“To care about the ummah is a blessing, not a danger”

Isn’t it about time that Britain’s Muslims wrestled their destiny away from government sanctioned initiatives that aren’t working and took ownership of their faith? Hizb ut-Tahrir’s Abdul Wahid offers a contrarian view of the path ahead.

Almost a year after 7/7, the stop and search and shoot to kill policies that already claimed the life of Jean Charles de Menezes, culminated in the near tragedy-cum-farce in Forest Gate. Guilt for the London bombings was not only placed on four individuals, but on an entire community. The government initiatives firmly placed responsibility at the door of the Muslim community to deal with its ‘extremism problem’. Other than the fact that there is little consensus about the definition of ‘extremism’, the decision to label the problem with this vague and emotive language has allowed the prescription of fuzzy solutions. The recent anti-terrorism laws provoked passionate debate before they were passed and the police use of the pre-existing laws has triggered accusations that the security apparatus is being politicised. Yet, the government’s Muslim working groups failed to address this, betraying a trust that many sincere people placed in them and only confirmed the views of others that they were merely a cynical PR exercise.

Meanwhile mosques, theology, identity crisis, faith schools, education and a failure to adopt ‘British values’ have all been fingered as the cause of the problem by the politicians and pundits, but the large grey mammal that sits in a room in Downing Street is ignored. That elephant is known to some as Iraq. If you mention it as a possible cause, those in denial will tell you where to go. However the ‘f’ word they will never mention is ‘foreign policy.’

Iraq has proved in the most terrible way that colonial wars can no longer be fought in secret. In this global village, where there is not only 24/7 media coverage but the phenomenon of trophy photographs captured by digital cameras and instantly circulated in cyberspace, the real danger to a historically aggressive foreign policy is not angry alienated Muslims who justify ends by destructive means. The real danger is that you cannot carry middle England with you when she herself sees the perverse policies that sustain dictators in one place, whilst ‘shock and awe’ bombing others into submission. It is not now enough to use a foreign threat - like the Soviet Union - as your justification for your foreign policy, for the nation now sees the ugly side all this too clearly. It is necessary to create the feeling of uncertainty at home and that means defining a domestic bogeyman. That is, brothers and sisters, you and I. We are but pawns in the latest Great Game that is likely to see increasing belligerence to other parts of the Muslim world. I am not denying that there may be security threats here, but I am certainly suggesting that the political and security response and the associated propaganda are exaggerated for a different purpose.

Yet here lies the opportunity. That many Muslims feel that they are ‘under siege’ is what may push us out of our safe, insular communities and force us to do what has been required of us for a long time: take ownership of our own message and not let anyone spin it for us. It is only by direct engagement with the non-Muslim community that we have any hope of being seen as human beings and not as monsters or a dangerous fifth column. If we really adopted a more Islamic ethos in our communities, currently so squeezed between sub-continental traditions that do not befit Islam - such as forced marriage and honour killings - and the worst excesses of British life - drugs, crime and mass consumerism, we might actually offer - by way of example - some direction for the rest of society that sees every day its own social fabric is unravelling.

I also pray the politics of occupation and aggression in the Muslim world will not sow seeds of discontent that turn violent, but that turn productive. To care about the ummah is a blessing, not a danger. We should be proud to be her voice in a time of crisis. We should use every opportunity to show the absurdity of the two choices offered to her by foreign powers that have decided to perpetually intervene - the choice of dictatorship or secular ‘democracy’. Our message can be quite simple: there is more than one way for society to function and the way of Islam has an unparalleled track record; and that the people in the Muslim world deserve the right to implement their own political path free from the external interference that merely sustains or tinkers with the existing corrupt regimes.