Muhammad Idrees Ahmad

I notice that Muslims are still falling over backwards to appease the xenophobes and jingoes who are keen to hold them collectively responsible for crimes that have nothing to do with them. Any indiscriminate attack on civilians ought to be condemned, of course, but not at the cost of cause-and-effect. ‘Denial of the link with Iraq is delusional and dangerous‘, argues Seamus Milne, the author of The Enemy Within, in the following excellent piece. ‘The insistence that terror attacks have nothing to do with Britain’s actions in the Muslim world only makes them harder to stop’.

Two years on from the suicide bombings that devastated London’s streets and tube system, official Britain is still in the deepest denial about why this country is a target for al-Qaida- style terror attacks. In the wake of the abortive atrocities in London and Glasgow, there has been no shortage of lurid media coverage of the “doctors’ plot” that came so close to carnage, nor of bombastic calls for the nation to stand firm against terrorists. The Sun was yesterday handing out free union jacks to “fly in the face of terror”, while its heavyweight counterparts have been demanding ever greater efforts by an increasingly intimidated Muslim community to demonstrate its loyalty. Mercifully, the tone adopted by Gordon Brown has been less strident than his predecessor’s – he has avoided the rhetoric of the war on terror and the shopping lists of new coercive powers favoured by Tony Blair in the aftermath of the July 2005 attacks and last year’s alleged transatlantic airline plot.

But when it comes to the substance, there has been little change. The failed bombings were, Brown insisted, an attack on “our British way of life” and the “values that we represent”, “unrelated” to the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan or any other conflict. He compared the fight against the bombers’ ideology with the struggle against communism and called for a similar “propaganda effort” to win “hearts and minds”. In the days since, this “it’s nothing to do with the war” refrain has since been taken up with gusto by large parts of the media. The pro-war Times and Telegraph have led the field, with neoconservative commentators and politicians hammering home the Blair-Bush message that terror is simply the product of an evil ideology. Anyone who dissents or suggests a connection with Britain’s violent role in the Muslim world is portrayed as somehow soft on terrorism – as the Liberal Democrats’ Nick Clegg found when he tentatively referred to Muslim grievances in the House of Commons earlier this week.

In an echo of Gordon Brown’s cold war propaganda theme, defectors from radical Islamist groups have been playing a prominent role in this campaign. Rarely a TV debate goes by without Ed Husain, one-time member of Hizb ut-Tahrir and now a British neocon pinup boy, or Hassan Butt, formerly of the banned al-Muhajiroun group, insisting that this is all about people with identity crises who are “hell-bent on destroying the west”, denouncing Ken Livingstone for engaging in dialogue with Islamists, or calling for a harsher crackdown on their former fellow enthusiasts for the restoration of the caliphate. They are championed by politicians like the Tory Michael Gove and New Labour’s Denis MacShane, who this week argued that all Islamists, from the liberal Muslim academic Tariq Ramadan to al-Qaida terrorists, had to be confronted without exception. It’s become eerily reminiscent of the McCarthyite era when communist renegades would be wheeled out to give Americans a state-orchestrated glimpse of the enemy’s dark heart.

Of course, it’s perfectly true that al-Qaida and its “takfiri” fellow travellers have an extreme, violently sectarian and socially conservative ideology. But it is simply delusional — and flies in the face of logic and history — to fail to recognise the central link between the terror threat and Britain’s post-9/11 actions in the Muslim world.

First, there were no al-Qaida-inspired attacks in Britain before the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. There were against the US — starting with the World Trade Centre in 1993 — triggered by the aftermath of the Gulf war, as well as jihadist campaigns in Kashmir, Chechnya and Bosnia. But Britain was not a target until it attacked the Muslim world. If the bombers’ real focus was, say, sexually liberal western lifestyles, they would presumably be attacking cities like Amsterdam and Stockholm.

Second, it is only necessary to listen to what the bombers say themselves. Just as Bin Laden has repeatedly spelled out that his campaign is about western occupation of Muslim lands and support for pro-western autocracies, so the “martyrdom videos” made by the London bombers of 2005 made clear that they regarded their attacks as revenge for British support for Israel and the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq: “Until you stop the bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture of my people we will not stop this fight,” Mohammed Sidique Khan declared. The government was repeatedly warned before the Iraq war that it would bring terror to Britain, and a string of government, intelligence and other reports have since underlined the connection – also accepted by a large majority in opinion polls.

