Diary
Time to rethink the mega mosque
30 July, 2007
By the time it closed yesterday, a petition on the Downing Street website that condemned the proposed ‘mega mosque’ near the Olympic village had attracted roughly 280,000 signatures. By any standards, this was a fairly significant measure of public opinion on an increasingly controversial issue. And in case you’ve been asleep for the last two years, the issue in question is the ‘proposed’ mosque and Islamic centre (‘the London Markaz’) which, if it receives planning permission, will be built on an 18 acre site in Stratford, very close to the London 2012 Olympic Park. It would become overnight the largest religious building in the country.
So what does one make of all this? According to the Independent’s religious affairs correspondent, interviewed this morning, there is nothing much in the plan to worry about. This petition is really all about ‘Islamophobia’ and the prevailing climate of fear and ignorance held by many towards Islam. He rather conveniently ignores the fact that many of those objecting to the mega mosque in recent months have been members of Britain’s Sufi Muslim community. Are they Islamophobic too?
No doubt some of those who object to this mosque come from the ranks of the ignorant and misinformed. Contrary to some critics, the cost of building this mosque will not be met from taxpayers’ money but will come from foreign (and domestic) donations. And of course we should strive to uphold the freedom of religious worship for all citizens, regardless of their cultural background. But strip away the simplistic arguments and you find at least three genuine reasons to be alarmed about the proposed mega mosque.
In the first instance there is the question of scale. This will be Britain’s biggest religious building, one able to accommodate vastly more worshippers than any other of its kind. In effect, it will be Britain’s predominant religious symbol. Notwithstanding the right of all communities to build houses of worship, this vast edifice will dwarf the buildings of other communities and do little to enhance community relations.
The second more serious objection concerns the role of Tablighi Jamaat, the group that is driving ahead with this proposal. For years the West has perceived Tablighi as an essentially benign, apolitical missionary group whose activities pose little harm to non Muslims. But in the last few years serious questions have been raised about Tablighi’s links to extremism. In an important scholarly article for the Middle East Quarterly, Alex Alexiev makes the following observations: ‘Tablighi Jamaat has always adopted an extreme interpretation of Sunni Islam, but in the past two decades, it has radicalized to the point where it is now a driving force of Islamic extremism and a major recruiting agency for terrorist causes worldwide.’
This would tie in with the views of many observers in India and Pakistan who believe that Tablighi founded Harakat ul-Mujahideen, the jihadist group that hijacked an Air India passenger jet in 1998. Tablighi is also believed to have been infiltrated by Lashkar-e-Toiba, a banned organization responsible for worsening sectarian violence in Pakistan. French intelligence (Le Monde, Jan. 25, 2002) described the organization as ‘antechamber of fundamentalism’ when they found that most homegrown Islamic extremists came from Tablighi ranks.
Thirdly there is the question of finance. The Saudi Wahhabis have been financing Tablighi Jamaat for years. The World Muslim League, itself subsidized by Saudi money, gave funds towards the building of the Tablighi mosque in Dewsbury, their current European headquarters. It is likely that the funds for the mega mosque will also come from Saudi Arabian petro-dollars, which are also used to fund the creation of Saudi schools, mosques and madrassas round the globe. As we have been finding out recently, the messages that come from these Saudi financed institutions are not that pleasant.
The Saudi Salafist strain of Islam is intolerant, puritanical, bigoted and hostile to other faiths. The children who go to Saudi financed schools are encouraged to remain distant from and mistrust the Judaeo-Christian ‘kuffar’ who may happen to live in the next street. This is hardly the ethos one would expect in tolerant, multi ethnic London.
Still, given the burgeoning costs of the Olympic dream, we may find that by 2012 the mega mosque is the least of our problems.
topThe flaws in Brown's terror approach
27 July, 2007
Lacking the fanfare and showmanship that was the hallmark of Tony Blair, Gordon Brown on Wednesday set out his government’s approach to tackling the terror threat. Much of what he proposed was simply a recycling of old ideas, including extending the period of police questioning without charge from 28 days and the introduction of ID cards. Ultimately the measures did not go far enough in securing the country from the enemy within or from abroad.
