A 21st Century Crusade: The rise of the anti-Islam movement in Europe

The organisation Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West (Pegida by the German acronym) has announced its first UK rally, due to take place on the 28th of February in Newcastle. 

In just four months, the group has racked up nearly 160,000 Facebook likes and has staged a number of protests in Germany, some attended by up to 25,000 people. Offshoots have sprung up in Denmark, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland and - now - the United Kingdom.

Former Pegida leader
Lutz Bachmann

According to reports, the UK branch is expecting somewhere between 500 and 3,000 protesters to attend the rally. This is by no means, therefore, a major demonstration. Indeed, Pegida itself as a European movement has suffered serious setbacks since the height of their popularity following the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris. 

Founder Lutz Bachmann was forced to resign from the organisation after a photograph of him styled as Adolf Hitler went viral on the 21st of January. German politicians, including Angela Merkel, have criticised the organisation over its use of the Charlie Hebdo incident for political purposes, and counter-protests in Germany have reached the stage where they are drawing more participants than the protests themselves. 

This might seem to suggest that Pegida, less than four months after its foundation, is already on the way out. But we cannot afford to be so optimistic. Pegida itself is just one part of a wider campaign across Western Europe which is targeting Muslims as a group. The very concept of 'anti-Islamisation' is nonsensical - the Muslim population of the UK is just 4.6%; in Germany, it is 5.4%. There is no 'Islamisation'; the fastest-growing belief group across Western Europe is, in fact, atheists, not Muslims.

But the narrative has been picked up, not only by radical rightist groups like Pegida and Britain First, but by the media - and from there, it has filtered into general society. A report last October showed that anti-Muslim hate crime rose by 65% over the preceding twelve months; in France in the aftermath of the Paris attacks, 24 violent incidents against mosques were logged in just six days. The last ten years have seen a seemingly inexorable upward trend in anti-Islamic sentiment across Europe, fuelling the rise of anti-immigration Parties like the French Front National and UKIP, as well as direct action groups.

There is a real danger that the actions of tiny extremist minorities on both sides will increase the polarisation of society around the issue of Islam. The stage is fast approaching where it is no longer possible to take a balanced view on the subject: one must either be an apologist for Islam in all its forms, or emphatically opposed to it. This is dangerous. Islam, like any religion, has inspired some people to do terrible things in its name, but the vast majority of its adherents are peaceable, friendly citizens of our countries. We must stand in solidarity with them.

The narrative of mutual warfare - crusaders vs. jihadists - is one which Islamist and far-right groups alike benefit from and seek to encourage. Those of us who are moderates - the vast majority - are easily capable of shrugging off the efforts of these bitter fringe elements. So let us not succumb to their poisonous rhetoric, but expound the virtues of tolerance and liberty and the right and ability of the human species to live in harmony despite our differences.

The 'crusaders' of the 21st century are no less brutal and self-serving than those of the 11th. We should treat them and their misguided 'anti-Islamisation' campaign with the contempt they deserve.

Charlie Hebdo: A Warmongers' Dream

  Unless you have been absent from the planet Earth for the last week or so, you will know that Islamist terrorists killed 17 people in Paris and the surrounding area over the three days from the 7th to the 9th of January 2015. This was the most deadly act of terror in France since 1961. 

  The attack on the offices of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo (Charlie Weekly) was carried out by Islamists apparently connected to al-Qaeda's Yemeni branch, while the gunman who struck the kosher supermarket Hypercasher near the Port de Vincennes self-declared his membership of ISIS.

  On the 11th of January, 3.7 million people marched in Paris and other cities throughout France to show their unity in the face of these terrorist networks' actions. The march was led by the families of the victims and more than 40 world leaders, including the French President, the British Prime Minister and German Chancellor. 

  These were the largest rallies in France since the liberation of Paris from Nazi German occupation in 1944. They were also a moving demonstration of the unity of not just the French people but also of the global community in the face of the despicable, murderous actions of Islamist extremists. The fact that the rally was attended by both the Prime Minister of Israel and the President of Palestine underscores just how important a show of unity this march was.

