While alcohol-slurred chants of "E – E – EDL" and anti-Muslim hate speech too foul to reprint here could be heard up and down Luton's town centre streets, another more urbane voice added its plum tones to the cacophony. This weekend British Prime Minister David Cameron gave a landmark speech setting out his vision for British Muslims.
The speech is remarkable for its clarity. Gone are the days when politicians felt that they had to take into consideration the feelings of Muslims. After dispensing the usual disclaimers and caveats that Islam wasn't equivalent to terrorism, Cameron clearly laid out exactly where he felt the problems of British Muslims lie: Islamist extremism.
For those puzzled by what exactly "Islamist Extremism" means, they will be disappointed to learn that being a law-abiding citizen who pays his taxes and minds his own business will not cut it anymore to extricate yourself from this label. The PM has made clear that there is a charter of acceptable thoughts and opinions that British Muslims will have to sign up to in order not to be classified as "Islamist Extremists".
To this end he has said that the state must confront, and not consort with, the non-violent Muslim groups that are ambiguous about British values such as equality of the sexes, democracy and integration. Cameron went on to declare that multiculturalism had failed and accused it of eroding the British national identity and promoting insular communities that fostered terrorism. The pill for this particular ill would be a robust promotion of liberal-democratic values – freedom of speech, democracy, the rule of law, equal rights regardless of race, sex or sexuality – and a greater emphasis on shared British cultural attributes, with anyone unwilling to take this course of medication coming up against what Cameron calls "active, muscular liberalism".
On the surface, this seems entirely appropriate. Indeed, how could any law-abiding citizen take issue with the PM promoting democracy and the rule of law? However, there is a layer of ambiguity in the speech that provides cause for concern. By shifting the focus from those groups whose ideologies explicitly advocate violence to the beliefs of those whom the government's paid Muslim pundits argue will inevitably and inexorably turn to violence, the government has made belief in Islamic orthodoxy a punishable sin to be rooted out. Does the government mean to say that it will not engage with any Muslim group or mosque that believes, for example, that homosexuality is a sin? Does it mean that any Muslim school that teaches the differing shares of inheritance to which Muslim men and women are Quranically entitled will be denied government funding? Does it mean that parents who do not wish their child to participate in mixed-sex physical education lessons, music lessons or sexual education lessons are closet terrorists at worst and an enemy of British society and values at best?
If we enquire as to the origin of this thinking, we quickly realise that this is not the impartial stance of a politician willing the best for his people but rather a pre-planned agenda of those with an axe to grind about Islam. Peter Oborne, chief political commentator for the Daily Telegraph and one of a minority of journalists in this country that have the moral courage to speak up against the widespread Islamophobia present in the media, provided a telling insight into the background behind the PM's speech. Writing in The Spectator magazine last week, Oborne mentioned that the Tories were divided into two factions over how to "deal" with British Muslims:
"There are two factions, and the strongest can loosely be described as neoconservative. This faction remains an unconditional supporter of the United States of America, continues to defend the Iraq invasion, powerfully admires and in some cases worships Tony Blair, and automatically takes the side of Israel in the middle east.
"This section of the coalition also takes a hard line on domestic security arrangements, supporting control orders and the divisive Prevent strategy for confronting its special interpretation of the Islamic terror threat. Its key cabinet supporters include George Osborne, Liam Fox, Oliver Letwin, Michael Gove (whose book Celsius 7/7 sought to define the domestic war on terror with astonishing success) and, crucially, the home secretary, Theresa May. Baroness Neville-Jones, the one-time Whitehall spook who sits on the fancily named Security Council, is another well-placed though bone-headed supporter."
The other faction is much less powerful with its two main players being Tory party Chairman, Baroness Warsi, and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg who, having quaffed the poisoned chalice of power, has fallen from his heady days when "everyone agreed with Nick" to become the Conservative Party's Lib-Dem fall-guy on everything from tuition fees to NHS reform.
