Ali Miraj is a young British Muslim who may go places in the
British Conservative Party. He has been twice endorsed by the
Conservatives to contest Parliamentary elections and is a board
member of the Conservative Party Policy Review on International and
National Security. He has written an article in the conservative
Daily Telegraph in the immediate aftermath of the airliner
bombing plot, headlined: “Muslim anger must be recognized.” He says
a recent poll indicates more than 100,000 of 1.6 million Muslims in
Britain see nothing wrong with terrorism against Britain such as
the 7/7 train bombings (some others put the number higher).
He continues that in many mosques up and down the
country,
We are constantly reminded that there is a perpetual
battle between the righteous (Muslims) and the “kuffar”
(non-believers). You will find no “love thy neighbor” sermons of
the kind I heard as a child at an Anglican primary school.
In addition to this, anti-Jewish sentiment appears to be
hard-wired into a number of Muslims I meet. At the last general
election, I remember being told by some of Watford’s taxi drivers,
slurping the froth from their pints of lager, that they could not
vote for me as the leader of my party, Michael Howard, was a
Jew.
He then got down to what might be seen as the nitty-gritty:
But it is the foreign policy pursued by the US and
Britain, not deprivation or a clash of values, in my view, that is
the principal catalyst of radicalization. A leaked Home Office
report on relations with the Muslim community from 2004 itself
recognized the ‘perception of double standards in British foreign
policy.’
Tony Blair argues that Muslims have a “false sense of grievance”
towards the West. He is wrong. The overwhelming majority of Muslims
find themselves on a continuum ranging from “deeply upset” to
“extremely angry.”
The sense of frustration at the injustice faced by Muslims
across the world as a consequence of the foreign policies of the
West (principally the US) is palpable. Mr. Blair’s refusal to call
for an immediate ceasefire in response to the current war in
Lebanon only reinforces the view held by more than half of British
Muslims that the war on terror is a war on Islam …
So, surprise! Surprise! Islamic terrorism is the West’s fault. In
Britain it is also, it seems, Tony Blair’s fault for being
insufficiently opposed to Israel. Mr. Miraj continues: “There is no
doubt that all British Muslims, not just their self-proclaimed
leaders, must to do more to combat intolerance in their midst. That
task is made more difficult when, despite all the mass protests
against the war in Iraq, the Government is seen not to have
listened.”
While he acknowledges that Blair did call for the intervention
in Kosovo to save Muslim lives, this evidently does not win him or
his Government much gratitude: “The Government must recognize the
anger that its foreign policies arouse. There is much talk of
strengthening the [Muslim] moderates and rooting out extremists,
but policy-makers should be aware of how rapidly the moderates are
becoming frustrated. The disturbing reality is that as their
frustration grows, so will the fringe prepared to resort to
violence.”
Shortly after this, James Chapman reported in the Daily
Mail on the outcome of talks between about 30 prominent
moderate Muslim leaders and British “Communities Secretary” Ruth
Kelly aimed at defusing extremism and encouraging Muslim
moderation. Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott also attended. Some
of the Muslim leaders at this meeting of minds, for their part,
made a series of demands including official Muslim religious
holidays in Britain and Sharia law.
Chapman reported: “Dr. Syed Aziz Pasha, secretary general of the
Union of Muslim Organizations of the UK and Ireland, said: ‘We told
her if you give us religious rights, we will be in a better
position to convince young people that they are being treated
equally along with other citizens.’”
This of course implies that Moslems are not being given
religious rights at present, though how this fits in with “Mosques
up and down the country” (there are now several thousand) I am not
sure. I have written elsewhere of such bizarre recent cases as an
English lady being forced by police to remove a collection of toy
china pigs from her front window in case passing Muslims saw them
and were offended, and prison officers being prohibited from
wearing Cross of St. George badges because of alleged Crusader
associations — I have a thick file of things like this. Chapman
continued:
Dr. Pasha said Miss Kelly had agreed to look at the
proposals, though her spokesman insisted later that she did not
favor any legal change which would give ‘special treatment’ for the
Muslim community.
