Pickled Politics in a pickle redux: a response to Al Hack

Al Hack, who wrote the original post in Pickled politics on which I posted, has written a detailed response in the comments section there. I know-- this is a post on comments on a post on a post on a post on an article.... Phew! Still with me? Thank you for being so patient and forebearing. Al Hack's comments were so interesting, and I wanted to answer them at some length. And I thought more of you would see my response, which I hope brings out issues about how we both think issues around Muslims and Jews in this country and elsewhere. I hope you'll bear with me and read it through.

Dear Al Hack

Welcome to my blog.

You are welcome to comment as often as you like, so don't feel you need to say sorry about that.

And I appreciate your ending your main message with "God bless". With that in mind, we should have a good basis for discussion.

Here's something I agree with you on.

I try to indicate in my original post on the HMD story that the Sunday Times itself bore responsibility for some of what I was criticising in the article by referring to what the paper astonishingly calls the Jewish Holocaust Memorial Day". I think it likely that Mr Taher wrote this description, because it fits with the rest of the content, but of course the sub editors and editor should have picked this up. Of course, they could not have failed to have known this would be a sensational story. Maybe I should have brought out the ST editorial element of culpability more strongly. Because I do think it was shocking that they allowed a blatantly false description of HMD to get published.

However, let's get on to what I said about Abul Taher. I did not actually say he was a Muslim. I did think it was likely he was, but I was not sure. I don't even know enough about name conventions to know if that would definitely only be a name a Muslim would bear or not. And even then, one cannot and should not always assume even that someone bearing a name which sounds as if it comes from a religious or ethnic group is indeed a member of that group. Example: my wonderful car mechanic in Stoke Newington is a Dave Levy. He even "looks Jewish", if you're into stereotypes. Except he isn't Jewish. Another example: Arsenal, or was it Fulham, in the distant ages that were my youth, had a footballer called George Cohen. And he wasn't Jewish either.

I mentioned Eastern Eye, because it showed he must have had some knowledge of the Asian, and therefore presumably including, Muslim, communities of South East Asia.

I quoted his questions to the dissident Muslim web site because they seemed shockingly verging on the conspiracy-theory-driven to me. I say shockingly, because that really does not seem appropriate for someone working as a professional investigative journalist. They could be typical of an Islamist, but could just as well have been written by someone who wasn't actually one, or someone who isn't necessarity Muslim, but is an intensely partisan defender of Islam. The fact that you seem to suggest Mr Taher is someone you see as a moderate fits with that view.

However, it really is not in my view reasonable to assume that a dissident web site which is critical of its own particular ethnic or religious community is full of made up views, and in particular that the people doing the making up are, in the case of a dissident Muslim site, a bunch of Christians and/or Jews with a hatred of Islam.

Here's a parallel. In response two of my posts there were what I regarded as racist comments from a Jewish commenter. And I did not for a moment think I should ask if he (or it could have been a she pretending to be a he) was actually an anti-semite of whatever religious or ethnic background pretending to be a Jew. And this is despite the fact that the UK police can confirm that there are neo-Nazi anti-semites who sometimes fake letters to the press under fake Jewish-sounding names uttering outrageously racist statements.

I'm sorry you think the way I wrote it gave the impression that I was laying into Mr Taher "as a Muslim". I want again to remind you that I did not say he was a Muslim.

Now, about your unrelated point re my post "Let's have a little balance around here" not being good enough because it's not enough to provide balance... Well, it may not fit your view of what should be there, but it is one more balancing site than your own critique of my post provides.

As I said before, readers can make up their own minds from the evidence whether the BBC is pro or anti-Israel. But I have to say that the site which claims it is pro-Israel seems to assume that evidence of this would include having a picture of Sharon smiling, and compounding that offence by failing to caption it something along the lines of "Sharon the war criminal". It also appears to include the further offence on the part of the BBC of always reporting suicide bombing attacks in Israel, and visiting the scene of the victims' destruction. That all seems to go with the mind set of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign cultural boycott rules, on which I've posted in my latest AUT-NATFHE post, which propose boycotting "any events which perpetuate the impression that Israel is a normal and acceptable member of the international community". If this is a position you support, then I can see that you would consider the BBC rampantly pro-Israel. But of course I would disagree with you. And so, I think, would most people in this country.

And of course, mine is a relatively new blog, and you will have to see how it develops as time goes on, because I hope to post at various points about my experiences of working with and for Muslims and Sikhs around educational matters. I will say straight off that I am a passionate supporter of faith schools, and think that one of the things we actually need in this country is more good Islamic state schools. My own view is that that is one of the best ways of ensuring that there is as good a cohort of knowledgeable, committed Muslim kids coming through those schools as are coming through, say, the existing Sikh, Roman Catholic and Jewish schools. I notice that (as far as I can see) all the UK Muslims who got involved in terrorist murder activities in the UK, US, Israel and Pakistan appear to have been educated in English mainstream secular schools. And of course the press was very ready to blame hardline mosques and not reflect on the failure of this country to give Muslims the educational provision they grant to other faiths. I don't think that's compatible with the view you seem to have formed of me as having a victim mentality. Nor do I think the Board of Deputies has a victim mentality. For example, it has done very valuable work in co-operation with Muslim groups on the issue of religiously prescribed approaches to the slaughter of animals for food, and has advised those groups on community security and other issues.

