Leading cleric rails at injustice of 'Muslim bashing'

Leading cleric rails at injustice of 'Muslim bashing'
Telegraph
28/07/2005

The most senior Islamic cleric in Birmingham claimed yesterday that Muslims were being unjustly blamed in the war on terrorism and that the eight suspects in the two bombing attacks on London "could have been innocent passengers". Mohammad Naseem, the chairman of the city's central mosque, called Tony Blair a "liar" and "unreliable witness" and questioned whether CCTV footage issued of the suspected bombers was of the perpetrators. He said that Muslims "all over the world have never heard of an organisation called al-Qa'eda"

....

His comments shocked senior police officers. Sources said that attempts to encourage Muslims to pass them information on the bombers' activities would be hindered. One said: "We are trying to gain the trust of the Muslim community and these kinds of comments have the opposite effect. All they do is encourage communities to close ranks against us." To the obvious embarrassment of council officials and police standing next to him, Mr Naseem said the Government and security services "were not to be relied upon".

...

"Muslim bashing seems to be more earnest than the need for national unity and harmony. Terrorists can be anybody - we will have to see [whether the bombers are Muslims]. The process is not open; the process is not transparent; the process is not independent. I do not have faith in the system as it stands." Mr Naseem is one of the most respected Muslims in the city and is considered a moderate. He has regular meetings with the chief constable to discuss religious harmony.

...

"Some people have been caught but I have not seen any evidence. The process of law is not open." Asked about the suspects' DNA being found at the scene of the first attacks, he said: "DNA can match you, but that does not mean you are going to commit a crime. Thousands of youths are passing by and caught on CCTV, so how do you know it is them?"

...

[I]n an editorial in The Dawn, the central mosque's newsletter, Mr Naseem writes: "Where is the evidence that four youths whose pictures were caught on CCTV cameras…were the perpetrators? How did we reject the possibility they were just innocent victims of this terrible happening?

----------------------------

If you give an inch…
Telegraph Opinion
28/07/05

To improve community relations, West Midlands police yesterday invited the "moderate" chairman of Birmingham Central Mosque to take part in a press conference called to discuss the dawn raids on terrorist suspects in the city. Dr Mohammad Naseem used the platform to brand Tony Blair a "liar" and to denounce the security services. He disputed the notion that Muslims might in any way be responsible for the bombing campaign in London, suggesting that the men sought for last week's failed attacks were probably just innocent commuters, then adding, for good measure, that DNA science could not be trusted. Thus, what should have been an occasion to celebrate sound investigative police work descended into farce.

The police were visibly embarrassed by Dr Naseem's outburst. Supt Russ Smith suggested that the cleric might be suffering from shock brought on by "the unusual events of the last few hours". That may be true, but we nevertheless welcome Dr Naseem's comments because of the clear light they shine upon the absurdity of much official reaction to the current terrorist campaign.

The day after the July 7 atrocities, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Brian Paddick of the Metropolitan Police rebuked a reporter who had asked about the nature of the threat by saying: "Islam and terrorism don't go together." When senior police officers go to great lengths to make such prim and dubious politically correct statements, then it is not surprising that Muslim leaders such as Dr Naseem end up believing them, and expect to be taken seriously when they take those assertions to their logical conclusion. Vigilance, clarity of thought and strength of purpose are the correct responses to a terrorist threat. These are the qualities that most people have displayed in the past three weeks. The stakes are simply too high these days for anyone in authority to say anything that encourages the half-witted utterances of the likes of Mohammad Naseem.

Beards and scarves aren't Muslim. They're simply adverts for al-Qaeda

Beards and scarves aren't Muslim. They're simply adverts for al-Qaeda
Amir Taheri
Times Opinion
27/07/05

... Muslims everywhere need to get to grips with a phenomenon that threatens all Muslim countries and Islamic communities in the West. This requires Muslim opinion-makers to take a number of steps.

The first is to discard the notion that anyone who is not a Muslim is an “infidel” and thus not a proper human being. Next, it is important to reject the belief that, since the goal of converting mankind to Islam is a noble one, any means to do so are justified. Muslims should accept diversity and compete in the global market place of faiths through normal channels, rather than ghazvas (raids) against “infidel” centres.

Since there is no power of excommunication in Islam the terrorists cannot be formally banned from the community. But the community can distance itself from them in accordance with the Islamic principle of al-bara’a (self-exoneration). This means that a Muslim must publicly dissociate himself from acts committed by other Muslims that he regards as sinful.

One way of doing this would be to organise a day of bara’a in all British mosques — and hopefully in mosques throughout the world — to declare that terrorism has no place in Islam.

Muslims could also help by stopping the use of their bodies as advertising space for al-Qaeda. Muslim women should cast aside the so-called hijab, which has nothing to do with Islam and everything to do with tribal wear on the Arabian peninsula. The hijab was reinvented in the 1970s as a symbol of militancy, and is now a visual prop of terrorism. If some women have been hoodwinked into believing that they cannot be Muslims without covering their hair, they could at least use headgears other than black (the colour of al-Qaeda) or white (the colour of the Taleban). Green headgear would be less offensive, if only because green is the colour of the House of Hashem, the family of the Prophet.

Muslim men should consider doing away with Taleban and al-Qaeda-style beards. Growing a beard has nothing to do with Islam; the Prophet himself never sported anything more than a vandyke. The bushy beards you see on Oxford Street are symbols of the Salafi ideology that has produced al-Qaeda and the Taleban.

Some Muslims also use al-Qaeda and Taleban-style clothing to advertise their Salafi sentiments. For men this consists of a long shirt and baggy trousers, known as the khaksari (down-to-earth) style and first popularised by Abu Ala al-Maudoodi, the ideological godfather of Islamist terrorism. Muslims who wear such clothes in the belief that it shows their piety, in most cases, are unwittingly giving succour to a brand of Islamist extremism.

It would also be useful if Muslim preachers paid a bit more attention to God, which means doing some theology, rather than making speeches about Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq which are, after all, political, and not religious issues. The excessive politicisation of Islam has created a situation in which the best-known Muslim today is Osama bin Laden.

Islam must decide whether it wants to be a faith or a political movement. It cannot be both without being hijacked by Salafis or Khomeinists who have transformed it into a breeding ground for terror.

LETTERS IN REPLY
ONLINE REPLIES

Palestinian forces 'can't cope with extremists'

Relevant to the various debates we've been having on whether and how Israel should negotiate with "the Palestinians".

Palestinian forces 'can't cope with extremists'
Telegraph
27/07/2005

Endemic corruption, factionalism and gangsterism inside Palestinian security services make them incapable of dealing with armed extremist groups, says an independent study made public yesterday. The 82-page report drawn up by a Washington-based thinktank called Strategic Assessments Initiative paints a picture of complete disarray among the soldiers and police working for the Palestinian Authority. Only one in four possesses a weapon, there is a critical shortage of ammunition, and senior positions are handed out along clan lines rather than on merit. This is in contrast to groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which are well armed and organised.

