Islamophobia Watch

Basing himself on Shiv Malik's "exceptionally penetrating article" in Prospect magazine – based on "research" that the BBC had the nerve to reject as "anti-Muslim" – Alasdair Palmer asserts that the problem of home-grown terrorism arises from allowing people from backward barbaric cultures into "our" liberal secular society.

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In an "Open letter to Tariq Ramadan" in the current issue of Prospect Magazine David Goodhardt rejects Professor Ramadan's recent Guardian article as a "grievance-seeking, responsibility-avoiding diatribe". According to Goodhardt, Muslims in Britain have never had it so good:

"Is there some discrimination, racism even? Yes, but there is far less than in the past and less than most other countries in the world.... The ideology of Islamophobia is a mixture of exaggeration (see Kenan Malik's work on this subject) and a sort of perverted utopianism that interprets the initial suspicion (and sometimes even hostility) towards strangers found in all cultures as proof of deep hatred of a particular religion."

The cover story by the appalling Shiv Malik is a study of 7/7 bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan. In an accompanying editorial Goodhardt explains that "Malik's account decisively refutes the claim, often heard in the weeks after 7/7, that Khan had been a well-integrated British-Pakistani Muslim driven to angry despair by the war in Iraq".

Today's papers are filled with articles reporting the Channel 4 poll of British Muslims. Typical headlines read "Muslims: MI5 behind 7/7" (Daily Mirror), "25% of Brit Muslims think 7/7 bombers innocent" (The Sun), "7/7 bombs staged by agents say one in four Muslims" (Daily Telegraph) and "24% of Muslims think 7/7 raids were MI5 plot" (Daily Express), while the Daily Mail goes with "59pc of UK Muslims believe there was a cover-up over 7/7".

The background to the poll – not least the fact that the fraudulent propaganda used to justify the Iraq war has destroyed the government's credibility among Muslim communities – is of course omitted from most of these reports. The Mail does at least quote Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain, who puts the findings into context:

"Most people who would examine the facts with a level head would realise that this (7/7) is not some conspiracy. But as with the assassination of JFK, regrettably these kind of incidents become a cause celebre for conspiracy theorists. I think that this particular government has also engendered a lot of distrust. Some people will always be determined to believe that Muslims could not have been behind such an act of mass murder and to this end they are vulnerable to conspiracy theorists. The Muslim Council has always asked for a public inquiry into the July 7 bombings and that inquiry would have put this scepticism to bed for good."

"Only one faith on Earth may be more messianic than Islam: multiculturalism. Without it – without its fanatics who believe all civilizations are the same – the engine that projects Islam into the unprotected heart of Western civilization would stall and fail. It's as simple as that. To live among the believers – the multiculturalists – is to watch the assault, the jihad, take place un-repulsed by our suicidal societies. These societies are not doomed to submit; rather, they are eager to do so in the name of a masochistic brand of tolerance that, short of drastic measures, is surely terminal."

Diana West at TownHall.com, 10 March 2007

Commenting on the report "Migrants face new 'Britishness' test" the Telegraph takes the opportunity to repeat the usual right-wing, anti-multiculturalist nonsense about the causes of 7/7:

"The terrorist bombings of London's transport system on 7 July, 2005, and their failed sequel two weeks later, brought a sharp public realisation that Britain's attitude to absorbing immigrants needed to be rethought.

"For innocent civilians to be murdered in their scores in an indiscriminate attack was appalling, but even more shocking was the revelation that these acts had been planned by British-born Muslims: young men who had been raised and educated in this country, but clearly did not feel themselves to be a part of it. In the analysis and debate that followed these traumatic incidents, the scale of the problem became evident.

"Large communities of migrants were living in virtual cultural isolation in Britain. Often making no attempt to learn English, or to accept the national identity that they had adopted, these immigrant groups had been left to their own devices.

"The policy of multi-culturalism, which saw itself as tolerant and benign, had in effect encouraged them to remain tied to their old national or ethnic loyalties, rather than to participate in mainstream British life. The consequence of this failure to assimilate was a pernicious alienation that bred underachievement and a sense of grievance."

Editorial in Daily Telegraph, 5 December 2006

A man has been jailed for spitting at a Muslim woman on a train after an event in memory of the 7/7 bombings. Charles Adams, 23, admitted religiously aggravated assault and affray with his brother Mark Adams, 26, and father Mark Raymond Adams, 50, from London. Michelle Idrees, from Luton, was wearing a burkha when she was targeted by the father and his two sons. Charles Adams was sentenced to 15 months in prison. His brother and father will be sentenced shortly.

BBC News, 23 November 2006

See also This is London, 24 November 2006

A man who carried out a religiously aggravated attack in Leicester has been given a suspended jail sentence. Alan Young, 55, from Bourne Crescent, Northampton admitted common assault, religiously aggravated assault and harassment on 7 July.

Leicester magistrates heard he had made remarks about Muslims and hit a Muslim man at a health centre on the first anniversary of the London bombings. Young was given a four-month jail sentence suspended for two years. He was also ordered to pay £200 compensation to the man he attacked.

The court heard Young, who had consumed three quarters of a bottle of whiskey, went into the surgery on Evington Road and shouted it was "kill a Muslim day". He made remarks about the London bombings and punched a Muslim man five or six times in the face. Young then went on to shout further remarks about Muslims from a nearby property and hit an Asian man after making comments about Iraq.

In court the 55-year-old accepted he had behaved very badly.

BBC News, 22 November 2006

"TENS of thousands of British Muslims would NOT shop someone they believed took part in a terror attack. A shock News of the World poll today reveals almost ONE IN TEN would not tell the police if they suspected a fellow Muslim was involved in an atrocity. With a million Muslims over 16 in Britain, it suggests a staggering 90,000 would turn a blind eye. And the figure is even worse among Muslims aged between 16 and 24, with 15 per cent saying they would not tell. Our poll also shows six per cent – or 60,000 Muslims – think attacks like the July 7 bombings are justified."

News of the World, 24 September 2006

See also Press Association, 24 September 2006

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"John Reid, the Iraq war boaster, may not have been the right man to say it and an East London Islamic centre may not have been the right place to say it. But it still had to be said – even at the risk of upsetting Muslims. There is a threat to the public from home-grown Islamic fundamentalists and British Muslims have a duty to monitor their own community for signs of incipient terrorists.

"They know better than anyone if young Ali is going off the rails, or has come under the ideological spell of a fundamentalist cleric. They see the signs better than a whole station full of coppers. They have a responsibility to take whatever action seems right, including informing the authorities, if someone they know seems to be on the brink of violent jihadism against fellow Britons. That includes parents, siblings, friends, clerics, youth workers and elders of the Muslim community.

"I'm sorry, but as Dr Reid admitted, there is no easy way of saying this. Silence, however, would be more culpable than speaking out. Just imagine if this habit of mind had been the norm before July 7 last year: the young Muslim bombers might have been apprehended before they set out on their deadly mission to London."

Paul Routledge in the Daily Mirror, 22 September 2006

So, according to Routledge, it would appear that the families of the 7/7 bombers knew, or at least suspected, that the young men were "on the brink of violent jihadism against fellow Britons" but they kept quiet about it.

There is no easy way of saying this, but it has to be said, even at the risk of upsetting Paul Routledge – he's an ignorant, bigoted idiot.

John Gaunt calls for 13% of British Muslims to be "rounded up".

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