The recent bombings and attempted bombings in London came as a shock to most people, despite the fact that the police had warned that such attacks were likely at some time in the future. The attacks were made by Muslims. And the shock was all the greater because it became clear that there are ‘home-bred’ Muslim extremists in Britain - people who were born here and are officially British citizens; further, there must be other person in the Muslim community who assisted the bombers. What has lead to the development of such a terrorist movement in Britain?
Masood (1) provides relevant facts about the Muslim community in Britain. He notes that “Muslims are among the least successful minority groups…three times more likely to be unemployed…more likely to lack formal qualifications…and more likely to live in deprived areas”. Criminality “is on the rise in these communities: 8 per cent of the prison population is Muslim, around three times the proportion of the population”. In these communities, people are likely to feel undervalued by society at large and become angry about their lot. Such communities are fertile ground for extremists seeking to recruit for their cause.
UK foreign policy in recent years has angered many, perhaps most Muslims. In particular the policy linkage of the UK to the USA, the latter with its double standards towards Israel and Arab countries (the idea of Jewish World domination comes to mind), its implied belief that the Judeo-Christian religion group is superior to other religions, and its determined attempt to dominate Muslim countries to safeguard its oil supplies, and to impose its own set of values on these countries.
Another cause however, is the theology of Islam, or the interpretation of that theology made by some Muslims.
Ruthven (2) notes the Muslim canon is divided into two parts, the Quran (Qur'an, Koran) and, of lesser status, the Hadiths. “For the vast majority of Muslims the Quran is the speech of God, dictated without human editing”. Maqsood (3) writes: “Muslims believe that it is the Word of Allah, exactly as the prophet received it”. He goes on to state his view that the Quran is different from the world's other holy books which in his view were created by human authors many years after the death of “the prophets” who wrote them, and later edited and revised by disciples. However, for us westerners, the Quran seems to be regarded by Muslims in the same way that the most extreme Conservative Evangelical Christians regard the bible. The Hadiths (traditions) are of lesser status (2). They are the Prophet's own teachings and sayings (3).
Now on radio and television we are constantly hearing, or hearing about, Muslim scholars and leaders saying that there is no authority for terrorism and suicide bombing in the Koran. In Gaia Watch, our knowledge of Islam is insufficient to assess the validity of this assertion, but we note that both Muslims who oppose terrorist attacks and Muslims who support such attacks, claim authority from the documents of the Islamic faith.
Khwaja (4) has an interesting article entitled “Terrorism, Islam, reform: thinking the unthinkable”. He maintains that such acts of terrorism are not sanctioned either by the Quran or the Hadith. He says that references in the Quran which might be used to sanction terrorism must be understood in the context in which they were made, a context very different from today. Many Muslims are he says failing to do this. “Unreformed Islam's relationship to the Muslim world is equivalent to pre-Reformation Christianity in Europe”
Masood (2)also notes the importance of interpreting the Koran in the context of the modern world. He says: “But unless the Koran is read in context, neither Bin Laden nor the BNP is wrong when claiming that Islam glorifies violence. What is a child expected to think when he or she reads a verse that says Muslims should defeat the infidels, and at the same time is told that the Koran is the literal truth spoken to the Prophet, as relevant today as it was 1,300 years ago?”. And again; “The Koran is taught across the Muslim world (including in Britain) as a set of eternal truths with little reference to its historical context”. He writes of mosque-based schools known as madrassas which are often the only place where many British Muslim young people learn formally about Islam , where they spend two hours most evenings after school learning to recite the Koran. How the Koran is taught here is, in Masood's view, “quite clearly one of the root causes of Muslim extremism”.
Masood also notes that a literalist reading of theology is found amongst Britain's extremist Muslim groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir (Liberation party), and its more radical offshoot al-Muhajiroun and the Saudi-inspired Salafis/Wahhabis, groups which emerged in the 1980s.
Various commentators are now speaking of the tensions young Muslims feel between their traditional relatively puritanical upbringing and the freer way of life enjoyed by other British people, tensions too between themselves and their elders, of their sense of “alienation” and their search for identity.