The report's findings suggest the so-called Road Map to peace remains blocked, since a precondition of the agreement demands the authority neutralises all armed radical groups.

Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam

Am currently reading this (started before the bombings!):

Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam
Jason Burke

Good book, strongly endorsed by Chomsky on the back (!), so far it seems an informed and fair view. It has made me realise how simplistic the predominant view of Islamic terrorism in our media really is, with their constant references to "al-Qaeda" operations while clearly having no idea what al-Qaeda is or what role it really plays.

Here's a relevant excerpt from ch14 "The Holy War Foundation":

So, what can we say about 'al-Qaeda', its structure, organization, personnel and operations between 1998 and September 2001? As ever, it is easier to say what it is not. As has become clear over the preceding three chapters, the idea that al-Qaeda is a coherent hierarchical terrorist group, with a single leader, a broadly uniform ideology and an ability to conceive and execute projects globally through well-disciplined cadres, sleepers and activists spread around the world is misplaced. Saying what 'al-Qaeda' was during the period, and thus what it is now, is far more difficult.

In my introduction, I defined several different al-Qaedas. We have seen all of these al-Qaedas over the last three chapters. There has been the hardcore, to my mind the only entity that warrants the label of 'al-Qaeda', even if they do not use it. In 2001, this was almost exclu- sively based in Afghanistan. Then there were men like Hambali, Abu Doha in London, Abu Abdullah al-Shami in Jordan and northern Iraq and al-Nashiri in the Yemen. All were long-term associates of bin Laden, al-Zawahiri and others, who accepted missions from them or acted as intermediaries and recruiters for others. They were 'associate members of al-Qaeda'. Along with people like Beghal, Ressam, Abu Hoshar, Khalim and others they acted as links between the 'al-Qaeda hardcore' and the rest of the vast, amorphous movement of modern radical Islam, with its myriad cells, domestic groups, 'groupuscules' and splinters, joining the 'network of networks' to the hardcore itself. Sometimes these networks were happy to be brought under bin Laden's umbrella. Often they had no interest in surrendering an element of their autonomy in return for access to funds or training, however much either was needed. Frequently other figures, such as Abu Qutada in London or ibn Khattab, the Jordanian-Saudi militant leader in Chechnya, or indeed the Pakistani or Indonesian government, were able to provide what was needed, whether it was fatwas, weapons or funds, without recourse to bin Laden and his close associates.

One thing that quickly becomes apparent, however, is the willing participation of those that bin Laden managed to co-opt. This mirrors the eagerness of volunteers, like al-Owhali, who overcame significant obstacles to make their way to the training camps where they remained for considerable periods, without compulsion. What is particularly striking is how, particularly when it came to terrorist attacks, it was more often al-Qaeda that was approached with ideas or plans for an attack than groups or individuals approached by al-Qaeda. Indeed, by the end of 2001, volunteers requesting martyrdom operations were being ticked off by senior aides of bin Laden if they did not come up with their own ideas for attacks. When Zuhair Hilal Mohammed al-Tubaiti, a Saudi who had made his way to the training camps in 2000, asked Ahmed al-Moula al-Billal, a member of the 'al-Qaeda hardcore', to be allowed to participate in an operation in which he would die, he was told, fairly abruptly, to go away and formulate a plan and submit it for approval like everyone else. Al-Tubaiti, and the men he recruited himself in Morocco and brought to the camps, are part of the third group of people who are so often lumped in under the label of 'al-Qaeda', those who are part of the huge groundswell of anger and resentment throughout the Islamic world which leads thousands of young men to set out in search of their own personal 'lesser' jihads each day.

Such men, as I have stressed a number of times, cannot be considered 'al-Qaeda'. Something that can be labelled 'al-Qaeda' did exist between 1996 and 2001. It was composed of a small number of experienced militants who were able to access resources of a scale and with an ease that was hitherto unknown in Islamic militancy, largely by virtue of their position in Afghanistan and the sympathy of so many wealthy, and not so wealthy, Muslims across the Islamic world, though particularly in the Gulf. This 'al-Qaeda' acted, as the name suggests, like a wealthy university disbursing research grants and assisting with facilities such as libraries or with teaching that can allow the ambitions of its pupils, particularly those star students who have attracted the attention of the chancellor or the senior lecturers, to be fulfilled. It is the Holy War Foundation.

Another model is venture capitalism. Individuals or small groups (companies) would approach the chief executive and board (bin Laden, Atef, et al.) with ideas that they believed were worth support. Of hundreds of such proposals, only a few were chosen. Some received a significant investment, others were merely given a small amount of cash. The firm's bank of experts were on hand to assist, sometimes travelling to do so. Other experts were stationed overseas, encouraging local businesses and picking ones that looked capable of turning a profit. A third model, familiar to anyone in the world of media, is of al-Qaeda as a newspaper or TV production or publishing house. Bin Laden and his associates acted as commissioning editors of films, books or newspaper articles. Freelancers approached, them with ideas that were sometimes funded and resourced but often rejected. Occasionally, old ideas were rehashed or the editor's own ideas were given to people whose own ideas had been rejected. Equally often, the approaches of the university, venture capitalist or commissioning editor were rejected as inappropriate, unwelcome or simply unnecessary. This is a complex and varied picture. There are, of course, hundreds of different universities, venture capitalists and TV production companies. Some have higher profiles than others and their reputations or media images may not accurately reflect the extent of the work they do. This picture may be less seductive than the image of the James Bond villain fomenting global mayhem from his secret headquarters, but it does have the virtue of being accurate.

Democracy and Iran

Iranian Presidency poses a dilema to Blair and Bush. the mayor of Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was democraticaly elected campaiging on a platform reminiscent of the early days of 1979 Islamic revolution.

Mahmoud is very conservative: he has made his distaste for all things western, ordering the removal of advertising billboards featuring David Beckham, the only foreign face to appear in Iranian advertising sinec the Shah's days. His slogan during the campaign: 'We did not make the revolution to have a democracy.' An article following his election noted that 'the Iranian middle class and wealthier elemens were dourly anticipating the change... Their opinions could be encompassed by one office worker, who declared: 'we're going back 20 years in history' another said more simply: 'Tomorrow I start growing a beard.'

Here is an article covering his determination to pursue a Nuclear programme regardless of European and American pressure.

And another covering the public execution of two gay teenagers.
Here's a quote: 'Homosexuality is a crime in Iran, but the death penalty is normally reserved for murder, rape, armed robbery, adultery, drug trafficking and apostasy.'

BTW - looked up apostasy it means the abandonment of one's faith.

Mosque 'punished by the extremists'

Mosque 'punished by the extremists'
Telegraph
23/07/2005

A week to the day after Shahara Islam became the first victim of the London bomb attacks to be buried, the mosque where her funeral was held was cleared by a bomb scare apparently caused by extremist Muslims. Some 300 people, including 100 children, were evacuated from the East London Mosque in Whitechapel and police surrounded the building as sniffer dogs were sent in to investigate a suspect package. Officers later said the mosque and adjoining Muslim centre were safe.

