Part
of the problem, not the solution: Baroness Warsi, centre, with David
Cameron and William Hague. They have never addressed radical Islam
"The
good news is that government is finally dealing with the issue and it
is now a priority," said the government minister in a BBC film last
month. And of which of the panoply of issues currently facing our
country was this speaker thinking? The stalled economy? Youth
unemployment? No. The words were spoken by Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, the
"minister for faith", and the issue she was happy to report as a UK
government "priority" was the tackling of "Islamophobia".
Coming
just days after the bombing of the Boston Marathon by two young radical
Muslims, Baroness Warsi's comments were not just poorly timed — they
were poorly thought through. The killing of three people and injury of
more than 260 others would have been the perfect time for Britain's only
Muslim cabinet minister to address and assault the ideology which
causes such attacks: radical Islam. B Days later, a soldier was beheaded
by Islamists on the streets of Woolwich. But — aside from attacking the
most irrelevant, fringe extremists like Al-Muhajiroun — Warsi has never
taken up this role. This is not just her own failing. It is an exemplar
of a wider cultural failure.
In the
first years after 9/11 there was some success in turning the global
spotlight onto what Islamic fundamentalists believed, taught and aimed
to achieve. But then — at some point in the last five or more
years — that spotlight was turned around. It was not on the extremists
but on the rest of us — Muslim and non-Muslim — that it settled. It
became all of us who were the problem — not the crimes of the
fundamentalists but our response to them. The primary problem was no
longer Islamic fundamentalism but "Islamophobia". This narrative has not
only become pervasive in our societies — it has become dominant. It is
stopping us from dealing with the most severe challenge to our security.
It is time to unfold the lie.
I have
long argued — in this magazine and elsewhere — that the very word
"Islamophobia" is a nonsense term. A "phobia" is something of which one
is irrationally afraid. Yet it is supremely rational to be scared of
elements of Islam and of its fundamentalist strains in particular.
Nevertheless the term has been very successfully deployed, not least
because it has the aura of a smear. "Islamophobes" are not only subject
to an irrational and unnecessary fear; they are assumed to be motivated
(because most Muslims in the West are from an ethnic minority) by
"racism". Who would not recoil from such charges?
There
is also something akin to the charge of anti-Semitism in the
accusation — a link that many Jewish leaders have promoted. It was
several years after 9/11 that I first remember speaking on a panel with a
leader from the Jewish community. My co-speaker framed his remarks by
saying, "We must fight anti-Semitism but we must also fight
Islamophobia." He could not answer my question of how you could condemn
Islamic anti-Semitism without committing an act of "Islamophobia". But
the term has caught on, in part because of its catch-all availability.
Much of society has imbibed the meme.
The
term "anti-Muslim prejudice" has been suggested in recent years to
replace it. Certainly an improvement, it may help to draw the lines more
clearly than the fundamentalists who shout "Islamophobia" might like.
For among the reasons the term "Islamophobia" is so inexact is that — in
so far as there is a definition — it includes insult of and even
inquiry into any aspect of Islam, including Muslim scripture.
Accusations of anti-Semitism would rarely if ever be levelled at
any — let alone all — scholars of the history of the Torah. It is not
levelled at people who say that the God of the Jews does not exist. Sam
Harris and other prominent atheists regularly lambasted for their
"Islamophobia" could never be seriously accused of anti-Semitism despite
the fact they make exactly the same claims about the Jewish God as they
do of the Muslim one.
But even talk
of "anti-Muslim" prejudice is wrong if it ignores the most significant
causal factors. As Boston should have reminded us, talk of "phobias"
only works if you ignore the facts. People do not say about Jews, gays
or any other minority what they say about elements — and in some
unpleasant cases all — of the Muslim communities because to date neither
Jews nor gays have carried out any acts of terrorism (let alone
repeated acts of terrorism) against our societies. If they did then we
would have to expect — while also again decrying — expressions of
outrage against members of these communities. Such widespread blame
would be wrong — as wrong as it is to hold all Muslims responsible for
the actions of the Islamists. But it too would not have come from
nowhere.
The terrorism, bigotry and
disdain for non-believers which the radicals in the Islamic communities
preach is not beside the point. It is the point — the point
from which everything else grows. However, a decreasing number of people
seem to want to accept this. They wish to consider everything other
than the facts.
At a London
conference on anti-Semitism last year there was a walkout by some
left-wing Jewish delegates. They objected to the discussion by some
members of the desire of Islamic extremists to transform and take over
Western societies. "We didn't like it when they said it about us" was
more or less the cry of these delegates. As one speaker was forced to
say in reply, "But when they said it about us it wasn't true."
