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Stop pandering to the Islamist extremists
Ed Husain07.07.08
Four suicide bombers on London's transport system is what it took to jolt Britain awake in 2005. Politicians of all parties turned a blind eye to the underworld from which suicidal terrorists emerge. Much has changed since 7/7. But not enough has happened to foster a real sense of belonging for all communities across Britain.
Extremists from all sides are on the rise. While conventional politicians conduct business as usual in Westminster, activist fascist politicians at street level have changed tack. The BNP appears in suits and increasingly focuses on Muslims, while Islamist extremists are busy embedding themselves among moderates to seem normal.
For fascism and racism are not the sole preserve of white people. A significant number of activist Muslims, better known as Islamists, are every bit as fascist as any far-Right party. By their own admission they oppose democracy, aim to create a dictatorial "caliphate" with an expansionist army, wish to destroy Israel and to subjugate normal Muslims to their harsh version of Islam.
Just as popes abused Christianity during the Crusades, some Muslim clerics today support suicide bombings in the name of Islam. Supporters of these clerics are more organised in London today than in any other city in Europe.
What has changed since 7/7 is the tactics and the public rhetoric of the extremists. Under pressure from Muslim activists, "Islamophobia" has become accepted as a phenomenon on a par with racism, as examined in tonight's Channel 4 documentary by political journalist Peter Oborne, for example.
Outside a few flashpoints where the BNP is at work, most Muslims would be hard-pressed to identify Islamophobia in their lives. Yet that is the charge every time the extremists press for new "rights" - over dress in the workplace, for example. If there is anti-Muslim sentiment, we Muslims have to ask what some of us have done to provoke such feelings in a country that is proudly multi-cultural. Islamist extremism might be a good starting point.
But the greatest shift since 7/7, for an array of groups that are offshoots of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, has been to embed themselves into the British and Muslim mainstream. I was once part of those movements - I know their psyche. And well-meaning liberals who would not share a platform, even for a debate, with a BNP supporter, are only too keen to be seen with Muslim versions of the BNP.
For example, this week, just days after the 7/7 anniversary, London's Olympia will see a massive, four-day event sponsored by the London Development Agency, a Ken Livingstone commitment to his friends. Called IslamExpo, the event seems ostensibly harmless and is sure to attract tens of thousands of young Muslims.
Journalists and academics, non-Muslim and Muslim, will speak at the event to lend it a veneer of respectability. But closer examination of the programme reveals something else. The most frequent speakers at this event are advocates of suicide bombing. The directors of Islam Expo Limited, as registered at Companies House, include well-known supporters of clerics who provide theological support for suicide bombers.
Azzam Tamimi, a director, has repeatedly expressed his belief that suicide bombings are martyrdom operations, and lead to paradise in the next life. Another director, Kathem Sawalha, was named as a co-conspirator in a 2003 indictment brought by US federal prosecutors in Chicago against Hamas activists in the US. According to the indictment, before Mr Sawalha moved to London in the early Nineties, he was a Hamas leader in the West Bank. Why are such men being allowed to organise and repeatedly address young Muslims in London?
Their endorsement of martyrdom operations in Tel Aviv makes it theologically possible to attack innocents in London and New York. The suicide bomber who seeks his place in paradise, as promised to him by clerics such as Yusuf al Qaradawi (hosted by Ken Livingstone), sees Brits and Israelis as one thing: kuffar, or infidel.
If you doubt my words, ask the innocent people at university campuses in Pakistan about how Islamists control - through violence and intimidation - their secular Muslim student opposition. Or ask those who live under the tyranny that is Hamas in Gaza. If you still want evidence, then read the writings of the founding father of Islamism, Sayyid Qutb, and digest his view of non-Muslims and Muslims as distinct races and peoples.
Islamists are a threat to Islam and Muslims. Before they started bombing Western cities, they started their campaign of terror by killing fellow Muslims in Egypt, inspired by the writings of Qutb and the repression practised by most Arab governments.
Mohammed Siddique Khan, the lead bomber behind 7/7, did not read Qutb. But those fanatical ideas of separation and superiority had gained a hold among many young Muslims - hence Khan's "martyrdom" video message, in which he said Britain was at war with "his people". Fellow Brits were not his people but an imagined "Muslim nation".