Muslims attending prayers said the bomb hoax was meant to punish the mosque for its condemnation of the bombings and its opposition to extremist teaching.

Mosque leaders said the hoax was the latest in a series of intimidation attempts since July 7. It has received regular hate mail and more than 15 abusive phone calls, many of which are believed to come from extremists within the Muslim community.

The Islamic 'Third Way'

V. interesting interview with a Muslim scholar who's working towards a post-Enlightenment form of Islam. He's apparently been villified elsewhere, (so I'm open to other articles about him) but in this interview he sounds very reasonable.

Due to the Indy's self destruct policy I'm posting the whole piece. I urge you to read this:

Tariq Ramadan: 'We Muslims need to get out of our intellectual and social ghettos'

Can this erudite Swiss lecturer really be the man branded by The Sun as the 'acceptable face of terror'? Paul Vallely meets Tariq Ramadan

Published: 25 July 2005

The day the first bombs went off in London, a Swiss academic issued a press release condemning the outrage. "The authors of such acts are criminals and we cannot accept or listen to their probable justifications in the name of an ideology, a religion or a political cause," it said. Even though it was signed by a Muslim, Tariq Ramadan, a philosophy lecturer at the University of Geneva and president of the Swiss Muslim Organisation, it received little coverage.

Four days later Tariq Ramadan was brought to the attention of the British public a little more dramatically. The front page of The Sun launched a blistering attack which claimed that Ramadan was "more dangerous" than extremist clerics like Abu Hamza or Omar Bakri. His moderate tones, the paper said, presented "an acceptable face of terror to impressionable young Muslims".

The coverage was shot through with errors and inaccuracies. Other papers repeated the story without checking the facts. The London Evening Standard managed in the space of just 10 short lines to include no less than four mistakes, the most pernicious of which was that Professor Ramadan condoned suicide bombings when he vehemently condemns them.

In fact, Tariq Ramadan is one of the brightest hopes for achieving the reconciliation between Muslims and the rest of society which is perhaps the most pressing agenda for the post-bomb world. Which is why he was a key speaker at a conference sponsored by the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Metropolitan Police yesterday. And why he was last year named by Time magazine as one of the world's 100 most important innovators of the 21st century. And why in academic circles he is widely known as an erudite and provocative scholar who has dedicated himself to working towards the creation of a new European style of Islam.

In a world in which Muslims and secularists occupy two distinct compartments, from which they can shout at each other without ever really listening or understanding, Tariq Ramadan offers the possibility of a new kind of dialogue. It is deeply rooted in Islamic theology, but it is informed by a post-Enlightenment Western intellectual worldview. It may well be the way of bridging the gap.

The implicit message of the terrorists to Muslims, he said this weekend, is: this is not an Islamic society; it is not your society. "We have to say it is your society," he says. "Now more than ever it is imperative for Muslims to be active citizens and to be proactive."

In part that means supporting new laws to tighten security and ban clerics who incite violence. "I have never been very happy with [the leeway given to] some of these people - Abu Hamza, Omar Bakri. Yes, of course, we need freedom of speech, but there should be limits. People who say it is Islamic to kill and not respect the law and to spread hatred are outside those limits. But we must not tackle security in a way that undermines human rights and makes every Muslim feel discriminated against."

And it is imperative now, he says, not to restrict ourselves to that security agenda. "We must understand that British Muslims are part of the solution, not part of the problem. We need to build partnerships at the local level. Muslims should collaborate with the local authorities and police. And the local community should try to trust Muslims. Focusing exclusively on security is not the way to build mutual trust."

The Muslim community now must face up to wider responsibilities. "Muslims now need, more than ever, to be self-critical," he says. That means educating young Muslims in more than religious formalism. They must be taught that "the capacity to promote social justice and the protection of the integrity of every individual, woman or man, rich or poor" is what determines authentic Islam.

What turned four young Muslims born and brought up in Yorkshire into suicide bombers was a radical and literalist Islamic discourse which the mainstream Muslim community did not do enough to pre-empt, he says. Disdain was not enough. "They needed to assert that this kind of talk is not just unIslamic. It is anti-Islamic."

But there is something more subtle. Too much of the internal conversation within the Muslim community at present nurtures a sense of guilt, inadequacy and alienation. "Young people are told: everything you do is wrong - you don't pray, you drink, you aren't modest, you don't behave. They are told that the only way to be a good Muslim is to live in an Islamic society. Since they can't do that, this magnifies their sense of inadequacy and creates an identity crisis. Such young people are easy prey for someone who comes along and says, 'there is a way to purify yourself'. Some of these figures even keep the young people drinking to increase their sense of guilt and make them easier to manipulate."

The alternative is to teach them to develop a critical mind. "On the arts, literature, the way we eat, our sense of humour, the second generation feel close to the non-Muslims they went to school with. That's right. That's the Islamic way. The universality of Islam is shown by the way you can integrate into the local culture. Our young people need to be told, you can dress in European clothes - so long as you respect the principle of modesty. Democracy and pluralism aren't against your Islamic principles. Anything in Western culture that does not contradict the message of Islam can be accepted and integrated."

To promote this it is essential to break what Tariq Ramadan calls "this binary vision of reality - the Us versus Them, the idea that everything Western is decadent and unIslamic."

It is also necessary for the young generation to jettison the approach of their parents, which was to try to make themselves invisible to the rest of society. "Now it's time to speak out - both against those who are doing these things in the name of our religion and against those who say that being a loyal British citizen means blindly accepting all the decisions of the British Government. Ours must be a constructive and critically participative loyalty."

The third change required is far greater inter-religious dialogue. "If you go back to the source of our religions you find common values. It's important to read the scriptures of the other faiths and see how the others interpret these common values. It's high time for Muslims to say that anti-Semitism is not acceptable. We have to ask questions of our own tradition and be self-critical about what is sectarian and racist. Only then can our society build a common future."

If all of this sounds uncontroversial to most Western secularists it has got Tariq Ramadan into hot water with fellow Muslims - most particularly for speaking out against Islamic punishments such as the cutting off of hands for theft, stoning for adultery and the use of the religion to oppress women.

His arguments for this are all Islamic. These penalties are Koranic but, he argues - in a way designed to persuade Muslims who fear they will appear to betray the Islamic scriptural sources - the original social conditions under which they were set are nearly impossible to re-establish. The penalties, therefore, are "almost never applicable". He cites historical Islamic precedents for the suspension of such punishments.

"Islam is being used to degrade and subjugate women and men in certain Muslim societies," he says. And the collusion of Muslims around the world in this "literal and non-contextualised application" of sharia law is a betrayal of the teachings of Islam.

Muslim critics have attacked Professor Ramadan for this, accusing him of being a sell-out, or of promoting Islam-lite. The Swiss academic is sanguine about this. "The more literal will say I am Westernising. But I am not losing the universal principles. I'm just not confusing them with the culture of the countries that Muslims have traditionally come from. There's no consensus among scholars that the conditions are in place for these penalties to be enforced. And if there's a doubt it should be in favour of the poor. Islam is centrally about justice. This is not just."