It
should not need to be said, but most Muslims in Britain and America are
no more involved in any conspiracy than Jews ever have been. The
problem we all have worldwide — Muslims first — is that extremist groups
exist which have power, influence and in some cases dominance and whose
aims are expansionist, extremist and violent. If the spotlight is taken
off them for a second they get off the hook. By taking it off them for
years we not only focus on the wrong things, we actually encourage what
we are trying to avoid. Suspicion and even hatred of Muslims could well
rise. But it could only be successfully stopped — as we must hope it
could be — by stopping radical Islam. The greatest fuel any such general
movement could get, by comparison, would be to ignore the thing which
sparks the suspicion — radical Islam — and attempt to cover for it.
The
immediate aftermath of the Boston bombings brought some striking
examples of this. In the days before the identities of the culprits were
known several prominent left-wing journalists wrote that they were
hoping the perpetrators would turn out to be "white" non-Muslim
Americans. Once it was clear that the bombers were Muslims, opinion
divided between those who said that the religion of the perpetrators was
of no consequence and those who said they now feared that Muslims as a
whole would be demonised as a result. This has been a staple of
terrorist attacks since 9/11: the "anti-Muslim backlash" meme.
No
"anti-Muslim" backlash has ever occurred. Americans, like the British,
are infinitely more tolerant and opposed to bigotry than our politicians
and media seem to realise. But the warning of such a backlash always
serves the same end — to confuse public opinion over who is the
perpetrator and who is the victim. Warnings of "backlash" — as in
Boston — take attention away from the actual, specific victims (such as
the eight-year-old Bostonian Martin Richard and his family) and towards a
generalised sense of potential guilt.
The
"Islamophobia" industry can find meaning only in such moments. It
responds not to the terrorism but to the perceived "response" to it.
Take Dr Hatem Bazian, Director of the "Islamophobia Research and
Documentation Project" at UC Berkeley Center for Race and Gender. In the
wake of Boston he condemned the "horrific crimes" of the Tsarnaev
brothers which "left the City of Boston in fear." And then he went on:
"But the Islamophobic machine committed crimes against our collective
consciousness by exploiting the suffering and pain of our fellow
citizens."
Here is one of the core
reasons why "Islamophobia" or even fear of "Islamophobia" is such a
destructive thing. For in the wake of an attack by any other group the
pools in which they swim are gone over relentlessly; undercover exposés
are carried out, names named and connections made. Were the Boston
bombing to have been carried out by some Tea Party activist, for
instance, every single politician, pundit and grouping that had ever
inspired, influenced or engaged the perpetrator would have been crawled
over and blamed. Even after all these years, our societal willingness to
do this to radical Islamists remains too weak.
As
it happens, the Tsarnaev brothers, who carried out the attacks, seem
most likely to have been radicalised by a combination of factors
including online videos of radical preachers. These include Anwar
al-Awlaki, the American-born extremist preacher who inspired numerous
terrorists before and since being killed two years ago in Yemen by an
American drone strike.
But there, and
in the search around it, we come to the core of the problem. If there
were such a thing as "Islamophobia", by what might it be caused? It is
not only by the behaviour of violent radicals but the way in which the
extremism they display comes from a radical agenda never nearly so many
steps away as one might wish. In this melée Baroness Warsi, and indeed
Boston, feature not as mere case studies, but as examplars of the
problem.
In the days after the
identification of the Tsarnaevs, media attention turned cautiously to
the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) whose mosque the brothers had
attended. As it happens, it is an institution that has been connected to
extremism and terrorism since its founding. But in the days after the
arrests a good news story came out. An unnamed witness at the mosque
said that in the months before the bombings the elder Tsarnaev brother
had twice been challenged by other worshippers at the mosque, for
interrupting sermons with anti-American rhetoric. But this much-desired
example of a mosque actually dealing with a radical did not last.
For
then came the discovery — leaked onto the blogosphere — of a different
story. The leaked email had been sent by the ISB to its congregation in
the wake of the discovery of the bombers' identities. The mosque had
warned them about co-operation with US law-enforcement.
"We
have been informed that the FBI may be starting to question some of the
community members about the two suspects," the email read. "Insha'Allah
we want to help as much as we can, but of course not put ourselves at
risk either." The ISB told its members to get in touch with the American
Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the mosque "for other resources" if
approached by law enforcement. What is any normal American — including
any normal Muslim American — to make of such a revelation? Surely to
wonder with everybody else what the risk could be to mosque members in
speaking with the FBI?