  And then, on the 12th of January, France announced it would deploy 10,000 soldiers and armed police onto its streets.

  The political necessity for such a show of strength, I understand. Hollande, France's embattled President, needs to salvage some credibility from the disaster that this attack has been. It may also be that there is a valid strategic and security reason for this massive mobilisation, which has already begun. But the deployment has been accompanied by such violent, warmongering rhetoric that I fear the consequences.

  In less than a week since the shootings, more than 50 anti-Muslim hate crime incidents have been registered across France. That is a worrying trend. The presence of ten thousand armed men on the streets will not calm this - it will fuel the fires. What is suspiciously close to a declaration of martial law is a move which will cause further polarisation, in France and across Europe.

  And that's what they want. The Porte de Vincennes gunman, Amedy Coulibaly, said in his ISIS propaganda video that his actions were in defence of the Palestinian people and in protest of the Coalition actions in Syria, Afghanistan, Mali and Iraq. Make no mistake, in his mind his murders were an act of war. Responding to rhetoric of war in kind will only worsen the situation. And the more Muslims in European countries suffer as a result of the backlash against these incidents, the easier it will be for Islamists to radicalise young Muslims in future.

  The ideology of these people - Salafi-Jihadism (ultraconservative Wahhabist Islam mixed with a quasi-fascistic personality cult and the willingness to undertake violent jihad) - is vile, make no mistake. It should be eradicated. But we must remember firstly that the ideology is our enemy first and foremost, and that the young men brainwashed by its demagogic leaders are victims of the virus. 

   That does not mean we should not defend ourselves against them. I am no pacifist. But we also cannot afford to become locked into an exchange of violent and ever-ratcheting rhetoric with the adherents of Salafi-Jihadism. That will only play into the hands of warmongers like Marine le Pen in France and Britain First here in Britain. And we especially must not allow our justified anger to spill over into attacks on moderate, law-abiding Muslims in our own countries or overseas.

  We may be Charlie. But we are all humans first.

Israel's Apartheid Continues

  

  Benjamin Netanyahu is at it again. He is not content, apparently, with the continuing blockade of the Gaza Strip, with the government-sponsored construction of illegal settlements on Palestinian soil, with the occupation of the State of Palestine itself in violation of any semblance of international law, and with the periodic brutality of the Israeli armed forces in their fruitless assaults on Palestine and her people. No, none of this is enough for this genocidal warmonger - now he is to make the Palestinian people second-class citizens in their own lands.

  A bill currently going through the Israeli parliament will make Jewishness a condition of the 'national rights' of Israel. For the 25% of the population who are not, including the Palestinians who live under Israeli occupation, lesser 'civil rights' will still be available - according to Netanyahu - but they will be officially, legally second-class citizens. The bill also bans the flying of the Palestinian flag and a number of other measures dressed up as counter-terrorism but in reality targeting the oppressed Palestinians.

  This bill is so blatantly ridiculous, even Netanyahu's fellow Likud party member and President of Israel Reuven Rivlin has come out against it, calling it 'unnecessary' and 'harmful' and pointing out that it will play into the hands of Israel's critics. Damn right it will: this is further evidence of the Likud government's ultra-Zionist, far-right agenda to crush the Palestinian people out of existence - or at least, out of Israel.

  The ridiculous thing is, the quickest way to remove the Palestinians from Israel, halt the majority of the inter-community violence in the region and make the bill truly unnecessary would be to recognise Palestine's sovereignty and accept the two-state solution - but that is something Netanyahu will not do. Meanwhile, Palestinians - who  have always been treated as second-class citizens in Israel - will not take this new legal confirmation of their status lightly. One commentator, Abu Azzan Saud, went to far as to call this 'the beginning of the third intifada'. 

  So, more deaths to come, then, on the back of a law allegedly designed to reduce the killing. Welcome to Netanyahu's apartheid state.