Some of the moderate Muslim leaders told Miss Kelly that important
days in Ramadan and Eid-ul-Adha should be made public holidays for
Muslims. Some (not all) the Muslim leaders attending also said
Sharia law should also be introduced in Britain. While this
specifies stonings and amputations as criminal punishments, Dr
Pasha said moderately that he wanted it only for family, not
criminal, law.
“We are willing to co-operate but there should be a
partnership,” Dr Pasha was quoted as saying. “They should
understand our problems then (sic) we will understand their
problems.”
There was apparently no suggestion that countries like Saudi
Arabia should in return publicly recognize and celebrate Christian
festivals and holidays, or that Westerners or Christians in Islamic
countries should be given their own courts too.
A statement by three Muslim MPs, three peers, and 38 community
groups said the alleged “debacle” of Iraq, combined with the recent
failure to do more to bring about an immediate end to the Middle
East conflict — presumably a reference to the Israel-Hezbollah
fighting — had encouraged Muslim extremists in Britain.
In another development, Britain’s most senior Muslim police
officer, Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Tarique
Ghaffur, has blamed racial profiling at airports for adding to
tensions and Muslim resentment — this at a time when, according to
the Telegraph, British police are involved in more than 70
anti-terrorist investigations involving more than 100 suspected
Islamic extremists.
Let us step back and consider briefly what Britain has
apparently done in the way of foreign policy to earn the homicidal,
suicidal hatred of so many Moslems who have been born in Britain
and lived their lives with the protection, benefits, and
opportunities it has provided.
Well, Britain has supported the U.S. in Iraq in overthrowing
Saddam Hussein, a ruthless, aggressive dictator who threatened to
destabilize the whole region. Since then it has, like the U.S.,
spent lives and treasure keeping the peace and preventing or
attempting to prevent massacres and genocide between Shiites,
Sunnis and Kurds, and in trying to build a more normal civil
society. Many Iraqis have expressed very emphatic thanks.
It has likewise supported the U.S. in Afghanistan in
overthrowing the Taliban, a medievalist regime, utterly intolerant
of the rights of women, minorities and other religions, which
sheltered the most dangerous terrorist movement on Earth, and again
it has supported the U.S. in trying to build a more normal civil
society there.
In regard to the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah the case
against Tony Blair is apparently along the lines that he has not
denounced or denied Israel’s right to defend itself against enemies
bent on its annihilation (though many of his party and government
have).
Supporting the U.S. is, apart from other considerations, a
legitimate and indeed vital British diplomatic objective in itself.
Looked at in even the most cynical light, Britain’s support for the
U.S. can be seen as an insurance payment for its own security
(Britain won the Falklands War only because of U.S. help, which was
given even though the U.S. paid a heavy diplomatic price in
alienating Argentina and other Latin American countries). Britain
is also acting in no more than its legitimate national interest if
it is trying to safeguard oil supplies.
Whether or not any of these actions and objectives are mistaken
or impractical or badly carried out (I have been very critical of
many aspects of the Blair Government’s policies) is here beside the
point: they are decisions made by Britain as an independent and
democratic sovereign state. In any event, Islamic terrorism against
the West and the Anglosphere was well under way before these
particular foreign-policy initiatives were embarked on. The
U.S.-led overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan, for example, did
not provoke 9/11 but resulted from it. Muslim terrorist leaders at
other times and places have frequently made pronouncements along
the lines that the West will be destroyed not for anything in
particular that it does but for what it is.
Nor is the point whether these spokesmen for moderate Islam are
acting as advocates of Western capitulation or are truly and
objectively setting out the facts as they see them. I have no doubt
many Muslim leaders are genuinely horrified by what is happening,
want to find ways to stop it, and are giving the best advice they
know.
No, the real point is that they — or at least many of them —
claim or imply that the only way to stop Islamic terrorism in
Britain is for Britain to very largely surrender, to abandon its
friends and allies and those who share its values and share a
willingness to defend them, and to move a long way towards becoming
a quasi-Islamic State, allowing its policies to be determined by
threat.
One might think of the lines of ‘Allo! ‘Allo! regarding the cafe
owner in occupied France and the German garrison commander: “We
have a good working relationship.” “Yes, you do what he says and in
return he doesn’t shoot you.”