Not that this lessens the attacks that come from the opposite direction, most particularly from neocon Americans who dislike him offering criticisms of Israel such as: "It's easy to see why many Muslims think that the policies of Western governments are killing people there." His opponents have plastered the internet with spurious allegations which were last year enough to provoke a hyper-sensitive US administration to withdraw a work permit granted for him to take up a post at an American university.

"I'm condemned from the Western point of view because I stand up for Muslim values. The West feels that the good Muslim is the less observant Muslim; that the practising Muslim is a potential terrorist. We have to be aware that there is an ideological struggle here."

The lecture he gave yesterday in London was entitled The Middle Path. It is a path he is treading with some difficulty.

"It is a path between text and context, which insists that in a changing world our interpretation of faith must also evolve, that there is no faithfulness without change. We need a deep faith, but a critical mind. Being British by culture and Muslim by religion is no contradiction. We need to get out of our intellectual and social ghettos, and be freed from our narrow understanding. To do that is not easy. The easy way is to become an extremist."

The day the first bombs went off in London, a Swiss academic issued a press release condemning the outrage. "The authors of such acts are criminals and we cannot accept or listen to their probable justifications in the name of an ideology, a religion or a political cause," it said. Even though it was signed by a Muslim, Tariq Ramadan, a philosophy lecturer at the University of Geneva and president of the Swiss Muslim Organisation, it received little coverage.

Four days later Tariq Ramadan was brought to the attention of the British public a little more dramatically. The front page of The Sun launched a blistering attack which claimed that Ramadan was "more dangerous" than extremist clerics like Abu Hamza or Omar Bakri. His moderate tones, the paper said, presented "an acceptable face of terror to impressionable young Muslims".

The coverage was shot through with errors and inaccuracies. Other papers repeated the story without checking the facts. The London Evening Standard managed in the space of just 10 short lines to include no less than four mistakes, the most pernicious of which was that Professor Ramadan condoned suicide bombings when he vehemently condemns them.

In fact, Tariq Ramadan is one of the brightest hopes for achieving the reconciliation between Muslims and the rest of society which is perhaps the most pressing agenda for the post-bomb world. Which is why he was a key speaker at a conference sponsored by the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Metropolitan Police yesterday. And why he was last year named by Time magazine as one of the world's 100 most important innovators of the 21st century. And why in academic circles he is widely known as an erudite and provocative scholar who has dedicated himself to working towards the creation of a new European style of Islam.

In a world in which Muslims and secularists occupy two distinct compartments, from which they can shout at each other without ever really listening or understanding, Tariq Ramadan offers the possibility of a new kind of dialogue. It is deeply rooted in Islamic theology, but it is informed by a post-Enlightenment Western intellectual worldview. It may well be the way of bridging the gap.

The implicit message of the terrorists to Muslims, he said this weekend, is: this is not an Islamic society; it is not your society. "We have to say it is your society," he says. "Now more than ever it is imperative for Muslims to be active citizens and to be proactive."

In part that means supporting new laws to tighten security and ban clerics who incite violence. "I have never been very happy with [the leeway given to] some of these people - Abu Hamza, Omar Bakri. Yes, of course, we need freedom of speech, but there should be limits. People who say it is Islamic to kill and not respect the law and to spread hatred are outside those limits. But we must not tackle security in a way that undermines human rights and makes every Muslim feel discriminated against."

And it is imperative now, he says, not to restrict ourselves to that security agenda. "We must understand that British Muslims are part of the solution, not part of the problem. We need to build partnerships at the local level. Muslims should collaborate with the local authorities and police. And the local community should try to trust Muslims. Focusing exclusively on security is not the way to build mutual trust."

The Muslim community now must face up to wider responsibilities. "Muslims now need, more than ever, to be self-critical," he says. That means educating young Muslims in more than religious formalism. They must be taught that "the capacity to promote social justice and the protection of the integrity of every individual, woman or man, rich or poor" is what determines authentic Islam.

What turned four young Muslims born and brought up in Yorkshire into suicide bombers was a radical and literalist Islamic discourse which the mainstream Muslim community did not do enough to pre-empt, he says. Disdain was not enough. "They needed to assert that this kind of talk is not just unIslamic. It is anti-Islamic."

But there is something more subtle. Too much of the internal conversation within the Muslim community at present nurtures a sense of guilt, inadequacy and alienation. "Young people are told: everything you do is wrong - you don't pray, you drink, you aren't modest, you don't behave. They are told that the only way to be a good Muslim is to live in an Islamic society. Since they can't do that, this magnifies their sense of inadequacy and creates an identity crisis. Such young people are easy prey for someone who comes along and says, 'there is a way to purify yourself'. Some of these figures even keep the young people drinking to increase their sense of guilt and make them easier to manipulate."

The alternative is to teach them to develop a critical mind. "On the arts, literature, the way we eat, our sense of humour, the second generation feel close to the non-Muslims they went to school with. That's right. That's the Islamic way. The universality of Islam is shown by the way you can integrate into the local culture. Our young people need to be told, you can dress in European clothes - so long as you respect the principle of modesty. Democracy and pluralism aren't against your Islamic principles. Anything in Western culture that does not contradict the message of Islam can be accepted and integrated."

To promote this it is essential to break what Tariq Ramadan calls "this binary vision of reality - the Us versus Them, the idea that everything Western is decadent and unIslamic."

It is also necessary for the young generation to jettison the approach of their parents, which was to try to make themselves invisible to the rest of society. "Now it's time to speak out - both against those who are doing these things in the name of our religion and against those who say that being a loyal British citizen means blindly accepting all the decisions of the British Government. Ours must be a constructive and critically participative loyalty."

The third change required is far greater inter-religious dialogue. "If you go back to the source of our religions you find common values. It's important to read the scriptures of the other faiths and see how the others interpret these common values. It's high time for Muslims to say that anti-Semitism is not acceptable. We have to ask questions of our own tradition and be self-critical about what is sectarian and racist. Only then can our society build a common future."

If all of this sounds uncontroversial to most Western secularists it has got Tariq Ramadan into hot water with fellow Muslims - most particularly for speaking out against Islamic punishments such as the cutting off of hands for theft, stoning for adultery and the use of the religion to oppress women.

His arguments for this are all Islamic. These penalties are Koranic but, he argues - in a way designed to persuade Muslims who fear they will appear to betray the Islamic scriptural sources - the original social conditions under which they were set are nearly impossible to re-establish. The penalties, therefore, are "almost never applicable". He cites historical Islamic precedents for the suspension of such punishments.

"Islam is being used to degrade and subjugate women and men in certain Muslim societies," he says. And the collusion of Muslims around the world in this "literal and non-contextualised application" of sharia law is a betrayal of the teachings of Islam.

Muslim critics have attacked Professor Ramadan for this, accusing him of being a sell-out, or of promoting Islam-lite. The Swiss academic is sanguine about this. "The more literal will say I am Westernising. But I am not losing the universal principles. I'm just not confusing them with the culture of the countries that Muslims have traditionally come from. There's no consensus among scholars that the conditions are in place for these penalties to be enforced. And if there's a doubt it should be in favour of the poor. Islam is centrally about justice. This is not just."

