The new prez
Maajid Nawaz on Malia Bouattia, newly elected president of the NUS.
The words below are not mine. But because of their gravity, it is important that you read them in full.
“The notion of resistance has been perhaps washed out of our understanding of how colonised people will obtain their physical emancipation…With mainstream, Zionist-led media outlets …resistance is presented as an act of terrorism.
“But instead of us remembering that this has always been the case throughout struggles against white supremacy, it’s become an accepted discourse among too many…
“Internalised Islamophobia has also enabled our obsession with convincing non-Muslims of our non-violent and peaceful nature, so we’re taking things a step further and dangerously condemning the resistance, branding groups and individuals as terrorists to disassociate from them, but at the same time supporting their liberation which is a very strange contradiction.
“There’s a need to change how we think about these things. After all, the alternative to resistance is what we’ve been observing over the last 20 years or so, which is ‘peace talks’… essentially the strengthening of the colonial project.
“To consider that Palestine will be free only by means of fundraising, non-violent protest and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement is problematic… My issue is that whilst at time it’s tactically used, or presented as the non-violent option, it can be misunderstood as the alternative to resistance by the Palestinian people…
“We also need to remember the Palestinians on the ground… who are actively sustaining the fight and the resistance against occupation and perhaps there’s a need to …take orders if we are to really show some form of solidarity”.
These words are from a chilling speech, given in a calm and deliberated style, at a “Gaza and the Palestinian Revolution” event in September 2014 by Malia Bouattia, the new president of the National Union of Students (NUS). Ms Bouattia was speaking in her official capacity as NUS’s Black Student’s Officer.
The Union of Jewish Students is naturally alarmed at her new role as President of the NUS.
So should we all be.
There’s more.
Along with such regressive-Left apologia for jihadism, predictably antisemitism has been rearing its head among the student body. In 2011 Ms Bouattia co-authored a blog which lists a “large Jewish society” – by which she now insists she meant “Zionists” – as being one of the challenges at Birmingham University. But she even considers the UK government’s beleaguered Prevent strategy against extremism to be a result of the ‘Zionist lobby’.
Her bid for president was endorsed by the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPACUK), a group that has been banned by the NUS since 2004 after publishing material on its website originally published on neo-Nazi and Holocaust Denial websites, as well as their own post entitled “Take your holocaust, roll it nice and tight and shove it up your (be creative)!” MPACUK’s endorsement of her candidacy would be less concerning if she hadn’t appeared to welcome it, by replying “Thank you :-))”.
It’s all so hideously depressing.
God… now “progressives” are shitting on BDS and not just the apartheid apologists? The hell?
Here’s an article defending Malia Bouattia
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/21/new-nus-president-muslims-malia-bouattia
That’s getting scary.
@RJW
Against that article in the comments, by the always excellent “sarka”:-
Why the insanely melodramatic, kitsch pathos?
Bouattia’s views have attracted controversy…but no one has suggested that anyone should gag her…on the contrary, she has been elected to a prominent position (for a student – frankly most students don’t follow NUS politics), and if she wants to shoot her mouth off on this or that issue she is now in an even better position to do so…The most critics have suggested is that the NUS delegates were stupid to have elected her – but that is par for the course as far as criticism of various elected figures is concerned.
Freedom of debate means being allowed to express your views, and being obliged to put up with criticism of them, and if possible coming up with persuasive responses. It is not the right to express your views in a “safe space”, where agreement can be guaranteed and critics, even harsh critics, kept out….
I have seen all the stuff including clips of Bouattia expressing her definitely “controversial” (to some positively repellent) views…I happen to think that she is at best a doctrinaire idiot….as regards ISIL, as regards Palestinian rights to violent resistance etc…but there you go – she’s plenty rude about zionists, over-enthusiastic (in her view) critics of ISIL or supporters of Kurds etc…why shouldn’t people be rude about her? She even – in an interview with Jon Snow on C4 – came across as dimwitted, responding to a perfectly obvious and reasonable question (rather unexpected from the not exactly pro-Israeli Snow), of a conventional kind that she ought to have been able to take in her stride, with a lot of girly distress and big-hair stroking and eye-rolling and “OMG it’s so unfair to ask me a robust question…I’m not expecting it!” Let her argue her views on the platform she now has and let her – or her supporters – whimper about “free speech” when she is simply questioned….She has a conventional idea of the exciting struggle of good against the forces of evil in the world, “Zionists, Islamophobes, imperialists, colonialists” and the whole band of stock villains, so why should she – or her supporters – be so apparently desperate to avoid any struggle – including the intellectual side of it…Hopeless!
KB Player @4
Interesting. I’d never heard of Bouattia until I read the article.
I’m leery of anyone who uses Islamophobia in a non-ironic sense, but I’m also wary of the Zionist hate machine, which doesn’t have an OFF switch.
Did Bouattia really run a campaign against the Kurdish/ISIS motion? If she did, she appears to have backtracked smartly: https://twitter.com/AsaWinstanley/status/722785264825798658
If she didn’t, then Maajid should withdraw and apologize. This is a dangerous thing to say.