One notable initiative was the idea of a single agency to provide effective control of Britain’s borders. Ostensibly, this would bring the country into line with other Western countries which police their borders to prevent illegal immigration, drug trafficking and fraud. However, the plan is ineffective because it does not involve the police, a central ingredient in the agencies set up in Spain and Australia.
The suggestion for increasing police powers was originally put to MPs 2 years ago. Back in 2005, Parliament decisively rejected the Blair plea to allow police up to 90 days to hold a suspect without charge. One key argument for rejecting the idea was that the police had not provided a watertight case for such a draconian, and irreversible, extension of their powers. True, terror cases require sifting through computer records, files and a vast amount of data but, to date, the police have not run out of time in investigating a terror suspect. Nothing has changed since 2005.
Now take the issue of ID cards. It is increasingly obvious that these are no more than an expensive and unnecessary intrusion into the lives of the innocent which will have little impact on terror cells. The Madrid bombers all had ID cards while the 7/7 bombers were British passport holders. Establishing people’s identity is the easy bit. Discerning their intention to cause carnage is quite another. Certainly, it is easier to discover a terror cell using the ID cards of terror suspects (which was the case in the Madrid bombings) but it does not help us in preventing an initial attack. Given the vast expense of implementing ID cards, it would surely be preferable to spend money on improving intelligence to prevent an atrocity in the first place.
There were two disappointing omissions from the proposals. The first was the inability to use intercept evidence from telephone calls in court. As the former Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith put it, ‘We do have a need to use intercept in court if we're going to give ourselves the chance of convicting some of the most dangerous and prolific criminals in the country.’ The second was the failure to proscribe radical groups like Hezb ut-Tahrir. This is an area where David Cameron scored points against the government weeks ago when he demanded to know why a group that called for the murder of Jews, and recruited radicalized Muslims to the call of jihad, was not guilty of a severe breach of the law.
People have been demanding to know why it is so hard to deport radical preachers, such as Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, who openly call for jihad within our borders. The answer is simple: under the European Convention of Human Rights, we cannot deport anyone to a country where it is suspected that they will face harm, especially torture. A set of outdated human rights conventions is therefore preventing us from taking measures essential to our security but which are also serving the interests of jihadists. Without tackling the ideological progenitors of radical Islam who sow the seeds of violent activity, the government is confined to tackling the symptoms, rather than the causes of terrorism.
topSo who says prisons don't work?
24 July, 2007
Some weeks ago, the Blair government announced that thousands of criminals would be freed early due to the increasing problems of prison overcrowding. With the prison population soaring above 80,000, Lord Falconer told the House of Lords that certain groups of people, including burglars, drug dealers and conmen serving terms of less than four years, would be eligible for release up to 18 days early.
As if to reassure the public, Falconer went on to say that people would be allowed out on licence, meaning that their sentence would continue and they would be risk-assessed by prison staff prior to release. With prison places drying up, the government resorted to keeping people in court cells at a cost of over £1 million pounds per week.
This is all desperately worrying news for all of us. The early release of potentially dangerous prisoners undermines confidence in the criminal justice system and endangers the majority of decent, law abiding citizens. It is hard to imagine that of those released early, a large number will not go on to re-offend in the near future and cause untold misery for their many victims. Indeed what we are currently witnessing with this prison overcrowding saga is nothing short of a fiasco.
Worse still, this is grist to the mill of the left wing cabal that views prisons as a dangerous and uncivilized nuisance. Their argument is a frivolous one that flies in the face of the facts. On any cost and benefit analysis, prisons represent good value for money and prove a remarkably effective means of reducing crime. Some statistics might help to explain why. First a quote from the Halliday report into crime and sentencing in 2000: ‘A survey of self reported offending among males received into prison under sentence in early 2000, suggests that they commit offences at around 140 per year in the period at liberty, before they were imprisoned.’ This means that if we locked up an additional 1000 persistent offenders through the creation of an additional 2 jails, we might prevent as many as 140,000 crimes being committed during one year of incarceration. Given the staggeringly high cost of crime, which the Home Office estimated for 2003/4 at £36.2 billion, and the vastly lower costs of running prisons, a modest prison building programme would bring real economic savings.