These ideas still loom large in London. Britain's central mosque in Regent's Park allows extremists from Hizb ut-Tahrir to hold public meetings every Saturday afternoon. A satellite television channel, calling itself the "Islam Channel", run by droves of Islamists, is beamed into young Muslim homes across Britain from London. And this week there's IslamExpo.
My challenge to extremist Islamists is this: if you're not peddling an ideology, Islamism, then declare yourselves normal Muslims and condemn suicide bombings, privately and publicly, disown clerics such as Qaradawi, and jettison Islamism. Accept that Britain is a secular country, not open to Islamisation. Why should ordinary Muslims have to pay the price for your political agenda?
Livingstone made a major mistake during his time as Mayor in pandering to these extremists - a position that seems to have come from believing ethnic and religious minorities were always right, no matter what. That kind of attitude helped create a victimhood mentality and the constant playing of community politics, rather than emphasis on individual citizenship.
Boris Johnson has a fresh mandate. He knows the organisers behind this week's event are those that cry Islamophobia. Will he co-opt them, appease or oppose them? His starting point could be to expose their Westophobia, and empower the right side in this battle of ideas.
* Ed Husain is co-director of the Quilliam Foundation, a Muslim think-tank, and author of The Islamist (Penguin, 2007).
Reader views (18)
Here's a sample of the latest views published.
More to the point Ed, stop government paying our taxes to people like you who have nothing new to say and come up with these pointless dribble time after time. Honestly I am for one fed up of seeing you or your colleagues elbowing of attention on TV or papers.
- Zoe Johnson, Yateley, UK
Good gosh! I am so confused, Islam channel run by Islamists? Islam expo run by Islamists? Ken Livingstone friends with Islamists? What in your view is a 'normal Muslim' dear ed? Would you care to let all us non-normal Muslims know how to be normal Muslims. . . . please?
- Farida, england
Good to see Yvonne in the comments -- how's your "cashing in" coming, Yvonne? IslamExpo was good fun -- nothing too controversial although one scholar (named in Ed's article, but I won't) did defend wife beating --- so we've still got a way to go, huh?
- M. Ibn Tahhara, London
Wow. Muhammed ("Ed") Mahbub Husain finds IslamExpo to be the equivalent of the London bombers. Yet by his own reasoning, he himself isn't without sin. When will Muhammed Mahbub Husain be honest about his own family connections with a Bangladeshi Islamist "cleric"?
I wonder if Husain would have similarly condemned IslamExpo if they had promoted his book?
- Irfan, Sydney, NSW
Awww..seems like Ed is sulking since no one invited him. He really does make laugh. He and his organisation claim to speak for the majority of Muslims in this country yet they have conducted no event for this majority. Seems to me Ed's majority are not Muslims in the UK but rather neo-con politicians and right-wing journalists. Ed knows which side his bread his buttered.
- Quentin, London, Uk
I went to IslamExpo...it was a gathering of peace, with Jews, Muslims and Christians coming together and sharing a weekend of culture and art and discovery. Ed Hussain lives in a dream world...he thinks that if he writes articles like this people will love him for it. Wake up Ed. You are labelling moderates as extremists and you have no credibility amongst Muslims or non-Muslims. Stop attention seeking...you are only drawing attention to your ignorance.
- Fatima Barkatulla, London
Ed's agenda is simple. He failed to agitate Muslims against the West so now him and other 'ex' Extremists are trying to rouse the west against Muslims by pretending to be 'moderates'. Their agenda is simply to create strife and division between Muslims and Westerners and get money from the Labour party Government and other neo-con Islam haters.
- James, UK
No discerning mind could fail to appreciate the murderous intolerance commonly on display at these congregations, organised by no less a clerical fascist than the egregious Azzam Tamimi, whose Jihadist sympathies are secret to no one.
No doubt there shall be much crowing on the part of miscreants like Yvonne Ridley and the MCB about their success to beguile witless Infidels concerning their veritably sinister intent.
Honour to those who refused to lend their imprimatur to this Jihadi-fest.
- E Soloman, London
Mr Ahmad shows exactly what the problem is: hostile resentment from the Muslim community, based on fantasy and skewed facts.