Not that this lessens the attacks that come from the opposite direction, most particularly from neocon Americans who dislike him offering criticisms of Israel such as: "It's easy to see why many Muslims think that the policies of Western governments are killing people there." His opponents have plastered the internet with spurious allegations which were last year enough to provoke a hyper-sensitive US administration to withdraw a work permit granted for him to take up a post at an American university.

"I'm condemned from the Western point of view because I stand up for Muslim values. The West feels that the good Muslim is the less observant Muslim; that the practising Muslim is a potential terrorist. We have to be aware that there is an ideological struggle here."

The lecture he gave yesterday in London was entitled The Middle Path. It is a path he is treading with some difficulty.

"It is a path between text and context, which insists that in a changing world our interpretation of faith must also evolve, that there is no faithfulness without change. We need a deep faith, but a critical mind. Being British by culture and Muslim by religion is no contradiction. We need to get out of our intellectual and social ghettos, and be freed from our narrow understanding. To do that is not easy. The easy way is to become an extremist."

Shoot to kill policy

Sometimes the news has a way of reminding us of our own personal bias to current events. So I was surprised by how having been raised in Brazil and having family there has effected my reaction to the fatal shooting of the Brazilian electrician at Stockwell tube station.

Anyway, here is a good article on the shooting by Tim Harnes in the Times.

Here's a quote that I found myself agreeing with:

'There are, furthermore, “no excuses”, it is intoned, for the fact that he ran when armed plainclothed police officers shouted at him.

I don’t know about you, but if I found myself minding my own business on the São Paulo metro and was suddenly confronted by men wearing no uniforms but wielding weapons, screaming at me in Portuguese, I too might choose to bolt for it. It was not merely the police but their victim who had to make a split-second decision.'

David Blunkett

Read this in the mirrror the other day:

'Meanwhile, David Blunkett delivered a moving message to the victims of the London bombs - apologising for being unable to save them.

A card attached to a bouquet of white carnations and roses he laid outside King's Cross station read: "In sorrow that I was not able to do more to save you, Rt Hon. David Blunkett MP."

He arrived unannounced on Tuesday evening with his guide dog and bowed his head in silent prayer.

As Home Secretary at the time of the September 11 attacks., before resigning over a visa scandal in December, he was keenly aware of the risk to London.

And he went into battle over ID cards, religious hatred and control orders.'

It reminded me that at the time Blunkett was ridiculed for saying that London could be the target of a 'dirty bomb'. Obviously that doesn't sound so silly now.

Here's the BBC's coverage of the Terrorism Bill at the time. I wondered whether fellow Bloggers' positions on the terrorism bill have been changed by the recent events in London - I think mine probably have.

Who is the enemy? Pipes & Phillips estimate the numbers

You often read the comment that we are dealing with a "tiny minority" of Muslims who are terrroists or terrorist supporters, yet rarely does anyone try to quantify this. Ken Livingstone ludicrously believes we are dealing with "tens, not hundreds". Somewhat more convincingly, here's Pipes (a link I think I have sent before):

Who Is the Enemy?
Daniel Pipes
January 2002

Let me try to specify with greater exactness the constituency for militant Islam. It is divisible into three main elements.

The first is the inner core, made up of the likes of Osama bin Laden, the nineteen hijackers, al Qaeda, leaders of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and the rest of the network of violent groups inspired by militant Islamic ideology. Such groups have mostly come into existence since 1970, becoming since then an evermore important force in the Muslim world. The network, dubbed the "Islamintern" by some Muslim critics, contains both Shiite and Sunni variants, appeals to rich and poor alike, and is active in such far-flung locations as Afghanistan, Algeria, and Argentina. In 1983 some of its members initiated a campaign of violence against the United States whose greatest triumph so far was the spectacular operation on September 11. In all, the network's adherents are as few as they are fanatical, numbering perhaps in the thousands.

The second ring comprises a much larger population of militants who are sympathetic to al Qaeda's radical utopian vision without themselves being a part of it. Their views were on display daily as soon as hostilities began in Afghan istan: protesters and mujahideen by the tens of thousands, all expressing a determined loathing of the United States and an enthusiasm for further acts of violence. ... As best I can estimate from election data, survey research, anecdotal evidence, and the opinions of informed observers, this Islamist element constitutes some 10 to 15 percent of the total Muslim world population of roughly one billion - that is, some 100 to 150 million persons worldwide.

The third ring consists of Muslims who do not accept the militant Islamic program in all its particulars but do concur with its rank anti-Americanism. This sentiment is found at almost every point along the political spectrum. A secular fascist like Saddam Hussein shares a hatred of the United States with the far leftists of the PKK Kurdish group who in turn share it with an eccentric figure like Muammar Qaddafi. Reliable statistics on opinion in the Muslim world do not exist, but my sense is that one half of the world's Muslims -or some 500 million persons- sympathize more with Osama bin Laden and the Taliban than with the United States. That such a vast multitude hates the United States is sobering indeed.

I bring it up again because I was looking into the worthy Melanie Phillips, who in another current thread has been accused of being al-Qaradawi in disguise, and I found this contribution of hers to the numbers game:

This lethal moral madness
Melanie Phillips
Daily Mail
14 July 2005

Far from being adherents of a ‘religion of peace’, huge numbers of Muslims world-wide support al Qaeda — 65 per cent in Pakistan, 45 per cent in Morocco. And in Britain, where the vast majority of Muslims are opposed to terrorism, according to an ICM poll carried out for the Guardian some 13 per cent of a Muslim community of 1.6 million support it.

And finally, here is the poll she refers to:

Muslims abandon Labour over Iraq war
March 15, 2004
Guardian

Meanwhile in Iran ...

An Article from the Salon 'The Iraq war is over, and the winner is ... Iran'

Tory leadership contest

An old news story and certainly less dramatic than the terrorism/jihad blog debate, but this article might be interesting for any Labour voters who secretly wish the Tories would pick David Cameron as leader.

Fanatical Preachers have no place in Britain

Following Ken's defence of Qaradawi here's an opinion piece from today's Telegraph.

Jihadism vs Girl Power

Good ol' Uncle Johann:

The best way to undermine the jihadists is to trigger a rebellion of Muslim women - and establish energy independence

Undermining an ideology is far harder than tracking down a network of criminals. It took seventy years and fifty million deaths until nobody would kill or die for Bolshevism. And many of the paths we take from here could make the problem even worse. We have all seen the Rumsfeld approach. Fill screens across the Muslim world with the orange jumpsuits of Guantanamo and the Muslims-on-a-leash of Abu Ghraib. Piss on the Koran. Show them who's boss. The Galloway approach is just as dangerous: give them what they want. Meet Osama's immediate demands and hope they'll leave us alone. Both encourage the totalitarian ideology to spread faster, one by beating it with a bloody stick and the other by offering it a carrot.