But what about high rates of recidivism argue the critics? For naturally there are notoriously high rates of re-offending when people come out of prison. But this logic should be pursued to its conclusion. Recidivism rates are also high when people are allowed out on early release schemes, as the Home Office found out when they reported in 2005 on the number of prisoners being recalled to jail after serving short sentences for burglary and theft. Just as bad are the recidivism rates for those who are not incarcerated in the first place. One point that is endlessly obscured by the liberal reformers is that once inside prison, offenders cannot commit further crimes against the innocent.
Of course this is not to deny the need for substantial programmes of prison reform and rehabilitation. As the Halliday report made clear, there is evidence that ‘properly conducted offender treatment programmes can have a significant effect on reconviction rates’ and that properly designed programmes ‘might reduce reconviction rates by 5-15 percentage points.’ The Koestler awards for music and art offer a real chance to boost offenders’ self esteem and creativity and help prepare them for a life outside prison. With nearly one third of offenders illiterate and ill educated, there is an urgent need for adequate and properly funded educational opportunities in every prison. But if resources are stretched because of overcrowding, this high illiteracy rate can never be tackled. At the same time there is an argument for reducing prison numbers where this is both morally justified and logistically feasible. One example would be allowing overseas offenders to serve their sentences abroad.
Prisons are sadly necessary in any society but it would be wrong to view them with embarrassment or shame. They do a much needed job in protecting the rest of us at a small fraction of the cost of crime in the UK. It would be a tragedy if the misguided ideology of the few obscures the greater needs of the many.
topCameron can reverse his ‘wobble.’
23 July, 2007
The last fortnight has hardly been a brilliant one for David Cameron. Two humiliating defeats in by elections, one of them ineptly managed by all accounts, Labour’s surging support in the polls, the Quentin Davies defection and now a clutch of MPs calling for a vote of no confidence in the Conservative leader. The golden halo that surrounded Cameron for the last 18 months has begun to lose its shine.
Of course, you would be foolish to think that these events constitute some kind of apocalyptic defeat for the Tories. David Cameron will no doubt brush off the by election results as a temporary ‘wobble’ and simply pick up the pieces. Sir Menzies Campbell would scarcely have had that luxury if his party had performed as dismally. Neither will Cameron be having sleepless nights about a relatively trivial threat from two of his backbenchers. Compared to the internecine conflict that bedevilled the Major administrations in the 1990s, this opposition from within is relatively lightweight.
But even if Tory strategy is not yet unravelling at the seams, its leader should pause for thought. Cameron is the most charismatic and communicative of Tory leaders for a decade and he sits in opposition to a government that has relentlessly squeezed the budgets of most hard working families across the land. He has formidable intellectual gifts and an apparent sense of direction and vision for the party. As a result, these by elections should have been his for the taking. So let me suggest why the Cameron brand is beginning to look a touch jaded.
The Tories assumed that they lost 3 previous elections because they were banging on about the wrong issues. In Michael Heseltine’s view, they were a right wing party obsessed with ‘talking to themselves’ rather than addressing the concerns of a wider electorate. This analysis led the Tories to adopt that notoriously self effacing phrase, the ‘nasty party’. No one would vote for the Tories because (supposedly) they were seen to be too right wing, xenophobic and out of touch. So the solution under Cameron has been to torch, quite mercilessly, the Tory image so as to eradicate any trace of nastiness and authoritarianism. Almost all the old obsessive mantras (low taxes, more prisons, immigration quotas, grammar schools, and Europe) have been airbrushed from their political vocabulary in order to accommodate a more benign and appropriate image. Only a supportive approach to marriage seems to have survived this ideological ‘Night of the Long Knives’.
The need to convince the public how much the Tories have changed has become an obsession in itself, backed up by expensive photo stunts and PR gimmicks that were the hallmark of the Blair years. In other words, the Tories have adopted the same obsession with image and spin to convince people they are different from Blair’s New Labour project. Oh what irony!