Masood (1) writes of Muslim youths “who find themselves torn between the material pleasures of British life - drink, drugs and sex - and their more puritanical Muslim heritage”. He also notes the tensions between young Muslims and their elders: He writes that South Asian Muslim households are often far more authoritarian than other Muslim households, with parents wanting to strictly control their offspring in terms of careers and marriage. Often, writes Masood, children who feel pressured to follow the parental line “look to Islam to provide them with a theology of liberation”. Most parents have little knowledge about Islam beyond what they need for ritual observance. So their children, being able to quote the Koran on Islam and marriage “can defy parental objections without cutting off ties”. The problem of the relationship with elders is made worse, Masood argues, because in many Muslim families, children, educated in Britain often speak English as their first language and cannot express themselves in Bengali or Urdu, the languages of their parents.
B. Patel, in Casciani (5) has a different angle on the strained relations of young Muslims with their elders. Disaffection he argues comes from a belief that their elders fail to strive for greater political power for the Muslim community: “Many of us are annoyed with the older generations. The sort of leadership we need is something more radical than what we have. But if you speak out as a young Muslim you are labelled extremist”.
Taseer gives us another useful insight (6). He sees a pathway for young Muslims - the second generation British Pakistanis - from frustration with the social scene in Britain and a sense of rootlessness, to acceptance of radical Islam. Taseer looks at things partly as a search for identity by these young people. They are of Pakistani ancestry, but Pakistan, throughout its history, has been a dangerous violent place, defined by hatred of India. So Pakistani ancestry, does not give them sufficient identity. Even less does any sense of being British: “Britishness is the most nominal aspect of identity to many young British Pakistanis”.
Taseer enlarges on this last point. He writes that during the time that present day tube bombers were growing up, “any notion that an idea of Britishness should be imposed on minorities was seen as offensive. Britons themselves were having a hard time believing in Britishness. If you denigrate your own culture you face the risk of your newer arrivals looking for one elsewhere” (i.e. a culture to identify with). We return to this idea at the end of our essay where we posit that this denigration was one aspect of multiculturalism.
Now Taseer bases his views partly on interviews with one prominent young Muslim radical, Hassan Butt (Butt had been a spokesman for the extremist group al-Muhajiroun, and been active in recruiting people to fight against the coalition forces in Afghanistan. Returning to Britain after recruitment activities in Lahore, he was arrested, had his passport revoked, and remains under surveillance).
In interview, Butt told Taseer “I feel absolutely nothing for this country”. Also Butt explained that while he was not in favour of military action in Britain, if somebody who was British did take such action, he would not feel troubled by that: “Islamically, it would be my duty to support and praise their action”.
Taseer thinks that Butt embodies the journey from frustration and rootlessness to radical Islam that some young Muslims have taken, a journey that has given them a sense of real identity. Taseer describes this identity as “the energised extra-national worldview of radical Islam”.
Butt in interview puts flesh on this concept. Butt spoke passionately about Arabia and how he wanted to go there, saying that the Arabic language would give him access to things he needed but did not yet have. Butt said: “My allegiance is to Allah, his Shari'a, his way of life. Whatever he dictates as good is good, whatever is bad is bad”. Butt thought that the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahir (HT) could show him an Islam that could bring order to his life. Butt speaks favourably of the philosophy of HT. Taseer asked Butt what was the philosophy of HT? Butt replied that it was the idea that Muslims in Britain should “keep to their Islamic identity and work for the re-establishment of the Islamic caliphate”. Butt also said he would like to see the caliphate here as well as in presently Muslim countries.
While saying that in this caliphate it was not necessary for everyone to become a Muslim, as his idea of the Caliphate was a “structure of law and order”, and “whether the people are Muslim or not is irrelevant”, he also held the view that “Islam was so powerful that it was the only way of life that both the conquered and conqueror embraced”. So Butt would see Britain converted into a Muslim state. And he said “I don't see why the rest of the world, the White House, 10 Downing Street shouldn't come under the banner of Islam”. And we point out to our readers that on our Population Trends page we documented how two leading Muslim officials in Britain wished to create a Muslim state in Britain.