But it is possible now to see realistic ways to defuse the ticking-bomb of jihadism. One of the central tenets of this ideology is the inherent inferiority and weakness of women. Every jihadist I have ever met - from Gaza to Finsbury Park - has been a fierce ball of misogyny and sexual repression. If you haven't spoken to these people, it is hard to explain just how obsessed with sexual apartheid they are. At least two of the London bombers refused to make eye contact with women outside their families. Image the sheer effort and repression that required.

The best way to undermine the confidence and beliefs of jihadists is to trigger a rebellion of Muslim women, their mothers and sisters and daughters. Where Muslim women are free to fight back against jihadists, they are already showing incredible tenacity and intellectual force. In Iraq, mass protests by women stopped the governing council from introducing sharia law in 2003. In Europe and America, from Irshad Manji to my colleague Yasmin Alibhai-Brown to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Muslim women are offering the most effective critiques of Islamism.

The jihadists themselves know that Islamic feminism is the greatest threat to their future - that's why, in Iraq, the "resistance" has been systematically hunting down and killing the leaders of Muslim women's rights organisations. No ideology can survive on terrorising half the population indefinitely. When it comes, the Islamic Reformation will be drenched in oestrogen.

Livingstone: West makes terrorists

Well, I didn't vote for him.

Livingstone: West makes terrorists
Evening Standard
20 July 2005

London Mayor Ken Livingstone has blamed Western foreign policy in the Middle East for creating the conditions for terrorist attacks such as the July 7 bombs in the capital. Mr Livingstone said that Western interventions to maintain control of oil supplies in Arab countries, dating back to the First World War, had produced the Islamist terrorism of extremists including Osama bin Laden's al Qaida network.


Is London Mayor right over Middle East?
BBC News

Apparently, yes he is.

Iraq Body Count - 25,000 Civilians Killed In Iraq

'25,000 civilians' killed in Iraq
BBC News
19/07/05

Nearly 25,000 civilians have died violently in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003, a report says. The dossier, based on media reports, says US-led forces were responsible for more than a third of the deaths.

The survey was carried out by the UK-based Iraq Body Count and Oxford Research Group - which includes academics and peace activists.

---------------

JP COMMENT:

I wonder if this is going to be like the Lancet report? Here's some background on those carrying out the report:

Wikipedia - Iraq Body Count Project

The [Iraq Body Count] project, which is rooted in the anti-war movement, is staffed by volunteers who measure the number of non-Iraqi-caused civilian deaths in the Iraq war of 2003 by sampling news stories to extract minimum and maximum numbers of civilian casualities.

Each incident reported at least by two independent news sources is included in the Iraq Body Count database.

Although IBC records the newspaper, magazine or website where each estimate is reported, it makes no attempt to record or assess the original sources for the information: that is, the NGO, journalist or government responsible for doing the counting. Hence, any inherent bias due to the lack of reliable reports from independent or Allied sources is hidden. Also, it is difficult for outsiders to assess the extent of this problem, because IBC does not publish full citations for their sources -- they only give a date, a newspaper name and an incident location.

If a number is quoted from a pro-Iraqi source, and the Allies fail to give a sufficiently specific alternate number, the pro-Iraqi figure is entered into IBC's database as both a maximum and a minimum. The same works vice versa. The project claims that these over- and underestimations of different media sources balance out to give some sort of accuracy.

...

[T]he project counts neither civilian deaths caused by Iraq, nor military deaths. ... This is a gross distortion of the facts. The vast majority of the above casualties have been caused by Islamic terrorists and other criminals since the official end of the war.

Wikipedia - Invasion and occupation of Iraq casualties

A western group, the Iraq Body Count project, compiles reported Iraqi civilian deaths that were caused directly by coalition military action, as well as deaths caused directly by the Iraqi insurgency (the Iraqi Body Count project claims that the Occupying Authority is responsible to prevent these deaths under international law.)

'Ee Begum'

Bad pun. Good article though from Steyn.

A victory for multiculti over common sense
By Mark Steyn

I particularly agree with his analysis of the Begum case:

It was the Prime Minister's wife, you'll recall, who last year won a famous court victory for Shabina Begum, as a result of which schools across the land must now permit students to wear the full "jilbab" - ie, Muslim garb that covers the entire body except the eyes and hands. Ms Booth hailed this as "a victory for all Muslims who wish to preserve their identity and values despite prejudice and bigotry". It seems almost too banal to observe that such an extreme preservation of Miss Begum's Muslim identity must perforce be at the expense of any British identity. Nor, incidentally, is Miss Begum "preserving" any identity: she's of Bangladeshi origin, and her adolescent adoption of the jilbab is a symbol of the Arabisation of South Asian (and African and European) Islam that's at the root of so many problems. It's no more part of her inherited identity than my five-year- old dressing up in his head-to-toe Darth Vader costume, to which at a casual glance it's not dissimilar.

Keen impdec followers will recall that the Begum case inspired the second ever impdec post. Here's the original post for those missed it.

'Them' & 'Us' - nursing a grievance

I'm not always a fan of Aaronovitch but this article is rather good: (thanks as always to Harry's Place for alerting me to it.)

Nursing a grievance, blinded by narcissism — such ordinary killers
David Aaronovitch

[...] last weekend, Azzam Tamimi, of the Muslim Association of Britain, told a rally in London: “My heart bleeds, I condemn it, yes, but I did not make those boys angry. I did not send those bombs to Iraq. I do not keep people locked in Guantanamo Bay and I do not have anything to do with Abu Ghraib, except to denounce it. Politicians, see what you have done to this world.” It’s not me, it’s not us, it’s them. They keep doing bad things to us.

This was brilliantly, if somewhat inadvertently, expressed in The Guardian by Madeleine Bunting. She pointed out the Kashmiri links of most British Muslims, and added: “One of the things they brought with them was the perception of a long history of dispossession and marginalisation.” [...] “The more recent oppression and humiliation of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan would have resonated powerfully with these collective memories of Yorkshire Muslims . . .”

Note how the “more recent oppression” is supposed just to be a fact. And we know to whom it refers and to whom it doesn’t. The elected Government in Iraq, the Shia majority, the new fact of Kurdish rights in that country, don’t count. All these peoples are de-Muslimified for the purposes of victimology. And that happens because they simply don’t fit the narrative. The Sunnis of Iraq are imagined to be “us”, but the Shia and the Kurds aren’t. The bombed villagers of Afghanistan are “us”, the liberated women aren’t. The Kosovan Muslims aren’t, either, though you can bet they would have been had Nato not intervened to save them. As it is, they too have disappeared from Muslimhood.

Multi-culturism and the dangers of tolerance

Three articles on Multic culturism and the dangers of tolerance: Julie Burchill's article in the times is in her usual combatitive 'two fisted' style; Times journalist Kenan Malik's accuses 'multi Cuturalism of fanning the flames of Islamic Extremism' in this article; and essential reading on this subject is Niall Ferguson's opinion piece 'If they pass the cricket test, how do we stop the suicide bombers?'

