"Enough is enough" - responding to Islamism

Quite understandably there has been a fairly frantic response to the terrible and terrifying events last night on London Bridge and in the Borough. As ever the story is one of shock mixed in with tales of bravery from police, medics and the public. It will have refreshed the barely faded memory of Manchester in those recently scarred by that atrocity and reminds us that Islamist terrorism is a real and substantial threat in the UK as well as across Europe.

The Prime Minister responded and did so in a more robust, almost angry, manner when compared to the statement after Manchester - 'enough is enough' was the message as she talked about 'safe spaces' online, the continuing problems with ISIS's insurgency in Syria and Iraq, and the need for a renewed counter-terrorism strategy. The response suggests a subtle shift in what happens in the UK on this issue and indicates that the Prevent strategy becomes more significant in that overall counter-terrorism strategy:

"But it also means taking action here at home. While we have made significant progress in recent years, there is – to be frank – far too much tolerance of extremism in our country. So we need to become far more robust in identifying it and stamping it out – across the public sector and across society. That will require some difficult and often embarrassing conversations, but the whole of our country needs to come together to take on this extremism – and we need to live our lives not in a series of separated, segregated communities but as one truly United Kingdom."

The challenge is, as always, to transform this rhetoric into some sort of strategy that works on the ground and which has the buy-in (not mere 'support') of local government, education and police establishments - I'm guessing that this is what the Prime Minister alludes to when she says 'across the public sector'. Right now strategies to identify and respond to nascent extremism are widely disregarded, even opposed, by local political and bureaucratic leadership especially in those places where the strategy is most needed and important. This situation needs addressing and represents a failure in the strategy as well as a continuing preference of those elites for political posturing and cultural indulgence rather than the tough job of challenging extremism especially within Muslim communities.

Some are saying the right thing but, I suspect, aren't thinking about their response when the actions they propose are carried out:




I'm guessing that I'm a councillor in a city that might be considered one of those 'breeding grounds of terror', certainly a place that will feature in the thinking of those drawing up a new counter-terrorism strategy. The question I have for Kevin Holland and many others suggesting that we need to get into the communities where Islamist ideology is transmitted is whether they are prepared for the reaction from those communities to our 'interference'.

The Prevent strategy is pretty mild. It doesn't single out Islamism as its sole target - referrals through Prevent into the wider 'Channel' anti-terror programme show that just over half are Muslims referred as a result of activity linked to Islamist extremism. This hasn't stopped some politicians arguing, in effect, that Prevent is some sort of national anti-Muslim policy:

The government's anti-extremism programme Prevent should be paused, Baroness Warsi has said.

The former foreign office minister said the scheme had "huge problems", including the quality of its training, and said its "brand" had become "toxic".

She called for an independent review to look into where the programme had failed or proven successful.

It is true that the image of the Prevent strategy in Muslim communities - at least in Bradford - is pretty poor but we should appreciate that this is a consequence of many Muslim commenters echoing a dominant Islamist discourse. Here's writer Sara Khan:

While there are legitimate concerns about the delivery and effectiveness of Prevent, I evidence how British Islamist organisations have led on delivering a highly effective campaign in deliberately misinforming not only British Muslims but wider society about what Prevent is and is not. These Islamists have not only partnered with teaching unions, students, lawyers, teachers and academics in an attempt to end Prevent, they have sought to malign the many Muslim organisations who do support it creating a “toxic” climate where many Muslims do not want to openly admit their support for Prevent. As a result the loud anti-Prevent lobby end up dominating the discourse – and narrative about Prevent.

You only need look at the persistent vilification of moderate Muslim voices like Maajid Nawaz - by both Islamist apologists and left-wing opponents of US and UK foreign policy to appreciate how this works:

But Murtaza Husain at Glenn Greenwald’s Intercept site felt so aggrieved, so agitated, so angry at my decision to talk to those with whom I disagree, about my own religion, that he posted a photo of Sam and me in conversation using the words “nice shot of Sam and his well-coiffed talking monkey.” When challenged the writer doubled-down, deciding that I was in fact a “native informant,” and nothing but Sam’s “porch monkey.”

This doesn't means Nawaz is right in all he proposes but he does represent a voice that sees Islam within a pluralist, liberal world rather than as an absolute truth to be imposed on the unbeliever, by force if necessary. I've a feeling that most UK Muslims (if not those in some parts of the Middle East and South Asia) would rather be in this place but find it difficult to endorse such a position with an Islamic academe dominated by Wahhabi and Deobandi traditionalism.

So when an actual Muslim arguing for a more moderate understanding of Islam is reviled as some sort of Muslim 'Uncle Tom' those arguing that politicians like me should 'take to the streets in the breeding grounds of terror' need to be ready to provide cover for us when we're called Islamophobic, bigoted and racist by both the Islamist apologists and also a set of left-wing agitators who support Islamism because it positions itself against the 'neoliberal' world order.

