Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (born Yasmin Damji on 10 December 1949) is an Uganda-born journalist, based in London; she hyphenated her surname only after her second marriage in 1990. She is the aunt of Farah Damji, the notorious journalist / socialite who went to prison. Her eldest brother is Amir Damji, Farah's father.

Career

Her mother was born in East Africa and her father moved there from India in the 1920s. Born into the Ugandan-Asian community in 1949, Yasmin belongs to the Ismaili sect.^[1] A Ugandan Asian expelled by Idi Amin in 1972, Alibhai-Brown was educated at Linacre College, Oxford University completing her MPhil in Victorian Studies in 1975. For a time, a journalist on the New Statesman magazine in the early 1980s, she now contributes a column to each Monday's Independent. She has also contributed to the New York Times, Newsweek and The Guardian.

Alibhai-Brown has been a fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), a think tank associated with New Labour, though she ended her connection with the Labour Party over the war in Iraq and other issues. She supported the Liberal Democrats in the 2005 general election^[2]. She is a Fellow of the British-American Project, though she has distanced herself from the organisation in recent years.^[3] Alibhai-Brown is also an occasional panelist on Matthew Wright's The Wright Stuff, her most recent appearance being in October 2008.^[4]

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown was awarded a MBE in 2000, but she returned it at the end of 2003, saying she had accepted her award only so that her mother would not face deportation. She said her mother was "distraught" that she had handed back the award.^[5] She copied Benjamin Zephaniah's decision to reject his proposed honour.

Criticism

When the Muslim Council of Britain called for the Holocaust Memorial Day to be replaced with the Genocide Memorial Day, she criticized the Council's refusal to "mourn victims of one of the deadliest mass exterminations in human history" [1]. The Council responded by accusing her of misrepresenting their position stating that it "fully accepts and recognizes the monstrous horror and cruelty that underpinned the Nazi holocaust".

Some critics have accused Alibhai-Brown of political correctness. Michael Wharton stated that "at 3.6 degrees on the Alibhai-Brown scale, it sets off a shrill scream that will not stop until you've pulled yourself together with a well-chosen anti-racist slogan".^[6] Alibhai-Brown argues that she is merely pointing out racism, and that, far from being politically correct, she wrote one of the first major books to criticize the concept, After Multiculturalism.

She is strongly criticised by Douglas Murray in his book, Neoconservatism: why we need it, for having written about Iraq that "there have been times I wanted more chaos, more shocks, more disorder to teach our side a lesson." Murray called her attitude "destructive and inexcusable" and wrote "the vindication of her own opinion is of more importance to her than the lives of British and American troops and Iraqi civilians".

In 2008 she referred to some Asians and Blacks who supported the British Conservative Party as "Uncle Toms". ^[7]

BBC debate with Sean Gabb

In a talk taped for the BBC on multi-culturalism, Alibhai-Brown objected when the Libertarian Alliance director, Sean Gabb said that he believed the government's Commission for Racial Equality should be shut down. When she stated that without laws meant to control discrimination, it would occur more frequently, Gabb asked her, "Yasmin, are you saying that the white majority in this country is so seething with hatred and discontent that it is only restrained by law from rising up and tearing all the ethnic minorities to pieces?" To which Alibhai-Brown answered "Yes". Gabb asked if Alibhai-Brown seriously thought that Gabb wanted to murder her, at which point the BBC shut off his microphone and told him that his debating was no longer needed.

The Libertarian Alliance announced that it "finds it disgraceful that Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is allowed to make racist comments against the white population of this country, while a liberal defender of civil liberties, freedom of association and free speech is censored. How would it be if a white person had said that blacks were only kept from raping and looting by fear of the police?"^[8]

Martin Amis

On 8 October 2007 Alibhai-Brown was drawn into the row between Martin Amis and Terry Eagleton over the treatment of British Muslims. After Eagleton's attack on Amis' alleged Islamophobia, she wrote a comment piece in The Independent accusing Amis of being "with the beasts" (ie, neo-fascists) .^[9] Amis' response, a highly critical 'open letter' was published on the 12th October.^[10]

Personal life

She is married with a daughter. Controversially, she sends their daughter (born c. 1993) to an exclusive public school. She met her current husband, Colin Brown, on a train to Brighton. She has a son from a former marriage. Her former Muslim university lecturer husband divorced her when their son (born c. 1978) was ten, for a younger woman, a student, after 17 years of marriage.

References

Select bibliography

• Some of My Best Friends Are... (2004). London: Politico's. ISBN 1-84275-107-7
• Mixed Feelings: The Complex Lives of Mixed Race Britons (2001). London: Women's Press. ISBN 0-7043-4706-7
• Who Do We Think We Are? Imagining the New Britain (2000). London: Penguin. ISBN 0-14-025598-2
• After Multiculturalism (2000). London: Foreign Policy Centre. ISBN 0-9535598-8-2
• True Colours (1999). London: Institute for Public Policy Research. ISBN 1-86030-083-9
• Hate Thy Neighbour (1998). London: Mindfield. ISBN 0-948491-52-3
• No Place Like Home (1995). London: Virago. ISBN 1-85381-642-6
• The Colour of Love: Mixed Race Relationships (with Anne Montague) (1992). London: Virago. ISBN 1-85381-221-8
• Racism (with Colin Brown, 1992)

External links

• Alibhai-Brown's columns for The Independent
• BBC World Service discussion of multi-culturalism with Yasmin Alibhai Brown
• "Madam, I am doing my job. These are regular customers."
• Epigram interview with Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
• Journalisted - Articles by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

News items

• Guardian January 2001
• New Statesman October 2000