These observations, if made in public, would undoubtedly cost this teacher her job and cause her to be branded as a racist. Such is the climate of intimidation in Britain, a nation that is paralyzed by a multicultural threat that it cannot even bring itself to name.
· CHAPTER FIVE ·
THE ALIENATION OF BRITISH MUSLIMS
Two months after the London bombings in 2005 , the British public was further jolted by a videotape that was suddenly all over the TV screens. It featured Mohammed Sidique Khan, the apparent leader of the first bomb plot, dressed in an anorak and Arab keffiyeh and calmly talking the language of homicidal hatred against his own country, Britain, in a broad Yorkshire accent.
He warned his fellow countrymen to expect more death and destruction unless the British government ceased to take part in the oppression of Muslims. “Our words are dead until we give them life with our blood,” he said. “Therefore, we are going to talk to you in a language you understand. . . . We are at war and I am a soldier. Your democratically elected governments continuously perpetuate atrocities against my people and your support of them makes you directly responsible, just as I am directly responsible for protecting and avenging my Muslim brothers and sisters. Until we feel security, you will be our target. Until you stop the bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture of my people, we will not stop this fight.”1
The “you” was Britain, and the “my people” and “we” were Muslims. Thus he drew a lethal line between the two. This Leeds boy had no allegiance to, nor identification with, the Britain where he was born and brought up. His allegiance was instead to the worldwide community of Muslims, the ummah.
Since the London bombings, both British Muslims and the wider community have systematically downplayed the religious significance of those atrocities and the religious motivation of those who carried them out. The ritualistic nature of the suicide attacks and their continuity with similar attacks around the world, whose one overwhelmingly consistent feature was their inspiration by religious fanaticism, were brushed aside. The radical hostility and disengagement displayed by Mohammed Sidique Khan towards the country of his birth were similarly not ascribed to the ideology of Islamism, at the core of which lies an irrational hatred of the West and a desire to subjugate it to the tenets of Islam. Instead, the British heard the phrase “atrocities against my people” and decided that Britain had been bombed because of its role in the invasion of Iraq. Despite the fact that the bombers had not been poor or marginalized but had been well educated, held down jobs and been to all eyes integrated members of the wider community, the British intelligentsia also decided that the roots of this impulse to mass murder lay in the segregation of Muslims within British cities. And the reason for such segregation was economics, discrimination, racism—anything but religion.
This played well with British Muslims, whose main reaction to the bombings was to disclaim responsibility for what had happened, to maintain that it was utterly “un-Islamic” and the bombers had been not proper Muslims, that the overwhelming majority of British Muslims were wholly opposed to violence and of moderate opinions, and that the main victims of the London bombings were in fact the Muslim community, who were being oppressed and victimized by “Islamophobic” reactions.
In the wake of such atrocities, it is certainly important not to demonize an entire community for the misdeeds of a few. With emotions so heightened, there is a risk of victimizing innocent people who have been besmirched by the activities of a small number doing violence in the name of the religion they all share. Last but not least, across the world it is Muslims who have been victims of Islamist terror in greater number than anyone else.
However, it is unfortunately not so easy to agree that British Muslims are overwhelmingly moderate in their views, and that those holding extremist views are so small in number as to be statistically insignificant. The crucial question is what exactly “moderate” is understood to be.
If “moderation” includes reasonableness, truthfulness and fairness, the reaction by British Muslims to the London bombings was not moderate at all. Yes, they condemned the atrocities. But in the next breath they denied that these had had anything to do with Islam. Thus they not only washed their hands of any communal responsibility but—in denying what was a patently obvious truth that these attacks were carried out by adherents of Islam in the name of Islam—also indicated that they would do nothing to address the roots of the problem so as to prevent such a thing from happening again.