The root cause of terrorism is not poverty or oppression but hatred

Telegraph Letters 16/07/2005

Sir - The poorest nations of the world are those of sub-Saharan Africa. The occupied nation most heavily oppressed is Tibet. So why don't we see African and Tibetan terrorists?

The root cause of terrorism is not poverty or oppression but hatred. The reason global terrorism is rising is not iraq or Israel but terrorist success (aided by the media and Leftists) in scapegoating the victim for the attacks of the killer.Human rights law prohibits deliberate primary targeting of civilians as a tactic under all circumstances.

Every time people argue that terrorism is merely "asymmetric warfare by oppressed nations" another terrorist is born.

Judith Rona, Bondi, New South Wales

Good suicide bombing vs bad suicide bombing

I have been keeping an eye out for any comparisons of the suicide bombings in London with those in Iraq, Israel and elsewhere, in the (probably vain) hope that the London bombings may awaken more sympathy for the plight of victims elsewhere, and for the difficulty of opposing Islamism and its extreme methods.

Just seen this at BBC News:

Muslim leaders and scholars met at London's largest mosque on Friday and condemned the attacks, saying the bombers had violated the Koran by killing innocent civilians, and could not be regarded as martyrs.

"There should be a clear distinction between the suicide bombing of those who are trying to defend themselves from occupiers, which is something different from those who kill civilians, which is a big crime," said the head of the World Islamic League's Sayed Mohammed Musawi.

In other words, killing Londoners is wrong, killing Israelis is right. I don't suppose the fact that the vast majority of Israeli victims are civilians has occurred to Mr Musawi. Wonder what he thinks about the killing of Iraqi civilians?

'The act of small time losers' - Anatole Kaletsky

Here's an article by Anatole Kaletsky in the Times today. Would be interested to know what JP thinks.

Scruton's take on the London terrorist attack

Right-wing philospher Roger Scruton's take on the terrorist attack. The entire article is cut and pasted below but it originally appeared as a piece in the Times.

I resent your success. I hate you and your kind. So I bomb you

Roger Scruton

APOLOGISTS for terrorism (and they are not in short supply) argue that it is a weapon used by people who despair of achieving their goals in any other way. It is a cry from the depths by those deprived of a voice in the political process. The terrorist is not an aggressor but a victim, and we must disarm him not by violence but by addressing the grievance that motivates his deeds. This argument has been used to excuse Palestinian suicide bombers, IRA kneecappers, Red Brigade kidnappers, and even the mass murderers of September 11. Its main effect is to blame the victim and excuse the crime.

If you look at the actual condition of terrorists down the ages, however, you will soon discover that the excuse does not match the reality. Some terrorists have been poor and some have been victims of injustice. But those are the exceptions. The Jacobins, who unleashed the original Terror, were for the most part privileged members of the rising elite. The Russian anarchists of the 19th century were no worse off from the point of view of material and social privileges than you or me, and with grievances that were more the work of the imagination than the result of either observing or sympathising with the ordinary people of Russia. There is no evidence that Osama bin Laden’s entourage is any different, and even the IRA, which purports to represent the “oppressed” Catholics of Ulster, is very far from recruiting from those whose oppressed condition it loudly advertises. As for the Islamist terrorists who have targeted our cities, they tend to be well educated, specialists in medicine, engineering or computer science, people who might have helped to provide the Middle East with the stable middle class that it so badly needs, but instead have chosen another and faster route to glory.

It seems to me that we will be nearer to understanding terrorism if, instead of looking at what terrorists have in common, we look at what is common to their victims. The targets of terrorism are groups, nations or races. And they are distinguished by their worldly success — either material or social. The original Terror was directed against the French aristocracy — soon supplemented by all kinds of real and imaginary groups supposed to be aiding them. The Russian anarchists targeted people with wealth, office or power. The Great Terror of Stalin, initiated by Lenin, was directed against groups alleged to be profiting from the system that impoverished the rest. The Nazi terror picked on the Jews, because of their undoubted material success, and the ease with which they could be assembled as a group. Even the nationalist terrorists of the IRA and Eta variety are targeting nations thought to enjoy wealth, power and privilege, at the expense of others equally entitled. Islamic terrorists bomb the cities of Europe and America because those cities are a symbol of the material and political success of the Western nations, and a rebuke to the political chaos and deep-rooted corruption of the Muslim world.

Success breeds resentment, and resentment breeds hate. This simple observation was made into the root of his political psychology by Nietzsche, who identified 'ressentiment', as he called it, as the distinguishing social emotion of modern societies: an emotion once ordered and managed by Christianity, now let loose across the world. I don’t say that Nietzsche’s analysis is correct. But surely he was right to identify this peculiar motive in human beings, right to emphasise its overwhelming importance, and right to point out that it lies deeper than the springs of rational discussion.

In dealing with terrorism you are confronting a resentment that is not concerned to improve the lot of anyone, but only to destroy the thing it hates. That is what appeals in terrorism, since hatred is a much easier and less demanding emotion to live by than love, and is much more effective in recruiting a following. And when the object of hatred is a group, a race, a class or a nation, we can furnish from our hatred a comprehensive stance towards the world. That way hatred brings order out of chaos, and decision out of uncertainty — the perfect solution to the alienated Muslim, lost in a world that denies his religion, and which his religion in turn denies.

Of course hatred has other causes besides resentment. Someone who has suffered an injustice may very well hate the person who committed it. However, such hatred is precisely targeted, and cannot be satisfied by attacking some innocent substitute. Hatred born of resentment is not like that. It is a passion bound up with the very identity of the one who feels it, and rejoices in damaging others purely by virtue of their membership of the targeted group. Resentment will always prefer indiscriminate mass murder to a carefully targeted punishment. Indeed, the more innocent the victim, the more satisfying the act. For this is the proof of holiness, that you are able to condemn people to death purely for being bourgeois, rich, Jewish, or whatever, and without examining their moral record.

The tendency to resent lies in all of us, and can be overcome only by a discipline that tells us to blame faults in ourselves and to forgive faults in others. This discipline lies at the heart of Christianity and many argue that it lies at the heart of Islam too. If that is so, it is time for Muslims to organise against those who preach resentment in the name of their religion, and who regard the crimes of last Thursday as virtuous deeds, performed with God’s blessing, in a holy cause.

Roger Scruton is author of 'The West and the Rest: Globalisation and the Terrorist Threat'

UK Fatwa to Call Bombers Unbelievers

I'm re-posting this here, because I think it's quite interesting but was previously buried in the various Al-Qaradawi comments.

UK Fatwa to Call Bombers Unbelievers, If Proved Muslims

(Note the provenance of this story.)

al-Qaeda and the G8

An interesting analysis from Niall Ferguson of the links between al-Qaeda, global warming and World poverty.

HERE'S THE CHALLENGE: LINK THE AL-QAEDA BOMBS TO POVERTY AND GLOBAL WARMING

Spielberg risking Israeli anger over Munich tragedy

I have a sinking feeling about this one....

