Muhammad Idrees Ahmad

The Israel Lobby and its neoconservative vanguard seem terribly concerned with finding ‘moderate’ muslim voices. Ever the mavericks their definition of ‘moderate’ doesn’t quite jibe with one commonly found in a dictionary. Their moderates are paragons of subservience, and consider questioning the government a vice, unless, of course, if it is for being too accommodating of muslim sensitivities [!]. These moderates are also required to distinguish themselves from the rest of the British population not just by not criticizing the government for its wars of aggression against other states, but in fact, to actively cheerlead for them (as the founder of the ‘Quilliam Foundation’ did). They also exhibit a remarkably benign, and at times fawning, attitude towards Zionism.

The Uncle Toms who join the ‘moderate’ ranks are duly rewarded. They are celebrated by a substantial chunk of the intelligentsia, regardless of political orientation, for furnishing the pretexts for their own racial prejudices, latent or otherwise. One such former ‘moderate’, Husain Haqqani has just been appointed Pakistan’s ambassador to the US. Another, Akbar S. Ahmad, ended up as a don at Cambridge. Before she left the Netherlands in disgrace over the false story she concocted to rise in the generally xenophobic environment, Ayaan Hirsi Ali was elected to the Dutch parliament on a far-right party ticket. She is now a scholar at the equally far-right American Enterprise Institute, while making frequent appearances on ‘liberal’ shows such as Bill Maher’s. ‘Ed’ Husain appears well on his way to a knighthood, if only he were moderate enough to dump in real life on a muslim’s head.

Here Seumas Milne and Ziauddin Sardar reveal the story behind the latest neocon-muslim outfit.

All mod cons

‘Vaunted new Muslim organisations exonerate government of its responsibilities and sideline credible voices: they’re anything but moderate’ writes Seumas Milne.

These are good times to be in the “moderate Muslim” business. If you press the right buttons on integration and “radicalisation” and hold your tongue on western foreign policy, there are rich pickings to be had – from both private and government coffers.

Latest in the ring is the “counter-extremism thinktank”, the Quilliam Foundation, due to be launched tomorrow in the British Museum by Ed Husain (much-feted author of The Islamist), Jemima Khan and former Lib Dem leader and Bosnian proconsul Lord Ashdown.

The foundation – named after a 19th century British Muslim – is the creature of Husain and a couple of other one-time members of the radical, non-violent Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. All three are straight out of the cold war defectors’ mould described in Saturday’s Guardian by the playwright David Edgar, trading heavily on their former associations and travelling rapidly in a conservative direction.

Given the enthusiasm with which Husain’s book was greeted last year by British neoconservatives such as Tory frontbencher Michael Gove and Mail columnist Melanie Phillips, it’s no surprise that he has recruited people like Gove and David Green, director of the rightwing thinktank Civitas, as advisers. But there are also a couple of more liberal figures on board like Guardian columnist Timothy Garton Ash and the vicar of Putney, Giles Fraser – though it seems not everybody realised quite what they were signing up to.

In any case, to judge by what Husain and his friends (such as fellow defector Shiraz Maher) have been saying, the aim seems to be a campaign to redefine what is acceptable within the Muslim community under the banner of reviving “western Islam”.

In particular, they want to put Islamism – an extremely broad political trend that stretches from the Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development party to al-Qaida – beyond the political pale.

“I wouldn’t call them Muslim,” Husain said recently of Islamists in a bizarre inversion of takfiri jihadists’ excommunications of supposed apostates.

The nature of Husain’s own politics were on unmistakeable display during a recent edition of Radio 4′s Any Questions, when he attacked multiculturalism and declared there were too many immigrants in the country. He also says he supported the invasion of Iraq to overthrow Saddam, but not what took place thereafter.

Husain has, meanwhile, compared Hamas to the BNP, described the Arab “psyche” as irredeemably racist, criticised the director of MI5 for “pussyfooting around” with extremists, poured cold water on the idea that western policy in the Muslim world makes terror attacks in Britain and elsewhere more likely, dismissed the idea of Islamophobia and defended the government’s decision to ban the leading Muslim cleric Sheikh Yusef al-Qaradawi from Britain because he had defended Palestinian suicide attacks. Whatever else that amounts to, it’s scarcely a voice of moderation.

Interestingly, Husain and the Quilliam Foundation hail another Egyptian cleric, Sheikh Ali Gomaa, the Grand Mufti of Egypt, as a “scholastic giant” making a brave stand against extremism. Last year, David Cameron also went out of his way to praise Gomaa and the Times called him “the wise mufti“.

But as it turns out, Gomaa is also on record as defending Palestinian suicide bombings, including against Israeli civilians (as well as endorsing wife-beating in some cultures). The crucial difference between Gomaa and Qaradawi is not their religious rulings on Palestine or other social questions – or their shared hostility to terror attacks in the west – but that Qaradawi is linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, the most popular opposition movement in the Arab world, while Gomaa is appointed by the pro-western Mubarak dictatorship.

The Quilliam Foundation’s leading lights could not be less representative of mainstream Muslim opinion in Britain. But the signs are that the government is nevertheless throwing its weight behind the organisation – after the failure of earlier efforts to build up the Sufi Muslim Council and British Muslim Forum as an alternative to the umbrella Muslim Council of Britain. Officials from Hazel Blears’ communities department recently made clear to a Muslim organisation involved in youth work that it would need to line up with the Quilliam Foundation if it wanted government funding.

