"This tide of anti-Muslim hatred is a threat to us all"

[Al-khiyal]

This tide of anti-Muslim hatred is a threat to us all

February 25, 2010 -- If young British Muslims had any doubts that they are singled out for special treatment in the land of their birth, the punishments being meted out to those who took part in last year's London demonstrations against Israel's war on Gaza will have dispelled them. The protests near the Israeli embassy at the height of the onslaught were angry: bottles and stones were thrown, a Starbucks was trashed and the police employed unusually violent tactics, even by the standards of other recent confrontations, such as the G20 protests. But a year later, it turns out that it's the sentences that are truly exceptional. Of 119 people arrested, 78 have been charged, all but two of them young Muslims (most between the ages of 16 and 19), according to Manchester University's Joanna Gilmore, even though such figures in no way reflect the mix of those who took part. In the past few weeks, 15 have been convicted, mostly of violent disorder, and jailed for between eight months and two-and-a-half years – having switched to guilty pleas to avoid heavier terms. Another nine are up to be sentenced tomorrow.

The severity of the charges and sentencing goes far beyond the official response to any other recent anti-war demonstration, or even the violent stop the City protests a decade ago. So do the arrests, many of them carried out months after the event in dawn raids by dozens of police officers, who smashed down doors and handcuffed family members as if they were suspected terrorists. Naturally, none of the more than 30 complaints about police violence were upheld, even where video evidence was available. Nothing quite like this has happened, in fact, since 2001, when young Asian Muslims rioted against extreme rightwing racist groups in Bradford and other northern English towns and were subjected to heavily disproportionate prison terms. In the Gaza protest cases, the judge has explicitly relied on the Bradford precedent and repeatedly stated that the sentences he is handing down are intended as a deterrent.

For many in the Muslim community, the point will be clear: not only that these are political sentences, but that different rules apply to Muslims, who take part in democratic protest at their peril. It's a dangerous message, especially given the threat from a tiny minority that is drawn towards indiscriminate violence in response to Britain's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and rejects any truck with mainstream politics. But it's one that is constantly reinforced by politicians and parts of the media, who have increasingly blurred the distinction between violent and non- violent groups, demonised Islamism as an alien threat and branded as extremist any Muslim leader who dares to campaign against western foreign policy in the Muslim world. That's reflected in the government's targeting of "nonviolent extremism" and lavish funding of anti-Islamist groups, as well as in Tory plans to ban the nonviolent Hizb ut-Tahrir and crack down ever harder on "extremist written material and speech".

In the media, it takes the form of relentless attempts to expose Muslims involved in wider politics as secret fanatics and sympathisers with terrorism. Next week, Channel 4 Dispatches plans to broadcast the latest in a series of undercover documentaries aimed at revealing the ugly underside of British Muslim political life. In this case, the target is the predominantly British-Bangladeshi Islamic Forum of Europe. From material sent out in advance, the aim appears to be to show the IFE is an "entryist" group in legitimate east London politics – and unashamedly Islamist to boot. As recent research co-authored by the former head of the Metropolitan police special branch's Muslim contact unit, Bob Lambert, has shown, such ubiquitous portrayals of Muslim activists as "terrorists, sympathisers and subversives" (all the while underpinned by a drumbeat campaign against the nonexistent Afghan "burka") are one factor in the alarming growth of British Islamophobia and the rising tide of anti-Muslim violence and hate crimes that stem from it.

Last month's British Social Attitudes survey found that most people now regard Britain as "deeply divided along religious lines", with hostility to Muslims and Islam far outstripping such attitudes to any other religious group. On the ground that has translated into murders, assaults and attacks on mosques and Muslim institutions – with shamefully little response in politics or the media. Last year, five mosques in Britain were firebombed, from Bishop's Stortford to Cradley Heath, though barely reported in the national press, let alone visited by a government minister to show solidarity. And now there is a street movement, the English Defence League, directly adopting the officially sanctioned targets of "Islamists" and "extremists" – as well as the "Taliban" and the threat of a "takeover of Islam" – to intimidate and threaten Muslim communities across the country, following the success of the British National party in baiting Muslims above all other ethnic and religious communities.