The relentless quest for change, and the desire to communicate that change, has led to accusations that Cameron is a rather lightweight and shallow figure. You kind of know what he is against but you are not so sure what he is for. This accusation has gathered pace now that the opposition are up against the clunking fist and brain of Gordon Brown. As we always suspected, Brown is a genuine public intellectual, dour yes, but deeply serious about the substantive issues facing Britain. Brown can never pull it off in front of the world's media in quite the same way that his predecessor could. Rather ironically though, it would appear that Brown’s lack of charisma is now an asset while Cameron’s obsession with spin, presentation and image is a drawback. But after a decade of Alastair Campbell, who wouldn’t welcome a more serious style of politics?
The solution for Cameron is to get back to basics. He must end the gimmicky media stunts on peripheral issues and return to the domestic agenda. He must set out a passionate case for a new political arrangement based on cutting back the power of the state. Instead of offering hollow soundbites that mimic the government, the Tory leader should set out a vision that encompasses lower taxation, more freedom for patients and parents in using public services, an end to welfare dependency for many, bigger and reformed prisons, a quota system for immigration and asylum and a commitment to support marriage through the tax system.
If he can come across as serious and passionate, he may just match the earnestness of Gordon Brown. If he can strike the right note, his message will resonate with people who are fed up of failing schools and hospitals, crippling taxation and welfare cheats. Trips to Rwanda are laudable enough but they don’t address the core concerns of the electorate. Now is the time for the Tories to show they are serious about winning an election.
topIt’s still the economy, stupid!
13 July, 2007
It really does come to something when the Liberal Democrats start to steal Tory clothes. We know that for years Labour has pursued a successful electoral strategy by outflanking the Tories on the economy, terrorism and law and order. It is a rightward policy shift that has perfectly matched the mood music of public opinion. The Liberal Democrats are now trying to steal a further march on David Cameron by attacking the core issue of Middle Britain’s tax burden. And with the Tories ruling out any radical thinking themselves, it seems that the party of Menzies Campbell, that hopeless ‘sick man’ of British politics, may be about to present the most credible intellectual critique of Gordon Brown’s tax regime.
Ostensibly the Liberal Democrat proposals look promising. First of all, the basic rate of income tax would be slashed by a fifth from 20p to 16p in the pound, reducing it to its lowest level since the middle of the First World War. Stamp duty would be reduced for properties under £500,000 while the starting threshold for inheritance tax would be raised to the same figure, thus relieving the many households who face exorbitant bills. The savings would be offset by green taxes, including a higher road tax for higher polluting cars, higher bills for the nasty super rich who exploit tax loopholes and the replacement of council tax by a local income tax.
Now the Liberal Democrats are famous for proposing loopy policies that have little prospect of being realised. And this particular set of proposals won’t fool any seasoned observers of the economic scene. For a start, there is the idea that green taxes and higher duty on flying will make a serious dent on carbon emissions. (I challenged this in ‘An inconvenient truth.) Then there is the risible claim that a local income tax will prove less burdensome to poorer families than the council tax when some studies have found that the opposite will be the case. In any event the Liberal Democrats have not committed themselves to reducing taxes overall: this is a wholly tax redistributive set of policies. In other words, it is tax cutting only in spin land.
That is the most disappointing feature of these otherwise interesting proposals. At the moment, according to the OECD, the increase in the tax burden (39.5 per cent of GDP in 1997 to 42.7 per cent in 2007) has been one of the very biggest in the western world. Vast sums have been raised from dozens of stealth taxes that have hit small families, small businesses and low earners. Billions have been wasted on needless consultants and advisors, overpriced IT projects and a fraudulent tax credit system. The IMF recently warned Gordon Brown that he had to slash public spending or risk driving businesses away from the UK. Both the OECD and the IMF realise the obvious – that a high tax burden stifles the values of enterprise and initiative on which any modern, dynamic economy depends. In this light, the proposal to redistribute taxes is misguided. They should be reduced full stop.
