• Military
• WMD
• Intelligence

• Security Menu                     

• Systems
• Industry
• Operations
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• Space

Row rages on over British minister`s Islamophobic outburst

IRNA

London, Nov 22, IRNA -- A bitter row over an Islamophobic speech made 
by Foreign Office Minister Denis MacShane continued Saturday after 
the minister insisted on only partially toned down his provocative 
remarks. 
British Muslim leaders told IRNA that they would not let their 
protests to the Foreign Office rest and would also take the issue up 
with the ruling Labour Party after the excuse was used that he was 
speaking in his capacity as a constituency MP and not a minister. 
"We do not need lecturers from a representative of a government 
that has conducted an unlawful war against Iraq," chairman of the 
Muslim Council of Britain`s media committee, Inayat Bunglawala, said. 
According to a draft test, MacShane had planned to controversially 
call on Muslim leaders to make a choice between the "British way" of 
dialogue and non-violence and the "way of the terrorists against 
which the whole democratic world is now uniting." 
But in his speech at his Rotherham constituency in northern 
England on Friday night, he still insisted it was time for Muslims to 
decide on the "democratic rule of law - if you like, the British or 
Turkish or American way" despite protests to the Foreign Office. 
The minister, who is responsible for Europe, also proceeded to say 
that he wanted to see "clearer, stronger language that there is no 
future for any Muslim cause anywhere in the world that validates or 
implicitly supports the use of political violence in any way." 
After his speech, he tried to insist that he had not been ordered 
to tone down his provocative comments by the Foreign Office, claiming 
that he was making his call as a constituency MP to a Labour Party 
audience and not as a government minister. 
MacShane went as far as accusing his critics as "making mischief" 
in London, saying that he had made similar appeals before but had 
been blown out of proportion because of the first terrorist attack 
against British targets in Istanbul since September 11 2001. 
Bunglawala said that the attacks in Istanbul "only emphasise that 
the disastrous war in Iraq has not reduced the risk of terrorism, as 
our own Governments had us believe beforehand, but has exacerbated 
it." 
"If Mr. MacShane is serious about wanting to reduce the war on 
terrorism, he and his Government should look again at reducing the 
causes of terrorism," he said, adding it was time the Government 
recognises that the war on terrorism is failing. 
According to the Times newspaper Saturday, MacShane suggested that 
his remarks were intended to counter "anti-Israel rhetoric" among 
Muslims and hostility to India arising from the dispute over Kashmir. 
HC/212 
End