Of course, anti-Muslim bigotry, the last socially acceptable racism, is often explained away by the London bombings of 2005 and the continuing threat of terror attacks, even though by far the greatest number of what the authorities call "terrorist incidents" in the UK take place in Northern Ireland, while Europol figures show that more than 99% of terrorist attacks in Europe over the past three years were carried out by non-Muslims. And in the last nine months, two of the most serious bomb plot convictions were of far right racists, Neil Lewington and Terence Gavan, who were planning to kill Muslims. Meanwhile, in the runup to the general election, expect some ugly dog whistles from Westminster politicians keen to capitalise on Islamophobic sentiment. With few winnable Muslim votes, the Tories seem especially up for it. Earlier this month, Conservative frontbencher Michael Gove came out against the building of a mosque in his Surrey constituency, while Welsh Tory MP David Davies blamed a rape case on the "medieval and barbaric" attitudes of some migrant communities. As long as British governments back wars and occupations in the Middle East and Muslim world, there will continue to be a risk of violence in Britain. But attempts to drive British Muslims out of normal political activity, and the refusal to confront anti-Muslim hatred, can only ratchet up the danger and threaten us all.

[Al-khiyal]

MPs step up campaign over jail terms for Gaza protesters

March 5, 2010 -- MPs and protesters are stepping up their campaign against "extreme and disproportionate" sentences handed down to young Muslims involved in demonstrations against the Israeli invasion of Gaza last year. There were 119 arrests after protests outside the Israeli embassy in London during which bottles and stones were thrown and a coffee shop was attacked. Seventy-eight protesters were charged, most with violent disorder. So far 22 have been jailed for between eight months and two and half years, and more cases are due to come before the courts.

This week the families of those sentenced, the vast majority of whom are Muslim, met lawyers and MPs at the Commons to set out their concerns. Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour MP for Islington North who chaired the meeting, said that the sentences amounted to an attack on the Muslim community and the right to protest. He said: "Some of the sentences that have been handed down to these young demonstrators are extraordinary and out of all proportion to the crimes committed. What possible justification can there be for handing down a year in prison for a 19-year-old lad, studying dentistry, who threw a plastic bottle in the direction of the Israeli Embassy?"

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer has tabled parliamentary questions about the policing of the event and the subsequent sentences. She said: "There were a disproportionate number of people arrested and disproportionately severe sentences. I think people's right to protest should be recognised by the courts and I think they have not caught up with what is a new attitude to legitimate protest."

According to Crown Prosecution Service guidelines the maximum sentence for violent disorder is five years. However, campaigners claim many of those sentenced should not have been charged with violent disorder and say the judge has repeatedly stated that the sentences were intended as a deterrent.

Joanne Gilmore, researcher in the School of Law at Manchester University, has monitored the cases and says people at more violent protests had received more lenient non-custodial, sentences. "The vast majority of them were people of exemplary character, who were involved in the communities, caring for their families and often studying," she said. "The demonstrations were overwhelmingly peaceful and if you compare the relatively minor disturbances that took place with the violence on other demonstrations these sentences are very severe."

Gilmore said there were more arrests after the Gaza protests than at any political demonstration since the poll tax riots. Campaigners say they are determined to fight the sentences. Corbyn is planning to table a motion in the Commons criticising the handling of the protesters, and families of those who have been locked up will meet lawyers to discuss appeals.

[Al-khiyal]

Sent to jail for throwing a single bottle

March 13, 2010 -- Badi Tebani and his wife were sleeping peacefully when all hell broke loose. He shudders at the memory. The front door was forced open, and then came the screaming. "Wah, wah, wah, get down, get down, you are under arrest." Any number of voices. He thought it was a nightmare – that he was back in Algeria in the bad old days before he was granted political asylum in Britain, and that the military had broken into the house. When he opened his eyes, his bedroom was full of police officers. "I have diabetes and high blood pressure," he says quietly. "It was worse than Algeria, even. I became very depressed."

It was 5am, April 2009. Badi's eldest son Hamza, 23, takes up the story. "I woke up and tried to get out of bed. The next thing is three police officers jump on top of me with their knees, and they handcuffed me so hard I screamed. That's when I really woke up." Hamza had been sleeping in shorts. When he asked if he could put a shirt on the police said no and opened the window. "It was freezing. I was shaking."

His three brothers, the youngest of whom was 15 at the time, were also handcuffed. Hamza says there were too many officers to count – somewhere between 20 and 30. They took computers, clothes, iPhones, everything. "I've never been in trouble, never been to the police station except when my car was broken into, and they were treating me as a criminal. One of the officers was playing card games with my iPhone, another was just ordering coffee." Badi, an Arabic teacher, tuts. "They make our house into a coffee shop."

