Though Cowards Flinch

A fantastic and very encouraging article by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – author of Purple Hibiscus and winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize – appeared on the Guardian‘s Comment is free page yesterday, describing an optimistic look at the future of Nigerian politics as being debated by young people today.

Inspired in part by recent events in the Middle East and North Africa, Adichie recalls the pessimism of old:

Coups could remove heads of state, I knew, but not mass revolutions; there were no models for such a thing on the continent. And so I, like many Nigerians, watched the Tunisia and Egypt revolutions with admiration, surprise, even awe.

Those events certainly have set a precedent. What occurred by largely young, secular people in Egypt, Tunisia and other countries that many had written off as having no palate for democracy, has very far reaching consequences, and looks set to inform the youth of nations where political corruption and poverty have in days past become all but accepted.

Adichie goes on to note that:

About 70% of Nigeria’s population is under 35, and there has been, for a long time, a political culture of ignoring the youth, who themselves were disconnected from the political process.

With figures like that it’s hard to imagine the political authorities will be able to ignore them any longer. A closer look at other figures about the country contextualises why a stir in youth politics was likely to reach boiling point at some stage. According to Ola Balogun in an article for the International Marxist Tendency some 40 million out of the 150 million Nigerians are unemployed. And with 45% of the population aged between 15-40 years the younger population are disproportionately affected by the deep levels of inequality and limited work opportunities in today’s Nigeria.

Al Jazeera last year carried an article explaining how UK banks were complicit in aiding corruption in Nigeria – a phenomena which ranked the West African nation 130th out 180 nations in Transparency International’s list of country’s perceived as most transparent in 2009. The article explains that most of the population survive on less than $2 a day or less, “yet the country is one of the world’s top champagne importers and its wealthiest residents are among the continent’s richest.”

The article continues:

Nuhu Ribadu, the former head of its anti-corruption agency, has estimated that corruption and mismanagement swallow up about 40 per cent of Nigeria’s annual oil income.

An article on All Africa gives further specific details:

In the absence of official statistics on wages and National employment, it would be a fair guestimate to expect that over 50% of the employed labour force in Nigeria would earn below N30,000 per month while about 70% of the same labour force would earn less that N50,000 per month! For example, you would have to be a graduate with over 10 years experience in the civil service to earn a salary of about N50,000/month (N600,000 a year).

Factor in necessities for an average family and “[t]here can be no place for one naira of savings in this budget profile!”

The tight grip of acceptance, which Adichie speaks about in her article, has allowed people to suffer terrible inequality. But the young are starting to realise their own potential, and the emergence of hope has been rekindled.

Adichie reminds us that:

On 25 March, I will moderate a presidential debate, organised by youth groups under the name “What About Us”, in which candidates will answer questions sent via social media. The first presidential debate to focus on young people, it is an exciting prospect.

Of course the problems of Nigeria are wider than lack of participation alone. Though the secession of south-eastern Biafra has long ended, tensions still exist, particularly based on ethnicity. But when poverty is a seemingly permanent reality, and opportunities are geared towards the upper strata of society alone, the conditions are inevitably directed towards disintegration.

Under the watch of the world bank and the IMF the Nigerian economy in the 1970s had been dominated by oil, while other export goods like coal, tin, palm oil “were almost completely neglected”. As Ola Kazeem has noted, in places most affected by the drastic changes in production “tension started mounting among the various ethnic groups who previously had peacefully lived side by side.” As much as anything else rallies and revolutions in places like Egypt have been to do with transparency (or, indeed, lack of); when a growing political force in Nigeria can start to call politicians to question over charges of corruption, Nigerian society can start to reverse the tide of community and national tension.

It won’t be easy, but installing democracy and accountability never is, though it’s worth the fight. On this Adichie says:

Nigerian politics has been, since the military dictatorships, largely non-ideological. Rather than a battle of ideas, it is about who can pump in the most money and buy the most access […] Debating ideas, spurred by youth participation, might bring more substance. Candidates will no longer merely hold colourful rallies, but will answer questions about important issues such as education and electricity.

