Lying about Muslims and getting away with it
JVL Introduction
Inayat Bunglawala is one of 15 people who wrote to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) chair Lord Faulks on July 31 calling for a standards investigation into the Jewish Chronicle.
He writes a personal blog – Inayat’s Corner – reflecting on life as a British Muslim, promoting “the values of pluralism, freedom of speech, a liberal secular state and opposition to all forms of xenophobia which are essential for our continued progress and if we are all to live alongside each other in harmony.”
Last week Inayat made a significant contribution to the story about the JC and IPSO, noting that the Jewish Chronicle has long targeted Muslims and Muslim organisations – in particular those that are vocal critics of Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people. He explained his own particular tussle with the publication which resulted in April in a ruling against it for asserting without justification that “the Islamic Republic has repeatedly vowed to wipe Israel and Jews off the face of the Earth.” He went on to explain how the JC has nonetheless continued its campaign to vilify Muslims, this time by falsifying seventh century Islamic history!
NWI
This article was originally published by Inayat's Corner on Wed 2 Aug 2023. Read the original here.
It Is Time For IPSO To Hold The Jewish Chronicle To Account
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Good luck to the author because this is a very important topic.
It worth reflecting that the lobby have been able to dominate so much cultural space in recent years because of the ground that Blair/Brown’s New Labour opened up.
9/11 was committed by 15 Sunni Wahhabist Saudi Arabians and 4 others (no one’s ever explored their grievances?). From this collective guilt was attributed to members of all the Muslim diasporas – there’s not just one – even those with adversarial relations with Saudi Arabia. These disaporas were spun as one by Blair’s narrative of ‘radical Islam’ or ‘militant Islam’. If this stuff had been said about Jews and Judaism, that would have been anti-Semitism.
The human status of victims of the new racist-imperialism was undermined by attributing ‘primitivism’ to Niqab wearers.
Similarly, despite stats to the contrary Muslims were disproportionately smeared as sex-offenders, echoing a rhetorical tactic of supposed sexual threat, the KKK had used to justify lynching of African-Americans.
Given the killings and territorial domination neoliberals were getting away with it was not long before the lobby would push at the open door.
The JC and others practically use the word Muslim as a slur and interchangeable with the word ‘terrorist’ And despite it libelous history its editor is a regular on news shows.
So there is a lot to unpick here and a lot of ideological ground to be retaken.
Inayat Bunglawala’s efforts are a very welcome part of this process!
The Jewish Chronicle is always first in line to bemoan any slight criticism of Israel and claim it is antisemitism, despite there often being no sign of prejudice against Jews, and criticism of Israel often being made by Jews disenchanted with the militarism, prejudice against Palestinians and illegality and injustices perpetrated by the state. On the other hand there is a groundswell of Islamophobia which the Jewish Chronicle seems more than willing to promote. Such blatant double standards do a great disservice to Journalism and damage the image of authentic Judaism which for many centuries was known for tolerance, reason and fair-mindedness.
I have nothing in common with the JC, but I think that a newspaper getting the place and date of a massacre wrong, or conflated with another Jewish-Muslim tribal battle, is not the most egregious mistake. Worth a correction, yes. The many hundreds of men of the Jewish Banu Qurayza tribe were massacred, essentially for trying to stay out of a fight and retain their faith, the women and young children were enslaved. forced into ‘marriage’, or sold. (Pretty much like the Yazidi, say, in our times). Look up their story on Wikpedia.
It isn’t as if it’s a historical libel on the Prophet Muhammad and his followers to say that they massacred a Jewish tribe. Would a suitable correction be for the JC to publish a detailed account of the right massacre of Jews by early Muslims? It’s not the fight I would have chosen!
In biblical times, the Jewish tribes also carried out genocidal massacres.
None of it is anything to be proud of.
I had not heard of this chant, so looked it up. It appears that the JC is not alone in calling the battle a ‘massacre of jews’ – the first half dozen or more entries on a google search all do this (CAA, Times of Israel etc al) and call the chant unequivocally anti-semitic.
It takes until you reach the Britannica entry that you find that the Jews of Khayyum were defeated but allowed to stay, in exchange for a payment of half their date harvest. ‘Two months later Muhammad leads his forces against the Jewish oasis of Khaybar, north of Medina. After a siege, it submits, but the Jews are allowed to remain on condition of sending half of their date harvest to Medina.’
On the other hand, those doing the chanting may also wrongly believe that there was a massacre. It’s a bit reminiscent of ‘Remember The Alamo’. All pretty unpleasant.
Most comment posters seem to focusing on the issue of the chant that the JC is trying to stir up into an issue.