In the immediate aftermath Mohammed Naseem, chairman of the Birmingham Central Mosque, said there was no proof that the London suicide bombers were Muslims. He called Tony Blair a “liar” and an “unreliable witness” and questioned whether CCTV footage of the suspected bombers actually showed the perpetrators. He said that Muslims “all over the world have never heard of an organisation called al Qaeda.” 2
From such nonsense, it was but a short step to saying that those who did point out that the roots of such terrorism lay in Islamist ideology, and therefore expected the Muslim community to do something about it, were guilty of prejudice. Accordingly Sir Iqbal Sacranie, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, was quick to say that “the real victim of these bombings is the Muslim community of the UK.”3 And if the Muslim community was the real victim, then it followed that the British, far from being the targets of terrorism, were actually to blame for causing it by supporting the war in Iraq. This moral inversion was then turned into a threat that unless the British changed their foreign policy they could expect more of the same.
Thus Dr. Azzam Tammimi of the Muslim Association of Britain said: “. . . and God knows what will happen afterwards, our lives are in real danger and it would seem, so long as we are in Iraq and so long as we are contributing to injustices around the world, we will continue to be in real danger. Tony Blair has to come out of his state of denial and listen to what the experts have been saying, that our involvement in Iraq is stupid.” The marketing manager for the Muslim Weekly newspaper, Shahid Butt, said: “At the end of the day, these things [violent incidents] are going to happen if current British foreign policy continues. There’s a lot of rage, there’s a lot of anger in the Muslim community. We have got to get out of Iraq, it is the crux of the matter. I believe if Tony Blair and George Bush left Iraq and stopped propping up dictatorial regimes in the Muslim world, the threat rate to Britain would come down to nearly zero.” 4
Other Muslim groups went even further and supported terrorism in countries other than Britain, including by implication the violence against British and American forces in Iraq, by relabeling it “resistance.” A joint statement signed by groups including the Association of Muslim Lawyers, the Federation of Student Islamic Societies, the Islamic Human Rights Commission, the Muslim Association of Britain and Q-News magazine said: “The Muslim community in Britain has unequivocally denounced acts of terrorism. However, the right of people anywhere in the world to resist invasion and occupation is legitimate.” The statement, which also opposed the banning of Hizb ut-Tahrir and any proposal to close “extremist” mosques, went on: “If the government hopes to pander to Zionist pressure by condemning and excluding from this country people who are critical of Israeli apartheid, it is in fact supporting apartheid.”5
The charge that Israel is an “apartheid” society is of course one of the Big Lies propagated by the Muslim world. And relabeling terrorism as “resistance,” if it takes place in connection with one of the iconic conflicts of Islamist demonology, is a sleight of hand to conceal support for the murder of innocents. It was therefore no surprise that the same statement dismissed the word “extremism” as having “no tangible legal meaning or definition” and being “unhelpful and emotive.” For such views were indeed extremist. Yet most of these were supposedly mainstream organizations.
Hope of a response by British Muslims that truly reaffirmed moderation rose briefly when the British Muslim Forum issued a fatwa against terrorism. But this was promptly das
hed by the text of this fatwa. It unequivocally condemned suicide bombings in London but did not unequivocally condemn them elsewhere, for example in Iraq or Israel:Islam strictly, strongly and severely condemns the use of violence and the destruction of innocent lives. There is neither place nor justification in Islam for extremism, fanaticism or terrorism. Suicide bombings, which killed and injured innocent people in London, are haraam—vehemently prohibited in Islam—and those who committed these barbaric acts in London are criminals not martyrs. Such acts, as perpetrated in London, are crimes against all of humanity and contrary to the teachings of Islam.
This left wide open the question of whether suicide bombings elsewhere were permitted. And if the religion did permit them elsewhere, then obviously it was not true that “there is neither place nor justification in Islam for extremism, fanaticism or terrorism.” The fatwa condemned the “destruction of innocent lives” everywhere, but that also left open the question of the meaning of “innocent.” This suspicion deepened when it added:The Holy Koran declares: “Whoever kills a human being . . . then it is as though he has killed all mankind; and whoever saves a human life, it is as though he had saved all mankind” (Koran, Surah al-Maidah (5), verse 32). Islam’s position is clear and unequivocal: Murder of one soul is the murder of the whole of humanity; he who shows no respect for human life is an enemy of humanity.