The split has been largely hidden from public view but has come to light most notably when Sayeeda Warsi withdrew, late in the day and without warning, from a planned appearance at the Global Peace and Unity Conference in London last October and then from attending the Doha Debates to defend the right to wear the niqab a few weeks later. Oborne links her withdrawal from the GPU event to a Quilliam Foundation memo circulated at the Home Office that accused the GPU event of having been infiltrated by Islamists and therefore not appropriate for Warsi to attend. Oborne says of the Quilliam Foundation that it has played a vital role in framing the public debate on Islam and exerted a huge behind-the-scenes influence on policy.
This appears to be borne out when one compares the contents of the PM's speech with a Quilliam memo to various government departments, including the Home Office, which we reported on after it was leaked online last year. In it, Quilliam redefined the parameters of what type of Muslim constitutes a "threat" by broadening the definition of "Islamist" to include just about every non-Barelvi, non-Sufi Muslim group and mosque in the UK and further damned them with the following statement:
"The ideology of non-violent Islamists is broadly the same as that of violent Islamists; they disagree only on tactics."
The rest of the document could almost double as a check-list for the PM's speech. This includes: a change in the use of language, replacing the phrase "Al-Qa'ida inspired violence" with "Islamist inspired violence"; identifying universities and prisons as "hotbeds" of Islamist recruitment; and the blocking of public money and cutting of ties with any group that doesn't share the government’s manifesto of liberal values. There is a strange concordance even down to the analogies used. Where Quilliam asserts that "non-violent Islamists" are to "jihadist Islamists" as the BNP is to far right para-military group Combat 18; the PM speaks of engaging with non-violent Islamists as "turning to a right-wing fascist party to fight a violent white supremacist movement".
When one witnesses the hand of Quilliam moving behind the scenes to determine government policy on British Muslim society, it does not require a leap of faith to conclude that perhaps Quilliam's other recommendations could be adopted wholesale by the government. These include:
- That no government department, from the Home Office to the Department of Justice and Scotland Yard to the Department for Education, should meet with any "Islamist" groups – even in secret – for fear of being manipulated or inadvertently influenced by them (!).
- Endorsing previous government decisions to ban, from entry into the UK, international Muslim speakers and advising that future bans should include those who believe in "inflammatory" ideas such as the immorality of homosexuality.
- Recommending that the Home Office screen all of its employees in case they support or have any sympathy for "Islamism".
- The police should only have contact with “Islamist” organisations when gathering intelligence and should not otherwise cooperate with them. Under no circumstances should members of the public be directed to any of these organisations for advice or support.
- Identifying universities as "hotbeds of Islamism” and advising that prayer rooms and Islamic societies be monitored; and disallowing any speakers with "Islamist" ideas, such as the immorality of homosexuality, to speak on campus.
- The Department of Education was advised to give teachers more training so that they can spot students who express "Islamist" ideas and publicly challenge them without the fear of being labelled Islamophobes. There are also proposals to monitor Muslim schools (including even part-time, after-school, mosque-based teaching, i.e. the maktab system), Muslim teachers and Muslim governors for "Islamist" influences, and teaching Muslim students specifically about "liberal and secular" interpretations of Islam.
- Quilliam delves into the world of Muslim prisoners, recommending that they should be monitored for non-violent "Islamist" leanings, and their probation terms linked to this. Needless to say, the authors also suggest that prison visitors and imams should be screened for "Islamist" ideology.
In summary, if the Quilliam foundation has been allowed the level of access and influence that commentators like Peter Oborne postulate, then it will make the Labour government's failed Prevent strategy seem like a Women's Institute position paper on jam-making.
