In the media
Muslim leaders blame Blair's war on Iraq for growing alienation
By Robert Verkaik
01 April 2004
'Bomb plot' is link to suspect detained in Canada 12 hours before
British raids
Adrian Hamilton: We must recognise the appeal of the call to jihad
Britain's Muslim leaders appealed for calm yesterday amid fears
that the arrests of eight terror suspects in London and the Home
Counties could trigger anti-Islamic feeling.
Iqbal Sacranie, the secretary general of the Muslim Council of
Britain, blamed sections of the media for stoking Islamophobia.
In a letter sent to Britain’s Imams and other Muslim community
leaders, he wrote: “There is no need, however, to be daunted
or intimidate by any Islamophobic propaganda and we should continue
with our daily lives – normally and in accordance with the
tenets of Islam.”
Mr Sacranie said many previous cases had attracted prominent media
attention only for the individuals to be released without charge.
“The impact of such ordeals on the persons concerned and
their families is unbearable. We urge against hasty pronouncements
of guilt,” he wrote.
Dr. Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, leader of the Muslim Parliament of Great
Britain, said British Muslims were paying the price of Tony Blair’s
failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He said the
Blair government had turned on Islamic fundamentalism because it
could not justify the war on Iraq. He warned: “If this is
a war against extremism and fundamentalism, then the policies they
have adopted are not working.”
Commenting on the arrests, he added: “This is nothing new,
the only thing that has changed is the name of the chemical. Last
year it was ricin and chemical gas – today it’s ammonium
nitrate. But it’s the same old story: Muslims have been arrested.”
He said the only way Mr. Blair could justify the war was to “keep
on creating this scare of fundamentalism in this country by saying,
‘They are dangerous people if we don’t get them they
will get you.’
Mr Sacranie said many Muslims felt alienated. “People from
Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities in this country live in areas
where they have the worst levels of unemployment and housing. And
this creates frustration and vulnerability.”
Dr. Siddiqui said the indiscriminate arrest and detention of young
Asian men over past five years had helped to “alienate, marginalise
and criminalise” Muslim communities.
“There does not seem to be any connection between the number
of Muslims who have been stopped and searched and the numbers of
people who have been charged or convicted. The community has simply
lost confidence that this is a government that cares about the well-being
of the Muslim community.”
Dr. Siddiqui said he and his fellow Muslim leaders had tried to
persuade Muslim communities that they had nothing to fear from the
authorities. “We have been telling young Muslims that as long
as they are law-abiding nothing will happen to them. But people
are coming back and saying, ‘I was arrested and I did nothing
wrong.’ Everyday more and more young people are losing confidence
in the system and in the rule of law.”
Jaffer Clarke, the joint deputy leader of the Muslim Parliament
of Great Britain, said that Islamophobia had been exacerbated by
the police referring to the “overall majority” of Muslims
being law abiding. This, said Mr Clarke, raised a specific innuendo
“about the Muslim community that hadn’t been there before.”
He added: “The police tried to reassure the Muslim community
but they indicated that the Muslims were Islamic extremists responsible
for the explosive without any forensic or other evidence. We thought
the comment was pre-emptory.”
He said some young Muslim men had become “anti-western and
anti-American”. He said: “One of the reasons for this
is the tacit support of Israel against the Palestinians in the West
Bank and Gaza and the continued suspicion that nothing is being
done to stop the appropriation of the territory of the Zionist entity
and that the road-map is no longer viable.”
He added: “But having said all this we have been dragging
our hearts to try to know why our young people are turning to extremism.”
|
