Workers' Liberty

Iraqi LGBT have recently obtained new video evidence highlighting the brutality of the Badr Corps and police treatment of LGBT people in Iraq. It shows LGBT people being arrested, held in custody and having their heads shaved and taunted with songs of hate and revenge.

The first video shows two gay men celebrating a wedding ceremony when they are stopped at a checking point between Al-Kut and Baghdad and violently pulled out of their car.

When Archbishop Rowan Williams proposed that British courts should use Islamic sharia law for family matters among Muslim citizens, he met with a just uproar of denunciation.

Williams was not concerned only with extending the role of sharia law amongst Muslims in British society. He wants — and he said so clearly — to increase the role of all the different religions, in British society, and not least the one at whose head he stands.

Adapted from the introduction to Workers' Liberty 3/1.
In many countries, religion and disputes about, or expressed in terms of, religion have long been central to political life — in Christian Spain, Portugal, Ireland, or the USA; in Muslim Iran or Algeria; in Lebanon; in Israel-Palestine. Today, since Islamist terrorists attacked New York on 11 September 2001, religion, or concerns and interests expressed in religion, are at the centre of international politics to a degree without parallel for hundreds of years. We have not, as in Francis Fukuyama’s thesis after the fall of the USSR, reached “the end of history”. We seem to be reprising long-passed stages of our history.

Gillian Gibbons, the teacher who was locked up by the Sudanese authorities for allowing her class to call a teddy bear Muhammad, said of her experience: “The Sudanese people I found to be extremely kind and generous and until this happened I only had a good experience.”

Eve Garrard has circulated the following on the activists' e-list of the lecturers' union UCU (first published here 22/11/07). Our union is affiliated to the Stop the War Coalition, which is holding a conference on December 1st. One of the speakers it has invited to this conference is Ibrahim Mousawi, the editor of al-Manar TV, Hizbullah's broadcasting network.

Eve Garrard has circulated the following on the activists’ e-list of the lecturers’ union UCU.

“Our union is affiliated to the Stop the War Coalition, which is holding a conference on 1 December. One of the speakers it has invited to this conference is Ibrahim Mousawi, the editor of al-Manar TV, Hizbullah’s broadcasting network.

Review of The Islamist, by Ed Husain

About three hundred people marched through central London on Sunday 7 October as part of the “Al Quds Day” march organised by the Islamic Human Rights Commission.

This article will attempt to explain and define Islamic feminism, positioning the emergence of Islamic feminism within a wider political context and finally raising some questions which might help us to consider how we, as socialist feminists, might think about/ relate to Islamic feminism.

From gay rights campaigner, socialist and Green Party activist Peter Tatchell. We would not agree with the way Peter puts everything here, but the basic sentiments are absolutely correct.

On 7 October, supporters of the Iranian regime are organising an “Al Quds Day” demonstration in London (assembling 12:30 at Marble Arch).

I’m going to give a quick definition and overview of Islamic feminism in this lead off (which hopefully the reading should already have given you.)

“40 reasons why Tariq Ramadan is a reactionary bigot” was written by the French Marxist, Yves Coleman and has been reproduced by the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty (AWL). The text presents factual information about the politics of Tariq Ramadan.

By John O'Mahony
The Al Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahri has (July 10th) threatened Prime Minister Gordon Brown with mass murder in Britain, in retaliation for the award of a knighthood to Salman Rushdie. The knighthood, al-Zawahri said, was an "insult" to Muslims. This once more expresses, and in its most brutish and blood-thirsty form, the paradoid intolerance that governs political Islam.

By Amina Saddiq

AT 28, Malalai Joya is Afghanistan’s youngest member of parliament, one of only a handful of women MPs. And Joya is a consistent fighter for women and girls.

by Pat Yarker

Some on the left argue that Muslim women have taken to wearing the ‘veil’ (used here to mean such attire as the niqab or burqa) as a political act with a positive content.

by Colin Foster

Is a new nationalist political alliance emerging in Iraq, non-sectarian or at least cross-sectarian? Some reporters in the USA claim it is. The balance of evidence, I think, indicates not.

By Sofie Buckland

A teenage girl belonging to the Yazidi religious sect has been stoned to death in northern Iraq. The killing was a punishment meted out for falling in love with a Muslim man, and has spiralled into further sectarian violence in the area.

Richard Preece discusses the recent anti-government demonstrations in Turkey

Much mainstream liberal and centre-right reporting on the crisis in Turkey has portrayed the debate as being a kind of “clash of civilisations in one country” between “Islamists” (or even “Muslims” according to others) supporting the ruling Adalet ve Kalk¦nma Partisi and “secularists” supporting the army and the opposition Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi.

By Richard Preece
The current political crisis in Turkey presents a dilemma for left-wingers, because Turkey is a country that doesn’t fit either of the stereotypical views held by knee-jerk “anti-imperialists” or “liberal interventionists” about politics in predominantly Muslim countries.

Islamism represents despair. It is not an alternative economic and political programme, but a retreat from having one, trusting instead in God.

From Workers' Liberty Teachers NUT conference bulletin 2007
Some on the Left argue that Moslem women have taken to wearing the ‘veil’ (meaning such attire as the niqab or burqa) as a political act with a positive content.

The liberal Establishment, including the liberal newspapers, have responded to the still-burning political explosion ignited by the Danish cartoons showing Muhammad in a downright disgraceful way.

The editor of the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo has defeated the court charges brought against him for publishing the "Danish cartoons", some of which satirised the Prophet Mohammed.

Leeds university has cancelled a talk by US academic Matthias Kuentzel for "security reasons" after it received Islamist emails complaining about the talk.

By Mark Osborn

The Economist believes that the Algerian government is likely to fall to fundamentalism. If it does, the repercussions will be felt right across the Muslim world and far beyond. The Economist concludes that “we” must “live with Islam,” which is “not like communism, something to be resisted tooth and nail.”

By Amina Saddiq

22 year old Egyptian blogger and former law student Abdul Kareem Nabeel Suleiman, or Kareem Amer as he is known online, was arrested by the authorities in Alexandria on 22 February and charged with the following offences:

A briefing on the Muslim Association of Britain and its links with the Muslim Brotherhood.

By Sean Matgamna

“They take each other by the hand today, but they will take each other by the throat, tomorrow,” we said not long ago, commenting on the United Front of Christian, Muslim and Sikh zealots to repress “disrespectful” comments on their respective religions.

[Posted 28 Feb, 2007]
22 year old Egyptian blogger and former law student Abdul Kareem Nabeel Suleiman, or Kareem Amer as he is known online, was arrested by the authorities in Alexandria on 22 February and charged with the following offences: