How do we deal with the 'dehumanisation' or 'demonisation' of muslims

[Kaka Tim]

I think that Hazel Blears has been very consistent, and quite brave within the party and cabinet, in standing up for the empowerment of disempowered and excluded sections of the community, and standing up against dialogue with extremists on the other.

Oh fuck off. Standing up for Enpowerment my arse.The last thing the govt - at central or local level - want is genuinley empowered communities. They want to assimilate a few token individuals into their - utterly disempowering - bureaucracy.
Eight years as a community development worker - working for lcoal councils, social-housing providers and charities - has made that abundently clear to me.
Hazel Blears hasn't got a fucking clue.

 

[Fullyplumped]

Oh fuck off. Standing up for Enpowerment my arse.The last thing the govt - at central or local level - want is genuinley empowered communities. They want to assimilate a few token individuals into their - utterly disempowering - bureaucracy. Eight years as a community development worker - working for lcoal councils, social-housing providers and charities - has made that abundently clear to me. Hazel Blears hasn't got a fucking clue.

The initiative to which I drew attention is led and delivered by a group of Muslim women and is part of a broader positive action programme to get Muslim women to get visibly involved in public life. They can decide, as can we, whether school boards, community councils, local councils, the magistracy and the like are worth being involved in or are part of a disempowring bureacracy. I note that the organisations for which you have worked in your eight whole years of community development work are examples of the type of disempowering bureaucracies that... appointed you. Unless you think your work has just been a token gesture?

You said earlier -

Ah yes - lets get a few of the ethnics into the management classes eh?... It would be far better to work at communtiy level and encourage different working class communties to make common cause with each other - after all they live in the same areas, use the same local amenities and all getting shafted by the same government and bankers. And I know from my own expericence that this can and does work.

All disempowered together, eh? Only kidding. There is space for strictly local community development work in localities, together with leadership development focussed on getting sections of the population that have been excluded. And of course locality based community develoopment work often misses out minority ethnic groups, or isn't practised at all in many parts of the country. I'm sure you know this really, with eight years under your belt, but you just don't like the minister who is fostering this work.

 

[tbaldwin]

i am interested in the diffferrences between how the left organised in the East End jewish community b4 ww2 and how the left now view the muslim ( actually bengali and in other areas pakistani/gujerti communities .. the turkish kurdish muslim communties don't fit into the lefts 'plan') communities

the main differrence i see is that the left now are appealingin a relegious basis NOT a class basis to these communities .. the CP in the 1930s did not appeal to the synagogues and orgainised on an pretty class basis .. respect not only seemed to work very much thru the mosques but used keo local businessmen. while the CP did have some business support in the east end it does not appear in ANY way comparable to hwo respect operated

i appreciate that maybe the mosques are stronger now than the rabbis were then .. though i am not so sure .. the kids in TH really are far more interested in the same stuff kids are everywhere than mosque

so iguess my point is IF you relate to muslims as muslims, instead of as people who ALSO happen to be muslim as well as people who live in a particulalr area, who go to certain schools, who work in certain trades, who like this or that music, then you run the danger of dividing BY RELEGION, of accentuating the differrence of relegion, instead of finding what unites us all

Good post comrade D...
The thing is that the left have made some really sad mistakes on this issue over the last 20 years or so.
There are loads of people bought up in the muslim faith in the UK and guess what some are reactionary sexist homophobic bastards and some are anything but. Some blame western decadence for all the problems of the world and some love liberal freedoms.
The Left need to be making alliances with people from all and no religious backgrounds who reject the most irrational shite. They need to be arguing against all religious fundamentalists not half heartedly cos there embarrased that there skin colour is slightly darker but wholeheartedly cos it is the only way real change will come about.

 

[durruti02]

A 16th Century style Reformation outta do it I reckon.

indeed .. but remember the muslims were civilised while we were barbaric at that time

and the question remains .. how do we help progressives in the muslim community

 

[durruti02]

Good post comrade D...
The thing is that the left have made some really sad mistakes on this issue over the last 20 years or so.
There are loads of people bought up in the muslim faith in the UK and guess what some are reactionary sexist homophobic bastards and some are anything but. Some blame western decadence for all the problems of the world and some love liberal freedoms.
The Left need to be making alliances with people from all and no religious backgrounds who reject the most irrational shite. They need to be arguing against all religious fundamentalists not half heartedly cos there embarrased that there skin colour is slightly darker but wholeheartedly cos it is the only way real change will come about.

thank you very much Comrade T .. it seems to me the liberal left are forever looking for short cuts to the revolution

 

[Stoat Boy]

I think the biggest issue is Saudi Arabia. It is the one that funds all of the extremists and has allowed Whabbism is make a disproportionate stake in how modern Islam has been shaped.

Its the equivilent of the Klu Klux Klan being able to spend billions promoting its form of Christianity through out the world.

In my opinion adherents of the Whabbism brand of Islam need demonising. Its a shitty, oppresive and nasty way of living and thinking and if it where not for oil would have remained a brutish but irrelevant belief system.

We need an alternative energy source to oil. The West should be pouring billion upon billion into things like research into solar energy and so on and once oil becomes an irrelevance, then Whabbism will just recede and the vast majority of Muslims will just become another major faith group, getting on with their lives.

 

[treelover]

Yes, the baleful influence of the House of Saud and its massive funding of Wahibism, especially here in the UK, is well documented.

 

[Stoat Boy]

Wahibism

I can never remember how to spell it

 

[durruti02]

I think the biggest issue is Saudi Arabia. It is the one that funds all of the extremists and has allowed Whabbism is make a disproportionate stake in how modern Islam has been shaped.

Its the equivilent of the Klu Klux Klan being able to spend billions promoting its form of Christianity through out the world.

In my opinion adherents of the Whabbism brand of Islam need demonising. Its a shitty, oppresive and nasty way of living and thinking and if it where not for oil would have remained a brutish but irrelevant belief system.

We need an alternative energy source to oil. The West should be pouring billion upon billion into things like research into solar energy and so on and once oil becomes an irrelevance, then Whabbism will just recede and the vast majority of Muslims will just become another major faith group, getting on with their lives.

and saudi is of course a major US ally .. so much for the suppossed war on Islam beloved of the liberal left

 

[likesfish]

saudi version of islam is anything but progressive and nobody who is less right than ukip should have anything to do with anyone who follows that belief it in compatable with basic respect for women, non belivers etc etc etc

over flavours your mileage may vary.
unfortunatly you can buy your own normal koran or get an extra gucci hardline saudi version for free