Hope is important for those most vulnerable, and with the work by Adichie and others like her, a new wave of politics will begin in Nigeria. It won’t happen overnight, but certainly something seems to be changing, and the old order should be quaking in their boots.

The nuts of David Cameron’s speech is as follows: it was badly delivered by the Prime Minister; it used vacuous terms no-one is familiar with like muscular liberalism; and though it chimed with things he has previously said, perhaps it was an error to deliver a speech addressing political and extreme Islam, in Germany, on the same day as the English Defence League marched in Luton.

Many bloggers and writers have been quick to point out that Cameron’s speech was ill-informed. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown for example said:

“Many of us Muslims would be with David Cameron if his speech hadn’t shown him to be selective, hypocritical, calculating, woefully indifferent to Muslim victims of relentless racism and chauvinism. He was speaking the words of white extremists but in posh.”

An Independent leader article explained that though the PM was spoilt for choice as to where he could’ve delivered a speech of national interest – Luton, Bradford, Birmingham, London – instead he chose Munich, which for Indy editors seemed “especially odd … since Germany is going through a spasm of intolerance towards its ethnic minority communities at the moment.”

Cameron’s use of the word liberal concerned others. Victoria Williams at Labour Uncut wondered if by “liberal” Cameron meant “forcing your beliefs onto others and excluding them from society if they disagree”.

However none of these examples really get to why Cameron was flawed in his actual sentiments. Moreover they seem less inclined to engage with how we oppose all forms of segregation and extremism, while being tolerant and multicultural without being culturally relativist.

Appealing to a sense of (muscular liberal) Britishness – which John Milbank yesterday noted for sounding far too ‘Cleggian’ and ‘Osbornite’ – was one notable error of Cameron’s. Most people oppose extremist tendencies of any stripe, but do so with a set of tangible ideas, which “Britishness” is not. Instead it is a term which can be twisted and turned into whatever meaning one wishes. Ideas which Cameron was quite happy to promote – universal human rights for everybody including women and people of other faiths; equality of all before the law; democracy and the right of people to elect their own government – are formed through political appeals to freedom and prosperity for all, border markings are irrelevant here, and serve only to trivialise.

There is nothing contradictory about multiculturalism and integration, but Cameron – if he was any kind of ideas man, transcending the Conservative Party’s recent past of patriotism for its own sake – ought to have spent less time trying to work out what Britishness means and reject what Nick Johnson, author of a recent Fabian Society report on integration, calls the “narrow conservatism that erodes diversity into a monolithic whole.”

Credit where it is due, Cameron does understand that diversity ought not to be forced, and individuals in a society should not be tenuously pigeon-holed in what he rightly referred to as “state multiculturalism” (though it’s fair game to ask what Cameron imagines can replace it?).

Finally the criticism levelled at Cameron’s speech that it was propaganda for the EDL (which Sadiq Khan accused the PM of) is way off the mark. The impetus here should be for leftist groups and anti-extremist movements who rally against the far right to make their opposition to fundamentalist Islam more vocal, ruining any opportunity the EDL have of saying Mr Cameron is talking their language. To be sure, nothing Cameron said on extremism in some communities should be to the contrary of what the left fights for, and yet instead of engaging with this angle, some are happier to accuse Cameron of propaganda and leave that void wide open for the EDL.

Cameron made a pigs ear out of his recent speech, but many on the left have hardly been accurate in their critiques.

BBC website 5th February 2011:

Security minister Baroness Neville-Jones said when Mr Cameron expressed his opposition to extremism, he meant all forms, not just Islamist extremism.

Sun headline 5th February 2011:

Zero tolerance for Muslim extremists

The Tories’ new Communications Director doesn’t seem very good.

I’ll be back to word-based blogging here in a day or two, but for now I’m happy with this image if the Egyptian revolution.  It’s had plenty of coverage worlwide already, but I hope it becomes truly iconic.

By @nevinezaki: Christians protecting Muslims at prayer, February 2nd 2011, Tahir Square, Cairo

A few brave Algerians, some draped in Tunisian flags, have stood up to their autocratic, police state government.

This pre-planned demonstration, held yesterday, attracted only a few hundred people, but it does at least suggest that the riots that broke out on January 7th may just be the start of something bigger in Algeria after all, after a lull of a couple of weeks.

Equally the brutality with which the state has reacted suggests that if popular unrest does develop, it will become much bloodier than the Tunisian uprising, much more quickly.

The Algerian government, after years of civil war and the institutional embedding of  the repression of its own people, and having seen what happened in Tunisia, is unlikely to do anything other than continue with its highly repressive tactics.

The question is whether sections of the Algerian people are organized and/or desperate enough to fight back enough till the state wavers (in the face of both internal challenge and changing international opinion, for whom perceived security of the huge oil and natural gas supplies will play an important role).

Regional expert George Joffe thinks a Tunisia-style uprising is unlikely in Algeria:

Next door [to Tunisia] in Algeria, very few of the [7th January] rioters articulated any political demands; they were just angry about sharp rises in the price of sugar and cooking oil.

The government, with deep pockets from the export of oil and gas, quickly said it would curb price rises, and since then the rioting has tapered off. Algeria has already had its “people power revolution” – the year after Ben Ali took office [1987].

Then, days of intense rioting in the capital led the authorities to loosen controls on society and the economy, allowing private newspapers and multi-party elections for the first time. That flowering of freedom quickly degenerated into a conflict between security forces and Islamist rebels which killed 200,000 people, according to some estimates, from which Algeria is still emerging.

After that experience, few Algerians have any appetite for any more political transformations.

For myself, I’m not quite so sure.

First, his analysis seems to overlook the fact that the first events in Tunisia were ones of desperation (there can be nothing much more desperate than sefl-immolation), but that initial inchoate anger became highly politicised and targeted incredibly quickly.

Further, the fact that the concessions on price rises that George mentions have been granted may give an inkling of hope that more can be achieved.

The very obvious disparities of wealth in the country – a country in which there was a $15bn trade surplus from its natural wealth in 2010 but in which people still can’t afford bread – may still be the key lever for further popular dissent.

Amongst a population where 70% of people are under 30, and for many of whom therefore direct memories of the worst of the civil war (1990-1998) are either absent or those now of earlier childhood, there may now be a tendency to hark back to better legitimized  expressions of independence and solidarity against French colonialism.

Certainly, I’ve not got George’s experience and knowledge, but I lived in the mountains of Eastern Algeria in the mid 1980s, when the place was under heavy Soviet influence, and while at this range it becomes all a bit impressionistic, I have followed the sad events in Algeria closely over the years.

And even after years of repression, there does seem to remain a tradition of fierce independence, often associated with a distinctive, though ethnographically confusing, Berber identity, especially in the Eastern Kabyle area of the country where back in the 1980s the government’s Arabicisation programme (and allied repression of the Berber languages) fostered long term resentment against a government viewed as a puppet of outside forces.  (Back then, such criticisms were only whispered, as I was followed by a completely inept but pleasant enough seeming government agent for much of my time there).

A key question is whether such different (from Tunisia) starting conditions will lead, if anything gets off the ground, towards a secular uprising, given the ravages of the civil war between a Western client-facing autocracy and violent (and often horribly brutal) Islamicist rebellion.

My hunch, looking on from afar, is that while many observers are looking towards Egypt for the next Arab-world uprising, it might be advisable to keep an eye on Tunisia’s Western borders for a not-quite-so-Arabic uprising.

The left in Europe in the UK has missed the boat with Tunisia, and the Tunisians don’t seem to need too much external support.  In Algeria, where conditions of social and economic repression of various kinds have now lasted far longer than all Algerians have been alive, the process of overt politicization may take longer, and be much ‘messier’.

In such a case there may be something in Jennifer O’Mahoney’s call for a renewed spirit of international socialism through support for leftwing, secular groupings like this one (see also this useful translation), and perhaps also through domestic efforts aimed at the oil and gas giants that dominate the Algerian economy to the benefit of themselves, a few Algerian plutocrats, but to the exclusion of ordinary Algerians.

