Ramadan is being punctuated by some horrific events for the Muslim community, the vast majority of whom are law-abiding citizens appalled by what is being done in the name of their religion. The decapitation of a man at a gas plant near Grenoble in France and the mass killings at a tourist beach hotel in Sousse, Tunisia and a mosque in Kuwait are just the latest atrocities which have shocked people of faith and no faith to the core.
British Prime Minister David Cameron was one of the many heads of state who had already gathered in Brussels on European business as news of the attacks unfolded on Friday within hours of each other. Cameron reacted immediately by calling for a meeting of his emergency response committee - Cobra - to discuss and analyse these latest outrages. Not an unreasonable reaction in many ways but there are many who lament that he appears to cherry pick international outrages before convening Cobra.
That aside (and I will elaborate later) it is vitally important that he and the others should remember that their best chances of defeating terrorism lie within the ranks of the Muslim community at home. However, so far all Cameron has managed to do is alienate the two million plus Muslims in Britain. His other basic error is the fact that he continues to sideline Baroness Sayeeda Warsi.
Lady Warsi has yet to be forgiven for breaking ranks after she resigned her post of senior Foreign Office minister in protest at the British government's policy on Gaza during Israel's brutal offensive last year. She described the assault on Gaza as "morally indefensible", a statement which now seems to be more than justified since the UN has just released a report declaring the Israeli military to be guilty of war crimes.
Her resignation letter elaborated on how the policy was damaging Britain's national interest to such an extent that it would have a "long term detrimental impact on our reputation internationally and domestically." More than 2,200 Palestinians were killed by Israeli bombs and other weapons. The dead included 551 children, many of whom were taking refuge in UN shelters and schools.
Since then she has been virtually airbrushed out of the Westminster picture; it is becoming increasingly obvious that Cameron likes to surround himself only with those who will tell him what he wants to hear and not what he needs to know. If ever there was a case of the "Emperor's New Clothes", this is it.
Initially, when Ramadan began, the signs were good when he sent his annual greetings to Muslims in Britain. In his TV message he even drew parallels with Muslim values and British values. He went as far as to acknowledge the important contribution of Muslims to society, as part of his "one nation" fad.
It was an unexpected shot in the arm but, in his now typical flip flop-style, Cameron changed his tune dramatically the very next day; in Slovakia he thundered that far from being part of his "one nation" vision we Muslims are all quietly complicit in support of ISIS.
Accused of normalising the hatred we apparently hold for the ubiquitous British values he loves to talk about, the impact was devastating. Although still on the furthest outer reaches of no man's land Lady Warsi felt compelled to pen some important advice to the prime minister via the Guardian newspaper.
She wrote about the government's "missed opportunities" in fighting extremism, adding: "British Muslim communities know that it is they who are being preyed upon and targeted by the likes of ISIS. They know that this is their fight and they are fighting it... My concern is that this call to Muslims to do more, without an understanding of what they already do now, will demoralise the very people who will continue to lead this fight. As one prominent female Muslim activist told me: 'This speech has undermined what I've been doing.'"
The next day another newspaper, the Daily Mail, well known for its Islamophobic leanings, interpreted Cameron's speech with the headline "PM: UK Muslims helping jihadis", giving the clear impression that British Muslims collectively are encouraging ISIS in its slaughter across Iraq, Syria and North Africa. It was a master class in how to demonise an entire community, the vast majority of whom probably detest ISIS more than the British government does.
The trouble is that Cameron has more faces than the Westminster clock tower. While he rushes to condemn overseas atrocities which bear the hallmarks of ISIS, he remains unequivocally dumb struck on Israeli atrocities and human rights abuses.
Not a word of sympathy was given from Downing Street after 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir was kidnapped as he hitch-hiked near a West Bank settlement last year. In court it emerged that his three Jewish kidnappers, one aged 29 years, and two aged 17, forced him to drink petrol before burning him alive.
