THE POLITICS OF FEAR

Of course it hasn't been reported much, but anti-Muslim attacks have shot up in the last few weeks, ever since Jack Straw suggested that women who wear a veil while attending one of his surgeries should take it off.

A student in Wolverhampton was surrounded by five people who shouted abuse at her and told her to take off her veil. "Jack Straw has made it illegal so you have to take it off," they told her.

Meanwhile, in Dundee there are allegations that the police are hounding Muslims in their attempts to root out terrorism.

And in Glasgow, a 53 year old imam was punched and kicked as he entered his mosque.

The Daily Express has, in typical paranoid fashion, been whipping up hysteria around the case of the teaching assistant who is trying to retain her job. It told us that Aishah Azmi's legal case is costing money to the taxpayer (I believe Muslim women who wear veils also pay tax, though this appears to elude the Express), and today its headline screams out:



Since the veil is banned in many Arab countries including Turkey and Tunisia, the Express asks, "why must we put up with it here?" Put up with what, exactly? Are the 99% of Express readers who apparently wish to see the veil banned in Britain really incapable of allowing law-abiding citizens wear whatever they wish? Will the ban on veils also apply to weddings? Or, as Dig rather cleverly asked on his blog, will it also apply to surgeons? I assume that the Daily Express's Saturday competition, advertised above as an opportunity to "win a cottage in Provence for a year", will only be open to people who can speak fluent French, otherwise how will they be able to integrate and communicate with the native community?

This is the great myth of multiculturalism - that everybody of every creed and religion can live together in harmony in an open and liberal society. What is at stake here is not communication - it is a seething resentment which exists in Britain at the moment, whose volume is rapidly rising. Under successive governments, the gap between rich and poor has not stopped growing since 1979. In real terms, the poor are getting poorer every day. People need someone to blame for this, and the fetishistic fascination / hatred of the Muslim Other is the perfect candidate.

The government is keen to stoke this inflammatory situation to deflect the claims that its own foreign policy is the reason that Britain is under threat of further terrorism. It has alienated many Muslims by invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq, and by betraying the people of Lebanon by giving uncritical support to Israel in the summer. In doing so, it sowed the seeds of the London bombings last year. It responded, in the most cynical way imaginable, by implying that extremism was inherent in the Muslim community, and that Muslim leaders must root it out. It has exaggerated the terrorist threat so as to scare people.

This is the politics of fear writ large, and its most pernicious effect is turning good people into bad. Everybody, even people who never really gave the veil a second glance, is looking at veiled women in a different way. Some will be looking distrustfully, while others (and I have caught myself doing this) will simply look away in case their look is perceived as being malicious or threatening. This second point of view is pure paranoia on my part, of course, but the fact remains: my ability to communicate with a women wearing a veil has been weakened, and this is because an anti-veil narrative is pervading the country, rather than because the woman's face is partially covered.

I don't know how this will end, but I have a really bad feeling about it. There really are parallels with the treatment of Jews in Europe during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There are no pogroms, of course, but there is oppression and prejudice and racism in abundance. If Muslims become (as the Jews were, and the Palestinians have been for sixty years) a people without a home - well, what then?

The Stop the War Coalition has written an open letter about the attack on Muslims by the media and by politicians:

There has been a recent increase in racist hysteria directed against Muslims. We deplore Jack Straw’s remarks concerning the veil worn in public by some Muslim women. His intervention, the bullying attacks of John Reid and other Ministers, and stories in some sections of the media, are designed to isolate and demonise British Muslims. The result has been violence against, and intimidation of, Muslim people.

We express our solidarity with all people in Britain of the Muslim faith, affirm their right to dress as they please and live their lives in peace and security.

The current attacks on Muslims are rooted in the disastrous 'war on terror', of which this government has been such a prominent supporter. This war has made Britain more vulnerable, not less, to terrorist attack.

If the government is concerned about improving the cohesion of our communities, let it first abandon its support for the foreign policy of the US administration, including the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

To add your name to the letter, email office@stopwar.org.uk

Meanwhile, here's more evidence of how the coalition forces are out of their depth in occupied Iraq.