The Council on
American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), America's largest Muslim umbrella
group, has similar form. In the wake of earlier terrorism
investigations, CAIR distributed a poster which read: "Build a wall of
resistance. Don't talk to the FBI." The major American Islamic
organisation has consistently taken a hostile attitude towards US law
enforcement, partly perhaps due to its inclusion as an unindicted
co-conspirator in a major Hamas terror fundraising case a few years ago.
Are
cases such as this — continuous connections to terror and an
unwillingness to co-operate with law enforcement — of no concern to
those concerned with "Islamophobia"? If suspicion towards Muslims were
ever to become mainstream, might it not come from just such facts? And
if such a situation were to become worse might it not come from the
realisation that people in positions of influence have tried to ignore
the problem and deflecting it onto everyone else?
Sayeeda
Warsi is just one of those guilty of this mistake. Her film account of
the scourge of "Islamophobia" showed her talking of the ten to 12
occasions on which windows had been smashed and graffiti daubed at a
mosque in the north of England. "Islamophobia" was, she said, "blighting
lives". Women have had veils torn from their heads, she said, and
families had been "continually targeted". This shows, she said, that
"anti-Muslim attacks can happen any time, any place". Is that really so?
If it is then all of us, of any background or faith, would do whatever
we could to address the problem. Yet Warsi's approach does not address
it. It exacerbates it.
At the end of
March, shortly before making her film, Warsi spoke at a conference in
the House of Lords organised by the Federation of Student Islamic
Societies (FOSIS). FOSIS has been repeatedly criticised in UK government
counter-terrorism reviews for its troubling attitude towards extremism.
The aim of the March conference demonstrated exactly why. Titled
"Representation and Reality", its intention was to challenge the idea
that Islamic extremism exists on UK campuses. The truth is that to date
numerous people who have been leading members of student Islamic
societies have been involved in — and convicted of — the most serious
terrorism offences. These include the Detroit bomber Umar Farouk
Abdulmutallab, who was president of the student Islamic Society at
University College London shortly before trying to blow up a plane on
Christmas Day 2009. His inspiration, as for the Tsarnaevs, was Anwar
al-Awlaki. The conference Warsi addressed was, in short, set up to
conceal a fact and repeat a lie.
As
it happens, Awlaki himself had been a guest speaker at FOSIS
conferences. The organisation protesting that campus radicalisation did
not exist had hosted a man who did more than anyone else to promote such
radicalism. And this is part of a common pattern. The day before the
Warsi-featured conference, FOSIS was hosting an event addressed by Hamza
Tzortzis, a well-known Islamist speaker on campus (also a favourite of
the Tsarnaevs), who, among other things, defends beheading those who
leave Islam (he calls it "painless"). A couple of days after Warsi's
speech to FOSIS the group's current president, Omar Ali, spoke on a
platform with numerous extremists at a rally in support of the convicted
al-Qaeda facilitator Aafia Siddiqui (currently serving an 86-year
sentence in the US). Why should anyone — let alone a UK government
minister concerned about "Islamophobia" — be taking part in an event
that will actually make matters so much worse?
FOSIS
epitomises the problem. Always wishing to be seen as representing
Muslim students as a whole, the FOSIS leadership has in fact long been
defined by its narrow sectarian interests and a specific desire to
promote fundamentalist versions of Islam as mainstream while condemning
any critics as critics of Muslim students as a whole.
The
damage such sleights of hand do to opinion on all sides cannot be
overestimated. Had Baroness Warsi not been so busily promoting the idea
that Muslims — in particular Muslim students — are being "demonised" she
might have looked into the facts and found an explanation: that any
suspicion is caused not just by the extremists but by actions like those
of Baroness Warsi.
The lie which the
extremists, and those who give them political cover, hope to promote is
that "Islamophobia" comes either from nowhere, or from some horrible,
nativist instinct on the part of non-Muslims. At no point do they
consider the possibility that while there may well be people who dislike
people because of the colour of their skin, their accent, their height
or anything else, the reasons for being suspicious or distrustful of any
Muslims is provided first by extremist Muslims and second by the fact
that mainstream Muslims too often pretend that the extremists are not
extreme or otherwise provide them with cover.
When
extremist organisations like FOSIS seek to make themselves the
mainstream they tarnish by association the whole community, including
those who suffer most from them. What is an Ahmadiyya Muslim student to
think of such official support for clerics who tour the country
preaching hatred of their own particular denomination?
A perfect example occurred five years ago when the journalist Peter Oborne presented a Channel 4 documentary called It Shouldn't Happen to a Muslim.
Timed to coincide with the third anniversary of the 7/7 London
bombings, the claims of this programme were summed up by the UK's first
Muslim minister, Shahid Malik, who said, "I think most people would
agree that if you ask Muslims today what do they feel like, they feel
like the Jews of Europe."
