Lone voices against Terror

I went to the Toynbee Hall, the meeting place for the radical East End, this week to listen to a debate many radicals would rather not hear.

British Asian feminists and their supporters had gathered to launch the Centre for Secular Space an organisation whose work I would say is close to essential. It is not fashionable, however, because its focus is the collusion between the Anglo-American left and the Islamist right, which has betrayed so many Muslims and ex-Muslims, most notably Muslim and ex-Muslim women. Gita Sahgal, Nehru’s great niece, became the movement’s figurehead and eloquent spokeswoman when the once respectable and now contemptible Amnesty International fired her for protesting about its promotion of supporters of the Taliban. She and her allies are now trying to stir Britain’s sleeping conscience.

The failure of Britain’s liberal establishment and white left to combat reactionary religion, or even call it by its real name, stuns them.