The ban on Palestine Action is inherently Islamophobic

“It’s our pals that were arrested.”

We had known for a few days that two people from the University of Nottingham had been arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000, but nobody knew who. One morning in 2008, in the middle of exam season, a friend found out that two of our pals had been arrested.

Just like we knew this June when we heard that Palestine Action had been banned under the same terrorism law, we knew then that this was nonsense. We knew then, as now, that when people of colour take part in organising for peace and justice, the state gets scared quickly and hits out. We knew then, as now, that this was bullshit.

Only a couple of months before, one of them had been plucked out of a Free Palestine protest outside our university library and arrested. He was released without charge because he wasn’t doing anything different to everyone else there, apart from having a darker skin tone.

“So we should probably organise a meeting about this on the weekend”, my pal said.

“Fuck that”, I replied, “we need to meet today.”

Islamophobia from the cops

That evening we met in a pal’s living room. About 12 of us gathered to work out what to do. We were scared. Homes had been raided. People had only just found out where their loved ones were. Officers in unmarked police cars were waiting outside. Some of us (not the white ones) were followed home.

The line from the Counter Terrorism Police was that our pals had copies of the Al-Qaeda Training Manual and therefore were terrorists. It sounds legit, until you know that it was downloaded from US government websites as part of their studies. The University of Nottingham did not bother to check what they were studying before they called the police.

Power never backs down or apologises unless forced to. From that first meeting we organised. We held a huge demo. We spoke to the media all around the world. The academic community were rightly concerned about academic freedom and some of them kicked off too. It turned out counter terrorism police had made up evidence, so eventually they had to apologise for that. The police hassled one of them so much that they had to pay him £20,000 for continued unjustified harassment.

To their shame, the University of Nottingham never apologised for its part in this racist witch hunt. They even hounded out Dr Rod Thornton, who acted as a whistleblower for their Islamophobic attacks. Never one to learn from their mistakes, the University of Nottingham again did not check before doing something, accidentally naming an accommodation block after them, the Nottingham Two.

Stopping Muslim dissent under the guise of terrorism

This was not the first time the Terrorism Act 2000 had been used to shut down dissent.

In 2003, it was used to stop protesters at an arms fair and detain over 1,000 peace protesters. In 2005, to evict an 82-year-old heckler from the Labour Party Conference. Schedule 7 of the Act is repeatedly used to target journalists and activists. The police made up “Domestic Extremism” and now “Aggravated Activism” to label protests similar to terrorism.

It is also not the first time counter-terror powers have been used in an Islamophobic way. Prevent is built on a foundation of Islamophobia and racism and has contributed to the legitimisation of institutional discrimination against Muslims.

Palestine Action is a protest group. It supports Palestine, which is largely Muslim. On top of that, many people active in it are Muslim.

The ban on Palestine Action is a worrying marriage of these two chronic abuses. Just as we saw back in 2008, Muslim dissent is seen as a legitimate target for crushing with terrorism legislation. Counter terrorism powers have always been used to crack down on dissent and attack Muslim people and communities. Just as we did in 2008, organising is the only way to defend our freedoms, friends and communities.

Featured image via the Canary