Losing Hearts and Minds

Communities Secretary, Ruth Kelly, launched proposals “Preventing Violent Extremism” on April 5 2007. The plan, aimed at winning the “hearts and minds” of young Muslims, would include targeting mosques, which the Government and a handful of Muslim organisations, believe are radicalising young Muslims, but it is unfortunately ill-conceived. The legislative proposals include the new role of the Charity Commission, which will only target mosques in “improving governance.” This is blatant discrimination as Churches, Synagogues, Temples, Gurdwaras and other religious places will be exempt from this new scrutiny. The Government intends to use its own imams who will be sent to prisons and universities to tackle individuals who “are susceptible to extremism.” It is also setting up and backing projects to create new leaders in the Muslim community of its own liking. The Government further hopes to “encourage” the teaching of citizenship in madrassahs and Muslim supplementary schools. Again all this will only be targeted at the Muslim community, which is being unfairly singled out. Other faith institutions and their religious teaching programmes are exempt. “Our action plan will do this. It sets out how new training opportunities will help imams take on the extremists’ messages, it signals a step change in madrassahs’ role in teaching citizenship and it supports strong and inclusive governance of mosques with a new role for the Charity Commission,” said Kelly at the Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre in West London, where she launched her proposals. Yet there is no evidence that mosques are creating or preaching violent extremism. The only example given by the Communities Secretary was Abu Hamza and Finsbury Park Mosque. But what she did not say is that the trustees of this mosque had asked the police’s help to re-gain the control of the mosque, who not only refused but, according to media reports, chose to monitor extremists who attended the mosque instead. And who gets the blame? The Muslim community. In its plans, the Government is trying to compete with an independent body to deal with imams and mosques, the Imams National Advisory Body (MINAB). It seems the Government does not want independent Muslim community led projects to tackle the community’s concerns. Rather it wants to control the imams and the mosques. It is important to remind ourselves that the Home Office had tried to do something similar two years ago but failed to get it off the ground as it targeted all faith groups and their religious centres. Proposed legislation by the former Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, backfired and as Christians, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims campaigned together against the plans, the Government was forced to back down. However, learning from that experience, the Government has now sought to target only imams and mosques and is being underhanded in its means to achieve it. Kelly said in her speech that 60 organisations had written an open letter and “have given support to the principles underpinning our action plan.” The letter, titled, ‘Parallel Muslim Communities Statement to Speech of Ruth Kelly, MP, Minister of State’, dated April 5, was actually not written by the named organisations. It was written by a consultant, and many organisations and Muslim leaders were simply briefed over the telephone about parts of the statement. Many we contacted were not told that the letter was in support of the Government action plan. The majority had not even seen the text of the letter. Some organisations, both Shi’a and Sunni, even had their names appended to the letter without their knowledge. For example, the Sunni organisation, Jamiat Tablighul Islam and the Interim Committee of the British Shi’a Council, were not even aware of the statement and were not consulted before their names were included. The new proposals assume it is religion, imams and mosques that are radicalising the young Muslims. The evidence is otherwise. A four year study of Muslims in prisons published this month vindicates that it is not the imams who are radicalising Muslim prisoners, but the way they are treated by the prison authorities that is the problem. (see page 1 for the report ). Radicalisation and extremism is taking place outside mosques. The primary factor is our foreign policy, which is alienating young people and not religion. The Iraq war has been a prime example. All surveys, including Foreign Office’s own internal reports leaked to the media, vindicate this. Moreover, the two videos by the July 7 terrorists also discuss foreign policy as their major cause. The proposals have been described as “disastrous” by the Liberal Democrats Communities Spokesman, Andrew Stunell. “State interference in places of worship does not deal with the root causes of religious extremism. It was never suggested during the troubles in Northern Ireland that state regulations of Catholic churches would have ended IRA activities,” Stunell said. This is not to say that everything in Ruth Kelly’s speech was misguided. There is a need to tackle extremism and radicalisation not only in Muslim community but in others too. This also includes other problems that are unfortunately endemic in society, like gun culture to name but one. Figures have also shown that the majority of those convicted under terrorism legislation have not been Muslims. This is vindicated by a Gallup poll published last week which confirms what we have been arguing in these columns, that Muslims are more likely to identify with Britain and have confidence in its institutions than the population as a whole. The survey shows Muslims are more likely to take a positive view of living side by side with people of different races and religions. Fifty-seven percent of the Muslims polled identified strongly with their country, compared with 48% of the general public. Muslims were also more likely to express confidence in the police (78% to 69%), national Government (64% to 36%), the justice system (67% to 55%) and elections (73% to 60%). Nearly three-quarters of the Muslims said they felt loyal to the UK (compared with 45% of the non-Muslims) and 82% said they respected other religions (compared with 54%). Muslims are more likely to unequivocally condemn the use of violence to further a “noble cause” than the non-Muslims. A survey of London Muslims found 81% believed such violence was “completely unjustified” compared to 72% of the UK non-Muslims. The Home Office Citizenship Survey published in 2003, found that Muslims were more likely to feel that they belonged to Britain than Indians, African and Caribbeans. The way to tackle violent extremism is not to target imams or mosques. We have to look elsewhere to tackle the real roots. As we have repeatedly said, an independent judicial inquiry is of utmost importance to find out the reasons that leads some people to commit terrorist acts. Muslims have been working hard for more than a decade to improve the running of mosques and improving the calibre of imams. There are hundreds of “homegrown” imams, trained in our institutions in Britain. We have an increasing number of good practise in mosques. Let the community continue to look after its own institutions independently of the Government interference. MINAB, which is still in its infancy, needs to be given time to gain the confidence of the community. The Government interfering in religious matters will only alienate the community and will be counterproductive. All of us are concerned about terrorism and the bombs do not distinguish between Muslims and non-Muslims. In fact ten percent of those killed in the July 7 terrorist attacks were Muslim disproportionately more than the size of the community in the UK.

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