Unless I've missed it, there was also deafening silence over the Jewish extremists who attacked the Church of the Multiplication in Galilee this week, where Christians believe Jesus performed the miracle of feeding the 5,000 with loaves of bread and fish. An arsonist gutted the church and investigators found a verse from a Hebrew prayer denouncing the worship of "false gods" spray painted on one of the walls. This is one of the most important religious sites in the Christian world but it seems that there are extremists in Israel and their religious leaders who hold these sites in just as much contempt as the vandals in ISIS might.
A report from the official Vatican news service described the arson attack as, "Yet another episode in the long series of desecrations and acts of intimidation committed by groups of extremist Jewish settlers to the detriment of monasteries, churches and Christian cemeteries since February 2012." The report also referred to attacks on mosques by "militant extremist groups close to the settler movement."
Churches in Jerusalem have previously been vandalised by Jewish extremists spray-painting death threats and obscenities against Christianity. "Death to Christianity", "Mary was a prostitute" and "We will crucify you" were just some of the phrases found on the walls of the Narkis Street Baptist Congregation in 2012. There is a long list of faith-hate attacks against Muslims and Christians in Israel and Palestine but apart from a few newspapers like Haaretz, the reports about these Jewish extremists barely make the media and are rarely condemned by European politicians or their Israeli counterparts.
David Cameron accuses Muslims of quietly condoning the evils of ISIS – a charge which most Muslims in Britain would rebut robustly - but if anyone is quietly condoning wicked behaviour it is the prime minister himself, who seems to be completely blind to any criminal behaviour or war crimes emanating from the Israeli state, whether against Muslims or Christians.
Just recently, academics at Teesside University released a study revealing that British Muslims are being targeted for hate crimes in retribution for terrorist attacks around the world. The careless, couldn't care less, words of David Cameron – and other European leaders - virtually give a green light to any thug with a machete, gun or spray-can to do his worst. It seems that every time Cameron opens his mouth against Muslims he becomes a recruiting sergeant or PR agent for ISIS while letting Islamophobes and race-haters believe that they have the implicit backing of the British government to do their worst.
However, the prime minister's double standards don't only apply to his dealings with Israel. He is equally silent over atrocities committed by the Egyptian, UAE and Saudi regimes which have also involved human rights abuses ranging from burning people alive and beheadings to kidnappings and detentions without trial.
It is difficult to know what message he intended to send out by inviting the architect of the Rabaa Al-Adawiyya Square massacre into Downing Street. The killing of 817 protesters in August 2013 was judged a crime against humanity equal to, or even worse than, that which took place in China's Tiananmen Square in 1989. These details seem not to concern David Cameron, though, who invited General Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi to Britain just 24 hours after his regime had sentenced to death Egypt's only democratically-elected President, Mohamed Morsi. Cameron's inconsistencies are glaring and jarring not only to Muslims in Britain but also anyone else who upholds the universal values of justice, fairness and equality.
As author and political commentator Owen Jones recently observed: "We assail extremist ideologies at home, while arming and cosying up to Middle Eastern dictatorships whose kingdoms export these ideologies, and are a source of funds and arms for extremist groups in Iraq and Syria."
Of course my words and those of people like Jones are usually dismissed by the US neocons in Cameron's circle as those of liberal, left-wingers. So here's a timely reminder from Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5 who in 2010 put Britain's foreign policy and the double standards of the Iraq war at the centre piece of her view on radicalisation: "Our involvement in Iraq radicalised, for want of a better word, a whole generation of young people - not a whole generation, a few among a generation - who saw our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as being an attack upon Islam."
Before Cameron makes another statement to or about the Muslim community in Britain or the wider world he should think carefully about the effect his words will have. If he wants British Muslims to take heed, he should be more careful about his intended target audience. As things stand, these awful Ramadan atrocities serve only to highlight his own bizarre double standards.
Comments
Add new comment