Of course, Labour’s obsession with punitive taxation ought to be the greatest godsend for Cameron’s Tories. Yet inexplicably the opposition have consistently flunked the challenge of making the case for change. While they acknowledge that taxes are too high, they refuse to make a commitment to tax cutting, instead offering a pledge to ensure ‘financial stability.’ This makes no sense. If taxes are too high, you cut them. If they are to low, you raise them. Pledging stability before tax cuts is simply parroting New Labour speak. It is the Tory version of Brownomics.
As the economy grows, David Cameron has promised to share the ‘proceeds of growth’ between tax reduction and improvements in public services. This is meaningless waffle. The highest growing economies are usually powered by lower taxes while most economies will be adversely affected by overregulation and overtaxation. By failing to articulate this argument, the Tories are guilty of a gross dereliction of duty as the opposition.
With a possible general election coming up in the next 12 months, taxation should be the Conservative party’s core issue. By mimicking the failed policies of this government, it risks being the albatross round their neck.
topThe rising tide of anti semitism
10 July, 2007
Last night’s Channel 4 documentary, The War On Britain’s Jews, presented by Richard Littlejohn, offered an illuminating account of the rising anti Semitism in Britain today. Littlejohn travelled round the country assessing the impact of prejudice in a number of communities, especially in London and Manchester, and what he found was truly disturbing. Pupils at one Manchester school needed police escorts to fend off verbal or physical attacks from outsiders. In the same area, graves had been desecrated with horrifying anti semitic daubings while attacks on individual Jews had visibly increased.
Evidence of rising anti Semitism was backed up by police figures for reported racial crime, which showed that anti semitic incidents to date had doubled since 2001. In 2005 John Mann, Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group against Antisemitism, commissioned the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism. The report concluded that ‘violence, desecration of property, and intimidation directed towards Jews’ was ‘on the rise.’ (For the full report go to http://thepcaa.org/Report.pdf) The report cited an impressive array of evidence to support this startling conclusion.
To some extent, the racism has been generated by the usual suspects. A close scrutiny of BNP literature reveals that their claim to oppose anti semitism on principle is rather hollow. For electoral and tactical reasons, anti semitism has been downplayed by the BNP’s leadership which is anxious to avoid the charge of prejudice. But this pragmatism is not reflected in the violent behaviour of their supporters. We also know that the Islamist fanatics of Hizb ut Tahrir have openly called for Jews to be murdered, while vicious anti semitic venom pours out from a host of radical preachers.
What was eye opening in the documentary, though not for seasoned observers of anti Semitism, was that a campaign against the Jews and Zionists was being bolstered not just by these usual suspects but by those who professed to oppose racism, namely the left and the mainstream Muslim community.
When one examines the behaviour and statements of left wing groups in recent years, one can see that they have (intentionally or otherwise) imbibed classical notions of traditional anti Semitism in their polemics. The New Statesman’s headline from 2002 questioned the existence of ‘a Kosher conspiracy’ with a Star of David impaling a copy of the Union Flag. The suggestion was that Britain’s Jews were engaged in a conspiracy to control the country, an idea which is anti semitic in effect, if not in intent. Compare this pernicious idea to the rantings of the hard left who regularly denounce the ubiquitous ‘Zionist lobby’ for all the problems of the Middle East. This is no better than a politicized update of the age old idea that a diabolical Jewish clique runs the globe, the kind of unsophisticated conspiratorial claptrap that found its place in Der Sturmer.
Littlejohn interviewed the left wing journalist, Nick Cohen. In March 2003, Cohen advised people on the left to think twice before opposing the invasion of Iraq, citing the grotesque violations of human rights under Saddam’s regime. When he checked his emails the next day, he found to his horror that fellow travellers on the left had sent him vituperative responses accusing him of being in the pay of neo-conservative Zionists. (I thoroughly recommend his article in the New Statesman on anti Semitism and the left, available at http://www.zionism-israel.com/ezine/Nick_Cohen_Anti_Semitism.htm) The left had been so seduced by their hatred of Western dominance and ‘imperialism’ that they had ceased even debating a political matter!
