"Londonistan"

Here's an interesting thread from Dr Paul Stott from the Henry Jackson Society in response to a tweet from the Muslim Council of Britain's Miqdaad Versi:

• Miqdaad Versi: Seems like not a single Conservative MP (/gvt/potential PM candidates) has spoken out after the Trump quote-tweeting Katie Hopkins using the Islamophobic term "Londonistan" & attacking Sadiq Khan. Many say I should expect this. Yet I am so hurt & disappointed.
• Dr Paul Stott: The tweet below from the Muslim Council of Britain's Witchsmeller Pursuivant adds the term 'Londonistan' to the never ending list of things which are 'Islamophobic'. This thread unpacks what is happening here.
• The term 'Londonistan' originates in the 1990s. Foreign intelligence agencies were staggered that the UK were allowing so many Islamists and jihadists to settle here, and we were seemingly disinterested when the dangers were pointed out.
• The countries angered at the UK included liberal democracies such as France and Belgium, Arab dictatorships in Algeria and Egypt, and countries somewhere in between - notably Russia. France in particular used the word, amazed at the Franco-Algerian jihadists organising here.
• Many Islamists also delighted in Londonistan - Gilles Kepel found Abu Hamza, at the peak of his powers in Finsbury Park mosque, using the term with glee. It took until after 9/11 before the Franco-Algerians were taken seriously, and a few yrs after that before Abu Hamza was.
• In many ways the global jihad starts, not in Islamabad or Kabul, but in London, as Bin Laden's supporters from the Saudi religious awakening faxed out his declarations of jihad from the capital. The rest is history.
• And what was the Muslim Council of Britain doing? In my PhD, I went through their press releases in the pre-9/11 era. They were doing what they do now - complaining about language used to describe terrorism, declaring racism & lobbying newspapers and gov't to use different words.
• The MCB were superbly placed to have opposed Londonistan themselves, but instead declared it ridiculous to believe jihad could be declared by fax. One global war on terror later, Miqdaad and co have succeeded only in turning up their own volume.
• Newspaper editors should be wary of Katie Hopkins, a loose canon. But they should be even more wary of the Muslim Council of Britain, who seek less to fight extremism, but to censor how we may discuss it.
• Oh, and whatever else Donald Trump gets wrong, whilst others tip-toe around the issue, to have someone say clearly and openly Sadiq Khan is an awful Mayor, does us all a favour.

Weekend reading

My copy of The Spectator dropped through the letter box today and the first thing I read was Charles Moore's Spectator Notes. There's quite a BBC theme this week. 

I

In the row which has rumbled on about Laura Kuenssberg’s allegedly biased coverage of the general election, one significant factor has not come into the public domain. Early in the campaign, Kuenssberg was assailed by Labour supporters. But later on, and in the post-election recriminations, it was Conservative supporters who were the more annoyed with her. Perhaps this is simply explained by the fact that Labour did better than expected and the Tories did worse. However, the bit the Tories haven’t said in public but keep complaining about in private is that the BBC never reported that Kuenssberg was so badly threatened online by Corbyn supporters that she was given personal protection. They feel that this subdued her capacity to cover the contest clearly. They suspect that if Theresa May had possessed fans as thuggish as Mr Corbyn’s, the BBC would have made a meal of it. I do not know the details of this story, and the BBC won’t comment on security questions, but I have had it informally confirmed from within the BBC. If it is correct, surely the BBC should disclose it. For my own part, I don’t share the resentment against Laura Kuenssberg. She is guilty of the generic sin, encouraged by the BBC in political reporters — including, over the years, Andrew Marr, Nick Robinson, Norman Smith and others — of giving smart-arse analyses with pithy punchlines rather than just telling us what is happening. For this the Corporation, not the individuals, is to blame.

It did cross my mind during the election that Laura K. was toning it down with regards to criticism Jeremy Corbyn, though I put that down to the BBC as a whole seeming to 'tone it down' as well. But what if Laura was toning it down because she had been successfully intimidated by Corbynistas? Wouldn't that be a jaw-dropping state of affairs, with serious questions for Labour and the BBC? 

Without wishing to add to Laura K's woes, I also think that Mr Moore absolutely hits the nail on the head when he says that Laura K. is guilty of a generic BBC sin, that "of giving smart-arse analyses with pithy punchlines rather than just telling us what is happening". 

II

There was a small but historic moment on the Today programme last week. John Humphrys introduced a report on Saudi Arabia’s support for terrorism as being by the ‘highly respected’ Henry Jackson Society. This flustered the BBC’s security correspondent, Frank Gardner, to whom Humphrys turned. Gardner said that he needed to explain at once that the Henry Jackson Society was ‘right of centre’, not ‘absolutely bang down the centre’. What Gardner meant, but dared not quite directly say, was that in BBC theology ‘highly respected’ means centre-left. Thus the King’s Fund and the Institute for Fiscal Studies are ‘highly respected’ (or, sometimes, ‘independent’). ‘Centre-right’, ‘right of centre’, ‘right-leaning’ think-tanks can just about be tolerated, but can never be ‘highly respected’. A ‘right-wing’ think-tank, tout court, means ‘really bad’. So Gardner was clearly shocked by Humphrys’s description of the Henry Jackson Society and was trying to steer the listener in a different direction. It will be interesting if the Henry Jackson Society remains ‘highly respected’ when it next pops up on Today. Was this a bold move by the excellent new editor, Sarah Sands, or just freelancing by Humphrys? 

Tracking down that exchange to the 5 July edition of Today, here's a transcript of what transpired:

John Humphrys: Saudi Arabia is the biggest source of Islamist extremism in Britain. That is what a report by the highly respected Henry Jackson Society has concluded after extensive research. Saudi Arabia is, of course, our closest ally in the Middle East - or perhaps I should say one of our closest. Frank Gardner, our security correspondent, what do they mean by 'biggest source of Islamist extremism' Frank?

Frank Gardner: Right. First of all I should just say that the Henry Jackson Society, which has spent the last 4 months, 5 months producing this report, it's is a right-of-centre thinktank, so it's not absolutely bang down the centre. It's right-of-centre and they particularly take aim at Islamism, extremism and Putin in Russia. That's their sort of agenda.

I'd rather the BBC dropped labels like 'respected' and 'highly respected' altogether. Let the audience judge whether these organisations are worthy of respect or not.

Ban Trump?

All this ridicule and condemnation over Donald Trump’s “We have places in London and other places that are so radicalised that the police are afraid for their own lives” is just too, too, ‘deja vu all over again’.

This time, because Trump is a potential POTUS (well, we all laughed when Jeremy Corbyn put his name forward)  - this time round the response isn’t so much ‘amused’ as ‘indignant’.

 However, quite a few people don’t think his remark is all that far-fetched.

It does occur to me that even if the police don’t actually fear for their lives, there must be a reason why they haven’t been doing enough to enforce existing laws to prevent illegal cultural practices in areas where they are rife.  Forced marriage, honour killings are still happening, and this report says: 

“An estimated 137,000 women in the UK are affected by female genital mutilation (FGM). However, the true extent is unknown, due to the "hidden" nature of the crime. 

One might think the police are paralysed by fear, and that their biggest fear is of being thought racist, or in this case institutionally Islamophobic.