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Posted on 10/14/2003 5:37:29 AM PDT by SJackson
The headquarters of the global jihad movement may be in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia or even Chechnya, but it has a vibrant branch office in the citadel of Western civilization: merry old England.
As late as the fourth weekend of August 2003 saw a conference organised in Birmingham by Hizb ut-Tahrir, a shadowy transnational Islamic outfit headquartered in London whose professed aim is to re-establish a pan-national Islamic caliphate in the Russian Caucasus and, subsequently, everywhere else. The theme of the confab, attended by many well-known British mullahs, was the important question ‘British or Muslim?’ One has to thank the Hizb for being forthright in posing a question few others dare to pose in these politically correct times. The last time a similar question was asked was during the Thatcher era.
In a cricket match between England and their ancestral homelands, can Britain’s immigrants heartily support the English team? A decade and a half ago Tory MP Norman Tebbit made that provocative inquiry and subsequently paid the price for his insensitivity by being shunned by his own party, not to mention the self-righteous Old (and New) Labour. The super-sensitive British establishment dismissed Tebbit’s ‘cricket test’ as a case of borderline bigotry and now the world is paying the price.
Exploiting the openness of the freest society in Europe, funded by patrons in the Middle East, and fired up by the zeal of the global jihadi movement, a section of Britain’s Muslims have turned London into the international capital of Islamist apologia. It comes as little surprise to many of us across the pond that on September 11, 2003, London was the host of a set of seminars organized by the al-Muhajiroun, another one of the many radical Islamic groups headquartered in the British capital. The topic of these seminars was the ‘glory of the martyrdom’ displayed by the 19 hijackers two years ago.
Young subjects of Her Majesty have been found fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba in Kashmir, and al-Qaeda in Yemen. Some, like the infamous shoe-bomber Richard Reid, have graduated to hijacking airliners. Others have volunteered as suicide bombers in Israel and saboteurs in Egypt. Measured by the sheer international reach of its nationals’ terror connections, Britain is perhaps second only to Pakistan in churning out globetrotting militants. While the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) is busy seeking clemency for such British citizens being held in Guantanamo Bay and Aden, it behooves the opinion leaders of the United Kingdom to also look into the activities of Britain’s traditional Muslim leadership. Is it possible that these words of British Muslims leaders created an atmosphere conducive to the militant mentality?
* “The fatwa against Rushdie was announced by the Imam of the only Islamic state and therefore is legally binding on all Muslims.” (the late Kalim Siddiqui of the British Muslim Parliament, February 1989)
* “Boys should be trained to become soldiers of Islam from age 15… and given toy guns and toy rifles to play with.” (Abdullah el-Faisal, preacher at the Brixton mosque, 1993 motivational audio tape)
* “Democracy is also anathema to Islam since Muslims do not believe in the rule of the majority.” (Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad, pamphlet of al-Muhajiroun, October 2002)
* “It is punishment from God since it carried a trinity of evil - Americans, a Hindu, and an Israeli.” (Imam Hamza Masri, Friday sermon, February 2003, referring to the Columbia shuttle disaster)
It is tempting and polite to dismiss those utterances as mere rhetorical flourishes of a fringe minority. While it may be a minority of Muslims in Britain who subscribe to such nonsense, however, the evidence shows that it is hardly a miniscule minority. A November 2001 poll by the Sunday Times found that four out of ten British Muslims thought the September 11 attacks to be justified! Similar polls conducted more recently continue to unveil a significant social disconnect between Britain’s two million Muslims and the rest of British society.
Economic challenges and social alienation from the mainstream are inherent features of first generation immigration to the West, and migrants from former British colonies have not been immune to this axiom. Unlike many other immigrant communities, however, British Muslims have actually deepened their separation from mainstream society in their second and third generations. Even as many Pakistani- and Bangladeshi-Britons have moved into the middle class, they have made Herculean efforts to maintain their insularity from the mainstream culture around them. Most have chosen to remain in their ethnic enclaves, where schools, clubs, and places of worship provide little opportunity for interaction outside the community. Their increasingly common practice of sending their kids back to the old homelands to find suitable marriage partners resulted in the FCO issuing travel advisories in 2001 that warned young British Asians about the possibility of being forced by their families into such marriages while the youngsters were away from the protections of British law.