But it wasn't Badi or Hamza the police were after. It was Yahia, one of Hamza's younger brothers. When Yahia heard that the police were looking for him he was confounded. "I didn't know why they were there, and then I hear my name and I'm shocked." Three months earlier, in January last year, Yahia had been outside the Israeli embassy on a fractious demonstration against Israel's sustained bombing of Gaza. The British foreign secretary, David Milliband, had condemned the "unacceptable" loss of life caused by the Israeli strikes on Gaza, saying the "dark and dangerous" events could fuel extremism, and had called for an immediate ceasefire from both Israel and Hamas.

Protesters complained that the demonstration was policed provocatively and that they had been "kettled" inside a tunnel and beaten. Meanwhile, the police complained that they had been assaulted by demonstrators. Yahia, 18, says both accounts are true. He claims that the policing was aggressive and intimidatory, and that demonstrators responded by throwing sticks and bottles at the embassy and the officers, who were wearing full-body shields. Yahia picked up a few sticks from discarded banners and flung them in the direction of the police. He was one of approximately 50,000 demonstrators, many of whom threw objects. It was a mixed bunch – white and black, Muslim and Christian, Stop the War Coalition, CND, all sorts. This was one of a number of Gaza demonstrations covered on television news, and it was reported there had been some trouble – but nothing on the scale of, say, the G20 protests or the poll tax riots.

Yahia, who was studying media technology at Kingston University, had gone on the march for two reasons – to protest, and to interview fellow demonstrators for a project on Gaza. The crowd was held by the police for four hours and eventually released. Some people were filmed and had to give their name and address to the police, some were arrested. Yahia simply left of his own accord, and eventually got home at midnight. He told Hamza it had been a difficult day, it had given him plenty of food for thought, and that was that – until the police broke into the family home in Finsbury Park, north London, three months later. Yahia was arrested in March and charged with violent disorder and burglary – at one point during the demo, he says, he had taken a chair from the nearby Starbucks to sit on, but police reports said the Starbucks was trashed and mugs and chairs were used as weapons. He was advised that the burglary charge would be dropped if he pleaded guilty to violent disorder, for which he would probably receive a suspended sentence or community service. He thought a lesser charge of affray would have been fairer, but agreed to the compromise. "It would always look bad in the future if it says burglary. People won't know what really happened, so I couldn't risk that being on my file."

What Yahia didn't realise was nearly all the protesters who pleaded guilty to violent disorder would end up receiving immediate prison sentences. His friend Sidali is serving two years. Yahia was in court the day Sidali was sentenced. "He didn't even throw sticks," he claims. "He just pushed or something, and his clothes were ripped a bit. In court he was crying. The shock on his face, I've never seen anything like that. Pah!" He blows his lips together in dismay. Yahia is to be sentenced this month. How's he feeling? "Stressed. Pah. Just waiting to go in. I've been asking my friend what it's like. He says time goes quick – he doesn't want to scare me." It's not just the prospect of prison that terrifies him, it's what comes after. "If I've got 'ex-prisoner' on my file, how am I going to get a job? It will destroy my career."

[Al-khiyal]

At Isleworth crown court in London, where the cases are being heard, a disturbing pattern is emerging. Most of the 78 protesters charged with public order offences were young men in their late teens or 20s. Many were students. And nearly all were Muslim. Some 22 protesters have already received prison terms of up to two and a half years for public order offences, and more cases are due to come before the courts in the coming months. The Gaza Protesters Defence Campaign has been formed by the families of some of those arrested, together with sympathetic MPs, the Stop the War Coalition and CND. The campaign aims to highlight the perceived injustice, and has launched a petition which will be presented to the attorney general and the director of public prosecutions.

Earlier this month, families queued up outside committee room 15 in the House of Commons for a campaign meeting. Many feel bewildered by the sentences the courts have passed on their sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. When Joanna Gilmore, a researcher at the University of Manchester's law school who has monitored the cases, gets to her feet the room is already full, and latecomers are forced to listen from the corridor. "The vast majority of the people involved here are of exemplary character," she says, to mutters of approval. "The demonstrations were overwhelmingly peaceful and if you compare the relatively minor disturbances that took place with the violence on other demonstrations these sentences are very severe."

