How could four ordinary men born and brought up in Britain turn into such
savage killers? That is the question Britain has been asking itself in wake
of the London tube bombings that killed 52 people on 7 July. Three of the
four men involved, Mohammed Sidique Khan, Shehzad Tanweer and Hasib Hussain
came from Yorkshire in the North of England. The fourth, Jamaican-born Germaine
Lindsay, lived in Luton about 30 miles north of London. None of them were
considered extremists, all of them were seemingly well integrated into their
communities.
The popular picture of Islamic terrorists is drawn from the caricatures of
mad mullahs, bearded fanatics and foreign zealots that people the press. Yet
few recent terrorists have fitted this picture. Many have been Western born,
Western educated, and seemingly ordinary. The most detailed study yet on Al-Qaeda
supporters, carried out by Marc Sageman of the University of Pennsylvania,
shows that the majority are middle class with good jobs. Most are college
educated, usually in the West. Fewer than one in 10 have been to religious
school.
Shortly after the bombings the government set up an ‘extremism taskforce’,
composed mainly of Muslim leaders, to try to answer the question as to how
men such as these could get gripped by a fanatic zeal for an irrational, murderous
dogma, and be possessed with a hatred for such virtues as democracy and decency.
And how could it be prevented from happening again? The taskforce has just
published its first conclusions. The London bombings, it reported, were the
work of young men alienated by Islamophobia. The best way to combat extremism,
the taskforce suggested, is by recognising Muslim grievances and by establishing
a more plural society in which moderate Muslim leaders are able to wield greater
political power. Its recommendations included a ‘rapid rebuttal unit’ to combat
Islamophobia, a better reflection of Islam in the national educational curriculum,
a national ‘roadshow’ of Muslim scholars to tour Muslim communities and a
training programme for imams.
The taskforce hopes that these proposals will isolate extremists and build
a better relationship between Muslims and the government. In fact the proposals
will make matters worse. The real problem is not Islamophobia but the culture
of grievance created by Britain’s multicultural policies. Certainly Muslims
face discrimination and harassment. But the extent of such discrimination
has been greatly exaggerated by both government and Muslim leaders. There
is, for instance, a widespread perception that Muslims are disproportionately
stopped and searched by the police under Britain’s anti-terror laws. Last
year I interviewed Iqbal Sacranie, general secretary of the Muslim Council
of Britain, for a documentary I was making for British TV. He claimed that
‘95 to 98 per cent’ of those stopped under the terror laws were Muslim. In
fact the vast majority are white. Just 15 per cent are Asians (Britain collects
figures by race rather than by religion).
The more that the threat of Islamophobia is embellished in this fashion, the
more that ordinary Muslims come to accept that theirs is a community under
constant attack. It helps create a siege mentality, stoking up anger and resentment,
and making Muslim community more inward looking and more open to religious
extremism. What we need is not for exaggerated grievances to be nurtured but
to be challenged.
Muslims have been in Britain large numbers since the 1950s. Only recently
has fanaticism taken hold. The first generation of immigrants faced greater
hardships and more intense racism than do today’s Muslims. Yet most thought
of themselves as British and were proud to be here. While that first generation
often put up with racism, the second generation (my generation) challenged
it head on, often leading to fierce confrontations with the police and other
authorities. But however fierce those confrontations, we recognised that to
fight racism we needed to find a common set of values, hopes and aspirations
that united whites and non-whites, Muslims and non-Muslims, not separate ourselves
from the rest of society.
It has only been over the past decade that radical Islam has found a hearing
in Britain. Today ‘radical’ in an Islamic context means someone who espouses
a fundamentalist theology. Twenty years ago it meant the opposite: a secularist
who challenged the power of the mosques within Muslim communities. The expunging
of that radical secularist tradition has played an important part in the rise
of Islamic militancy in this country. To understand how this happened we need
to look closely at what happened in the 80s and in particular at how the emergence
of multicultural policies helped create a more fragmented nation with little
sense of a common identity and created the space for the growth of Islamic
militancy.
Thirty years ago, Britain was a very different place than it is now. When
I was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s racism was vicious, visceral and often
fatal. Stabbings were common, firebombings almost weekly events. I remember
having to organise patrols on East London estates in the 1980s to protect
Asian families from racist thugs. Police harassment was common. The so-called
‘sus’ laws, which allowed the police to stop and search people on ‘suspicion’
of committing an offence were used to persecute immigrant communities. Deaths
in police custody were not uncommon; between 1969 and 1999 more than 1000
people died while in the hands of the police. Discrimination in housing, employment
and the services was the norm. These issues shaped immigrant struggles. In
the sixties and seventies four main issues dominated the struggle for racial
equality: opposition to discriminatory immigration controls; the fight against
racist attacks; the struggle for equality in the workplace; and, most explosively,
the issue of police brutality.
