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The Silly Season Page 22 The record breaking heart-wave may
have subsided by the end of July, but the dog days of summer continued
unabated into August. This time, though, it wasn’t the spectre of
dehydration and drought the dominated the headlines, but of an alleged
bomb plot that brought air travel to a standstill and British Muslims,
once more, into the crosshairs of security services and media. Dal Nun Strong considers the fallout
and offers a contrarian view.
However, life being the way it is, I found at least a minute during my recent holiday to Morocco to browse through the foreign language papers. Amazingly, there were stories about airports chaos at Heathrow, police foiling another terror plot and commentators wondering whether our multicultural model is now a hindrance. I have to say, as a Briton and a Muslim I’d prefer to face the British version of a slow news day to an Arab slow news day - the seemingly endless coverage of “al-harb as-saadis” - the “Sixth War” - between Israel and its Arab neighbours. I’d prefer to be delayed a bit on my journey and have my water bottle confiscated by airport staff rather than suffer the real destruction of lives, property and livelihoods that’s the fate of so many Lebanese and Palestinians. But the world is not a friendly one for a lot of Muslims, whether in Europe, the Middle East or anywhere else. Particularly so when yet more evidence is presented to impartial judges and partial journalists about how members of your community have been planning to murder anyone unfortunate enough to travel with them. I have been pondering the enormity of the accusations against the transatlantic plane-bomb plotters ever since, particularly when my bottle of water and my wife’s sun-tan cream were confiscated as I tried to fly home. 24 people, who look like the people in my street, were arrested and the majority charged with a series of crimes including conspiracy to murder, preparing an act of terrorism and failing to disclose information that could help prevent a terrorist act. According to the reports (or leaks) from the police, the plot was designed to bomb up to 10 commercial airliners simultaneously, safe in the knowledge that most of the evidence would be at the bottom of the Atlantic and useless to investigators, if they ever found them at all. Assuming that each of the aircraft was similar to a fully laden Boeing 777, this might mean up to 3000 passengers would have gone down with them - roughly equal to the 2,973 people who died in the 11 September 2001 attacks. It would have been exponentially higher than any terror attacks Europe has known - 52 people died on 7 July 2005 in London and 191 in Madrid on 11 March 2004. Back in Britain now, I’m still haunted by what the consequences of a successful attack might have been. Although there were no real explosions to cause fear and terror, commentators in the newspapers tried their best to fill in. Right-wing media darling Niall Ferguson told his readers in the Telegraph that “whereas 9/11 united Americans (albeit ephemerally), Britain would have been torn apart by 8/26, with the possibility of violent confrontation from Bradford to Brick Lane.” I would like to think that such hyperbole was simply nonsense from a man who previously wrote that “a youthful Muslim society to the south and east of the Mediterranean is poised to colonize-the term is not too strong-a senescent Europe.” Anyone who points to demographics as a reliable prediction of future politics either has no knowledge of statistics or is trying to mislead his readers. And a prediction of “violent confrontation from Bradford to Brick Lane” does sound suspiciously like Enoch Powell’s infamous prediction of “rivers of blood” Fear and distrust - met by fear and distrust But views like this are not whistles in the wind. Muslims would be foolish to ignore the fact that public opinion is hardening more and more against our “behaviour” in this country. According to the latest opinion polls, we are failing miserably to convince others that we’re not even a mortal threat to their lives. Nearly 20% of the people surveyed by YouGov in July thought that “a large proportion of British Muslims feel no sense of loyalty to this country and are prepared to condone or even carry out acts of terrorism.” 53% of them - a majority - thought that Islam itself presents a threat - or a major threat - to Western liberal democracy. This is sharply up from even two years ago. Two thirds of the people surveyed want the security services to focus intelligence-gathering and terrorism prevention efforts on Muslims, and agreed with the statement that although most Muslims are not terrorists, most terrorists who threaten this country are Muslims. In response, Muslim representative groups vocally put forward the perennial concerns of the community - that we are marginalised, disenfranchised, suffer racism and deprivation inside the UK, and are bombed, cheated and abandoned overseas. I’ve lost count of the number of press releases from the Islamic Human Rights Commission (and many others) claiming “ever-increasing Islamophobia” and “latter-day witch-hunts” against Muslims. I believe that responses like this are themselves a cause for the growing public concern. Given that almost every British person knows in great detail the assorted grievances that Muslims claim to hold, it is hard to claim plausibly that we are disenfranchised. Instead, it suggests that British people simply don’t accept our