Mick Hartley

Nick Cohen on what Livingstone should be apologising for: his support for Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

There has always been something of the American city boss about Livingstone. He pays the necessary pieties to ethnic and sexual blocs and collects their votes. But for the sake of argument, let’s assume that he’s not just a grubby machine politician but is sincere when he declares that he is defending Qaradawi to the hilt because, ‘I have a responsibility to support the rights of all of London’s diverse communities and to maintain a dialogue with their political and religious leaders.’

He doesn’t seem to realise that this bland formulation is cover for a deeply reactionary manoeuvre which is being practised across the Western pseudo-left. First they define ‘communities’ by their religion. Then they assumed that misogynist and anti-democratic practitioners of that religion are the true leaders of their communities. The inevitable consequence is that liberals, socialists and feminists in the poor world are betrayed. They look to the Western homes of liberalism, socialism and feminism and are greeted with indifference or spite.

Last year Iraqi, Jordanian and Tunisian writers organised a petition to the United Nations by 2,500 Arab intellectuals which condemned ‘individuals in the Muslim world who pose as clerics and issue death sentences against those they disagree with. These individuals give Islam a bad name and foster hatred among civilizations.’ Prominent in their list of the ‘sheikhs of death’ was one Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Just as the British anti-war movement chose to turn its back on the eight million Iraqis who defied the murderers and voted, Livingstone has chosen to ignore the Arab left and offer comfort to its enemies.

You find this pattern time and again. The dominant voices in the rich world’s left are consistently on the wrong side. You have to go back to the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939 to find a similar accommodation with the dictatorial right.

As inevitable as betrayal is award-winning hypocrisy. In the name of anti-racism, Livingstone perpetuates the stereotype of the Muslim as a death-obsessed, woman-hating, queer-bashing cheerleader for suicide bombers. In the name of multi-culturalism, he talks as if something in the water supply of the Islamic world, or maybe an obscure genetic mutation means that one billion people actually want to be ruled by priests.

The joke of it all is that if the British government or a European or North American government were to recommend the execution of homosexuals or the enforcement of Christian belief by death sentences on apostates, Livingstone would be taking to the streets to protest. But when the same policies are proposed by brown-skinned leaders he shakes them warmly by the hand and invites them into city hall.