The writer and secularist Tarek Fatah was interviewed by Ezra Levant on a Canadian current affairs programme a few years back. They were discussing the behaviour of the leader of the Liberal Party in that country, Justin Trudeau. Trudeau had been criticised by some for attending an event hosted by the Islamic Society of North America; a sharia-advocating Islamist group. He had just previously attended a gay pride parade.
Levant was (like many of us) confused as to how someone who openly supported gay rights on Monday, could hang out with groups who may seek to execute gays on Tuesday.
Fatah gave this most superb response.
Unite Against Fascism, Hope Not Hate, the Socialist Workers Party, Stop the War Coalition, Ken Livingstone and all the rest of you who are all but silent on violent and brutal misogyny and homophobia from Islamists, while condemning it from everyone else, this one is just for you:
“This is orientalism, which Edward Said talked about. These are white folks who really don’t think that Muslims are human beings. Maybe in 5,000 years, we will develop to be in that state. Right now, we are some underclass who need to be pandered to. We can make mistakes and they will tolerate us and reach out to us under the diversity agenda. It is the racism of lower expectations. When a white man goes to a racial minority and says “I understand that you are bigoted against gays, you will in the next 1,000 years understand, but until then I will treat you like I treat my serfs”.
Justin Trudeau is yet another in a long line of leftists and liberals whose racism of lower expectations has restored segregation in to western society, and made it increasingly dangerous for women and gay people.
Left-wing racists have encouraged cultural misogyny and the impact is being widely felt – our state institutions are more concerned with being culturally and religiously sensitive than they are with defending the basic civil rights of their female citizens. Sharia tribunals are condoned and defended by many people on the left despite the fact that they blame women for the violence they face, deem marital rape “impossible”, and treat the word of a woman as next to worthless.
But a parallel sharia legal system is not the only development that should cause us to worry; misogyny has now entered the mainstream in British courts with some people escaping punishment, ostensibly because of their religion, while the democratic principle of one law for all is buried deep in an accommodationist swamp.
Take for example the case of Adil Rashid – an 18 year old Muslim man from Birmingham who was convicted of raping a 13 year old girl but escaped a custodial sentence because he was deemed “sexually naïve” and had told psychologists that he believed women to be no more worthy “than a lollipop that has been dropped on the ground”. He claimed he had been taught this of women at the Islamic school he attended .
(I noted a deafening silence, as usual, from most left-wing “feminists” on this occasion.)
There are also the small matters of the dispensing of judicial norms by allowing a female Muslim defendant to wear a full face covering in court, the separate entrances and seating for men and women at leading UK university events, and the arrest of people for causing offence to Islamic sensibilities while a blind eye is turned to signs reading “butcher those who insult Islam”.
It is clear that in some cases, there is one set of rules for our Muslim citizens and yet another for everyone
else. It is also clear how this situation was created; a multicultural separateness which has been promoted and maintained primarily by the political left.
By Anne Marie Waters
Director of Sharia Watch UK. Former UKIP Parliamentary Candidate.