This brings us to Jihad. According to Ruthven (2), jihad is a collective obligation for Muslims. This jihad has for the Prophet, two components, the lesser component of war against polytheists, and the greater war against evil. Now according to Maqsood (3), Jihad, as originally conceived, was “never to be military activity for the sake of nationalism, tyranny or aggrandizement, but only for defensive reasons”. However, Maqsood admits that what he terms “Sunni and Shi'ite extremists” interpret the verses in the Qur'an about Jihad “to mean that they should put all their energy into conversion of the world by driving away the devil and all his works”. In parentheses, Maqsood notes that the West is typically regarded as corrupt and is known as “the great Satan”. So there we have it. For Butt and some, perhaps many young Muslims in Britain, the ultimate goal is turning Britain into a Muslim state.
We do not know how many Muslims in Britain are sympathetic to the cause of the extremists, and we doubt if the police have a clear idea how many committed terrorists there are among the Muslim community.
Masood (1) comments on the extent of extremism in Britain: “it is now believed that up to 3,000 British-born or British-based Muslims have passed through jihadist training camps abroad”. And referring to a leaked Home Office document, while the number of persons with the will and capability to carry out terrorist acts is 40 at most, the number of British Muslims who positively support terrorism is around 15,000. Masood also mentions a guardian newspaper poll in March 2004 which found that 13 per cent of British Muslims believed that al Qaeda attacks on the US were justified.
It is worth noting here the views of Butt in conversation with Taseer (6): While the majority of Muslims in the UK simply care about living their daily life and don't care about moderate or radical Islam, the majority of Muslims who practice their religion feel sympathy for the radical element in their society. However, most of them don't voice their opinions publicly. He thinks there are about “750,000 Muslims with a real interest in Islam, and he thinks that about 80 per cent of those were over the moon about 9/11” (the Twin Towers attack).
Masood also writes about the Hizbut-Tahir (HT) group. HT discourages integration into Britain “and wants the restoration of the Islamic caliphate across as much of the world as possible”. This was one of the groups which fought for control of university campus Muslim societies during the 1990s. While it is now proscribed by the National Union of Students, this has not hindered its ability to recruit supporters.
Groups like HT, says Masood, “do not restrict their recruitment to universities. Extremists can also find disaffected youth through mosques, secondary schools and, increasingly, in prison”. And we noted earlier the big rise in the Muslim prison population.
Khwaja (4) provides another insight, focusing on the Wahhabi sect, noting in passing that the Taliban and Osama bin Laden belong to this sect. This sect (known in South Asia as the ‘Deobandi’) has a network of mosques and Islamic guidance centres. It runs most of Pakistan's 10,000 madrasas (religious schools). There are Dar-al-Alums (religious universities). These produced firebrands such as the ex-jihadi Abu Hamza.
But numerous Dar-al Alums are also found in Britain, and most acquire their syllabuses from radical counterparts aboard, and “often contain inflammatory material incompatible with a multifaith, multicultural society”. Many Imans in Britain have been trained in Dar-al Alums - not only Imans brought in from abroad, but locally qualifying Imans.
What then can we conclude about the extent of radical Islam in Britain? A general picture emerges of a widespread network of radical pedagogic schools operating within and without the numerous mosques, which provide extremist teaching to increasingly disaffected Muslim youths. These schools consequently produce young people who swell the ranks of extremist sympathizers and potential terrorists.
However, we need to put this picture into perspective. We note that even H. Butt, who on the basis of his views, one might have thought would tend to over-estimate the extent of support for radical Muslims, conceded, as we wrote earlier, that the majority of Muslims in the UK simply care about living their daily life and don't care about moderate or radical Islam.
At one point in an interview Taseer (6) asked Butt: “where do you see Muslims under attack?” Butt replied “Everywhere” - they were being attacked mentally. “They are being told that their way of life is backward, they're being told that for women to cover is against human rights, that being told that to cut the hand of the thief, which Allah says in the Koran, is outdated”. Butt here points to differences between Islamic and Western values. And in the final section of this essay we will draw attention to Western liberal values which are regarded as being at the heart of Britishness.
Now there seems to be a growing consensus that we do now need to promote the concept of ‘Britishness’ which focuses on such liberal values. But it is precisely those liberal values that stick in the maw of orthodox Muslims. So promotion of Britishness, which we think is a valid and necessary promotion, is likely in our view to further fuel hostility in Muslim communities.