The documentary exposes the ‘Nazi-Soviet pact’ style alliance between the British left and the forces of Islamist fundamentalism. United by a shared hatred of American imperialism, Western capitalism and Israel, the two sides have ignored the other side’s vastly different agendas but set in motion a powerful tool for anti Western propaganda. One thinks of Ken Livingstone, the alleged advocate of rainbow politics, the stern critic of all sexism, racism and homophobia, teaming up with Sheikh Qaradawi, an Islamist who advocates the killing of all Israelis and homosexuals. You get a sense that something is wrong.
In the mainstream Muslim community, however, there are signs that a low level form of anti Semitism has become increasingly widespread. Littlejohn discusses how MPACUK, a mainstream Muslim lobby group, carried out a campaign to unseat Lorna Fitzsimmons using, as a pretext, her support for the Iraq war and for Israel. Some MPAC supporters went further and distributed leaflets identifying her as Jewish, even though she was not a Jew. Even though MPAC later distanced itself from this tactic, members of the group clearly sought to gain some electoral advantage by identifying her in this way. One has to ask whether this would be a plausible strategy were it not for a disturbing level of anti semitic feeling in sections of the Muslim community.
One imam, when interviewed about the rising prejudice faced by Jews, called on British Jewish leaders to cease their overt support for Israel in order to lessen anti semitic attacks. But as John Mann MP pointed out, this was a totally invalid argument. It implies that unlike everyone else, Jews are not entitled to hold whatever views they like on the Jewish state. Would anyone dare suggest that British Muslims publicly distance themselves from the policies of Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria in order to curb growing Islamophobia? Of course, every documentary has its limitations and there was little time for even wider analysis. But the major points in this 1 hour production can be backed up by a wider array of evidence which is not hard to find.
To suggest that Britain’s Jewish community is in a state of unprecedented peril would be an overstatement. Jews are hardly about to emigrate en masse and one also hopes that this visceral prejudice is still confined to a minority of people. But 60 years after the horrors of Auschwitz, and in an age of supposed racial tolerance, it is clear that the world’s oldest hatred is alive and well on these shores.
topMike
London, UK
27/07/2007
This is no surprise. The question is what are British Jews and their various organisations doing to arrest this trend. Jews need to be as aggressive in countering these threats as the people are who present them.
Another warped analysis of terror
8 July, 2007
The Guardian can normally be relied upon to produce a twisted, morally eviscerated analysis of the global terror threat. This last week they haven’t disappointed us. In an article in Thursday’s paper, Suemas Milne argued that denying the link between Iraq and the attempted bomb attacks was ‘delusional and dangerous.’ Britain, he maintained, was ‘still in the deepest denial’ about why the country was ‘a target for al-Qaida- style terror attacks.’ Criticizing the notion that Al Qaeda attacks like these were fuelled by an evil ideology he went on to say that it was ‘simply delusional’ to not recognize the ‘central link between the terror threat and Britain's post-9/11 actions in the Muslim world.’ It flew ‘in the face of logic and history’ for Britain ‘was not a target until it attacked the Muslim world.’
Milne’s wisdom does not end here. These bombers could not have been that bothered about ‘sexually liberal western lifestyles’, for if they were they would be attacking ‘Amsterdam and Stockholm’. That these attacks are happening in the first place was the ‘responsibility of a political class that failed to hold to account those who launched an illegal war of aggression with the most devastating human and political consequences.’ In case you didn’t see it coming, he went on to add that the solution to all our nightmares was for Gordon Brown to make ‘serious moves to end Britain's role in the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan’.
This warped argument is full of the usual moral inversion, willful blindness and sense of victimhood that has come to characterize debate on this issue. There is the notion that British post 9/11 policy was characterized by ‘attacking the Muslim world.’ Yet the decision to support the US led invasion of Afghanistan was a defensive response to an Islamic attack, namely from Al Qaeda, which had set up base there. This is typical Islamist propaganda. Any attempt by the West to defend itself from terror is immediately interpreted as an attack on Islam, which then creates justification for further attacks.