And yes, there are plenty of de facto anti-Jewish sites run or substantially contributed to by Jewish people. They are sometimes a particular type of anti-zionist site, where the authors irrelevantly parade their Jewishness as giving them authority to speak on matters in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict where the ethnicity of the speaker is irrelevant. Some have been known to characterise Israeli behaviour using traditional anti-semitic stereotypes or cartoons, and sometimes they distort evidence or quotations in quite outrageous ways. There are also a few sites by Jewish-religion hating Jews of quite an horrific anti-semitic character. There was a notorious Israeli of this type, now thankfully dead, who was actually a chemist, but who outrageously misinterpreted and misrepresented Jewish law and practice. Christopher Hitchens loved him. Mr Hitchens' knowledge of Judaism, on which he so completely trusted this man's views, is probably as great as my knowledge of advanced theoretical physics.

Yes, I do accept they are genuine. I loathe them, but I would not dream of writing up comments on their sites, or posting emails to them, making the sort of comments Mr Taher felt the need to make.

So, Al Hack, I hope you will take what I have to say on board. And I hope you can credit me with being just a little more than an unthinking recycler of other people's opinions about the BBC or any other issue. Because, as I proclaim, I do have six decades' worth of opinions to offer. And that's enough time, and enough changes through my life history, for all of them to be my own.

I  hope any continuing dialogue we have will be positive and fruitful.

with best wishes, and may the Almighty bless you

Judy

Comments

[Al-Hack]

Hi Judy,

I feel a bit honoured here that you've decided to dedicate another post in response to my rantings against erm, your rantings. But let's thrash this out anyway.

1) You say:
"they allowed a blatantly false description" - Well, I guess Holocaust day is primarily concerned with the genocide of Jews by Hitler, even though other groups also died, so I think the description might be technically misleading but not broadly inaccurate. I guess it depends on how you see it.

2) On Abul himself.
Firstly, the point about Eastern Eye is largely redundant.

The point about Faith Freedom is this. His questioning isn't really partisan or that "shocking" if you consider that he may be trying to find out the motivation behind why that site was set up.
Look, I follow quite a few sites set up by people to slander those of other religions. Within the Asian community these are dime a dozen. If you want on a vehemently anti-Jewish site, I doubt you would want to sit there and have a friendly chat with the person who runs it, so why aren't you giving Abul the same leeway?

I don't anyone who could see that line of questioning as something an Islamist would do. The latter would go on there and start cursing the man straight out.

A few weeks ago we saw young kids in the Gaza strip calling Israeli soldiers 'Nazis' for turfing them out. Would you call those people terrorist-supporters too for using such slurs?

That brings me on to another point. You likened this to the Dilpazier Aslam controversy. That automatically suggests not only that you believed Abul Taher was a right-wing terrorist supporter, but also that he was part of some right-wing political group while working at a national paper. Those sorts of accusations get people into trouble and you clearly made it in a slightly smug fashion as if you had caught out another mole of some kind. That is what annoyed me the most about your post I think, and made me laugh that Abul could be compared to someone from Hizb ut Tahrir.

3) You say:
"but it is one more balancing site than your own critique of my post provides."
I don't need to prove any websites to back up an argument here, I'm not using facts but simple logic and reason. Nevertheless, it doesn't detract from the fact that overall, on this site, citing one website that says the BBC is pro-Israeli, while the rest of your posts suggest otherwise, is some example of balance.

4) You say:
"Nor do I think the Board of Deputies has a victim mentality. For example, it has done very valuable work in co-operation with Muslim groups on the issue of religiously prescribed approaches to the slaughter of animals for food, and has advised those groups on community security and other issues"

You can say the same about the MCB. But I don't trust them as far as I can throw them. Most Muslims don't see the MCB as having a victim mentality either, believe it or not. If we can set some benchmark for this, I'm happy to compare.

5) You say:
"Yes, I do accept they are genuine. I loathe them, but I would not dream of writing up comments on their sites, or posting emails to them, making the sort of comments Mr Taher felt the need to make."

That doesn't suggest that Abul is an Islamist as you say. He could be asking those questions for an interview, as this page suggests:

http://faithfreedom.org/oped/sina50827.htm

Either way, it certainly wasn't a long rant promising to kill the guy - that is what an Islamist would do. So let's face it, you made a mountain out of a molehill.

kind regards
Al Hack

[Al-Hack]

Ok, having read through that and not bothered to preview it, I see I've made quite a few typos and missed out a few words. Apologies for that, I blame insominia. I hope it makes sense, otherwise I can clarify.