But the example cited here of the JC smearing pro-Palestinian fooballing nations during the world cup, plus the claim from the JC cited in this article that Iran wants to ‘exterminate Jews’ also demonstrates the ongoing continuous nature of JC smears.
If white western Catholics, Protestants or Atheists had conquered Palestine no doubt Iranians would have been equally incensed. It bears repeating, as things stands, Iran has the largest Jewish population outside of Israel – served by some 70 synagogues and the communities have parliamentary-type representation.
As USA Today states
“Iran’s Jewish community is the largest in the Mideast outside Israel – and feels safe and respected.”
https://eu.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/world/inside-iran/2018/08/29/iran-jewish-population-islamic-state/886790002/
I have been wanting to express some disquiet about the wholly uncritical posting of this particular piece. Still hoping of course that the JC will be called to account and the egregious stirring of racism against Muslims in particular will stop. Na’mod is doing great in-depth work on this among young Jews and their families. BUT
20 years ago I wrote in Tribune that the conservative Jewish-leadership establishment had done other minorities a great disfavour by presenting its model as the only template for ‘advancement’. Many of Inayat’s generation adopted this defensive-offensive route , including disciplining their own communities for any perceived disloyalty. (For instance the first Islamophobia Award nominated Yasmin Alibhai Brown, and the most recent in 2018 had Sadiq Khan on the shortlist; the ICRC vocally protests against the uprisings in Iran). Inayat’s blog comes from a different tendency but still seems to me to be conservative and defensive. The Bible, as Moshe Machover and others have often pointed out, is full of genocidal attacks on the inhabitants of the land of Canaan by the incoming Hebrew /Israelite forces. No one in JVL I’m sure would defend these as ‘Jewish values’, so why does Inayat’s blog go out of its way to defend the ‘punishment’ of a Jewish tribe by another set of holy warriors? This is not the level on which we want to fight racism surely.
With all due respect to Amanda, the BoD and other Conservative Jewish organisations have culturally appropriated some of the strategies of Black anti-racists and working-class solidarity organisations. These strategies don’t belong to right-wing Israel supporters and shouldn’t therefore be criticised by association.
Muslims are often predominantly people-of-colour and entitled to scrutinise and condemn – like those speaking out against Uncle Toms, House N*gros, & Aunt Jemimas, class traitors etc- those that collude in the oppression of their own class and ethnic group.
During the worst of New Labour’s demonising of Muslims Yasmin Alibhai Brown smeared Niqab wearers and fed the narrative of Muslims as primitives.
Sadiq Khan is a neoliberal that for reasons of career advancement has chosen to side with the Israel supporting JLM. It does not even occur to him think about how he would be treated in apartheid Israel without his careerist class status off-setting his dark-skinned Muslim identity or that perhaps he should be showing solidarity with those that do suffer at the country’s hands.
No offense Amanda.
I cannot see the undemocratic BoD and the wholly unelected and secretive JLC as having structures that in any way mirror those of the civil rights movement or working class unions. The former are lobbying organisations pure and simple, and it’s no surprise that some minority groups have followed that pattern as it is encouraged from above.
Gavin, you and I clearly know different activists from South Asia. I care for instance about the Ex-Muslims’ association, and the underground support network for Bangladesh humanist bloggers who are being murdered; and secular Bangladeshi socialists, allies of the JSG incidentally, whose meetings are broken up by people from the big local mosque founded by genocidaires who sided with the Pakistani army. I don’t take kindly to the frequent obeisances to an ‘Islamic republic of Iran’ which is imprisoning, beating and executing feminists as we speak.
At an early moment in the women’s liberation movement we decided that as women had always been divided from each other we would try not to attack other women on a personal basis but would instead clearly oppose politics that we disagreed with. The Islamophobia Awards , and the Islamophobia Watch site (run by a white british marxist I happen to like!) attack and ridicule liberal Muslims in just the same way the JC attacks Jews who say things they don’t like about Israel. We can’t go all huffy and innocent when this happens to us, but support the same tactics as allies.
BTW I obvs agree with most of your comments about Khan’s policies , though he is showing unexpected backbone about the ULEZ and getting more money to the drivers who need to change their cars. I’ve not been aware of Alibhai Brown’s disdain for the veil, but I do know North African feminists who were very much alarmed by it. Over time some of these differences iron
themselves out; some of the most respected parent governors at our local school fully cover, and their daughters are feisty and sporty and perform in plays and do everything they want. It’s not the clothes that make the woman. That said, I think Alibhai Brown’s efforts with the British Muslims for Secular Democracy have been brave and have gradually made a difference over time.
Some British revolutionary socialist groups’ brief embrace of selected islamists has been opportunist and far less lasting! This is too vast a subject , a whole religion cannot be subsumed so I too hope to cause no offence on a personal level.