I’m far too old for Jennifer’s call to European socialists to support Vietnam/Afghanistan style armed insurrection against imperial powers, and I’m not too sure whether she’s being ironic when she makes it, but if it’s any help I’m one of only about 10 non-natives who understands any of the Chaouïa language  at all (ok, I’m a bit rusty.).

You never know, it might come in handy.

I put off writing this because I had already got the subject out of my system, but it has returned and it’s very difficult to ignore: it is the question of multiculturalism, and more specifically what this means to anti-fascists.

Richard Seymour recently produced a blog entry about philosopher Slavoj Zizek’s attempts to critically analyse violence and provocation carried out against the Strojan family – an extended family of 31 Gypsies, 14 of them children.

Seymour’s beef is with two things: firstly the outcome of the events, which culminated in the police succumbing to pressure by violent mobs and forcing the family to leave, who, as he notes, had they not “driven the gypsies out, the racist mob would have done so with fire and blades.”

The second thing Seymour has beef about is Zizek’s poor research on the matter. Zizek has used this example to underline his own controversial view of multiculturalism (more of which in a moment) but what he has failed to do is properly understand what happened to the family. As Seymour says in a reply to critics of the aforementioned entry:

I find no evidence that the Strojan family are car thieves, and they didn’t murder anyone. It is true that locals blamed the Strojan family for a number of thefts, but it’s also true that they acknowledge when pressed that the Strojans have been scapegoated on this issue.

I’m with Seymour here; had Zizek done his homework, he would’ve seen that this is a case of scapegoating, or at best a heavy-handed response to petite-theft among some individuals of a family, perhaps spurred on because of the family’s racial background. Zizek here is not being racist, he has just erroneously placed this disgraceful event in the wrong context; by implication I feel that Zizek’s “apologia for anti-Roma racism” is due to a misjudgement by the Slovenian.

****

As it happens I find Zizek’s critique of multiculturalism very useful (which is why one can agree with Seymour on this issue, and still be in defence of Slavoj Zizek, so to speak). I will attempt to place it in its correct context.

Multiculturalism, according to Kenan Malik, author of From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and its Legacy, has come to be defined as a policy promoting diversity among a society of people with fixed identities, partly as a reaction to inharmonious feeling at a time of increased immigration into the UK. For Malik this has simultaneously become the problem and solution to intolerance. While it rather nobly aims to celebrate difference, it also rather crudely pigeon-holes people, on account of their racial or national heritage.

In trying to effect “respect for pluralism [and] avowal of identity politics” – which have come to be “hallmarks of a progressive, anti-racist outlook” – segregation has simply become institutionalised.

As a consequence to the respect agenda, all cultures have become of equal value, which may mean that in purely multicultural terms everything is permissible if it can be justified on the grounds of cultural heritage – which leads to the question who can authoritatively account for what a cultural trait is (for Malik, such policies in the eighties served only to strengthen conservative Muslim leaders in Birmingham, on the daft assumption that they alone could authoritatively account for what Islam is).

For Zizek, there is a bourgeois liberal variant of multiculturalism that is repulsed by (far) right wing populism of the Other (the immigrant for example) to the extent that it starts to fetishise the Other. Not content with opposing all racism directed at this Other, it starts to think the Other can do no wrong. Take as an example the song “Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer” often sung by Julius Malema, President of the African National Congress Youth League; the real anti-racist would oppose this song in spite of its historical context, for whatever the white farmers’ crimes during the apartheid, this is a song that is derogatory towards a race. The bourgeois liberal fetishist, of the ilk to which Zizek refers, may justify singing the song on the grounds that such retaliation is historically justified (you could perhaps ascribe to this the notion of “white guilt”).

