Peter Tatchell: A Human Rights Defence.

The Results of Standing up for Human Rights.

Islamaphobia – the attempt to define criticism of Islam in any form as racialism and  beyond the Pale –  has taken a new toll. A virulent discussion has taken place on the Socialist Unity site. Around charges that Peter Tatchell is ‘Islamphobic’. That his campaigning for human rights is barely disguised Western cultural imperialism. That Peter has used gay issues to attack Muslims. That he is therefore, objectively, (and subjectively) an ally of the far-right. Barry Kade (Green left) has added fuel to the fire by a confused partial defence of this disgraceful pack of lies (here). He even added his own claims. That Islamophobia is hidden behind atttacking Islam on rationalist grounds,  “this racism is veiled in the language of enlightenment liberalism and secularism.”

Really….

There are plenty of causalities in this battle. Beginning with Kade’s ability to disscuss politics without clichés. Andy Newman appears to have stepped into deeper waters than he bargained for. Derek Wall of the Green Party’s left,  published a reasonable defence of Tatchell’s record as a human rights campaigner. That this charge is “a lie plain and simple”. We have teased Derek in the past (and not doubt will in the future) but this was heartfelt. For reasons best known to himself Andy Newman saw fit to add a much more mixed analysis (here). This had some well-expressed comments that make it clear that Tatchell was not an ally of the far-right. But melded them with much pontificating around the subject, he failed to resolve the issue. Letting the smear’s traces there. To the annoyance of some Greens. They see this, not unreasonably, as an effort to stir up animosity between  the Green Party and liberal Islamist Salma Yaqoob. She after all refuses to reject the Sharia – how could she, she is a believer! It would be like a Marxist criticising Marx (opps – we do).  Instead Yaqoob and her apologists, talk of Islam’s ‘respect’ for human beings (not, all varieties and forms of the religion  taken account of, often  in evidence for Gays). Andy Newman caps this by  citing the obscure post-Colonial cultural studies academics and paper activists who began the latest hunt-the-Tatchell,

Rather than help, politics such as Tatchell’s have worsened the situation for the majority of queer Muslims. It has become increasingly difficult for groups such as the Safra Project, who are forced into the frontline of the artificially constructed gay v. Muslim divide, to contest sexual oppression in Muslim communities. The more homophobia is constructed as belonging to Islam, the more anti-homophobic talk will be viewed as a white, even racist, phenomenon, and the harder it will be to increase tolerance and understanding among straight Muslims. The dialogue which Safra and other queer Muslim groups have long sought over this is more often than not ignored or disregarded, and white gay activists such as Tatchell have proved indifferent to the fact that the mud which they sling onto Muslim communities lands on queer Muslims themselves.

Peter has answered such charges many times. He states that “We should fight the real oppressors and not pick fights with, and publish false allegations against, other progressive people. Sectarian attacks undermine the struggle for human rights, social justice, peace and anti-imperialism.” (here) It follows that if homophobia (and say, the oppression of women) is something Muslim institutions and organisations practice (which is obviously the case) then we have to fight the institutions and organisations that promote this. If these academics (whose dismissal of ‘white gay activists’ says more about their ‘anti-racism’ than anything else) want a ‘dialogue’ with the Safra Project then so be it. But what is their attitude to States, Islamist parties and religious bodies which do actively promote anti-gay anti-human rights policies? Dialogue with oppressors?

Let’s be clear on this. Peter Tatchell stands on the side of universal human rights. Some cack-handed Leninists and post-modern relativists, may consider this as disguise for Western claims for European and US cultural norms to be better than any others. However, human rights, in the way Peter grasps them, are part of a fight for a better world. They are not fixed, but the result of people actively to defend them. We could add that the UN Declaration of Human Rights was itself the product of a sincere desire to draw together many different conceptions. Far from being exclusively  ‘Western’ – they tried to include a planetary spectrum of views (Mary Ann Glendon, A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ( 2000). It was explicitly anti-colonialist. For all its faults (and there are many, starting with its neglect of material rights), it remains something that can be carried forward and developed. Not retreated from because some Muslims ((excused by attendant Islamophiles) think it represents an attack on their divine right to declare their own religious rights more important than anyone else’s.

Andy Newman now states, that (here),

At no time did any one ever accuse Derek Wall of being Islamophobic.
At no time did any one ever accuse Green Left of being Islamophobic
At no time did any one ever accuse the Green Party of being Islamophobic

The term Islamophobia has poisoned the whole discussion. Rather like the question ‘when did you stop beating your wife’, it is almost impossible to deny without some dirt rubbing off. I have good reason to dislike the word – as one of the first British leftists to be charged with it publicly on Islamophobia Watch. Someone very hostile to Islam full stop, Christopher Caldwell, in Reflections on the Revolutions in Europe (2009) has claimed that it’s a sign that any criticism of Islam is deemed unacceptable. This appears borne out by the ‘debate’ around Peter Tatchell.

What a mess.