Israel's Holocaust

  Back in March I wrote an article on Israel's heavy-handed response to what was then the most recent bout of Palestinian rocket fire into the Jewish State, and the pressing need for talks to take place for a two-state solution. It is now July, and the past three weeks have seen a resurgence of the decades-old conflict on a scale not seen since the pre-Israeli election massacres of Dec '08-Jan '09. 


How Things Stand

  Before we turn to my analysis of the situation, let's have a look at the numbers. Bear in mind, the latest bout of violence - christened Operation Protective Edge by the IDF - began on 08/07/2014.

• Palestinian Deaths: 771 (16:11, 24/07/2014) inc. 605+ civilians (08:00, 24/07/2014)
•                                                                        of which: 132+ children (21:35, 23/07/2014)
• Palestinian Injuries: 4,750 (16:11, 24/07/2014)
• Palestinians Displaced: 140,000 (16:11, 24/07/2014)

• Israeli Deaths: 35 (24/07/2014) inc. 3 civilians (24/07/2014)
• Israeli Injuries: 178 (12:00, 15/07/2014)

  I hate to have to reduce the deaths of real people to mere statistics like this, but the volume of casualties is simply too high to go into details (although the Telegraph has created a thought-provoking spread showing the names and ages of each dead Palestinian child). Each of these deaths - all 806 of them - is a tragedy. But these killings are no accident. They are a result of the policy of Benjamin Netanyahu's government towards Gaza - that it is the stronghold of Hamas, and as such its people are legitimate targets. 

  Netanyahu and his cronies don't seem to care how many civilians or even children die - as long as they pick off a few Hamas fighters. The fact that well over three-quarters of all Gazan casualties have been non-combatants does seem seem to even register - the tanks keep rolling, the missiles keep coming. The deaths keep mounting up. Seventy-six people have died today. 

Netanyahu's Purpose

  The word 'Zionist' is a loaded one. Those who decry Israel's government as Zionist extremists are often accused of being anti-Semitic, but the claim is perfectly legitimate. Zionism is, at its basic level, simply the belief that the State of Israel should exist in its present location. This, in an of itself, is not a particularly extreme view. But Netanyahu's party, Likud, and its partners in the ruling coalition represent something more. 

  Likud are Revisionist Zionists. This ideology originally called for Jewish control of the entirety of the old British Mandate of Palestine - including present-day Israel, the West Bank, Gaza and Jordan. The claim to Jordan has largely been dropped, but Likud and their fellows still desire Israeli control over the Palestinian territories. 

  Netanyahu does not want peace - that fact is self-evident. He broke off peace talks with the Palestinians in April after the last flare-up of the conflict and has repeatedly denied Palestine and Gaza in particular the justice it deserves. Hamas' rejection of the most recent ceasefire proposal last week is highly regrettable, and they must accept part responsibility for the civilian deaths since then, but it is understandable that the organisation does not trust Netanyahu when his party's ideology is built around the conclusion of Israeli conquest of the Palestinians' remaining land.

The Consequences of Fascism

  The Israeli government's persecution of the Palestinians has gone on since the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, but it is growing seemingly worse under the rule of the fascist Netanyahu. And, no, to call this man a fascist is not,as some have claimed, anti-Semitic - the comparison is exact. His government has advanced a nationalist agenda to force the Palestinian people onto smaller and smaller areas of land, provoking them to violent response and then launching overwhelmingly heavy-handed responses to attempt to crush their resistance. In the Jewish settlements in the West Bank, corporate exploitation of poor Palestinians is rife as major companies collude with the government to take advantage of this source of cheap labour. Palestinians are second-class citizens within their own homeland.

  And they are not the only victims. In France this week, a protest against the Israeli onslaught transformed into anti-Semitic rioting directed at the local Jewish population. Israel's brutal actions are playing right into the hands of groups such as the Front National and other extreme-right Europeans who are able to use them to incite violence against the blameless local Jews. It is a sad fact, but a fact nonetheless, that the actions of the 'Jewish State' are considered by many to be the fault of all Jews. Netanyahu cares as little for his own people outside Israel as he does for the Palestinians trapped within it.

