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A leading member of George Galloway’s Respect Party, Adam Yosef, has urged violence against gay activist and human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell.

He has denounced Tatchell as a “hate-mongerer”, listing him as one of Britain’s top three “Hate-Filled Bigots”.  The other two bigots Yosef names are Nick Griffin of the British Nationalist Party and Muslim fundamentalist cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed.

The astonishing attack was made by Adam Yosef in his column in the Asian weekly entertainment newspaper, Desi Xpress, on 6-12 January 2006.

His article advises readers to violently attack Tatchell, stating that he (Tatchell) “needs a good slap in the face”.

In a naked appeal to homophobia and xenophobia, Yosef goes on to urge Australian-born Tatchell and his “queer campaign army” to “pack their bent bags and head back to Australia”.

Mr Yosef has a history of homophobic outbursts in Desi Xpress.  In a December issue of the newspaper (Issue 42), he ridiculed same-sex civil partnerships: “Hmmm...gay weddings... Gay people and commitment? I don’t think so... They’ll be shagg*ng the neighbours before they even cut the cake.  Bad idea I’m afraid.  Great way of evading tax though...”

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Dr Naseem is also Home Affairs spokesperson for the Islamic Party of Britain, which advocates the death penalty for homosexuality and the banning of gay organisations. Mr Yosef is a leading light in the Stop The War Movement, and has worked with the Socialist Workers Party."

Yipes! I had a great deal of respect for Galloway after he told off the Chickenhawks in the US Congress last year. Why is he even associating with such bigots?

Probably writings like this:

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The left’s political somersaults and ethical acrobatics are most striking on the issue of Islamic fundamentalism. Muslims should be defended against prejudice and discrimination. But that does not mean that human rights violations by Muslims (or anyone else) should be ignored.

The threat of being labeled "Islamophobic" is inducing a new wave of moral paralysis, as evidenced by the way most leftists ignore the role of fundamentalist Islam in the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan, where racist Islamists are exterminating the black African population.

We see similar double standards in Britain when many left-wingers fail to speak out against the sexism and homophobia of organisations like the Muslim Council of Britain, the Islamic Human Rights Commission and the Muslim Association of Britain.

Sections of the left now openly tolerate – and even seek to excuse - attacks on human rights by Muslim fundamentalists, when they would never tolerate similar attacks by fundamentalist Christians or Jews. This is a patronizing inverse racism. It judges Muslims by different standards than it judges others.

Where are the left campaigns in solidarity with liberal, progressive Muslims? The victims of the fundamentalists get little sympathy from many who claim to leftists. Indeed, the Socialist Worker’s Party, Respect and the Stop The War Coalition seem to be forging a strategic alliance with right-wing Islamists like Dr Yusuf al-Qaradawi and the MAB – against left-wing, feminist and gay Muslims.

Whatever happened to the principles of universal human rights and international solidarity? Is it really Islamophobic to condemn the stoning of adulteresses in northern Nigeria and the arrest and torture of gay people by the PLO and the Palestinian Authority? Can we remain silent when Muslims are suffering persecution at the hands of fellow Muslims? Is Muslim-on-Muslim oppression any less worthy of our concern?

The queer rights group OutRage! has experienced the left’s ethical retreat from humanitarian values first hand. We are campaigning against the murder of gay Jamaicans, and against eight reggae singers who encourage these homophobic killings. Some black and left activists accuse us of "cultural imperialism". These armchair critics never lifted a finger to help gay Jamaicans, but they readily attack our solidarity campaign.

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We are witnessing one of the greatest betrayals by the left since so-called left-wingers backed the Hitler-Stalin pact and opposed the war against Nazi fascism.

