The long delayed, Livingstone report on Islamophobia and the UK Media was finally been published this week. Between £30,000 and £50,000 of public money has apparently been spent on this report.

Frankly, all you need to know about this report, can be determined by the following facts. One of the authors is Inayat Bunglawala. Two of the other authors are Mohammed Abdul Aziz and Tariq Hameed. All three of them - that is, one third of the team - are Muslim Council of Britain activists. No muslim, unconnected to the MCB, were appointed to the committee.

One of the major themes of the report is that the Muslim Council of Britain has been unfairly criticised by journalists. So, in effect, what has happened is this. Ken Livingstone has given tens of thousands of pounds of public money to fund a report, co-authored with the Muslim Council of Britain’s spokesmen, in which newspapers and television stations are criticised for pointing out that the MCB is a promoter of the politics of the Islamist far right.

Precisely what this has to do with the representation of ordinary muslims in the British media is unclear to me. It seems to have rather more to do with Ken Livingstone doing a favour for one of his allies. Isn’t that a scandal?

A curate’s egg
When the report is dealing with the position of ordinary British muslims, who are - let us be frank - facing a tide of suspicion and hostility within this country, it is not at all bad.

There is a section which deals well with the plight of British muslim reporters, who - after 9/11 - found themselves being assigned to “muslim” stories and being treated as “a spokesperson for the faith”.

Other parts of the report take aim at tabloid reports of banned piggy banks and cancelled Christmases: trivial and often untrue stories which are likely to provoke and increase feelings of insecurity, suspicion and anxiety amongst non-Muslims [and] feelings of insecurity, vulnerability and alienation amongst Muslims. That seems correct to me.

These are all points well made.

Silliness
A big chunk of the report consists of a facile analysis of reports in newspapers about muslim subjects: which are then categorised as either positive or negative. The stories identified are overwhelmingly negative. However, as the report admits:

The principal instances of negative association were to do with terrorism in Britain, and with Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran.

No, really? I’d have thought that terrorism was a subject on which one might put a positive spin. Here’s another example of a story which the Report judges to be negative:

Likewise the article ‘Missed clues over the fanatical four’ (Daily Mail, Friday 12 May) rested heavily on the premise that there remained a threat from other similar young Muslim males in the UK. In relation to Jermaine Lindsay, it noted, ‘after he converted to Islam his behaviour changed’ nd ‘religion increasingly became the main focus of his life’. Whilst none of these examples were explicitly anti-Muslim per se, there is a strong implication that ‘Friday prayers’, ‘conversion’ and ‘religion’ are warning indicators of those who might subsequently pose a threat.

Uh huh. Also included among “negative” stories are Prince Naseem’s speeding ban. By that measure, had Naseem won a fight in the week in question, it would have been a “positive” story, no doubt.

Defending the MCB
What troubles me most about Ken Livingstone’s Report is this. A major function of the Report appears to me to be the defence of the Muslim Council of Britain. Given that Inayat Bungalawala is an author of the report, that is wholly unsurprising. However, the sections of the report which defend the MCB appear to have very little, if anything, to do with the representation of ordinary British muslims in the media. It has everything to do, quite explicitly, with an ideological defence of the politics of Islamism.

Section 5 of the Report is wholly devoted to a hatchet job on John Ware. I would be astounded if this section had not been written by one of the three MCB appointees to the panel. It does little more than rehearse all the arguments which the MCB deployed in the wake of the John Ware Panorama expose of that organisation.

A lengthy section repeats the MCB’s unapologetic and unconvincing defence of the clerical fascist and Jamaat e Islami founder, Mawdudi. It is telling that the Report adopts the MCB’s hagiographical attitude to Mawdudi. Indeed, it rather goes to show how close the senior ranks of the MCB are to this vicious and dangerous ideologue.