For Zizek, the bourgeois liberal justifying Malema singing the song is akin to expressing the belief that Melama knows no better, leading Zizek to assert that certain modes of politically correct tolerance of the Other is grounded upon the belief that certain groups can be judged differently (which is why the BNP for example are wrong for being racist populists, but Malema is clear on the grounds that he has experienced racism himself). This ends up being monoculturalism based upon a rather stereotypical ideal of how the Other should act – the point being that the bourgeois liberal, for Zizek, is deluding himself by thinking he is a mutliculturalist, since it is almost a colonial understanding of the foreign Other who he is identifying.

In short, this notion of multiculturalism masks a racist idea of the Other who needs to be “tolerated” (for more on this see Naadir Jeewa’s excellent analysis).

The confusion here lies in who we identify as this bourgeois liberal, naïve apologist? For many people who subscribe to multiculturalism this simply doesn’t resonate. For me, Zizek’s analysis is less a critique of multiculturalism, and more a critique of naïve, neo-colonial monoculturalism (which I assume he is well aware of, though if not, we ought to understand that the bourgeois liberal variant of multiculturalism is not necessarily inherent to multiculturalism proper). But maybe the word multiculturalism lends itself too easily to the idea that cultural relativism is appropriate– since we’re immediately in a struggle to identify what we can call culture (authority on which, as Malik explains, can often fall into the wrong hands).

When most people support multiculturalism, what they mean is that a country ought not to have a dominant national character immigrants are obliged to adopt as a guarantee of their debt to their new homeland. Instead a country should allow all to practice what they wish, as they wish, provided that it doesn’t harm anyone. Perhaps I’ll adopt the term socialist universalism?

The scene was Toronto, Canada, where atheist and anti-theist Christopher Hitchens came to debate former British Prime Minister Tony Blair on the resolution “religion is a force for good”.

Munk debates – who organised the event – saw all 2,600 tickets sell out soon after the ticket office opened, while CBC news in Canada claim that “scalpers outside were asking for as much as $500 a ticket.

Inside, the compere and the chair of the debate both felt inclined to remind the audience that Christopher Hitchens has recently been diagnosed with cancer which he battles with today, yet this has not put stop to his intellectual output, as tonight’s debate seems to testify.

At the start of the debate, the crowd were asked to offer their own opinions of the resolution in a poll. The pre-debate results came in at: 22% for the resolution, 57% against and 21% undecided.

Hitchens started the debate by mentioning Cardinal Newman, assuring the crowd that his opposition to the resolution doesn’t just pick on the extreme elements of religion, or so-called extreme elements, but rather the false hope of the moderate voice as well – a theological position which, to Hitchens, is just as damaging and preposterous, but which is given legitimacy.

Not to forget the fanatic side, Hitchens asked the audience to think what will happen if fanatics take hold of apocalyptic weaponry – before explaining that in the Middle East this is already a reality.

In Blair’s reply to his opponents’ opening statement, he told the audience that a quarter of the work done on HIV/AIDS in Africa is carried out by Catholic organisations. Faith, for Blair, is not just a means of counsel to people, but it is a spiritual experience, which rather than sits separate to science, actually contextualises it.

In reply to Hitchens on fanatics, Blair reminded him that it is not just religion that produces evil, pontificating on Pol Pot and Stalin.

After setting out their statements, the argument seemed to rest on whether religion can be a necessary source of inspiration for people who carry out good, in the name of the faith – something the Tony Blair Faith Foundation is keen to promote, in addition to promoting interfaith discussion and resolution – or whether what we choose to describe as religious inspiration is simply common humanism which is an appeal to kindness that all people share, religious or not.

As this notion became the centre of the debate, Hitchens was able to set the narrative, leaving Blair to try and find examples where faith is the main driver of good. The former PM, being reduced to admit that people have the capability of good, religious or not – which would seem obvious – it allowed Hitchens to assert that faith is not necessarily a force for good, since it is as likely that someone with faith can be as good as someone without it, leaving Blair to pursue the rather flimsy counter-argument that faith can be some source of inspiration for those who do good in its name – a position which does little to undermine Hitchens’ own.

The most memorable line of the night came from Hitchens who said that “the cure for poverty has a name: the empowerment of women” which while Blair did not disagree, left him in the position of distancing himself from bigoted opinions inside the church.