As I noted in Standpoint
at the time, the programme did not find any evidence that Treblinka or
Auschwitz had reopened in the UK. But they did find a Muslim leader at
the Basildon Islamic Centre in Essex called Sarfraz Sarwar, who
complained of attacks by vandals, including arson, on his prayer hall,
house and car.
"What is happening is
mainly to do with misunderstanding," he explained. Oborne presented this
in the way Warsi presented her case. Yet no one presenting the
programme thought to note Mr Sarwar's current and high-profile calls, in
the local newspaper and elsewhere, for Sharia law to be imposed in the
UK and Sharia-style public floggings to take place in the town centres
of Essex. "Sharia law is not controversial. It's a deterrent. Muslim
countries don't have half the problems we have because Sharia law is
there," he said.Needless to say, nobody should throw stones through
anybody's windows, but mightn't people end up doing so because of
statements like this?
A few months
later, when another round of fighting between Israel and Hamas broke out
Mr Sarwar — who like most such leaders boasts of "interfaith"
work — could be found demonstrating outside the Israeli embassy in
London. He told a reporter, "I met hundreds of young Muslims who are in
no way fanatical. They haven't been brainwashed and aren't religious
zealots, they are normal young men, but see what is happening and they
are getting frustrated. It's senseless violence like this that will feed
their anger and will make them want to fight." The next year,
explaining the benefits of Sharia law for Britain to a journalist, he
explained how British society could be improved by Sharia punishments.
What would his punishment be for underage sex? "If they're caught doing
it, you stone the woman."
He
explained, "In Victorian days they applied Sharia. They held people in
stocks. There were public floggings, hangings. Why not go back to it?
What's the big beef now? Too many goody-two-shoes talking about human
rights." It seemed that the only thing even more confused than Mr
Sarwar's attitudes towards Victorianism is what our opinion should be
towards him.
Mr Sarwar is not the
most prominent Muslim leader in Britain, but he is symptomatic. On the
one hand, he says of someone throwing a stone through his window, "I
thought we were living in a modern European country, but it is like
Victorian times. There is a lot of hate." One the other, he promotes
punishments which are pre-Victorian, indeed medieval, such as stoning
women to death. On the one hand, he can say that fear of the Muslim
community is inexplicable. On the other, he can threaten that hundreds
of young Muslims in Britain are standing on the cusp of violence.
And
there is the heart of his-and our-problem. Shortly before the Boston
bombings I attended a conference at a London university on the subject
of the "anti-jihadist" movement, including the English Defence League
(EDL). One of the presenters talked in particular of the way in which
EDL supporters talk of "Muslim rape gangs" — cases like those in
Rochdale of Muslim men abusing white non-Muslim girls. The speaker
presented it as though it were a smear straight out of a modern-day Der Stürmer.
I
was left marvelling that at a London university
everything — interpretation, response — other than facts were now open
for discussion. For at that moment only half a mile up the road at the
Old Bailey, a group of men from Oxfordshire, of Pakistani and North
African origin, were standing trial. A few weeks later in mid-May the
guilty verdicts in the Operation Bullfinch trial came in. Once again
these Muslim men had organised a paedophile abuse-ring of non-Muslim
girls. I do not believe they raped those girls because of Islam. But the
extremist versions of the religion are a factor in such cases, and
judges, in British courts, have said as much and more.
And of course I know — and Standpoint readers
know — that such cases involve only a tiny proportion of Muslim men.
Distrust, let alone dislike, of Muslims generally should never occur
because of this. But there will be people in the country at large who
will have less judgment and discernment. They will see not only a
terrible thing that has happened, but a desperate unwillingness at the
heart of our society to even address this. Will that make things better
or worse?
The primary challenge
should be obvious. The second is how we deal with a reaction which only
has the potential to grow. The answer for much of the media — and most
governments — is to say either that things are not happening, or that
they do not mean what people think they mean and that in any case we are
all bigots for even thinking it. I think there is another answer.
Perhaps
the "Islamophobia" of which Warsi speaks, and anti-Muslim hatred can be
stopped. But it will only happen if the spotlight remains on the right
people. Only then will more people in the Muslim communities stand up,
speak out, and tackle the extremists out of rage that they are causing
so much trouble for everybody else. When people try to deflect attention
from the community, the radicals continue to get away with anything. A
government or individual who sincerely desires to tackle "Islamophobia"
must start by dealing not with the reaction but with the cause. And that
is not a thing which is the invention of paranoids, but the reaction of
many ordinary, alert people to a real problem. Deal with radical Islam
and what is rightly or wrongly called "Islamophobia" will disappear.
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