These struggles politicised a new generation of activists and came to an explosive
climax in the inner city riots of the late seventies and early eighties. Just
as the extremism taskforce argues now, so the authorities argued then that
unless black and Asian communities were given a political stake in the system,
their frustration could threaten the stability of British cities. It was against
this background that the policies of multiculturalism emerged. The Greater
London Council, led by Ken Livingstone (who today is the mayor of London)
pioneered a new strategy of making immigrant communities feel part of British
society. It organised consultation with black and Asian communities, drew
up equal opportunities policies, established race relations units and dispensed
millions of pounds in grants to community organisations.
At the heart of the strategy was a redefinition of racism. Racism now meant
not simply the denial of equal rights but the denial of the right to be different.
Black and Asian people, many argued, should not be forced to accept British
values, or to adopt a British identity. Rather different peoples should have
the right to express their identities, explore their own histories, formulate
their own values, pursue their own lifestyles. In this process, the very meaning
of equality was transformed: from possessing the same rights as everyone else
to possessing different rights, appropriate to different communities. Equality
no longer meant treating everybody equally despite their racial, cultural,
ethnic or religious differences but treating people differently because of
them.
Many local authorities followed London’s lead, including Bradford, the heart
of Britain’s Muslim community. By the early 80s Bradford too was facing militancy
within Asian communities and unrest on the streets. In 1977 young Asians formed
the Asian Youth Movement (AYM) to defend their civil rights. AYM activists
did not distinguish themselves as Muslim, Hindu or Sikh; indeed many did not
even see themselves as specifically Asian, preferring to call themselves ‘black’
which they viewed as an all-inclusive term for non-white immigrants. They
challenged not just racism but also many traditional values too, particularly
within the Muslim community, helping establish an alternative leadership that
confronted traditionalists on issues such as the role of women and the dominance
of the mosque. In response, Bradford council drew up equal opportunity statements,
established race relations units and began funding Asian organisations. A
12-point race relations plan declared that every section of the ‘multiracial,
multicultural city’ had ‘an equal right to maintain its own identity, culture,
language, religion and customs.’
Multiculturalism transformed the character of antiracism. By the mid-eighties
the focus of antiracist protest in Bradford had shifted from political issues,
such as policing and immigration, to religious and cultural issues: a demand
for Muslim schools and for separate education for girls, a campaign for halal
meat to be served at school, and, most explosively, the confrontation over
the publication of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses.
Political struggles unite across ethnic or cultural divisions; cultural struggles
inevitably fragment. As different groups began asserting their particular
identities ever more fiercely, so the shift from the political to the cultural
arena helped create a more tribal city. At the same time, since every group
was now defined by its culture, militancy came to be seen as the demand for
greater cultural authenticity. Secular Muslims were regarded as betraying
their culture while radical Islam became not just more acceptable but, to
many, more authentic.
This process was strengthened by a new relationship between the local council
and the local mosques. In 1981, the council helped set up and fund the Bradford
Council of Mosques and looked to it as a voice of the community. This helped
marginalise secular radicals - the Asian Youth Movement eventually broke up
- and allowed religious leaders to reassert their power. As the secular tradition
became squeezed out, so the only place offering shelter for disaffected youth
was militant Islam.
In the wake of the London bombings much was said about the strength of Britain
as a multicultural nation. What makes London great, mayor Ken Livingstone
pointed out, was what the bombers most fear a city full of people from across
the globe free to pursue their own lives. I agree, and that’s why I choose
to live in this city. Multiculturalism as a lived experience enriches our
lives. But multiculturalism as a political ideology has helped create a tribal
Britain with no political or moral centre.
For an earlier generation of Muslims their religion was not so strong that
it prevented them from identifying with Britain. Today many young British
Muslims identify more with Islam than Britain primarily because there no longer
seems much that is compelling about being British. Of course, there is little
to romanticise in old-style Britishness with its often racist vision of belongingness.
Back in the fifties policy makers feared that, in the words of a Colonial
Office report, ‘a large coloured community would weaken… the concept of England
or Britain.’
That old racist notion of identity has thankfully crumbled. But nothing new
has come to replace it. The very notion of creating common values has been
abandoned except at a most minimal level. Britishness has come to be defined
simply as a toleration of difference. The politics of ideology has given way
to the politics of identity, creating a more fragmented Britain, and one where
many groups assert their identity through a sense of victimhood and grievance
something that has been particularly true of Muslim communities.
Multiculturalism did not create militant Islam, but it helped create a space
for it within British Muslim communities that had not existed before. It fostered
a more tribal nation, created a grievance culture, strengthened the hand of
conservative religious leaders, undermined progressive trends within the Muslim
communities and created a vacuum into which radical Islam stepped and all
in the name of combating racism. The danger with the recommendations of the
extremism taskforce is that history might be about to repeat itself.