The two debaters concluded in disagreeing the qualities of faith and religion, Hitchens opining that it should be enough to want to help others without recourse to a “theocratic dictator” while Blair assumed that love and humanism for other people can be legitimately bound in religion, which is no bad thing.

The audience had the opportunity to vote on the resolution after the debate, to see whether they had changed their mind (which 75% of them had said before the debate they were open to do); 68% of the votes ended up backing Hitchens, while 32% backed Blair – which means a swing of nearly 10% for both men.

The question remains; religion and faith are not always bad for the world, prejudice and intolerance can be carried out by anyone of any theological position or none. But does it necessarily follow that religion is a force for good? A crowd in Toronto has said no.

I’m sure most of us have seen the response by the Pope regarding the Catholic Church’s work with victims of AIDS/HIV and what place the condom has in fighting this. As can be seen from a few high profile Catholic blogs, writers and journalists themselves felt duty bound to correct the mistranslation of the Pope’s words, in lieu of the Vatican’s late press release.

Dr Janet Smith, who holds the Father Michael J. McGivney Chair of Life Ethics at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, penned a blog entry underlining the Pope’s words as the understanding of a warped human subjectivity (namely, a male prostitute) on the path to “moral growth”. She reminds her readers that the condom, in homosexual sexual activity, does not act as a contraceptive, but rather the intention of wearing one is at once a step towards moral culpability (something she, and thus the Pope feels, is absent from such an individual) and of humanising sexual activity.

This outlines some complex notions of the condom in Catholic teaching, but also sees Dr Smith trip up a little; is the condom the means with which live sperm are trapped, leading to a loss of life, or is the condom only prohibited where the possibility of procreation exists, namely during heterosexual sexual activity? This problematic is not outlined here, rather, the Pope’s words refer to the opinion that condom use is a trivial means to stop the spreading of HIV/AIDS in comparison to the humanisation of sexual activity – which is the official line on the matter.

Does this change the Catholic Church’s attitude to condoms? No. Since “she” (the gender which the Pope attributes to the Church) still regards condoms as a failing means to combat disease, there is nothing in the Pope’s words which convey approval for public programmes relating to the distribution of condoms for male prostitutes, since according to Dr Smith this would risk actively condoning sin; what the Church does condone, however, is leading people to the path of Christ – a road which the Church accepts will not be entirely free from what they consider immoral acts.

The analogy Dr Smith chooses to represent the Pope’s stand is that of a bank robber with an unloaded gun. What he is doing is still wrong, but at least there will be less harm involved. This wasn’t the only analogy used to represent the Pope’s words. Thomas Peters of the American Papist spoke about the alcoholic who reduces the amount of days he binge drinks on, noting that while binge drinking is wrong, there is a modicum of harm reduction in his actions.

Lisa Graas, a self-described pro-life Catholic mom of four, lifelong Kentuckian and contributor at David Horowitz’s NewsRealBlog, did not use an analogy herself, but seemed to imply that the Pope was using the figure of a male prostitute as a means of characterising a person who is so ignorant of Catholic moral teaching, might still have “an ounce of moral responsibility” even if that is the moral injunction not to kill someone. The Church recognises this, at the same time as recognising that the person, on the rocky road to Christ, may act immorally.

So this is the point. And to all those who welcome the Pope’s words, remember that what he is saying is actually worse than we originally thought, to be precise male prostitutes are so disgusting that for them condom use is a moral step up. That’s not progress.

Recently I wrote:

An anti-Semite by the name of Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky will be addressing an otherwise very respectable Mosque tonight in my local area of Kilburn.

He is the head of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN), the website of which has an article clearly demonstrating the extent to which he views Jews as plotters. An article on that website details a recent seminar given by a deeply dubious character Sheikh Yusuf Ali who talks about the Zionist plot against Muslims; then clearly details Zakzaky noting “the Jewish plot against Islam is manifested in Iraq as they sent Bush to capture Iraq for them”. There is of course the obligatory reference to the “protocols”.