Hope?

  But the tables are turning on this despot. The programme of oppression and ethnic cleansing which this vile man has made his mission is drawing more and more condemnation. Even the UK government, which - along with the USA and Australia - has shamefully backed Likud's war, has warned Netanyahu that the West is losing sympathy for his country's actions. Within Israel, and from amongst the wider Jewish community, groups like Jews for Justice for Palestinians are growing and are criticising more heavily the murder being done against their will but in their name. Netanyahu's agenda is looking more and more precarious.

  As long as the USA and the UK continue to fund the Israeli war machine, we will not see the end of this bloody struggle. Likud and its partners will continue to persecute the people of Palestine until they no longer can. It is up to the people of Israel to push for a change in their government's brutal policy, and for the rest of the world to force their own governments to withdraw their support for this fascist regime and push for a two-state solution, so that Jews and Palestinians might live side-by-side in peace. The beginnings of this shift are already being felt - let us not lose momentum, but continue onwards. For while Israel remains an apartheid state, and Netanyahu's holocaust continues, we will never live in a world where peace and freedom reign.

Narendra Modi - The Rise of 'India's Milosevic'

  On Friday, the results came in for the world's single biggest election, a poll covering most of a subcontinent where 815 million people have the chance to cast their vote. The Indian General Election took twelve days to complete, and a further four to count the votes. This is truly a momentous event, easily the most important so far this year, yet it got virtually no mainstream coverage in the UK or US media.

  The really worrying thing about this election in particular, though, isn't the lack of attention the Western media pay to such an important event - concerning though that is. No, the scary thing is that this election marked the ascension to power in India of Narendra Modi, leader of the Hindu nationalist party, the BJP. Modi swept to power in a landslide, with his party taking 282 of the Lok Sabha's 543 seats, whilst his wider electoral alliance won a further 54 - a total of 62%, compared to its closest rival's paltry performace of just 11%. 

  This is a party, let me make it clear, which has as its official policy a ban on Muslim immigration from neighbouring Bangladesh, whilst opening its arms to Hindu Bangladeshis; a party which states the existence of Pakistan to be illegal and has been consistently hostile towards this and other Islamic states in the region; and which is generally considered the political wing of the Hindu nationalist paramilitary the RSS, an organisation frequently linked to violent acts of terror and banned four times in India by both pre- and post-independence governments.

  In short, the BJP is bad news.

  Narendra Modi himself is a particularly vile example of an already distasteful organisation. Leader of Gujarat state since 2001, Modi was implicated in the Hindu-Muslim race riots of 2002 in that state, which killed around 2000 people - mostly Muslims. Modi's personal involvement has never been proved, but it is certain that Gujarat state police and BJP government officials were involved. Despite receiving heavy criticism for his inaction over the violence, Modi remained in power - and actually stepped up his anti-Muslim rhetoric in the aftermath of the tragedy.

  India is the world's second-largest country in terms of population and seventh-largest by land area; it has the world's third-largest economy by PPP and possesses armed forces of 1.3 million troops, as well as nuclear weapons. This is a powerful nation, make no mistake, and it is now in the hands of a man who until 10 months ago was banned from entering the UK due to his extremist views and connections with the 2002 riots. 

  Modi has been likened to Serbian dictator Slobodan Milošević by Mehdi Hasan and to Adolf Hitler by former Indian Union Minister Mani Shankar, but the extreme nature of these comparisons - which has, perhaps understandably, generated calls for restraint in that small portion of the media which is paying any attention - risks undermining the very real point that this is a man with extremely disturbing views, and a history demonstrating his willingness to allow them to be realised, who has now been handed the keys to power in one of the world's upcoming superpowers, with the capability to launch nuclear strikes and a very clear target on its doorstep to aim at.

  And THAT should make us very worried indeed.