In the case of these latest bungled bombings, in which two Iraqis, a Palestinian and at least two other Arabs are said to have been involved, it’s not hard to guess what might lie behind them. And while politicians who have supported wars that have cost hundreds of thousands of lives might want to cast a veil over the link, it makes no sense for the rest of us.

The neocon attempt to lump together all Islamists — a political trend that stretches from Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development party to al-Qaida — as beyond the political pale will meanwhile only make it harder to overcome the terror threat and isolate those who believe it is justifiable to kill civilians in retaliation for the Iraqi and Afghan bloodbaths. It is a folly that exasperates senior figures in the police, including special branch, whose job is to counter terror groups in the Muslim community. Just as mainstream Islamists in the Palestinian territories such as Hamas have helped prevent the encroachment of takfiri jihadists, so non-violent Islamists in the west can offer an alternative political channel to those who might otherwise be drawn to al-Qaida-inspired terror. “This approach has played into the hands of al-Qaida,” one high level special branch officer argues. “Islamists have the best antidotes to al-Qaida propaganda.”

Given Britain’s role in the Muslim world, the surprise must be that there haven’t been more attacks. They have, after all, yet to reach anything like the level of the campaign waged by the IRA. But that such attacks continue is a central part of Blair’s legacy — and the responsibility of a political class that failed to hold to account those who launched an illegal war of aggression with the most devastating human and political consequences. Until the Brown government makes serious moves to end Britain’s role in the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, the likelihood must be that the threat will grow.

Western society in general has come a long way since its days of colonial slaughter, genocide, administrative massacres and racial segregation, but that only means that methhods have evolved that make such acts less obtrusive. There are many things which are just not acceptable in respectable society any more — especially racist comments about minorities. But it is perfectly acceptable if such comments are made by a native informer — by one of ‘them’. Book deals are the usual first step, soon to be followed by media appearances. In times of crisis, especially, they come in handy. Kudos to Milne for being the first mainstream British commentator to speak on their pernicious role. Alas, few have Milne’s acuity.

Take Ed Husain (real name Mohammed Mehboob): His book is a bestseller, thanks in no small part to the endorsements it has received from the whole bevy of British hardline Zionists. So what is in this book? Ziauddin Sardar writes,

It is…disingenuous to imply that Husain’s is not a unique journey, undertaken by someone whose critical faculties are conspicuously absent, but a route that can easily be followed by vast majority of young Muslims. Young Muslims are no more likely to join Hizb ut-Tahrir than young Christians are to join the Moonies. You have to be of a certain bent to come under the influence of a cult and join as a fully paid-up member. Fortunately, in my experience, the vast majority of young British Muslims have more sense and critical acumen than Husain.

The suggestion that the radicalisation of Muslim youth can be laid firmly on the door of Hizb is also hard to swallow. The anger of young Muslims against the West has a much broader context. There was a great deal going on during the 1990s that agitated young Muslims and brought anti-Western sentiment to the fore – from the first Gulf War to the genocide of Muslims in Chechnya. But Husain sees the world in reductive, one-dimensional terms.

When he finally realises his folly, and bids farewell to Hizb, Husain continues to be a reductive extremist. Now, the entire blame for the radicalisation of Muslim youth is placed on multiculturalism – the very idea that gave Husain all the opportunities he had in life! Terrorists, he tells us, are a product of sexual frustration. So we ought to provide them with generous doses of sex to usher them towards peaceful directions.

Hizb ut-Tahir should be banned so that they can take their nefarious activities underground and become even more difficult to tackle. Muslim organisations are secret terrorist sympathisers. Husain doesn’t tell us what we should do with them. But I suspect he wants everyone locked up, leaving the terrain open for his brand of neocons to run amok…

The occasional insight of Husain’s memoir notwithstanding, The Islamist seems to have been drafted by a Whitehall mandarin as a PR job for the Blair government.