These very protections afforded by the British state have been used to the hilt by sinister individuals to organise, orchestrate, and operate a web of anti-Western propaganda right from the heartland of old England. The accommodating asylum policy has given sanctuary to dangerous radicals expelled from the Middle East; strong traditions of free speech have allowed these radicals to preach hatred to impressionable young minds attending mosques in Finbury Park, Brixton, and elsewhere; the freedom of travel facilitated by the British passport has let the graduates of these mosque seminars join terror groups from Afghanistan to Algeria to America. Thus, liberal democracy’s freedoms have been perverted to further the aims of those who wish to destroy those very freedoms for everyone else.
None of this is to suggest that Britain’s Muslims constitute a ready fifth column in democracy’s fight against Islamist terror. Like England’s cricket captain Nasir Husain and Lords frontbencher Baroness Paula Uddin, many British Muslims have been thoroughly integrated into British society and contributed at its highest levels. Yet, by and large, the physical and psychological segregation of British Muslims has helped create a situation that has been exploited by extremist preachers and foreign-funded organizations that prey on confused young minds torn between two worlds.
What Muslim participation there has been in the mainstream political process has been largely manipulated and monopolised by the ethnic identity driven politics of the Left’s multi-cultural mandarins. In return for solid vote banks in the inner cities, Labour has been largely content to let self-appointed Muslim spokesmen call for outrageous concessions ranging from legalised polygamy to the seating of senior mullahs in the House of Lords.
Recent tightening of British laws on terrorism, money laundering, and asylum are a welcome step in policing freedom’s own backyard. Nonetheless, for the fight against terror to have a lasting effect, legal efforts have to be matched by tackling the more important underlying social issues. On part of the purveyors of ethnic politics, there has to be a realisation that pandering to votes on the basis of race and religion only exacerbate the psychological distance between British Muslims and the mainstream polity. Are a dozen seats for Old Labour worth the price of compromising New Labour’s war on terror?
For the moderate majority of British Muslims, there has to be a major commitment to assimilate with the larger society around them. They owe it to their children to make sure that their mosques, community centers, and charities are not used by rabid preachers to poison the lives of future generations. Rather, the integration of children and grandchildren of immigrants into mainstream British society ought to be encouraged by all means available. Britain’s Muslims, like all other immigrants and native-born Britons alike, owe undivided loyalty to the United Kingdom, now more than ever. The Union Jack that defends all must be defended by all.
A forty-year resident of north London, my aunt Rehana has a good question for Muslim immigrants who have ambivalent attitudes about the system they choose to live under: ‘If you don’t like Britain, why are you here?’ It is a question worth asking everybody who wishes to enjoy the protection of liberty that the United Kingdom so singularly affords to so many. Normal British politeness may have precluded such insensitive queries, but then these are hardly normal times.
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Or mail checks to or you can use PayPal at Jimrob@psnw.com |
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STOP BY AND BUMP THE FUNDRAISER and say THANKS to Jim Robinson! |
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DEMOGRAPHICS / CHARTS - Census 2001 Data British Muslims - ethnic categories
Total Muslim population 1.6 million 69% of UK Muslims are from the Indian Sub-continent. There are also significant numbers from other parts of the world (31%). The Census ethnic category 'Black' (6%) applies to 'Black Caribbean, Black African, Other Black'. A breakdown of the 'Other' category (21%) is indicated in the table below - this will include Muslims of Arab, Turkish and Persian ethnicity:
Muslims in London- Ethnic categories Muslim population 607,000 The Muslim population of London is different from the national picture. There is almost an even split between Muslims from the Indian Sub-continent (Pakistan, Bangladesh, India) and those from elsewhere. Most of the Muslims in the 'Irish & Other White' category live in London - 83,402 out of 116,770. A detailed breakdown of the 'Other' category (30%) for London is indicted below:
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