"It is not Islam and Muslims who are creating problems, actually it is
British society creating problems for the Muslim community."
How dare you say that, which is nothing more than a spurious tit-for-tat accusation against a country that is notably laid back, tolerant and accommodating. Only Muslims cause these problems, no other ethnic group, and its the same all across Europe.
"The Muslim community has been victim of Paki-bashing in all walks of life by the British society and Establishment for the last 60 years. Now it is
victim of terrorism by the British Establishment."
Excuse me? What planet are you living on matey?
"Thousands of Muslim youth are being searched in the streets and hundreds of them are behind the bar without any trial."
That sir is just hysteria. Public debate is not conducted like that and you should not do it. It is however a fact that thousands of Muslims in your community are under terrorist surveillance, testimony to the problem with YOU and not with everyone else.
- Joe, Manchester
When I read articles written by Ed Hussian, it reminds me of the children books that I read when I was child; especially books on fantasy themes (bad dragons, the big bad wolf, the boy who cried wolf and so on). Perhaps Ed Hussian is still reading such books as secondary sources for his writings…!
- A S Khan, London
Salaam
It is not Islam and Muslims who are creating problems, actually it is
British society creating problems for the Muslim community.
The Muslim community has been victim of Paki-bashing in all walks of life by
the British society and Establishment for the last 60 years. Now it is
victim of terrorism by the British Establishment. Thousands of Muslim youth
are being searched in the streets and hundreds of them are behind the bar
without any trial.
State schools with non-Muslim monolingual teachers are not suitable for
Muslim children. This is the reason why majority of them leave schools with
low grades.
God has created diverse human beings to live in this tiny global villages
of one family. Creation by its very nature is diverse with different
species, different communities, different cultures and languages. These
differences represent the beauty and wonder but diversity is sometimes not
fully appreciated, resulting in all sorts of clashes. The British society
and Establishment must learn to respect and accommodate others, as if in a
family.
A Muslim is a citizen of this tiny global village. He/she does not want to
become notoriously monolingual Brit. He/she is supposed to be well versed in
standard English, Arabic, Urdu and other community languages, to be part of
the British society, as well as proud of his. Her cultural roots and enjoy
the beauty of his/her literature and poetry.
- Iftikhar Ahmad, London UK
How many more comments should there be on this website or any other media platform to show the utter irrelevance of Ed's views of British Muslims.
It appears he has been ostracised from the MAJORITY of Muslim community and the average Englander does not want to hear it.
Come on Ed, just give up...(unless it pays good!)
- David, London
I never experienced or saw evidence of Islamaphobia in Britain ... until I embraced Islam.
I'm not sure what is Ed Hussain's agenda but it is quite clear he does not speak for Muslims, does not represent Muslims and has absolutely no influence in the Muslim community.
What he forgets is that Londoners lived through decades of Irish terrorism and we will simply not allow silly individuals like him to whip us up in to a state of hysteria regardless of our faith or lack pf it.
Cashing in on his foolish past to fund his future at the expense of the Muslim community is, I find, quite odious.
- Yvonne Ridley, London
Ed Hussain thinks so highly of his secular friends, that he changed his name from Mahbub Mohammed Hussain to Ed Hussain to fit into his new secular body. I am not sure how true, but this guy changed his name from Mohammed, because his friends could not pronounce Mohammed, says a lot about his friends.
- M Hussein, London
Ed Husain adds to the demonisation of Muslims within our society claiming to speak for moderate Muslims. Ed Husain speaks for himself, and does in no way represent popular Muslim opinion. His views about Muslims over dressing in the workplace, his denial of islamaphobia, and allegations against many leading Muslims and Muslim organizations add to divisions within our society, and panders to right wing political opinion.
- Stephen M, London UK
That's it Jamal, it must be right wing junk if its not in line with your way of seeing things.
- Aesir, London
Ed Hussain holds no authority in the Muslim community, in fact he is despised by most, he is part of the problem not the solution. Our fellow British country men and women have nothing to fear of mainstream Islam the way he continually depicts it, but they should fear the machinations, conspiracies and conceit spun by the treacherous likes of Ed Hussain.
- Noah Greaves, Birmingham
Same old unhelpful right-wing junk we have become accustomed to hearing from Ed Husain.
- Jamal, London, UK
