened if gay couples are allowed to stay in B&Bs.

It all comes down to Paris Hilton's narrow notion of homosexuality. She was secretly recorded in a taxi last month saying that "gay guys are the horniest guys in the world" and described them as "disgusting". She later claimed, via her publicist, she was expressing concern over unprotected sex in the gay community but with compassion like that, all she managed to do was fuel a stereotype. Such comments reduce the lives of all gay men to sexual acts and rampant promiscuity, and ignores the fact that plenty of gay men and women are in stable relationships or are celibate. Indeed, Black and Morgan have been together for nine years.

Susanne Wilkinson needs to be reminded that homosexuality is no longer illegal here in Britain. If Black and Morgan were dealing drugs in their room, committing murder or making child pornography in there, then yes, she'd be well within her rights to kick them out and call the police. But as far as we know, the couple just wanted a bed for the night. Hell, they might not have even planned to have sex under her precious roof. Nine years is a long time to keep up that early relationship level of shaggery.

Given her conservative Christian beliefs, does she also ban unmarried heterosexual couples from staying in her B&B? Or adulterous couples? What if she found out that a heterosexual married couple partook in anal sex in her premises? Or if two heterosexual couples stayed in two rooms, turned out to be swingers and did a midnight wife swap? None of what actually goes on in her rooms is any of her business as long as it's consensual and legal.

"But it's her house so it's her rules!" I hear the voices yell from the peanut gallery. Except that she has voluntarily started a business in her house. A business, like a hotel, whereby couples of all persuasions may see your property advertised and fancy a nice weekend away. If the judge ruled in her favour, it'd set an idiotic precedent for anyone running a business from home. What if a Christian accountant who worked from home decided he or she didn't want gay people as clients? Could a Christian architect refuse to design a house for a gay couple if he or she worked from a home office?

In a civilised, progressive, fair capitalist society, people have the right to run a business but they don't have the right to discriminate on the grounds of sexuality. How exactly are the rights of business owners being infringed upon if their have to offer their services to and make money from people they disapprove of? They're not. They can continue to hold whatever views they like, they are free to express those views, they can worship at churches where other people might hold those views, they can continue to maintain heterosexual relationships - and they can still make money.

And what is hilarious is that Griffin has effectively echoed the views of strict proponents of sharia law. By being perfectly OK with a gay couple not being allowed to share a room, he is encouraging the very society Islamophobes like him are terrified will come to Britain. It is, quite simply, an own goal from a proven buffoon.  

Image courtesy of www.kozzi.com