英國的伊斯蘭恐懼症
Once
again, the British press is panicking over the "Islamists" that are
apparently lurking with malicious intent on every street corner in the UK.
While
tabloids fret over imagined Islamic plots
to take bacon off Britain's streets, the broadsheets reflect a more highbrow
hysteria over an extremist Islamism that has apparently taken
root on British soils.
Meanwhile,
the political class is doing its bit, too. Tony Blair,
the Middle East war-mongering former prime minister turned Middle East peace
envoy, has declared "radical Islam" to be the biggest threat ever,
in the world. The British government itself has launched an inquiry into
the Muslim Brotherhood, which, according to Prime Minister David Cameron is to "establish
a complete picture" of the organisation.
And
the UK Charities Commission - headed by William Shawcross, formerly of the
neo-con Henry Jackson society - has declared
"Islamist extremism" to be the most "deadly threat" facing
charities in England and Wales thereby raising alarm that legitimate
Islamic charities may have funding
choked off by association, through a spread of fears over
handing out hard-earned pennies to hot-headed jihadis.
Convoluted
approach
As many
commentators have already pointed out, the British government has taken a
curiously convoluted approach to political Islam. While the Muslim Brotherhood
has suddenly been fingered for investigation, the Islamist, power-sharing
Ennahda party in Tunisia is of course still fine - but
then, so are Muslim Brotherhood rebels in Libya, whom the Brits helped
overthrow Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, and the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated rebels
in Syria, whom Britain also backs. Is it really too much to ask of our
political leaders to at least make sense and be consistent?
And rather than being premised on national security considerations,
this just-ordered investigation is thought to be intended mostly to
appease allies - Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states that hate
the democratically-elected but now deposed Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
Analysts
tell me that, despite this ally-appeasing gesture of an inquiry, they think it highly unlikely that the Brotherhood would be
banned in Britain.
But
if the government has taken a path of political expediency, it has done so with
utter disregard for predictable outcomes. For the very act of ordering an
investigation has signalled that there are grave dangers associated with all
political Islam, thereby collapsing all its variations - including non-violent,
democracy-participating groups - into one violent, menacing version.
In
other words, the space for legitimate political expression just got squeezed
even smaller - which is exactly what Muslim community workers have for years
been warning is itself creating a dangerous breeding ground for potential
extremism.
After
all, if the political framework you are encouraged to join is telling you that
your non-violent Islamist views cast you under suspicion of being a
throat-cutting jihadi, why would you maintain any sense of faith in the system?
Meanwhile, the move has once again placed the entire
Muslim population of Britain - political or not - under the microscope,
hard-wiring the perception of a "problem" community.
This
is, by the way, a conflation that we would never dream
of casting upon any other group: Who, for instance, would attempt
politically to associate all British Jewry with the nutty, violent fanaticism
of Jewish ideological settlers in the occupied West Bank? Nobody demands of the UK's practising Buddhists that they
denounce Buddhist violence in Burma daily, before being accepted as normal
members of society.
And
let's not pretend this doesn't have consequences. A steady drip-feeding of
politically driven panic over violent Islamists taking root in in the UK has
helped create a sense in which British Muslims are now pretty much the punchbag
of choice. Muslim community workers speak of a toxic
climate, the worst it has been in over a decade - in other words, since the
attacks on 9/11.
Poisoned
political debate
When
the political class is pushing fears that fuel such a climate, is it any wonder
that the far-right, Islam-bashing UKIP party -
which tops the opinion polls for the forthcoming European parliamentary
elections - is able to flourish? This party has so badly poisoned
political debate that a recent proposal from a UKIP member of the Europeans
parliament that British Muslims sign a "declaration denouncing parts of
the Quran" is only one horrifying element.
A UKIP candidate was suspended a few days ago, after tweeting, among other things, that Muslims were the "devil's kids". That
followed another UKIP candidate leaving the party "by mutual
agreement" after he compared Islam to the Third Reich - and also said
British comedian Lenny Henry should "emigrate to a Black
country".
And
let's not forget the UKIP candidate for Oldham, greater Manchester, who
suggested on her Facebook page that Britain should "ban Islam and
knock down all the mosques".
There are seemingly no legal consequences for people making
statements that should be construed as hate speech because, campaigners say, it seems
as though Britain has not yet codified what that actually means when practised
against Muslims (cue all those tediously wrong-headed claims, crowding message
boards all over the Internet, that anti-Muslim comments can't be
"racist" because Islam isn't a "race").
Meanwhile,
Britain's main political parties are so worried about hemorrhaging voters to
UKIP that they have forgotten one of their primary responsibilities as public
officials: to take a firm, loud stand against such unequivocal racism. A
frankly bewildering political position has sprung up in the UK, whereby it is somehow
"wrong" to call UKIP racist, because it alienates and
erroneously labels UKIP supporters.
In
2014, after so many hard-won successes of the anti-racism movement through the
years, the only morally responsible position is to call out racism wherever you
see it. This principle is pretty clear-cut. And we must not forget that it
applies just as much to the racism barely acknowledged as being one, the racism
routinely indulged and set loose by political leaders: that against the Muslim
community.
Rachel
Shabi is a journalist and author of Not the Enemy: Israel's Jews from Arab Lands.
Follow
Rachel Shabi on Twitter: @rachshabi
The views expressed in this
article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's
editorial policy
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/05/uk-hysteria-over-islamist-threat-20145573556609623.html
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