I don't often watch Newsnight but did last night, to see a
report and discussion on public libraries, not about the real or alleged
deficiencies of modern public library management, but this time about
clerico-fascist Islamic books stocked, in large numbers, in Tower Hamlets
libraries. (An aside, thank heavens the report and all who participated called
them libraries rather than Ideas Stores). It seems that, financed by the Saudi
Arabian government, the shelves groan under the weight of books by Islamo-fascists.
The programme was based on a report, available as a pdf on the Centre for Social Cohesion's website which suggests that as well as Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest, Birmingham and Blackburn are all at fault. But while it provides a detailed analysis of the content of the offending works, it offers no suggestions as to how this imbalance in stock occurred, makes no reference to the stock policies of the authorities concerned and offers no recommendations. Its credibility is further weakened by the fact that one of the joint authors, the Director of the Centre, is the self-styled "neo-con", Douglas Murray, whose intemperate performance on the BBC's Question Time earlier this year sticks in the memory.
The Newsnight report was unsatisfactory. It made much of the
fact that some of the works on the shelves were by convicted criminals. If
public libraries were not allowed to stock books by anyone
convicted in a court, then the works of Oscar Wilde would not be available, nor would those of Jeffrey Archer, though that is perhaps an argument in favour
of such a ban. The panel was light-weight and unrepresentative, consisting
only of Patrick Mercer, the maverick Tory brought in, much to everyone’s surprise, to advise the Brown government
on terror (and who has, incidentally, perhaps the worst website of any MP, which
is saying something) and two professional Muslims; there was no representative
from Tower Hamlets, CILIP or the MLA.
Those who argued for a ban on these books offered no
evidence to show that anyone was ever recruited to Islamic terrorism by reading
the ranting of Abu Hamza or others. If the government wanted to reduce the likelihood of further attacks like those of terrorism, stopping state funding and promotion of faith schools would be far more effective. . On the other side, no one suggested that
people might legitimately need to read these authors critically, to understand
the roots of the medieval mind-set that justifies suicide bombings and the
veil.
I have a solution to offer: satire always works and we desperately need someone to be as savage with these people as Brecht was with the fascism of the 1920s and 30s. I suggest that Tower Hamlets
leaves the books in stock, but offers them to local writers and artists to
embellish, in much the same way as Joe Orton and his lover Keith Halliwell who,
in the 1960s were taken to court by Islington council for defacing library
books. Orton and Halliwell's highly inventive minds doctored
illustrations to place a gorilla's head at the centre of a bouquet of roses, or
a picture of a naked tattooed man on the cover of a volume of John Betjeman. Their efforts
may now be seen in Islington's Local History Centre. The addition of passages
of homosexual pornography, some satirical annotations and inappropriate
illustrations would improve the works
of Abu Hamza and Abdullah al-Faisal no end.
Note to non-classificationists: 297 is the class number for Islam in the
religion schedules of the Dewey Decimal classification.
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