Furthermore, Milne ignores the overwhelming evidence suggesting that the global campaign by Al Qaeda and their affiliated groups is largely rooted in ideological indoctrination based on an extreme interpretation of Islam; an interpretation that believes that Western (and all non Islamic) societies are living in a state of decadence because they separate religion and state and because their societies grant people freedoms that are at odds with Islamic law. The Islamists therefore wish to extend the domain of Islam across the globe, and ensure that all societies are ruled on the basis of their puritanical and extreme ideology, one in which ‘sexually liberal lifestyles’ would most definitely be ruled out. Why else attack nightclubs, either in London or Bali, in order to kill ‘slags?’ What we are witnessing, in other words, is a culture war between traditionalism and modernity, played out on a violent battlefield.
But let us pretend that Mr. Milne is not in denial for a minute. Just suppose he is right and our foreign policy is to blame for the doctors’ plot, 7/7 and all the rest. Would that really legitimize the foreign policy choice that he has offered to Gordon Brown? Would it be prudent to order a precipitate withdrawal from Muslim lands in order to stave off further attacks? Quite clearly not. No responsible prime minister can base this country’s foreign policy on appeasing the vocal demands of a violent, fanatical sub section of one minority community. Milne’s prognosis is an open invitation to would be fanatics to advance their goals and seize the political agenda through open warfare.
Still, with the British political class abandoning talk of ‘Islamism’ and ‘the war on terror’, and with a visceral anti American mood growing among the public, Milne has a receptive audience for his commentary. Delusional and dangerous? You bet.
topRoot causes of terror
4 July, 2007
We’ve all heard more times than we care to remember the conventional wisdom about the ‘root causes’ of Islamic terrorism. You know the narrative by now - it is all about angry young Muslims trying to avenge our evil government’s illegal war in Iraq and how these men are radicalized by images of Israeli aggression and Guantanamo Bay. If only these ‘grievances’ could be addressed, we are told, they would cease to be a recruiting sergeant for extremist organizations. It is that amorphous entity, the ‘West’ and its misguided ways that is stirring up the hatred of the terrorists and giving the rest of us sleepless nights.
Some of us have been saying for years that this is all a naïve fantasy which merely plays into the hands of the fanatics. The more disturbing reality is that the Islamist campaign is a dangerous manifestation of religious extremism perpetrated by people who wish to foist their lethal ideology on the rest of us. While Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir and Palestine remain sore points for many, the central motivation for the jihadis is to turn the nations of the world into a universal Taliban style Islamic state ruled by Sharia law.
On Monday night, there was a resounding confirmation of this view on the BBC’s Newsnight. A former Islamist, Hassan Butt, was interviewed about his time with Al al-Muhajiroun. He followed up the interview with a short article in the Daily Mail entitled ‘I was a fanatic…I know their thinking.’ I quote from his article:
‘I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy. By blaming the Government for our actions, those who pushed this ‘Blair’s bombs’ line did our propaganda work for us. More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.’
Notice the critical words: ‘(they) did our propaganda work for us.’ Indeed, those commentators (he mentions Ken Livingstone) who constantly rail against injudicious Western policies are doing an immense PR job for the jihadist groups, precisely because they deflect blame from where it is due and because they hide the true ideological dimension of the new terrorism. Hassan Butt goes on to say just what this ideology consists in. While he admits that extremists are angered by the deaths of fellow Muslims around the world, he then goes on to spell out the terrorists’ central motivation:
‘What drove me and many others to plot acts of extreme terror within Britain and abroad was a sense that we were fighting for the creation of a revolutionary world wide Islamic state that would dispense Islamic justice.’