Clearly there are moderates and extremists amongst the Muslim community in Britain. There are conservative traditionalists who wish to apply the ancient Islamic documents without consideration of change of circumstances, and there are those people who wish to see Islam adapt to modern conditions.
What is the likelihood that moderate thought will triumph in Muslim communities in Britain? Khwaja (4) seems on the whole to be pessimistic. He says first that contemporary Islam has produced more suicidal extremists than all other creeds, modern or ancient. He thinks the precedents for reform are not promising: “For centuries, reactionary Islamic scholars and clerics have used threats, intimidation and outright murder to resist it”.
He notes the difficulty of reform for a religion that lacks a leader, like a Pope, who is recognised by the Muslim peoples. Past history is not encouraging: it is littered with failed attempts at reform. A single mufti (religious academic) can issue a fatwa declaring the mildest dissenter an apostate, whom a Muslim is obliged to slay. He also notes that “the extremist ideologies holding modern Muslim societies to ransom have been exported across the western world by globalization, the electronic revolution, migration, abuse of refugee and asylum-seeker status, and arranged marriages”.
Masood too writes a note of caution about being too optimistic over reform. He says that reformers will face concerted opposition from an alliance of more extremist-traditionalist groups who will argue as has always been argued, that reformist attempts are just another doomed experiment to modify Islam to satisfy the west. They will say “The Koran was revealed to humankind as the final testament superseding the books of Christianity and Judaism”. And that there should be no compromise with the absolute truth of the Koran since this leads to “the slippery slope to unbelief that so many Christians have taken”.
When asked by Taseer whether he thinks the radical Islamic movement is growing or declining in Britain today, Butt replied he thought support was growing “In the public eye it seems as though only a tiny number of Muslims are making this noise, but the fact is that only a tiny number have the courage to speak out” (our italics).
There certainly are a large number of angry young Muslims around, and it is significant that when Taseer recently went to Beeston ( home of one of the London suicide bombers) and met some of its youth, he found that many of them were “as full of vitriol as Butt”.
On the other hand, Masood thinks that the London bombing may help to make the Muslim community more open. And “British and European Islam (learning from the west and moving with the times) may finally be starting to spread its wings”. Further, he thinks the Muslim Council of Britain “is now well placed to push the case for a broader understanding of the Koran among Muslim youth”. And Khwaja thinks there is “a ray of hope” coming from European Islam: “A new generation of Muslim thinkers is emerging, free of the fetters of the thought-police that bind its predecessors. The moderate tone of their Islamic polemics suggests that an updating of outdated theory and practice might be possible”.
Now the successful tackling of the terrorist threat requires that the police are able to identify and track down terrorists. And there are several things which, combined together make this task very difficult indeed. In the first place, the cooperation of the public is essential. But since members of radical groups are, or primarily are Muslims, this means the cooperation of the Muslim community. Now we hear on the BBC and other media channels that various Muslim leaders have urged Muslims to cooperate with the police. But to what extent will they do so? Butt has something to say about this too. He commented on what he described as a letter sent out by the Muslim Council of Britain to the mosques “about how we should be spying on one another”. Butt had subsequently spoken with ten different Imans in Manchester, Birmingham and London, and “all ten disagreed with the letter, but they never publicly said so”. And now we hear of Asian persons in London being charged with failure to disclose information to the police over the recent failed bombing attempts.
In the second place, it is essential that the Police are free to stop and search anybody who may have any connection to terrorist cells. These people will be, or primarily be, Muslims, the vast majority of whom will be non-White, in fact Asian or Black. And the connection of known terrorists with Pakistan and North Africa point to subgroups within the Muslim community which are particularly likely to house terrorist cells or their sympathizers. Quite obviously, quite logically, ‘stop and search’ should focus on such suspect groups.
But many Muslims are apparently outraged by the idea of such profiling, and they are supported by the dominant left-wing liberal White politically correct parties. We think the police may well be hampered in practice by restrictions on how they can operate.
Now ‘stop and search’ is apparently having a big effect on the Muslim community. They are angered by the policy, and the idea has been voiced that they will react by withdrawing even further into their own communities. And this makes the cooperation with the police, dealt with in our first point above, less likely.
