The Problem With The Problem With Hijab

The sensitive little darlings, The Sun, subsequently deleted this tweet.

You may have seen The Sun's Kelvin MacKenzie protesting that UK Channel 4 TV's coverage of the Nice attack featured a young lady (Fatima Manji) wearing a hijab. I don't recommend you read it, but here it is in case you feel you have to.

As the Nice news broke, I was to be found shouting at the TV, infuriated by mainstream sources crowding each other in the rush to denounce terrorism, ISIS and Islamic terror in general. I was shouting because it seemed to me to be a lone wolf attack and I couldn't believe how fast ISIS came up, conflated with a senseless and barbaric killing with absolutely no reason whatsoever to suspect a link to 'Islamic' motivation of any sort. The Daily Mail led all the next day with ISIS Kills 84, a story that wasn't stood up on a single link to ISIS, a lone 'expert' trotted out to give any reason to draw a link or one - one - fact tying the perpetrator to ISIS or any other radical group.

It's only when ISIS itself claimed responsibility that anyone actually pulled themselves up and questioned the spurious and widespread claim of ISIS' involvement being made in our media.

And so now - belatedly - we start to explore whether this was, in fact, a lone wolf attack by a man who was clearly no practising Muslim. The idiocy of 'quickie radicalisation' was brought into play and, thankfully, quickly extinguished. He's emerging as a wife beating substance abuser with a range of issues that clearly bring his mental state into much starker linkages with relation to his motivations than Islam. But the damage has already been done.

And in the wake of the atrocity and the mischaracterisation of the killer's motives, we have the question of whether it is appropriate for a woman in hijab to cover such news. Because it was a Muslim attacker? Because he attacked in the name of Islam (which, it would appear, is highly unlikely to be his motivation) or because we don't want ladies in hijab on our TV screens?

MacKenzie makes the point: "Would the station have used an Orthodox Jew to cover the Israeli-Palestine conflict?" Which neatly plays into labelling Manji as somehow belonging to 'the other side' responsible for the carnage in this 'conflict' between two opposing forces.

The comments to Roy Greenslade's typically thoughtful piece on MacKenzie's Islamophobic rant show how fractured we have become in the West over the wearing of hijab. I have worked and socialised extensively with women who wear hijab for much of my adult life. As far as I can see, they do so out of choice (not a 'subtle social pressure'; I know many devout Muslim women who have chosen not to wear it and many who wear it as a conscious choice with no pressure to do so, who have previously not done so) and many would point out that, as women, if they chose to wear a Micky Mouse t-shirt, hijab or a yellow polka dot bikini that is their choice and they would very much prefer if men would stop telling them what to wear.

What constantly amazes me is to listen to Western Christians complaining about hijab. It's a Christian tradition, too, you know. Here. Do a Google Image Search for 'Virgin Mary'. Fill yer boots.

Shocking, isn't it? A woman in hijab covering your screen. The mother of the man you hold to be the Son of God, the core of your Trinity.

Quick. Fetch the religious police...

Cairo? Not.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I guess I was asking for it, posting this. Cairo's not happening, the team at The Townhouse have postponed the event until January.

Why? This here slice of madness.

Pal Mai told me the Salafist Kickoff was going to happen, so I got in touch with conference organiser Dina and we changed my flight to the morning so's I'd get in before the Friday mosques emptied and it all went batshit. But it turns out that wasn't enough.

It looks like downtown's going to be a mess of barricades from Thursday night and the increasingly frenetic tone of what's expected to go down on Friday meant that not only were overseas and local speakers looking at how they were going to make it safely to the venue, but whether there'd be an audience there waiting for them if they did.

In fact, anyone with any sense in downtown and even wider afield will be sat at home watching endless re-runs of 'Friends' or whatever boiled grey dross MBC's doling out rather than venturing into the streets.

So that's it. Game over. Watch this space for some Cairo-inspired fuss in January. I was looking forward to seeing the city again, catching up with friends and doing the Conference Thang.

Next year...

If Gaza Were Ireland

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As the world stands idly by and Ban Ki Moon waffles incomprehensibly about peace, it struck me what would have happened if Britain had behaved in Northern Ireland as Israel has in Gaza and the West Bank.

It's the same sort of gig, after all. The occupation of a territory and all that. Religious divisions and an artificial border. 'Freedom fighters' bringing their violent protests over that border into the heart of the occupying power.

Except the IRA was actually quite good at it, where Hamas is rubbish. The IRA killed hundreds of British citizens and soldiers, in fact murdered thousands in their campaign for Irish freedom. Hamas' rocket attacks have yet to hit a significant target or result in any major loss of life - claims for fatalities from rocket attacks so far total two Israelis and a Asian worker. Even the recent celebrated kidnapping and killing of three Israeli youths turned out to have no connection to Hamas. And the provocation dealt out in Gaza to cause these attacks is all too little discussed. Those rockets didn't come from nowhere - they were Benjy's reward for his vicious little campaign against the coming together of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.

The whole - bloody - conflict in the North since the start of 'the troubles' (whether you date them back to 1916, 1922 or 1969) has taken a smaller toll of human life than the Israeli-sponsored massacres in the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps alone. The Israelis are already well over a third of their way to beating the total all-time Irish Troubles Death Record after a couple of weeks' conflict in Gaza. That's some going.

Imagine the global reaction if the UK had sent in helicopter gunships to blow apart Irish Republican houses in Nationalist areas of Belfast. If our response to bombings such as Canary Wharf were to send in ground troops and tanks to lay waste swathes of houses around the Falls Road and reduce whole districts of Tyrone and Armagh to rubble? If our troops poured shells into schools and our politicians glibly trotted out platitudes about them being used as human shields for bomb-making factories? There was a huge political and civil rights fallout from the few - highly targeted - extra-judicial killings that UK forces carried out - but these (and no, I am by no means justifying them) actions were pinpoint intelligence-led operations, not high explosive bludgeoning of tenements, terraces, schools and hospitals packed with innocent civilians.

What values, then, prevented our Western style democracy from acting in the way that Israel has acted towards the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza? How is it that the British - for all their pursuit of influence and power in Ireland over the centuries - found a fundamentally more decent way to manage conflict with rebellion against our occupation - against paramilitaries - than tearing their adversary's children to pieces?

Would the British people have been supportive of our government's bloody treatment of a people under our occupation if we had been blowing up their houses, degrading their basic infrastructure and killing innocents? Or would we have concluded that our government was monstrous and refused to let our whole society be led into unforgivable monstrosity in the name of a 'war against terror'?

Imagine if we'd killed a thousand Irish people in a week-long 'ground war' against the IRA in Belfast.

Do you think the world would have stood idly by as Ban Ki Moon waffled incomprehensibly about peace then?