Today, the pseudo-left reveals its shameless hypocrisy and its wholesale abandonment of humanitarian values. While it deplores the 7/7 terrorist attack on London, only last year it welcomed to the UK the Muslim cleric, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who endorses the suicide bombing of innocent civilians. These same right-wing leftists back the so-called 'resistance' in Iraq. This 'resistance' uses terrorism against civilians as its modus operandi - stooping to the massacre of dozens of Iraqi children in order kill a few US soldiers. Terrorism is not socialism; it is the tactic of fascism. But much of the left doesn't care. Never mind what the Iraqi people want, it wants the US and UK out of Iraq at any price, including the abandonment of Iraqi socialists, trade unionists, democrats and feminists.

If the fake left gets its way, the ex-Baathists and Islamic fundamentalists could easily seize power, leading to Iranian-style clerical fascism and a bloodbath. I used to be proud to call myself a leftist. Now I feel shame. Much of the left no longer stands for the values of universal human rights and international socialism.

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When the left agrees with Muslims that the Muslim world cannot be legitimately invaded, those in power activate fools like this.

It is quite possible to have alliances on specific, important points, and yet agree to disagree on other less important points.

[ 17 January 2006: Message edited by: Khimia ]

He was apologizing for the remarks referred to in the last paragraph of the quote in Heph's opening post, above.

[ 17 January 2006: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

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Sometimes in life there really is only one side to a story.

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Not this time, though. The tendentious moralizing here against "the left" is almost entirely without merit.

The complaint is that "the left" makes alliances with Muslims who do not support other western values.

So, why does the author not mention George Bush's alliances with similar Muslims? For example (one of MANY POSSIBLE):

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When the US overthrew the Taliban and installed the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, the Bush administration implied that everything had changed.

What few observers seem to have noticed is that Hamid Karzai immediately appointed as Afghanistan's chief justice, Fazal Hadi Shinwari, whose philosophy of life was little different from that of the Taliban!

One can only imagine that Bush, who kept thousands of troops in the country and oversaw the evolution of the Afghanistan government, had no objections to the man's judicial philosophy.

Among Shinwari's rulings:

Amputation of hands and stoning to death will continue to be the punishment for thieves and adulterers in post-Taliban Afghanistan, country’s new Chief Justice Fazal Hadi Shinwari was reported today as saying.

Afghan Chief Justice Bans Cable TV.

Afghan chief justice wants co-ed schools to be shut.

Fatwa for "Blasphemy" Journalists: The supreme court proposes the death penalty for two journalists who criticised Islamic practice.

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Generally, yes, I'd agree with you on that. I have over the years made alliances with Catholics on anti-poverty issues and I demonstrated alongside Muslims in 2003 to protest the impending invasion of Iraq. At that point, it did not bother me that both Muslims and Catholics have views on gay-rights that are abhorrent to me. The diffrence in this case is that one of Galloway's associates is this man (from the first link):

"Dr Naseem is also Home Affairs spokesperson for the Islamic Party of Britain, which advocates the death penalty for homosexuality and the banning of gay organisations."

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So, why does the author not mention George Bush's alliances with similar Muslims?

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Probably because George Bush doesn't claim to be a leftist, and leftists aren't being asked to embrace him as an ally in their struggles.

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Originally posted by voice of the damned:

Probably because George Bush doesn't claim to be a leftist, and leftists aren't being asked to embrace him as an ally in their struggles.

Whereas, unless I'm mistaken, the Respect party bills itself as a left-wing organization, and wants the rest of the Left to view it as such. So yeah, I guess that kinda makes their association with theocratic homophobes an issue.

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But by what right does Thatchel call himself a leftist. And then again Yosef may be a homophobe, but then is he a theocrat? His denounciation of a prominent Muslim theocrat as a "bigot" seems to take the edge of this idea.

And this is the danger in Thatchel's diatribe, here we have these labels being bandied about willy nilly without much thought.

Thathchell is claiming he's left. Then why is he trumpetting a right wing position?

Thatchel is tarring the left/Muslim theocratic alliance (obviously a direct attack on Galloway and his supporters.) But then why is Yosef attacking a prominent Muslim Mullah as a bigot, if he's a one of the Muslim fundamentalists?

Whose a theocrat? Whose a leftist?

[ 18 January 2006: Message edited by: Cueball ]