Gilmore, who has followed all the court cases, says the police arrested more people at the Gaza protests than at any political demonstration since the poll tax riots, when about 90 were charged with public order offences. At last year's G20 demonstrations, during which a branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland was looted, 20 were charged. "Many were on their first demonstration and were protesting because they were appalled about what was happening in Gaza," Gilmore says. "These people and their families are in shock and say that they will never take part in political demonstrations again."

Bruce Kent, a former general secretary of CND and long-time peace activist, gets to his feet to address the packed meeting. Kent, 80, had been on the demonstration and says he was "amazed and indignant" about the reaction of the police and the courts. "I don't know why there isn't absolute outrage … All this will do is solidify in people's minds the idea that there is a persecution of Muslims which is determined and organised and will result in some young people being radicalised." He says there is a huge discrepancy in the way different people are treated by the law, and recalls a time in 1986 when he had been convicted of criminal damage after cutting a wire fence during a protest at a nuclear base. "I was in the crown court waiting with my toothbrush packed. I thought I was off to one of her majesty's holiday camps. Not at all, not even a fine. Why? Because I am middle-class and white."

Like Yahia Tebani, 24-year-old Ashir was in bed when the police raided her west London flat at 4am. The strange thing is, she says, her brother, who is due to be sentenced for his part in the demonstrations this month, has never been interested in "politics or religion" and only joined the protest because he was at his cousins' house when they decided to go. Although Ashir says her younger sibling did not throw any missiles, she admits he did protect himself when the "police people started fighting". He left as soon as he could, giving his details to officers. Two months later the police made their unannounced visit. "We heard a disturbance at the neighbour's flat first and I heard loads of banging and shouting," she says. "I looked out of the window but no one had police uniforms on so I didn't know what was happening. A few minutes later when we were getting back into bed we heard people running up the stairs and then our door burst open. I was so scared because I had no idea what was happening or who these people were."

Every detail chimes with Yahia's experience – the family were handcuffed for two and a half hours, Ashir only had her nightclothes on and was not allowed to get dressed and her computer was taken. "They said I may have weapons in the house, but I didn't understand – what weapons could I have? I am not a criminal. They went through everything. They said they were looking for evidence, for clothes that my brother had been wearing on the demonstration. They took my laptop which had my university dissertation on spa tourism on it because they said he had had access to it. I asked if I could at least email the dissertation to myself but they said I wasn't allowed to touch it. I still have not got it back almost a year later even though I keep asking for it. I had to start my dissertation from where I had last saved it on a uni computer." Ashir, who does not want to give her real name because she fears going public might result in her brother being given a bigger sentence, still has panic attacks about what happened that night. "I am scared if I see any police anywhere. Even if I was angry about something I would never go on a demonstration now because I have seen what can happen."

Muhammad Sawalha, president of the British Muslim Initiative anti-racist group, has two questions: why were such a high proportion of those arrested Muslim, and why have they been dealt with so heavy-handedly? Actually, Judge John Denniss has been quite clear about sentencing policy. He has said, more than once, the draconian sentences are meant to act as a deterrent to future protesters. But, because of the fact that the people being brought before the courts are disproportionately Muslim, Sawalha says, the consequences could be disastrous: "The British Muslim Initiative encourages Muslims to express their feelings and ambitions and frustrations only through political and legal processes. But if anything sends the message that Muslims cannot express themselves through political processes, and they will not be dealt with like others, it will give more strength to the fringes within the community who say democracy and the political system doesn't apply to Muslims in this country. This will only increase the frustration and sense of alienation among these people."

Dr Khalil al-Ani says his son Mosab was one of the lucky ones. There was no pre-dawn raid, no handcuffs, no ransacking. He was simply asked to surrender his passport to the police. Months after throwing an empty Orangina bottle – the police said it was at them, Mosab said it was at the Israeli embassy gates – he was charged. Mosab, who was on a medical access course, hoped to be a dentist or dental technician. He is now in prison serving a one-year sentence. It was the first demonstration Mosab had been on since his family marched against the Iraq war in 2003. Al-Ani, an Iraqi who works as a GP in Wakefield and Leeds, was pleased his son would be on the march. His two sisters were also going, and Al-Ani felt Mosab, then 20, would protect them. Mosab was arrested on the day and taken to a police station where he admitted throwing the bottle, apologised, and stressed that he had not aimed it at the police. He was released and returned to Yorkshire, but didn't tell his father what had happened – he didn't want to worry him, and he assumed it was the last he would hear of it. "He didn't think it was serious because how many times have you seen something like this or more serious, and nothing happens."