complaints as valid. It’s hard to claim plausibly that we’re committed to progressing ourselves when Muslim educational achievements remain so low. Worse still, up till now Muslim representatives have seemed very reluctant to answer the obvious questions that are put to us: why does the Muslim community seem to accept no responsibility for its own social, economic and cultural integration into mainstream society? And why does it take no responsibility for the fact that too many of its young people have been brought up to consider themselves “at war” with wider society, and even try to justify patently criminal acts? This latest crisis has proved a case in point. Very detailed accusations about a plan for mass-murder were revealed to a horrified public. But Muslims mostly thought about the Forest Gate police bungle. Later, when the police appeared to have found real evidence, Muslim organisations changed tack and blamed the government - in an open letter which ignored the direct evidence against young Muslims and suggested that “it is our view that current British government policy risks putting civilians at increased risk both in the UK and abroad.” At which point in this sorry saga, if any, was there serious thought given to the real concerns of the British public, or even of the long-term interests of Muslims living in this country? Showing some wider benefits This latest loss of public confidence in Muslims’ capacity to run themselves will have wide repercussions. Muslims should see the writing on the wall. Already, a panicked government is thinking of overturning the whole of the multicultural model which has given some religious leaders and mosques such political influence. In the future, we will almost undoubtedly be asked to show that the wider society benefits from Muslims being treated as an autonomous bloc. If we want the government and society to privilege faith-based communities within the national society, we have to show that Britain does better because of a strong Islamic component. A first battleground must surely be education. What is the value-added of Islamic schools? Do they provide better education than mainstream community schools - for example by showing better exam results than a comparable sample? The objective evidence is that for every excellent Muslim school, there are dreadful counter-examples. Do they provide a better understanding of the rights and responsibilities of young citizens of the UK? Hmm. Do they even provide an adequate understanding - let alone better understanding - of Islam’s place in a modern Britain? The jury is still out. Urgent attention needs to be given to the quality of education we give to our young people, because time and again exam results and inspections reveal serious problems for our next generation. Likewise employment. What skills can young Muslims bring to the labour market? Are we diligent, industrious and hard-working enough to be a corner-stone of a modern knowledge-based economy? Are we dynamic, entrepreneurial and commercial enough to set up new businesses that provide the wider customers with products they want? Can the community afford to continue a situation where 73% of Muslim women over 16 are either economically inactive or “actively unemployed” (including 71% of women in the crucial 25-34 age-bracket)? If we don’t cut the mustard in this crucial area, we surely won’t prosper against young, skilled and motivated competition from Eastern Europe, Africa and elsewhere. The signs aren’t great, and this community needs a sustained concentration by parents on ensuring that their children study hard and possess the necessary skills. If not, the community will simply be setting our children up for a poor and vulnerable future - prey for the extremists among us. Changing the course None of this is very new. We’re in the tail end of the summer silly season, of course, when the news follows its usual pattern of airports chaos at Heathrow; police foiling yet another terror plot; too many young people passing their GCSEs and A-levels because of dumbing down; and baseless optimism about the chances of the England cricket team. But if the stories could be from any August in the past five years, Muslims mustn’t kid themselves that the latest terror hyperbole will blow away without consequences. Opinion polls suggesting that 2/3 of the population want the security services to crack down on Muslims cannot be ignored. Likewise, when even a Labour government pledges to revise the multicultural model, it’s clear that time is up for laissez-faire. If the Tories win the next election, I don’t believe they’d view the uncles who are our “community elders” as anything other than an obstacle to integration of an alienated youth. And fair enough. Wider society does have a right to demand that the British Muslim community changes itself. It does have the right to ask that young British Muslims have the right skills and attitudes to enter the labour market in much larger numbers - and to impose curricula on us if this is not the case. It has a right to know that Muslims want to be a part of a wider community on the same terms as any other citizens (including understanding that the other 58m people in this country may not always support our views on foreign policy). And it has a right to ask us to ensure that our understanding of Islam really does include that our neighbour’s property, person and honour are sacrosanct. If we can all sign up to the above, well, maybe next the papers next August might be worth reading. |