The Quilliam Foundation itself is being funded by Kuwaiti businessmen, Husain told me yesterday, but could not reveal their identities. He added that he would be happy to take government funds if there were no strings attached.

This is a perilous game. Those like Quilliam and its friends who claim that terror attacks are all about a rejection of our way of life rather than western war-making and support for dictatorships in the Muslim world may help get the government off the hook of its own responsibility.

But if we want to stop such attacks in Britain, rather than indulge in shadow boxing with an elastically-defined extremism, there needs to be engagement with – not ostracism of – credible Islamist groups, as the former head of Scotland Yard Special Branch’s Muslim contact unit has argued.
Earlier this month, the chairman of the National Association of Muslim Police, Zaheer Ahmad, warned in Jane’s Police Review Community that while Husain had “few supporters within the Muslim community”, some senior officers had been “seduced” by his “celebrity status” and “taken in by the stereotypical image of Islam he portrays”. The dangers of trying to impose the voices you want to hear on the Muslim community should be obvious.

To lionise former extremists feeds anti-Muslim prejudice

‘It is a mistake to fete these repentant members of Islamist cults,’ Ziauddin Sardar writes. ‘They are part of the problem, not the solution.’

When one sinner repents, says the biblical adage, there is much joy in heaven. So the angels, along with the government, must be rejoicing at the launch of the Quilliam Foundation. The thinktank has been established by not one but two repentant sinners: Ed Husain and Maajid Nawaz, ex-members of the extremist Islamic cult Hizb ut-Tahrir.

On earth, however, I would suggest a greater degree of caution. In the here and now, it’s not the repentant sinners we should celebrate but “the 99 righteous persons who need no repentance”, those unmentioned Muslims who refused to be seduced by the dark side. I know I am going to upset many of my Muslim friends who are quite ecstatic about the foundation. After all, as its website declares, Quilliam “rejects foreign ideologies of Islamism and jihadism” and upholds “Islam as a pluralistic, diverse tradition that can heal the pathology of Islamist extremism”. What could be wrong with such a message?

The answer is the messenger and the message. When erstwhile sinners gain the limelight, the support of neocon luminaries and the backing of respectable Muslim leaders, sinning acquires a certain cachet. We prove again that radical extremism is the way to get attention. We make flirtation with violent ideology the way to be heard and become acceptable.

The embrace of former extremists is a slap in the face for Muslims who have worked tirelessly to build a British Muslim identity and foster inclusion by constructive community activity. It’s another attempt at the marginalisation of the overwhelming majority who never had a moment’s doubt that Islam gives no sanction for such murderous and misguided perversion of belief.

I am troubled by the fact that former extremists are seen as the only people who know how to deal with extremism. Just because you have been an inmate of a mental hospital does not mean you are an expert in clinical psychology. But former extremists are being lionised because they confirm the basic tabloid prejudice that violence is a natural part of being a Muslim. So whose ignorance is being vindicated? Certainly the potential of an open, unapologetic belief in Islam as a valuable part of British society is not on the agenda.

At every stage of dealing with extremism, the government has made the wrong choice. First, only British-trained imams were to be promoted, though how and what they were trained in was not examined. Then there were to be roadshows at which religious scholars selected for their moderation and tractability, rather than an understanding of the problems of young British Muslims, would explain the error of extremist ways. Then Sufism was touted as the solution, and the Sufi Muslim Council was created as the voice of moderation. Now the way forward is with sinners who were once mouthpieces for jihadi propaganda and advocated the violent rejection of all things western.

The thing nobody has suggested is engaging the silenced and diverse majority of Muslim communities. If the debate of the mainstream is ignored, there is nowhere for those rescued from extremism to go. The silent majority is supposed to be groomed to embrace quietism – which explains why Sufi mysticism is in vogue – and, most important, to be put off politics for life.

At the launch of the foundation this week, Sheikh Abdul-Aziz al-Bukhari, a “master” of the Naqshbandi Sufi order in Palestine, rightly pointed out that Islam is not an ideology. He went on to say Muslims should love, obey and respect the government. It’s exactly what I would expect of a neocon Sufi order that supported Bush and his war on Iraq. Islam is not an ideology, but it is no more devoid of politics than Christianity. Far from “obeying” this government, Muslims are duty-bound to challenge it. Extremism is not only a religious issue; it is also a product of our politics. And tackling extremism requires changing politics as much as changing religious outlook.

Within the British Muslim community there are pockets of underachievement, under-employment and high unemployment. There are problems of education, health and social provision. All are festering ground for extremism; all are political facts. Then there are problems, which too few Muslims are prepared to acknowledge, that they share with sections of white British society: problems of family disintegration and drugs, of an existence devoid of opportunities to share in consumer culture. An escape from this existence is gang membership and drug culture, a kind of glorying in the indignity of one’s existence. These, too, are political problems.

Most of all, British foreign policy has a direct bearing on nurturing extremism. The occupation of Iraq, the byproducts of the “war on terror”, the perpetual suffering of the Palestinians are not amenable to Sufi solutions or deprogramming techniques. So we don’t need neocon ex-extremists to tell us what extremism is about. They are part of the problem, not the solution. But we do need a viable politics that tackles the root cause of extremism. Whatever the joy in heaven, we cannot allow former lunatics to take over the asylum.

· Ziauddin Sardar blogs on a different verse or theme of the Qu’ran weekly at blogs.guardian.co.uk/quran