According to his biography on the official website of the IMN:

The goal of the Islamic movement is to enlighten the Muslims as to their duties as individuals and as a community. The movement owns more than three hundred primary/secondary schools located in different places mainly in the northern part of the country. They are known by the name of Fudiyyah Schools. This is in addition to many Islamic centers and other institutions. The movement also owns the Nigeria’s most widely circulated newspaper, Al Mizan, in the Hausa language.

It also details Zakzaky’s arrests, which the site claims were “for his ideas”.

The Jerusalem Post – one of the few publications with details of Zakzaky’s visit – mentions details of the host of the conference, the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC). They say:

The IHRC is a Hezbollah and Islamic Republic supporting organization. At an anti-Israel rally in Hyde Park during the Second Lebanon War, its chair Massoud Shadjareh wore a Hezbollah flag as did research director Reza Kazim, who was seen chanting phrases like “We are all Hezbollah” and “Bomb, bomb Tel Aviv.” At a pro- Israel rally in London’s Trafalgar Square in 2008, Kazim was ejected by the police for filming within the roped off area.

According to an article written by the Middle East Strategic Information written in 2009:

• Zakzaky’s IMN is growing popular among impoverished Nigerian Muslims
• He believes Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden do not exist, acts of terrorism in the west are organised by western intelligence services, and that Tony Blair was behind the 7/7 bombings
• He claims Nigeria’s secularist leaders perform ritual sacrifices removing unborn babies from their Mother’s wombs by ripping them out
• He believes Jews are “”dastardly infidels” and draws inspiration from Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and the deceased Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin

He has been and gone now, but came almost unnoticed.

I hate to come across all Eustonite or “decent” but if Geert Wilders or Le Pen or someone dreadful like that came to our town, we’d be all over them like a rash, but with figures such as Zakzaky – who is not small beer by the way, he is the head of Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN) – we give it a miss.

Some may say that Zakzaky has never committed terror himself, which is why it is not important, but this does not disprove his threat. Some may say, in his words, he does not cause terror. This is questionable, but I’m careful not to make claims I cannot substantiate. During the conference season, the Quilliam Foundation held an event on how non-violent extremism can be just as dangerous as violent extremism. Whether directly or indirectly, Zakzaky has sounded off to the tune of racial discrimination and religious violence, and this should not be sniffed at.

Some will perhaps accuse me, and have done before, of making straw man of whom to knock down. The point here is that I’m not accusing anyone of supporting Zakzaky – though there obviously are some who do - and I’m certainly not saying that in the absence of an anti-fascist picket of him, that I should therefore deduce the anti-fascists in fact support Islamic fascists. It is not true. But I have difficulty understanding why people like Zakzaky don’t wind them up to the point of protest, whereas smaller targets like David Irving, do.

Now let me quickly qualifiy this before I get myself into trouble. Of course Irving is bad news, and has dangerous ideas, but at least he is an army of one; him and maybe some idiots in the National Front or Combat 18. His words are largely ignored by the vast amount of thinking human beings, and are taken on board by a small group of twits that if they express their counterfactual opinions, land themselves in court. Zakzaky, on the other hand, is the head of a church, has many followers and is fiercely anti-Semitic – context, here, is all.

In my quest to get more airplay on Zakzaky, I wrote to three individuals/organisations that I thought could maybe help; Peter Tatchell, Hope not Hate and Unite Against Fascism.

I requested their help in numbers to picket the arrival of Zakzaky and ask questions of the mosque why they felt it responsible to invite someone with a evident history of anti-Semitism and crime.

I saw something on him at the Jerusalem Post and some bits on Harry’s Place blog here and here, as well as a cross-post on the Spittoon website, but when I read next to nothing about him in the mainstream press I wrote to the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Jewish Chronicle – as well as tweeting Martin Bright and Stephen Pollard – Hampstead and Highgate Express and the Kilburn Times.