ISIS have a concept of the 'grey zone' - where Muslims and non-Muslims coexist more-or-less peacefully - and the destruction of this 'grey zone' is close to the centre of their ideology. Here's another moderate Muslim writer, Nafeez Ahmed:

The imperative now is for citizens around the world to work together to safeguard what ISIS calls the "grey zone" – the arena of co-existence where people of all faith and none remain unified on the simple principles of our common humanity. Despite the protestations of extremists, the reality is that the vast majority of secular humanists and religious believers accept and embrace this heritage of mutual acceptance.

The extremists on the new right who call for expulsion, internment and limitations of Muslims in Europe or the USA are straightforwardly doing precisely what ISIS want the West to do - here in the terrorists own words:

“The Muslims in the West will quickly find themselves between one of two choices, they either apostatize and adopt the kufrī [infidel] religion propagated by Bush, Obama, Blair, Cameron, Sarkozy, and Hollande in the name of Islam so as to live amongst the kuffār [infidels] without hardship, or they perform hijrah [emigrate] to the Islamic State and thereby escape persecution from the crusader governments and citizens... Muslims in the crusader countries will find themselves driven to abandon their homes for a place to live in the Khilāfah, as the crusaders increase persecution against Muslims living in Western lands so as to force them into a tolerable sect of apostasy in the name of 'Islam' before forcing them into blatant Christianity and democracy.”

The whole point and purpose of Prevent (and other anti-extremism programmes) is to prevent - get it - this polarising of Islam and Not Islam in our society. And in doing so to allow Muslims to confront the evident division between the majority who are content to live in a plural, liberal society and the minority who want to create an absolutist, sharia-led polity. It isn't our job to try and control or direct that debate within Islam but rather to insist that we remain an open culture and a free society in which Muslims are welcome. And that we will act firmly to protect pluralism, liberty and secularism.

This will be a long slow process and I will close with a Tweet from historian Tom Holland that reminds us this is a theological debate as much as it a political challenge.




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Islamist terror is about political power not faith - which is why we must help Muslims defeat it

Eduard Steinbrück, Die Magdeburger Jungfrauen

Then was there naught but beating and burning, plundering, torture, rape and murder. Most especially was every enemy bent on securing much booty. When a marauding party entered a house, if its master had anything to give he might thereby purchase respite and protection for himself and his family till the next man, who also wanted something should come along. It was only when everything had been brought forth and there was nothing left to give that the real trouble commenced. Then, what with blows and threats of shooting, stabbing and hanging, the poor people were so terrified that if they had had anything left they would have brought it forth if it had been buried in the earth or hidden away.

In this frenzied rage, the great and splendid city that had stood like a fair princess in the land was now, in its hour of direst need and unutterable distress and woe, given over to flames, and thousands of innocent men, women and children, in the midst of a horrible din of heartrending shrieks and cries, were tortured and put to death in so cruel and shameful a manner that no words would suffice to describe, not no tears to bewail it… (from a personal account of the sacking of Magdeburg on May 20, 1631)

It's terrible. It's terrible wherever it happens. It was terrible when some young Irishmen blew up a pub in Birmingham. It was terrible when Brigate Rosso kidnapped and murdered Aldo Moro. Terrible when Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhoff murdered their way across German politics. It's terrible when a young woman blows herself up on a Tel Aviv bus. Or some young men do likewise on a tube train. And it was terrible when eight young Arabs machine-gunned their way across Paris last Friday.

The terror isn't simply because of the guns, the bombs, the violence. The terror is that it could be you or I sat there on the restaurant terrace, on a bus heading for a day's work, or letting our hair down at a rock concert. The effectiveness of terror is how close to home it is - and no-one knows this better than the innocent residents of middle eastern countries as suicide bombers target crowded markets, busy streets filled with outdoor cafes and even beaches.

We ask why? What possible purpose does this serve - the terrorists are facing any existential threat, this isn't a matter of kill or be killed. Yet they choose to commit foul acts of violence against the innocent to make a political point, to play a part in some deranged strategy dreamt up by persuasive maniacs (albeit persuasive maniacs safely ensconced elsewhere - it wasn't Gerry Adams who planted that bomb in the Mulberry Bush back in 1973 and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi wasn't in Paris wearing a vest of explosives last Friday).

A simple and common response - we've seen it a thousand times over the past couple of days - is to say that somehow the terrible murders in Paris are a direct consequence of foreign policy decisions, that the ideology of Islamist violence would not exist had Bush and Blair not invaded Iraq, had France to taken part in air strikes against Syria. As if there is either excuse or justification in murdering people having a glass of wine at their favourite restaurant because you disagree with their government. Just as the IRA had no political justification for killing 21 people and injuring over 300 more on that day in 1973, the Islamists who rampaged through Paris had no political - let alone religious - justification for their murderous destruction.

Terrorists have agency. The decisions or actions of others do not - and never have - forced them to engage in acts of violence. The murders on Friday were a matter of choice - those men chose to arm themselves, chose to drape themselves in high explosive, chose to target unarmed people having a good night out, and chose to murder them. They were not made to do this by Tony Blair, Binyamin Netanyahu or Francois Hollande - they chose. And this choice was part of a political campaign not an act of defence or the consequence of vengeance. The leaders of ISIS want power just as all political leaders want power - but those Islamist leaders reject democracy and prefer violence as the route to that power. It's not about defending Muslims - after all most of the people killed by ISIS are Muslims - nor is it about protecting Muslim lands.

