A highly-respected Indian activist settled in the UK, Gita Sahgal recently issued a statement after being suspended from Amnesty International (AI) for questioning the organization's cooperation with Islamic fundamentalists. A longtime champion of human rights and the former head of the gender unit, Sahgal was concerned about Amnesty’s relationship with Cageprisoners, an organisation headed by British Muslim Moazzam Begg, a former Guantanamo detainee. Sahgal felt the closeness of the relationship between Amnesty and Cageprisoners — which appears to give succor to those who believe in global jihad — was a threat to Amnesty’s integrity.
The bigger picture is how human rights organisations — and society more widely — should view Islamic radicals. There has been much debate over whether, spurred by a sentimental knee-jerk anti-Americanism, white liberals have sympathised with Islamic radicals, thereby implicitly tolerating their intolerance, particularly towards women. “For me that’s a form of racism,” says Sahgal, “because what it does is wipe out the experiences of the people they oppress. And it’s not helped by a discourse about a ‘clash of civilisations’, which elides jihadi ideologies and treats them as normal Muslim thinking. That’s devastating for ordinary Muslims.”
“To be appearing on platforms with Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban, whom we treat as a human rights defender, is a gross error of judgment,” she wrote to Amnesty’s leaders.
An active member of Women Against Fundamentalism, Sahgal protests the famous human rights organization's cooperation with an organization that does not support AI's mission, the universality of human rights. Without a job and finding it hard to acquire legal support from human rights lawyers who will fight AI, Sahgal understands what she's up against. While Sahgal reiterates her support for Begg's campaign on raising awareness of the human rights violations committed in Guantanamo, she contends that that's not the issue.
While Begg argues that his perspective on engaging the Taliban is not fundamentalist, members of his organization have not made great strides in denouncing Islamic fundamentalism. Asim Qureshi, one of Begg’s senior colleagues at Cageprisoners, appeared on a radio programme with Sahgal last week and was reminded of a speech he had given at a rally organised by Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamist political party, in which Qureshi supported “jihad” against oppression of Muslims, he did not distance himself from the sentiments. Cageprisoners not only campaigns on behalf of those detained without trial, but also for Islamic radicals who have been through the due process of the British courts, such as Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada. Sahgal believes the organisation has an agenda “way beyond being a prisoners’ rights organisation.”
The bigger picture is how human rights organisations — and society more widely — should view Islamic radicals. There has been much debate over whether, spurred by a sentimental knee-jerk anti-Americanism, white liberals have sympathised with Islamic radicals, thereby implicitly tolerating their intolerance, particularly towards women. “For me that’s a form of racism,” says Sahgal, “because what it does is wipe out the experiences of the people they oppress. And it’s not helped by a discourse about a ‘clash of civilisations’, which elides jihadi ideologies and treats them as normal Muslim thinking. That’s devastating for ordinary Muslims.”
If the men incarcerated in Guantanamo were white fascists, she says, “I hope we would defend them. We would have to defend them — but we wouldn’t necessarily put them on 50 or 100 platforms after that”. The problem, she believes, is that human rights organisations want to believe they represent “perfect victims”.
“But a victim can also be a perpetrator,” she says. “It’s a very simple thought.”
Point taken, I concur.
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