The only response I got from any of these places was Peter Tatchell to tell me he was ill and had no campaign funds. Tatchell in his email recommended I contact the Board of Deputies of British Jews and contact local news sources – which I had done. It is a great credit to the man for at least writing back to me and taking my email seriously; there indeed is someone who will not allow sentimentalities affect his principles, and I can’t talk highly of him for doing so.

Tatchell’s first line said it all: “I share your anger about Mosques hosting extremist clerics and preachers. It is no better than having a right wing white racist speaking.”

There is no such thing as a “decent” left. There are leftwingers and rightwingers, with some mixing in the middle, and there are hypocrites and those who allow confused politics affect principles. I do not level this charge at anyone in particular, but in the fight against fascism in all its forms, we can’t just sit on our hands, we should be pulling our fingers out.

In the end I went down to the mosque by myself, and I was ineffective and nervous about getting on the wrong side of anyone. But were I backed up with the same level of energy certain organisations reserve for other far rightwingers, we could have told a number of people what we think about foul ideas infiltrating vulnerable communities.

In an attempt to demonstrate western hypocrisy, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – President of Iran – has spoken out at the lack of uproar levelled against the US and the execution of Teresa Lewis, the women convicted of plotting to kill her husband, Julian Lewis, and her stepson, Charles Lewis.

This tactic by the Iranian premier is designed to deflect criticism over Iran’s decision to prosecute Mohamedi Sakineh Ashtiani.

Reports in the BBC say no final decision on Ashtiani’s fate has been made, though some media outlets such as Mehr, a semi-official Tehran news agency, are reporting the judiciary in Iran as having convicted her of murdering her husband which carries the penalty of execution by hanging.

However reports from Isna suggest she has been given a 10-year prison sentence for complicity in her husband’s death.  

During his UN speech, Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying Ashtiani would not be sentenced to stoning, something he vowed to oversee in an interview with former UK Member of Parliament George Galloway recently.

But there had been no willing by Ahmadinejad to allow Ashtiani the opportunity to emigrate to Brazil or Turkey, where both President Lula and President Erdogan were willing to assist.

The charge levelled at Ahmadinejad that he has done far too little still holds. His office was quiet when it was revealed Mohammad Mostafaei, the lawyer of Ashtiani and human rights expert, fled the country after an arrest warrant had been issued against him.

Nor did the President appear to show any public distress when authorities arrested Mostafaei’s wife and brother-in-law, ransacked his office and carried out interrogation methods.

Today a media lens message board post discussed the case of Ashtiani. Some posters echoed the sentiments of Ahmadinejad saying this is only one case among many, and questioning why the same level of outcry had been absent in other cases; exemplifying the case of Al-Janabi, the 14 year old girl who was gang raped, killed and set on fire by U.S. troops in Mahmudiya, Iraq, in 2006.

Oliver Kamm, the Times leader writer and columnist, called the comments “Sub-Chomskyite” on his twitter feed.

There is no Western-designed plot to single out Iran, and even if there was, the most effective campaigns to save Ashtiani’s life have come through grassroots activism such as from Avaaz and the International Committee Against Stoning – by no means front organisations for imperialism, or groups whose interest it is to engage in armed conflict with Iran in the future.

The excuse being spun by Ahmadinejad that Iran is being treated unfairly is down to the extreme measures with which they choose to condemn innocent people such as Ashtiani. Even under Islamic law – professed to be the mode practiced in Iran – adultery cannot be satisfactorily proven before the perpetrator has confessed under free conditions on three separate occasions, or if four males, whom the court are happy to trust, actually witness the act of penetration.

It seems very unlikely that Ashtiani confessed to her husband’s murder under free conditions. Amnesty International, in August, reported that:

televised “confessions” have repeatedly been used by the Iranian authorities to incriminate individuals in custody. Many have later retracted these “confessions”, stating that they were coerced to make them, sometimes under torture or other ill-treatment.

The case of Ashtiani is a reminder of the suspect justice system operating in Iran. It is a foolish position to take, thinking opposition towards her execution is somehow a justification of similar methods used in the US; in fact hostility towards state sanctioned murder ought to be levelled against any country operating it.