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Titolo: (MO) Muslims are now getting the same treatment Jews had a century ago

Muslims are now getting the same treatment Jews had a century ago
Today's anti-Muslim racism uncannily echoes earlier
anti-semitism - both minorities abused as an alien
security threat
Maleiha Malik
Friday February 2, 2007
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2004258,00.html
Migrants fleeing persecution and poverty settled with
their children in the East End of London. As believers
in one God they were devoted to their holy book, which
contained strict religious laws, harsh penalties and
gender inequality. Some of them established separate
religious courts. The men wore dark clothes and had
long beards; some women covered their hair. A royal
commission warned of the grave dangers of self-
segregation. Politicians said different religious dress
was a sign of separation. Some migrants were members of
extremist political groups. Others actively organised
to overthrow the established western political order.
Campaigners against the migrants carefully framed their
arguments as objections to "alien extremists" and not
to a race or religion. A British cabinet minister said
we were facing a clash about civilisation: this was
about values; a battle between progress and "arrested
development".
All this happened a hundred years ago to Jewish
migrants seeking asylum in Britain. The political
movements with which they were closely associated were
anarchism and later Bolshevism. As in the case of
contemporary political violence, or even the radical
Islamism supported by a minority of British Muslims,
anarchism and Bolshevism only commanded minority
support among the Jewish community. But shared
countries of origin and a common ethnic and religious
background were enough to create a racialised discourse
whenever there were anarchist outrages in London in the
early 20th century.
Most anarchists were peaceful, but a few resorted to
violent attacks such as the bombing of Greenwich
Observatory in 1894 - described at the time as an
"international terrorist outrage". Anarchist violence
was an international phenomenon. In Europe it claimed
hundreds of lives, including those of several heads of
government, and resulted in anti- terrorism laws. In
the siege of Sidney Street in London in 1911, police
and troops confronted east European Jewish anarchists.
This violent confrontation in the heart of London
created a racialised moral panic in which the whole
Jewish community was stigmatised. It was claimed that
London was "seething" with violent aliens, and the
British establishment was said to be "in a state of
denial". East End Jews were said to be "alienated", not
"integrated", and a "threat to our security" a long
time before anyone dreamed up the phrase "Londonistan".
Today the Middle East is the focus of a challenge to
American political and economic hegemony, which is
being presented as a "civilisational conflict with
Islam". Nearly a century ago, the Russian revolution
sent shockwaves through western states and financial
markets. Anti-semites argued that Jewish involvement in
revolutionary politics was part of a conspiracy by "the
homeless wandering Jew" to replace European states with
their "Hebrew nation". Winston Churchill, as secretary
of state for war in 1920, wrote an article in the
Illustrated Sunday Herald claiming there were three
categories of Jews - good, bad and indifferent - and
arguing that they were part of a "worldwide conspiracy
for the overthrow of civilisation and for the
reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested
development".
Jews were the first non-Christian, yet monotheistic,
religious minority in Britain. They are also one of its
earliest "racialised" people. Despite important
differences, the treatment of British Jews provides an
illuminating comparison with contemporary anti-Muslim
racism. There are recurring patterns in British society
that racialise Jews and Muslims, which we need to
understand if we are to develop an effective strategy
for national security.
Jews and now Muslims have been and are the targets of
cultural racism: differences arising from their
religious culture are pathologised and systematically
excluded from definitions of "being British". Both
anti-semitism and anti-Muslim racism focus on belief in
religious law to construct Jews and Muslims as a threat
to the nation. Pnina Werbner, professor of social
anthropology at Keele University, argues that Jews are
predominantly racialised as an assimilated threat to
national interests emerging at moments of crisis.
Muslims are now being represented as a different kind
of "folk devil" - a social group that is openly and
aggressively trying to impose its religion on national
culture. This partially explains the recent concerns
about multiculturalism. "Anti-fundamentalist images
provide racists with a legitimising discourse against
Muslims," as Werbner puts it, which is used by
"intellectual elites as well as 'real' violent
racists".
The Jewish-Muslim comparison reveals another recurring
pattern in recent British history: the rapid collapse
of security fears associated with a religious minority
into a racialised discourse of "civilisation versus
barbarism". The American philosopher William Connolly
predicted after September 11 that "the terrorism of al-
Qaida, in turn, generates new fears and hostilities.
The McCarthyism of our day will connect internal state
security to an exclusionary version of the Judeo-
Christian tradition".
The ease with which security fears can generate "moral
panics and folk devils" was recently highlighted at a
conference organised by London mayor Ken Livingstone to
debate the neoconservatives' insistence that we now
face a new clash of civilisation versus barbarism. In
London's past, the East End British Brothers' League
carefully framed its objections using terms such as
aliens, anarchists and Bolsheviks rather than Jews. At
last month's conference, many cheered as if at a rally,
as these new advocates of "civilisational conflict"
worked hard to keep separate their categories of
barbarian and civilised. They cited Ayaan Hirsi Ali as
their exemplar of a "good Muslim", thus clarifying the
"civilisation" they are encouraging Muslims to emulate.
Hirsi Ali, whose research is funded by the neo-
conservative American Enterprise Institute, argues that
the west should launch a war against Iran - with the
prospect of the deaths of thousands more innocents - as
it earlier agitated for war on Iraq.
The neocons want us to treat domestic security like the
war against fascism. This manipulation of Europe's
memory of its struggle against nazism mirrors the
propaganda of some Muslims - the July 7 bombers who,
citing Iraq, insisted that they were martyrs in a holy
war; and those who portray domestic anti-terrorism
policy as a new western crusade against 1 billion
Muslims. The London mayor's refusal to lapse into such
"war talk" is one factor that has so far helped to
prevent fear of domestic terrorism from collapsing into
a racialised conflict of civilisations in the heart of
diverse London. This is not just about foreign neocon
wars, or politically correct anti-racism, or
multiculturalism - or even the defence of the human
rights of British citizens who are Muslims. It is about
the security of all British citizens. As Ken Macdonald,
director of public prosecutions, warned last week, if
we want to safeguard our security we must abandon
delusions that we are fighting wars, and deal with
terrorism in the context of criminal justice. With more
terror arrests inevitable, and the prospect of new
anti-terrorism legislation any day, the need to grasp
what is really going on could not be more urgent.
---------------------------------
Maleiha Malik is a lecturer in law at King's College
London.
· This is an edited version of lectures prepared for
presentation at the Clash of Civilisations conference
in London on January 20 and at Finchley Progressive
Synagogue
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http://groups.google.it/group/it.politica/browse_thread/thread/9c1904f19fe35558/2c3b0f961364a3f1?lnk=st&q=alessandro+saitta&rnum=1&hl=it#2c3b0f961364a3f1
5 Febbraio 2007
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