In the third place, despite what the politically correct say on this subject, we think Identity Cards would be of great use in combating terrorism, and we have heard that the Police recommended them. Now the situation at present is that we do not have such cards, and we will not have them for some time to come. And even if we do get them, while people must have a card, they will not have to carry them. Such a scheme is, in our opinion, of very limited value. What we need is the speedy introduction of Identity Cards which it will be compulsory for everyone to carry.
In the fourth place, there is a big difference between tackling any threat if those posing the threat are part of a wide network with a well defined chain of command - so that once penetrated, the whole network, may be rolled up, and a threat posed by many loosely connected, or even not connected cells driven by a common ideology. It seems that Al Qaeda is nearer to the latter type of organisation. Taseer comments on this. He wonders if the London bombings had been a ‘loose cannon’ operation: “The bombers certainly had outside support, but there seemed to be a frighteningly independent quality about the operation, a cottage-industry terrorism growing in Hamara youth centres”.
The tackling of the terrorist threat, must be seen in the context of the total array of police duties. As we understand the general situation, the police are understaffed if they are to cope with the multifarious demands on their time. Now we hear on BBC programmes that the present series of massive anti-terrorist operations in London and elsewhere are causing police to be taken away from other duties, for example some murder enquiries have been temporarily suspended. Social cohesion in our urban areas requires that the police can cope effectively with all the crime problems in our cities. The terrorist threat will make the task of the police very much more difficult, and we could face a general deterioration of quality of life in our cities due to inadequate police action.
The successful prosecution of the war on terrorism will in our view, demand much more stringent laws than we have at the present, and much more rigorous enforcement of the existing laws. Yet even the, to our eyes, very moderate proposals of Tony Blair are already facing opposition from liberal and Muslim groups. Thus Shami Chakrabarti, director of the organisation Liberty spoke out in a press release against the new proposals as we write on the 5th of August:
“Liberty is very disappointed by the Prime Ministers remarks. We want a unifying leader, not one who sows the seeds of discord” And: “We are disappointed by his thinly veiled attacks on the courts and political critics. We are alarmed by his intention to return individuals to countries where they may face torture. Torturing, or sending people to face torture, can never be justified. We are deeply concerned that the criminal offence of condoning, glorifying, or justifying terrorism is broad enough to catch moderate as well as ranting politicians and religious spokespeople”.
And the Muslim Council of Britain, which has made it clear it does not support terrorist bombing in Britain, and asserts it “holds no brief for Hizb ut-Tahir”, nevertheless is opposed to Blair's planned measures to proscribe that organisation (press release 6th August).
Finally, we hear on the radio that in recent times, there has been a massive increase in race-related crime in Britain. And since the London bombings, religious hate crimes, mostly against Muslims, have risen six-fold in London (BBC News, 4th August). Such facts do not augur well for the future.
We reported earlier how Taseer had drawn attention to the denigration of native culture, and more specifically of “Britishness”. We believe this denigration has occurred. And we further believe this denigration arose with the adoption of the concept of multiculturalism and was indeed an essential part of the way the multiculturalism concept was developed.
Honeyford (7) provides useful insights into the concept of multiculturalism and its development. One of the things he points out is the relevance of the concept of ‘cultural relativism’. He says that the essence of this concept is that “cultures are systems sufficient unto themselves; they cannot be understood except in terms of concepts that they themselves generate. They cannot be evaluated by any general, independent principles, since all perceptions and explanatory systems are culture-bound. The notion of cross-cultural judgment is, therefore, very dubious. Since this is the case, any attempt to assume ethnocentric attitudes is deplored, as is the idea of cultural absorption, since this would imply the superiority of major to minority cultures - however they are defined” (page 31).
It is only a short step from this position to that where the values of the host culture are downplayed, in order to assure minorities that their cultures are not inferior. In Britain, we think this ‘downplaying’ became denigration.
This denigration continues, and seems to have got worse in recent years. We notice too that in a recent television programme by Michael Collins (Channel 4, 10th July 2005 “The British Working Class”), Collins pointed to denigration in relation to a major portion of society, the working class, linking this with the concept of multiculturalism. And he said that after the Stephen Lawrence case that class had been demonised as ‘yobs’ and ‘racists’.