Al-Ani stops, and apologises for his tears. "I'm sorry I get so emotional. I came to this country in 1981. You can hear by the way I speak my accent is not purely British. It is a foreign accent after all these years. But Mosab was born here in 1988 – he is British in every sense. This is the first time I feel that because he's a Muslim he's been discriminated against. What he did was certainly wrong, but he should be treated similar to a British citizen. He's gone to prison for a single bottle that didn't hurt anybody." The astonishing thing is, he says, that the judge gave Mosab a flawless character reference. "He said, 'I know you came here peacefully, I know you have an excellent character, I know you were not armed, you said sorry to the police.'" He was sure his son would go free. "I was so pleased. Then the judge says, 'I'm going to give you this sentence to deter other people.'"

Back in north London, Badi Tebani is looking at the door the police forced open. As they left the house, they made a point of telling him it was still in one piece. "When they finished their work, the police officers show me the door and say, 'It's not broken, look, look,' and they took a photograph. I told him, it doesn't matter if you broke the door, you broke my life."

[Al-khiyal]

Gazans show solidarity with jailed British protesters

April 22, 2010 -- In a statement released by the Palestinian Students' Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel and the University Teachers' Association in Palestine, Gazan academics and students have found themselves in the unusual situation of having to express solidarity with protesters in the UK. “We support and salute your willingness to suffer the consequences that come with demonstrating in a ‘free’ Western country against the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against us, the Palestinians of Gaza, crimes that the entire world witnessed,” the statement read, continuing: “How typical of the UK establishment and police to overlook what it is these men and women were so angry about - a massive act of bombing and mass murder of our civilian population, sealed in the Gaza concentration camp, 1.5 million people crushed by a hermetic siege, and with the direct use of equipment supplied by Britain, as a House of Commons report on strategic exports controls recently admitted.”

The Gazan statement refers to the controversial sentences being handed down by a West London court to protesters arrested at demonstrations which took place in January 2009 against the major Israeli re-invasion of Gaza. Of 119 demonstrators known to have been arrested, the majority are young Muslims, many of them students and most of them with no criminal records. “They can't say our boys are criminals,” says Badi Tebani, an Algerian refugee living in London, whose son Yahia was sentenced to a year in prison. Yahia says he took a chair from a branch of Starbucks to sit on, but police allege that the cafe was wrecked and the chairs broken and used as weapons. Yahia gave his details to the police in order to be allowed to leave the area after police 'kettled' the crowd; three months later the family's home was raided while they slept. “My wife is very depressed, when she sees police in the street she feels very frightened. They destroyed our life,” says Tebani. According to Manchester-based academic Joanna Gilmore, the sentences - including many jail terms of a year or more - handed down to Gaza protesters are far more severe than those given to anti-capitalist demonstrators charged with similar offences. Human rights lawyer Matt Foot has also called the dawn raids used against many of the Gaza protesters 'extreme,' and has also suggested that many of the demonstrators were charged with offences out of proportion to their actual actions. Islamophobia and racism could “easily be a factor” in the severity of the charges and sentences, he admits.

Joanna Berridge of the Gaza Demonstrators Support Campaign also thinks that Islamophobia has played a part in the judge's decision to hand down “deterrent” sentences to young men with no prior criminal convictions. “We think this is about political policing of protest,” she suggests, believing that young Muslims are being victimised by the authorities because they are 'soft targets' and can be used to create legal precedents without the outcry that might meet long sentences for white activists. “It's really important that these boys don't get used as an example, because this will stay on their record for years. They were protesting about something as widely recognised as war crimes against Gaza. That's not been taken into account but it should really be focused on, that these brave and conscious young people were going out and taking a stand and are having their lives ruined as a result,” says Berridge. “They demonstrated to support people in Gaza and all the world knows what happened there, how many people were killed in Gaza, how many houses destroyed,” agrees Badi Tebani, who fears that a criminal record will harm his son's job prospects in the future. “People tried to stop the catastrophe in Gaza, to say to the British government to stop the war. But the government sends them to jail.”