Here’s the Report’s conclusion:

In reality, Islam is all-embracing in the way that it touches personal relationships, intimate feelings and the inner life of the spirit; and because of the central belief in God as omniscient and omnipotent, it is more holistic than either fascism or communism. The BBC’s response demonstrated that Mawdudi’s words had been quoted accurately, but only in a limited and strictly literal sense. However, the words ‘fascism’ and ‘communism’ carry negative connotations for most people in Britain. The effect of using a very brief quotation was, therefore, to highlight references to these two political systems and to exaggerate the parallels with Islam, thereby transferring to Islam the negativity that fascism and communism connote.

There you have it. A defence of Mawdudi, paid for out of public money by Ken Livingstone!

A further part of section 5 goes on to object to the use of the term “Islamism”, on the grounds that it sounds too much like “Islam”, that it has negative connotations, and that it fails to do justice to the many and varied ways in which the “personal and political” are intertwined within Islam.

A particularly odd part of the Report deals with John Ware’s “hostile body language” when talking to Azzam “Kaboom” Tamimi. This is the part of the interview that the Report thinks is particularly unfair:

John Ware: You said that martyrdom in Israel is, quote, ‘divine bliss’. That’s glorifying, that is glorifying the tactics in another country irrespective of the rights and wrongs of the Israeli government, that is glorifying a terrorist tactic, the same tactic that was used in London. You, Mr Tamimi, are an apologist for terrorism, aren’t you?

Dr Azzam Tamimi: If you want to consider me so, that’s up to you.

And here is the Report’s main objection:

Ware’s method of conducting this interview meant that Tamimi was quite unable to present the context which would enable him to explain fully what he actually meant by ‘martyrdom’ and ‘glorification’.

Astonishing. Another part of the Report condemns the hostile response to the Muslim Council of Britain’s “Information and Guidance for Schools”. According to the authors of the report, the function of this Guidance was “to provide helpful guidance for headteachers and governing bodies on understanding the needs of Muslim pupils.”. The Report is upset that the press coverage of the MCB’s Guidance was not more positive.

In fact, the MCB’s Guidance showed scant respect for diversity of practice between British muslims, and promoted a particularly restrictive and puritantical vision of acceptable muslim practice. It recommended avoiding dance lessons, mixed gender sports, and mixed gender trips, as well as any drawing of the human form. Furthermore, it counselled:

In public boys should always be covered between the navel and knee and girls should be covered except for their hands and faces, a concept known as ‘hijab’.

The Report specifically condemns the use of the phrase “Taliban-style conditions” to describe the treatment of pupils promoted by the MCB’s Guidance. Perhaps the Report has a point. Gender segregation, and the presumption that British muslim children follow the most restrictive school of muslim thought is bad. However, at least the MCB wasn’t recommending the stoning of pupils caught snogging.

Conclusion
I get the distinct impression that Ken Livingstone is embarassed by this shoddy self serving report. Indeed, it might not have been published at all, were it not for Nick Cohen’s Evening Standard piece, a few weeks ago.

There is, as yet, no sign of it on the Mayor of London’s home page; although it was launched this morning. Instead, there’s an article about a survey which highlights the shared values of all Londoners, including muslims. There’s an announcement about a Livingstone jolly to India. There’s something on Bendy Buses. There’s also something on homophobia and attacks on homeless people.

But nothing on this Report. And, frankly, I’m not surprised.

If I’d just spent £30-50,000 of public money on a shoddy piece of advocacy for the MCB, written by a committee, on third of whose members are MCB activists, significantly directed at a journalist who correctly pointed out that the MCB was closely aligned to South Asian and Middle Eastern clerical fascist political parties, I’d be keeping quiet about it too.

Here is Ken’s press conference, where the report was launched. John Ware, Martin Bright, Nick Cohen, Padraig Reidy and Shiv Malik all are present, and ask some focussed and rather tricky questions.

At one point, Nick Cohen asks whether opposing the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat is racist. Ken Livingstone doesn’t answer, but instead, starts to talk about 19th century prejudice against jewish immigrants. Indeed, Livingstone repeatedly references historic hostility to jews, whenever he is asked about criticism of Islamist groups.

John Ware makes the point that the MCB is a political pressure group, and asks why this report seeks to prevent scrutiny of a political organisation. Ken simply squirms, and utterly dodges the question.

Pathetic.

(Cross-posted from Harry’s Place)