Butt goes on to explain the theological reasoning used by jihadis to justify their militant outlook and how it is able to appeal to a new generation of young Muslims. What is so revealing in Butt’s analysis is the blame he lays on Muslim communal leaders who are frustratingly mired in denial. They are so assured that Islam cannot be interpreted to condone killing and violence that they repeat the mantra that the faith ‘is peace and hope’, allowing the radicals to step in and indoctrinate vulnerable people. In his words: ‘…the main reason why radicals have managed to increase their following is because most Muslim institutions in Britain just don’t want to talk about theology.’ Here then is a former Islamist asserting coolly that the radicalization of young Muslims is being fuelled by religious extremist indoctrination and that the failure to tackle it is, at least in part, the responsibility of poor Muslim leadership. It is hard to imagine this coming from the Muslim Council of Britain!
Now contrast Butt’s cogent analysis with the words of David Cameron in The Observer last May: ‘We do need greater understanding of the true nature of the terrorist threat. There's too much complacency about it among non-Muslims, and too much denial of it in the Muslim community. But our efforts are not helped by lazy use of language. Indeed, by using the word 'Islamist' to describe the threat, we actually help do the terrorist ideologues' work for them, confirming to many impressionable young Muslim men that to be a 'good Muslim', you have to support their evil campaign.’
Elsewhere Cameron has launched a scathing attack on multiculturalism and the ‘cultural separatism’ to be found among many young Muslims. He has compared the divisive agenda of the MCB with the tactics of the BNP. So maybe his article was just another example of trying to be all things to all people. Whatever the motivation, his attempt to disengage terror from religious fanaticism was obtuse and morally blind. He should be listening to Hassan Butt about the real causes of terror.
FOOTNOTE: There are also reports that the government has dropped any references to 'Islamic' terror. Instead of stressing the religious roots of radical jihadism, they will talk instead of 'terrorists' as 'criminals.' If true, and it would not be surprising, then Brown's merry men are leading the way in cringing submission and cultural dhimmitude. For more entries, click on diary and select a month from the list. Alternatively use the search facility to look up articles on specific subjects. topHow will Gordon Brown challenge the Islamists?
1 July, 2007
Had they been successful, this week’s two attempted car bombings might have produced a higher casualty rate than the 7th July attacks. As it is the security services deserve our gratitude for an efficient and speedy response that helped avert catastrophe. Their courage and decisiveness should never be taken for granted. These attacks were designed not only to cause maximum carnage but to send a signal to Gordon Brown that the Islamist cause has not gone away with the departure of Tony Blair. With the latest incident at Glasgow airport, it now looks as if there could be a concerted summer campaign against British citizens designed to cause maximum disruption and loss of life. No one should believe that these people are just amateurs; they may have been unlucky once or twice but it only takes one successful ‘hit’ to cause widespread devastation and suffering.
But if these bombings teach us anything, it is that the Islamist ‘grievances’ with the West will not be appeased by an immediate pullback from Iraq or Afghanistan. The argument that these mass murderers are pragmatists whose evil deeds comes in response to ‘atrocities’ abroad is now wearing extremely thin. Remember that one target this week was a nightclub on ‘girls’ night’ and that the perpetrators of the fertilizer bomb (led by Dhiren Bharot) plot had talked of killing ‘slags’ who did not ‘deserve to live’. Now also think back to the Bali bomb plot in 2002 when nearly 200 revellers were brutally slaughtered by another group of Islamist fanatics. Their only crime was to indulge in a spot of Western hedonism, which is clearly anathema to these enemies of the West. It is the liberal traditions within Western nations, as much as the Western backing for Muslim leaders, that the Islamists oppose.
Gordon Brown has only been in his job for a few days and this will represent a huge challenge at the start of his premiership. On Sunday AM yesterday, he sounded resolute enough in confronting the menace that we face, but actions always speak louder than words. It remains to be seen whether he will vigorously clamp down on radical preachers, especially from overseas, whether he will ban groups like Hezb ut-Tahrir which call for the establishment of an Islamic caliphate, and whether he will show a cast iron determination to distance his government from the extremist Muslim groups (e.g. the MCB) that were feted by the last government. It also remains to be seen whether he can reclaim control of our borders and correct the chaos at the heart of our immigration and asylum policy. If he can do these things, then the country will surely be better placed to deal with the ongoing threat of Islamist terrorism.
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