But it is not unequivocal at all, because the passage that is quoted here contains other phrases, left out in this fatwa, that change the meaning altogether:That was why we laid it down for the Israelites that whoever killed a human being except as punishment for murder or other villainy in the land [my emphasis] shall be regarded as having killed all mankind; and that whoever saved a human life shall be regarded as having saved all mankind. Our apostles brought them veritable proofs; yet many among them, even after that, did prodigious evil in the land. Those that make war against God and His apostle and spread disorder in the land shall be slain or crucified or have their hands and feet cut off on alternate sides, or be banished from the land [my emphasis].6
In other words, where there is “villainy,” killing is expressly permitted; and since villainy can mean anything, and since Islamist extremists regard Western or democratic influence as acts of war against Islam, it follows that in such circumstances the slaughter of Western or reformist Muslim innocents is expressly permitted—because they are not regarded as innocent in the first place.7
Concern about the extremist character of British Muslims does not rest solely on their responses to the London bombings. Survey evidence suggests that, while the vast majority do not support violence, a frighteningly large number do; and, beyond them, a much larger proportion dislike British values and would like to replace them by the tenets of Islam.
A survey carried out by the Home Office in 2004 provided deeply alarming evidence. It found that no fewer than 26 percent of British Muslims felt no loyalty to Britain, 13 percent defended terrorism and up to 1 percent were “actively engaged” in terrorist activity at home or abroad, or supported such activity. This last number, deemed “extremely small” by the Home Office, added up to at least sixteen thousand terrorists or terrorist supporters among British Muslims.8 Meanwhile the former Metropolitan Police commissioner Lord Stevens revealed that up to three thousand British-born or British-based people had passed through Osama bin Laden’s training camps.9 Security agencies believed that the number who were actually prepared to commit terrorist attacks might run into hundreds. Polling evidence revealed similar numbers who supported attacks on the United States. In 2001, a BBC poll had found that 15 percent of British Muslims supported the 9/11 attacks on America.10 In 2004, a Guardian poll recorded that 13 percent of British Muslims thought that further terrorist attacks on the USA would be justified.11
In addition, polling evidence revealed a dismaying amount of anti-British feeling among Britain’s Muslim citizens. Following the London bombings, a poll found that the overwhelming majority rejected violence, with nine in ten believing it had no place in a political struggle. Nevertheless, one in ten supported the attacks on July 7, and 5 percent said that more attacks in the UK would be justified, with 4 percent supporting the use of violence for political ends.12
The evidence of Muslim alienation from Britain was no less disturbing. Between 8 and 26 percent have said they feel either not very or not at all patriotic.13 Another poll revealed that while 47 percent said they felt “very loyal” to Britain, nearly one in five—more than one hundred thousand British Muslims—said they felt little or no loyalty at all. And while 56 percent said Muslims should accept Western society , 32 percent believed that “Western society is decadent and immoral and that Muslims should seek to bring it to an end.”14
These numbers were simply horrifying. While the vast majority were opposed to terrorism, the numbers who supported it were wholly intolerable and almost certainly unique; no other community in Britain contains such an enormous reservoir of potential violence against the state. Moreover, to have almost a third of the community hostile to Western society and wanting to bring that society to an end clearly makes a mockery of the claim that British Muslims are overwhelmingly moderate. That is a huge pool in which terrorism can swim.
Why are so many British Muslims so angry and alienated? After the Muslim riots of 2001 in northern English towns, a clutch of official reports concluded that the essence of the problem lay in the fact that Muslims tended to be segregated from the rest of the community, in terms of both where they lived and how they behaved. But this failed to address the further question of why they were segregated. To some extent, it was because poor, vulnerable communities with very different traditions do tend to stick together for mutual support in a strange culture. But there were two obvious flaws in this argument.