Spielberg risking Israeli anger over Munich tragedy
Telegraph
09/07/2005

A drama about the 1972 Munich Olympics where Black September Palestinian terrorists killed 11 Israeli athletes is being filmed by Steven Spielberg, who is courting controversy by concentrating on the bloody aftermath as the murders were avenged. The material is so delicate that the project, which is being filmed in Malta, is shrouded in secrecy. ... Daniel Craig, one of the British stars of the film, said that the screenplay is a less-than-flattering portrayal of Israeli tactics. "It's about how vengeance doesn't work - blood breeds blood." Craig said that Spielberg, creator of the Shoah Holocaust Foundation, was "incredibly aware" of his background "and that's why he wants to get it right".

However, the office of the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, which manages Mossad and its archives, has reportedly received no request for assistance. In addition, five retired Mossad agents, all of whom served in key intelligence posts at the time, have not been contacted.

Where is the Gandhi of Islam? by Charles Moore

He is not always worth reading, Charles Moore, but this article is a tour de force. Go read.

Where is the Gandhi of Islam?
By Charles Moore
Telegraph
09/07/2005

The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, was in Singapore on Thursday, having helped London's successful Olympic bid. His stricken face showed his shock, and of course he condemned the attacks. Then he analysed them. They were not, he said, attacks "against the mighty and the powerful", but against "working-class Londoners". Would they have been all right, one wondered, if they had been against the mighty and powerful, or if they had cleverly found a way of killing only middle-class Londoners? Then Mr Livingstone said: "This is not an ideology or even a perverted faith." Why did he want to say that? How - if, as the authorities tell us, the attacks were carried out by Islamist extremists - could this be true?

The mayor of our bombed city has himself got involved with Muslim leaders who say some interesting things. Last year, Mr Livingstone extended a warm welcome in London to Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a mainstream, world-famous spiritual leader based in Qatar. Qaradawi has supported suicide bombing against Israelis, the treatment of all Jews as legitimate targets, the whipping of homosexuals and the killing of all Americans - civilian and military - in Iraq. Surely, Ken recognises an ideology here, and a faith of sorts? Yet he praised, rather than condemned, and so now, when the logical extension of such ideas hits King's Cross and the Edgware Road and kills dozens of his voters, he has to say that such deeds arise from no belief at all.

........

Mohammed Abdul Bari from the East London Mosque ... welcomed to the opening of the London Muslim Centre Sheikh Abdul Rahman al Sudais, the Saudi-government-appointed imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca. In Mecca two years ago, al Sudais described Jews as "scum of the earth", "rats of the world" and "monkeys and pigs who should be annihilated". Yet, criticise al Sudais, and Mohammed Abdul Bari leaps furiously to his defence.

As I write, I have beside me an article that appeared during our recent election campaign in Muslim Weekly. By Sheikh Dr Abdalqadir as-Sufi, it calls for the replacement of British parliamentary democracy with "a new civilisation based on the worship of Allah", attacks the Conservatives for being "in the hands of an illegal Jewish immigrant from Romania" and speaks of the "near-demented judaic banking elite". These views are expressed by an educated Muslim in a Muslim publication. Are these Muslim views, non-Muslim views, anti-Muslim views?

........

What about the methods of the police? Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, has shown himself so obsessed with the implementation of the recommendations of the Macpherson report that followed the Stephen Lawrence case that he has been officially criticised for "hanging out to dry" three officers falsely accused of racism. His approach to policing Muslims appears to be to seek the consent of those he supposes to be community leaders before "going in". It is surely not right that they should have a veto on whether or not an inquiry is pursued, and it must be asked whether all of them could be trusted not to protect some of those who merit police attention.

The methods matter, too. Although offence should always be avoided if possible, if the police will not use dogs in their investigations of Muslims (as they may do with almost anyone else), and if they undertake never to go into the religious parts of Islamic buildings, then some people with things to hide will hide them.
........

When did you last hear criticisms of named extremist groups and organisations by Muslim leaders, or support for their expulsion, imprisonment or extradition? How often do you see fatwas issued against suicide bombers and other terrorists, or statements by learned men declaring that people who commit such deeds will go to hell? When do Muslim leaders and congregations insist that a particular imam leave his mosque because of the poison that he disseminates every Friday? When did a British Muslim last go after a Muslim who advocates or practises violence with anything like the zeal with which so many went after Salman Rushdie? Why is not more stigma attached to the Muslims who are murdering other Muslims every day in Iraq and the Middle East?

What communal protection is offered to those Muslims who really are brave and confront Islamist violence, or the poor treatment of women, or call for democracy in the Middle East? How much do mainstream political parties with Muslim councillors and candidates really insist on their religious moderation and co-opt them to extrude the bad people lurking within their communities? I understand and accept that there are many moderates among British Muslims, but I want to know why Britain gets so pitifully little to show for their moderation.

Go to Harry's Place for London bomb posts

There are too many good posts there to link to them all. Just go there. (There's a permanent link off this site, but here it is again just in case.)

Read Hitchens' response to the attacks, see the stuff about the BBC and the word 'terrorist' and loads more.

Here's a choice Hitchens quotes on the subject of grievances:

We know very well whatthe "grievances" of the jihadists are.

The grievance of seeing unveiled women. The grievance of the existence, not of the State of Israel, but of the Jewish people. The grievance of the heresy of democracy, which impedes the imposition of sharia law. The grievance of a work of fiction written by an Indian living in London. The grievance of the existence of black African Muslim farmers, who won't abandon lands in Darfur. The grievance of the existence of homosexuals. The grievance of music, and of most representational art. The grievance of the existence of Hinduism. The grievance of East Timor's liberation from Indonesian rule. All of these have been proclaimed as a licence to kill infidels or apostates, or anyone who just gets in the way.

FOR a few moments yesterday, Londoners received a taste of what life is like for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, whose Muslim faith does not protect them from slaughter at the hands of those who think they are not Muslim enough, or are the wrong Muslim.



You'll also find the inevitable stuff about Israeli warnings (which may warrant a separate post - so far I haven't sorted the facts from the anti-zionist conspiracies.)

Steyn and religion

It's actually an EU bashing article, but it contains some intersting thoughts on religion: (was discussing MS' views on this with JP, Andy & Wembley over lunch the other day.)

My virility doesn't matter - the EU's does
By Mark Steyn

There aren't many examples of successful post-religious societies. And, if one casts around the world today, one notices the two powers with the worst prospects are the ones most advanced in their post-religiosity. [The two Steyn goes on to cite are Russia & Europe.]

Anti-Semitism Evolves - Pipes

Interesting overview of the trends....

Anti-Semitism Evolves
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
February 15, 2005

Pipes on the Gaza withdrawal

Again, following lunch today, here's Pipes on Sharon's Gaza withdrawal and why he opposes it:

Ariel Sharon's Folly
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
April 5, 2005

Reading Sharon's Mind
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
December 23, 2003

Sharon's provocative(?) visit to Temple Mount

Couldn't find the article I was looking for following lunch discussions today - in the meantime, he's another one to be going on with:

A Visit Here, A Visit There - Why Did One Prompt Violence?
by Jonathan Schanzer
Jewish Exponent
August 22, 2002