Now it is reasonable to suppose that the still majority White native population resents this denigration: this resentment, entirely understandable, is damaging to social cohesion and can all too easily turn into violent protest. Honeyford also notes that extending individual rights - irrespective of ethnicity or race - which are enforced by retributive law, to group rights, as in multiculturalism, tends to create inter-group jealousy and friction (p.37). And such heightening of tensions helps those people who seek to radicalise the Muslim population.
We wrote earlier of the significance of Islam for discussion of identity and terrorism. Now Honeyford (chapter 2) has eloquent comments on the nature and impact of Islam. He says “…there is a single factor pointing to the dangers of some kind of multiculture - Islam”. He says that already by 1998, his nearly six years of working in a Muslim area of Britain showed that orthodox, fundamentalist Islam was alive, well, and flourishing in Britain. He notes that Islam is more static and absolutist than either Judaism or Christianity. And “Islam has an uncompromising legalism its rivals lack”. Islam is also “an international, proselytising movement which is on the march - conversion of both people and states is a central purpose”.
He notes ways in which he claims orthodox Islam is fundamentally at odds with fundamental British, or indeed Western values. First “the essentially Western notion of individual human rights…has little meaning for Islam”. He draws attention to a then recent report which drew attention to human rights infringements in 1985, which ranks eleven members of the Arab League Moslem states as ‘not free’, and ten, plus Egypt, ‘partly free’. Second, he notes that the separation of state and society, sacred from secular, “an impulse which lies at the very heart of Britain's civil liberties and free institutions, has no meaning for Islam”. And more generally, “Islamic philosophy in social and political terms is profoundly anti-Western”.
Honeyford goes on to discuss national sovereignty. He sees constitutional loyalty as a hallmark of the native British peoples, and a key element of any policy of integration: “Loyalty to Britain is demanded of all citizens, patriotism being a valuable source of political identity and social solidarity”.
But he argues, where you have large, and growing minority communities, “who may choose to reject integration and define themselves in terms of a foreign nationality”, this “could constitute a threat to the constitution, particularly where separate political influence is being claimed”. He goes on to say that “history provides many instances where minorities with divergent loyalties have caused national disintegration - Palestine, India, Cyprus and (currently threatening) Sri Lanka”.
All these considerations are clearly highly relevant to any discussion of the type of terrorism we see today. But we would like to mention something else that is also relevant, something arising out of the central interests of Gaia Watch - namely the significance of population growth and migration. We point out on our Population Trends page that the Muslim population in Britain is rapidly expanding, not just by high birth rate, but also through immigration. And we share Honeyford's concern that “continued reinforcement from the homeland tends to encourage separatism and delay integration” (p.48). And as we noted earlier in this essay Khwaja wrote:
“the extremist ideologies holding modern Muslim societies to ransom have been exported across the western world by globalization, the electronic revolution, migration, abuse of refugee and asylum-seeker status, and arranged marriages” (our italics).
One final comment. It is important that the British people are made fully aware of not just the nature of the problem of terrorism, but the extent of terrorist sympathies within our land. In our opinion, in news bulletins, interviews and other programmes on BBC radio and BBC and Channel 4 television, programme designers, presenters, interviewers, and commentators are, with a few exceptions, falling over themselves to try present a picture of Britain as a place of moderate Islamic communities and excellent social cohesion between ethnic groups. We do not deny that many Muslims are moderate. We do not deny that there are individual communities with good ethnic relations. But the coverage on radio and television in our opinion greatly distorts the overall situation in our country. In our view, the situation is not as good as we are being told by these media.
References:
1. Masood, E. (2005). Muslim journey. Prospect Magazine 113, August.
2. Ruthven, M. (1997). Islam. A very short introduction. Oxford University Press.
3.Maqsood, R. W. (2003). Islam. Teach yourself series, Hodder and Stoughton.
4. Khwaja, M. (2005). www.openDemocracy.net.
5. Taseer, A. (2005). A British jihadist. Prospect Magazine 113, August.
6. Casciani, D. (2005). Disaffection among British Muslim youth. BBC news.
7. Honeyford, R. (1988). Integration or disintegration? Claridge Press.
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