The first was that other minorities, like the Hindus, had no problem integrating at all. The second was that British Muslims drawn into terrorism were not necessarily poor or marginalized. As British officials had noted, they tended to fall into two groups: “a) well educated, with degrees or technical/professional qualifications, typically targeted by extremist recruiters and organizations circulating on campuses; b) under-achievers with few or no qualifications, and often a non-terrorist criminal background—sometimes drawn to mosques where they may be targeted by extremist preachers and in other cases radicalized or converted whilst in prison.”15
So it would appear that there is something particular to Islamic culture at this present time that makes it vulnerable to this kind of extremism. Indeed, since a number of terrorists are Muslim converts who have not come from these segregated communities, the reason goes beyond ethnicity or economics. And although many in Britain lean over backwards to deny this, the case that the cause lies in the religious culture itself is overwhelming.
One must acknowledge that the Muslim community in Britain is extremely diverse, consisting of many subcommunities with different geographical and cultural antecedents and views as well as different positions on the religious spectrum. Many British Muslims just want to get on with life and have no leanings towards religious extremism, let alone violence.
But the fact that so many do not succumb to religious extremism does not mean that it doesn’t have a profound influence on others. And all the evidence suggests that a doctrinal radicalization that took root in Britain more than twenty-five years ago has fed upon a widespread sense of cultural dislocation, resulting in a disastrous effect upon many Muslim youths.
In recent decades, the Islamic world has succumbed in large measure to an extreme version of the religion that emerged out of the postcolonial ferment and the rise of Arab nationalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This version, which gave rise to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928, was promulgated by hugely influential Islamic thinkers such as Sayed Qutb and in India by Sayed Abu’l Ala Maududi, and later fused with the puritanical Wahhabi doctrine, that was the orthodoxy in Saudi Arabia.
Sayed Qutb laid down that
Muslims must answer to God alone and that human government was illegitimate. It was therefore a proper target for jihad, which would be waged by true believers, “destroying the kingdom of man to establish the kingdom of heaven on earth.”16 This approach is the basis of Islamism, whose defining characteristic is the belief that the world should be conquered for Islam. It is a doctrine that forms a continuum of clerical fascism which has at its extremity al-Qaeda—but with many other punctuation points along its route.
In 1973, the Conference of Islamic Cultural Centres in London decided to set up an Islamic Council of Europe to propagate the “true teachings of Islam” throughout Europe. In 1978, the Organization of the Islamic Conference sponsored a seminar in London organized by the Islamic Council of Europe to consider the position of Muslim communities in non-Muslim countries. It said that such communities must establish autonomous institutions with help from Muslim states, and lobby the host country to grant Muslims recognition as a separate religious community, as a step towards eventual political domination:Once the community is well organised, its leaders should strive to seek recognition of Muslims as a religious community having its own characteristics by the authorities. Once recognised, the community should continue to request the same rights the other religious communities enjoy in the country. Eventually the community may seek to gain political rights as a constituent community of the nation. Once these rights are obtained then the community should seek to generalise its characteristics to the entire nation.17
The Islamic Foundation in Leicester espouses the ideas of the Jamaat al-Islami, whose guiding star was Sayed Maududi. He said: “The truth is that Islam is a revolutionary ideology which seeks to alter the social order of the entire world and rebuild it in conformity with its own tenets and ideals.” In 1982, the Leicester foundation said in its declaration that the Islamic movement “is an organised struggle to change the existing society into an Islamic society based on the Koran and the Sunna and make Islam, which is a code for entire life, supreme and dominant, especially in the socio-political spheres.”18 In 2005, the foundation’s chairman and rector, Kurshid Ahmad, said that a revolutionary idea that lets people “try to change the world on the basis of values of faith in Allah, justice, service to humanity, peace and solidarity” was nothing to be frightened of.19
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