And because these terrorists have agency - they act out of choice not compulsion - the rest of us have every right to respond. And I assume this is the basis for Hollande's describing last Friday's terror as an act of war against France. That statement - just as with George Bush's 'war on terror' words after 9/11 - is one of intent. But one that - if the past fourteen years are a guide - requires us to be very clear about who the enemy in this war might be. And, in doing this, it is necessary to have the support of Muslims - those Muslims who are as shocked, scared and angry about ISIS as the rest of us. I'm not talking here about the governments of Muslim countries but about those millions of ordinary Muslims who hate ISIS just as much as many non-Muslims.

The problem is that this engagement seldom happens. To be sure, if you talk to a Muslim he or she will tell you they reject terrorism, loathe the terrorists and don't believe that the murderers are truly Muslim. But if you ask for their support for actions to defeat the terrorism - especially if that includes some form of military action - the response is 'no'. It's almost as if there's a preference for putting our head in our hands and hoping against hope that it will all end. The problem is that, as too many Muslims discover, the cost of doing nothing is abuse and hatred. You can choose to call it 'islamaphobia' but it's grounded in the belief that those who yell 'Allahu akbar' as they machine-gun innocent folk sun-bathing on a Tunisian beach are Muslims.

And so long as this situation persists, so long as young men and women decamp to Syria to join ISIS, so long as terrorists blow up innocents in a Beirut rush hour because they're the wrong sort of Muslim, many non-Muslims will still look on in horror asking how anyone could claim it's a 'religion of peace'. There's a job resisting this but that's not the only job, for unless the distinction is made between Islam and the warped creed of Islamism those non-Muslims will remain distrustful of Muslims and Islam.

At the top of this article is a description of how the army of the Catholic League destroyed Magdeburg - just one of the atrocities in Europe's last great religious war. This is, as it were, intended to make the point that we can come to live peacefully alongside those whose faith or race is different from ours. But to achieve this it's necessary to learn Europe's lesson that, so long as religion and government are one and the same, there is no chance of peace. Yesterday, writing on The Spectator blog, British Muslim doctor, Qanta Ahmed said this:

The repugnant creed of the Islamic State is certainly related to Islam – but it is also inimical to Islam. The scenes in Paris will shock Muslims world over; indeed, when we Muslims hear of gunmen shouting “Allahu akbar” before committing the very acts of murder explicitly prohibited by the Koran, our repugnance is joined with a sense of desecration. To assert that this Islamism is un-Islamic is not a kneejerk response to the atrocities we saw last night, and so many times around the world. It is the only conclusion that can be drawn after serious consideration of its principles.

To win this war it's not enough to beat ISIS militarily. Nor can we win without defeating the men who would visit death on shoppers in Kenya, villagers in Nigeria and diners in Paris. And the war isn't a war against Islam but, I hope, a war to defend Islam from those who would use it - as with Christianity in 17th Century Europe - as a route to power and to the imposition of a violent totalitarian death cult. To win the war with ISIS - however it is conducted - requires Muslims everywhere to show why Islamism is a rejection of their faith. For it is - in truth - as much your war as it is ours.

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There are prayers but no protest, no boycotts...why is this?

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Cranmer relates - again - the words of Canon Andrew White, Vicar of Baghdad who speaks of Christians in that sorry nation:

"You know I love to show photos but the photo I was sent today was the most awful I have ever seen. A family of 8 all shot through the face laying in a pool of blood with their Bible open on the couch. They would not convert it cost them there life. I thought of asking if anybody wanted to see the picture but it is just too awful to show to anybody. This is Iraq today. The only hope and consolation is that all these dear people are now all with Yeshua in Glory."

This good man - a saintly man indeed - presents to us a real extermination, the murder, rape and destruction of a culture dating back over a thousand years. I hesitate to use the word 'genocide' it is too easily bandied about but the motivation of the men who killed that family is clear - they say their religion calls them to destroy Christianity and Christians.

And there are prayers - doubtless pained and anguished. But no protest, no flag burning, no calls for boycotts, no public condemnation from leading figures in the political opposition. Indeed there are no marches, no men, their heads half wrapped in scarves, crying 'death to all muslims' as they gather in anger at what is happening to an innocent Christian community.

I like to think that good Christian men and women would not gather in vengeance but rather to urge on a reluctant government some more vocal criticism of the men who murdered that family in Mosul, who shot thousands of others simply for being the wrong sort of Muslim.

At times I despair at this world, at the hatred that we see in so many places and at the persistence of lies, prejudice and evil. Indeed, for all the men like Andrew White who live each day in celebrating a god of love, there seem hundreds whose god it dark, vengeful and disturbed, who support murder, oppression, rape and the extermination of ancient communities in the name of that god. I hear people who tell me that it is not so, that these men are not of their religion. But do they spit on the ground before them, turn their backs on them, condemn them as the worst of sinners, as men headed for the loneliest, darkest part of hell? Do they throw them out from the place of worship, excommunicate and expel them? Do they?

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