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Londonistan and end of an era
This is Dr Moeed Pirzada formerly of the London School of Economics (enough said) writing in the Kaleej Times. He is worried for himself and his ilk and I do hope he is correct.
KEN Livingstone’s defeat at the hands of Boris Johnson in the elections for the Mayor of Greater London, last week, was the end of an era. It was a development bigger than the city of London or UK with ominous implications for Muslim communities across Europe. Yet few of us in the Muslim media, across the world, so easily carried away with the nonsense of Geert Wilders, paused to reflect on the enormity of what happened.
Some events help to understand ourselves. Living all those years in London I never felt it was part of my identity. Yet suffering the visuals that emanated from the screen of BBC World News, with Ken Livingstone conceding his defeat, I suddenly had to clutch for support. With weakness in my legs and butterflies in my stomach, with something hitting in my face, I knew an age in the world history had passed — and for worse. No, better!
Few realise it is the largest Muslim city in United Kingdom. And it was this diversity, this complexity Ken Livingstone served; and provided a spirit with by reaching out to everyone.
Immediately after the attacks on London subway, Ken Livingstone, as Mayor, addressed the terrorists telling them that though they do not fear death, they must fear the fact that, whatever they may do, London will continue to be the place: “where people will arrive from all over the world to become Londoners...where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another” ...it was his style of revenge.
In contrast Boris Johnson, now his successor in office, reacted to the tragedies of 7/7 by declaring that “it is time to reassert British values...that means disposing of the first taboo, and accepting that Islam is the problem..”
Two weeks later in a BBC interview, Livingstone was now reminding his audience of the 80 years of western intervention into predominantly Arab lands because of the western need for oil. What was Boris Johnson doing? At one point in time he said: “If I were an Israeli, I would be astounded that any member of the British government or opposition felt able to criticise Israel at all.”
And at another moment he said: “If we were Israelis we would dispatch an American built ground-Assault helicopter to blow the place to bits and then we would send bulldozers to scrape over the remains...the best way to deter Palestinian families from nurturing these vipers in their bosoms, and also the best way of explaining to the death hungry narcissists that they may get 72 black-eyed virgins of scripture, but their family gets the bulldozer”
Ken’s defeat was a sad day for the Muslim and Asian communities in London and across UK. Always under attack, or perceiving it so, in Ken they had a friend and a strong voice ready to risk media’s wrath to defend them. But has anybody taken cognizance across the Muslim world?
What about Pakistan the country that continues to boast its connections with the British Muslim communities? Not even a whimper; and newspapers did not even have an inner page story on something that was so important to the British Muslims.
The vote for Boris Johnson was a negative vote: . . May God protect London from his parochialism!