Quilliam's claim to have specialist knowledge and understanding of "Islamism" is rooted in its founders' previous associations with Hizbut-Tahrir (despite allegations that Maajid Nawaz only had a brief and inconsequential acquaintance with a few HT supporters) and the claim has been repeatedly rejected by British Muslims. It has also been shown that Quilliam enjoys little or no support from the average UK Muslim. Despite this, Quilliam has been lavished with over £1 million in funding from the previous government and patronised with access to high ranking government ministers such as the former Secretary of State for Communities, Hazel Blears, and current Minister for Education, Michael Gove.
It appears that the current and previous governments are desperate to swallow the Quilliam mantra that Western policy in the Muslim world has nothing at all to do with increasing the likelihood of terror attacks in Britain and elsewhere. One can hardly blame these ministers for yearning towards Quilliam's version of reality, as it completely exonerates them from responsibility for the fallout of enacting disastrous policies in the Middle East and blindly following US hawks into illegal wars.
But it is a dangerous game. A government policy that specifically cuts ties with an entire community will effectively "kettle" British Muslims into a "pariah's corner", encouraging polarisation, and with no routes open for the government to engage with and influence them. The national interest will not be served by this stance. The only ones set to gain from it are former "Islamists" looking for a government salary and powerful lobbies for foreign powers (such as the "only democracy in the Middle East") keen to silence British Muslim voices speaking out in opposition to their brutality at home.
Needless to say, many of those marching with the EDL in Luton on Saturday were jubilant that David Cameron had "come around to their way of thinking". It simply beggars belief that on the day when that violently anti-Muslim group was holding its "homecoming march" in Luton, David Cameron could give a speech like this and thus hand the far right a propaganda victory, a point highlighted by Inayat Banglawala in an interview with the BBC.
Any policy which rejects dialogue with groups representing huge swathes of the Muslim community, hoping that those people will magically go away, is misguided and shortsighted. The government should not rely on advice dispensed by paid stooges who are openly and heavily influenced by foreign lobbies and who do not reflect British realities. Quilliam's snake oil formula of propagating stereotypes and misconceptions demonstrates its intellectual laziness and should be rejected. One of the few positives to be taken from this mess is that Muslims will learn to become more resourceful and independent-minded once the security blanket of the government's shilling has been stripped away.
This leaves us with the stark reality that the battle within Britain's coalition government - about how to "deal" with Muslims - has been won by those who wish not to address the root causes of terrorism but rather to quietly terraform Islam. It is a shrewd tactical move to silence the voices of Islamic orthodoxy prior to launching a full-on campaign to reform Islam. Given the half-baked, laughable ideas of the reformists, muzzling their critics is the only way for any of their voices to reach the mainstream. How else could you characterise a "new interpretation" of Islamic inheritance that blatantly contradicts the clear instructions of the Quran?
When a serving Prime Minister chooses to align himself with the rhetoric of a violent street movement by delivering a speech in a country which went to war following the failure of "monoculturalism" in 1930s Europe, then one’s mind is inexorably drawn to those events less than a century ago. Given this sea change in domestic policy and the death of our pluralistic society, what should be the strategies of those organisations that were our representatives but which now have been muted? Who will fill this void of "acceptable" Muslim representation?
Cue the proponents of postmodernist Islam: Tariq Ramadan, Usama Hasan, Taj Hargey, Maajid Nawaz. Rejoice, for your time has come! It seems that instead of the normal democratic process, whereby would-be leaders have to demonstrate that they represent their community, the British Ummah has to decide whether we should jettison whole tracts of our religion in order to meekly fall behind these charlatans and shysters.
Prophet Muhammad (sallallaahu alayhi wasallam) warned of time when knowledge would be lost through the death of scholars and "People would then appoint ignorant leaders for themselves who would be consulted in matters of religion and they would give fatawa (rulings) without knowledge, falling into misguidance and misguiding others." (Muslim)
"Whoever is guided is only guided for [the benefit of] his soul. And whoever goes into misguidance does so against his own soul. And no bearer of burdens will bear the burden of another. And never would We punish until We have sent a messenger." (Allah Almighty in the Quran, 17:15)
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