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Dr. Bari is telling us that if we only ignore the problems of violence associated with Islam and the odd slaughter of innocents in the name of Allah in our backyards, the problems will all go away. I don't know. That particular technique didn’t work so well for Chamberlin in 1938 when he was trying to stop Nazi aggression, but who knows, it’s a different era now. Nothing to see here, just move along. That is an incredibly outrageous assertion and deserves a response in kind. It of course would be horrendous if Britain were to succumb to an autocratic, racist, and triumphalist ideology that promotes violence and has been responsible for countless deaths of innocents in just the past century. And it would be equally bad if Britain were to succumb to Naziism. There are a lot of widows, widowers, orphans and wounded alive today who would take issue with that bald assertion. Having said that, Dr. Bari does have some support for his argument. His view comports with the findings of the Muslim dominated UN Human Rights Counsel. The only terrorism they have been able to find for the past few years has been in acts committed by Israel. And the OIC, the Organization of the Islamic Conference involving the governments of all Muslim states, likewise provides support for Bari's assertion. The OIC issued a very strongly worded condemnation of terrorism several months ago. That certainly sounded promising, until one also learned that days before issuing the condemnation, the OIC, in what can only be described as an exercise in Orwellian doublespeak, issued a statement defining "terrorism" as “Islamaphobia.” Taking note of the religion of the majority of terrorists today might lead one to, apparently erroneously, suspect that they were motivated to slaughter by something in their religion. I guess the best way to handle this is to willfully ignore the single unifying characteristic of the terrorists – as oftens happens in the BBC coverage of terrorism. Dr. Bari and the multiculturalists at the BBC evidently do not want us to confuse the issue of terrorism with too many salient facts.
The insanity doesn’t end across the pond. The UK’s Labour government has tried to make nice with its Muslim population for years, even to the extent of making any reasoned criticism or satire of Islam a potential crime of Hate Speech - a law adopted at the urging of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB). But one wonders just how things like today's outrageous statements of MCB President, Dr. Muhammed Bari, reprinted in UK newspaper, The Telegraph, will go down with the British rank and file who do not share their Labour’s unquestioning devotion to the doctrine of multiculturalism. Among other things, Dr. Bari claims that there is no such thing as terrorism associated with Islam, that the mere identification of Islam with terrorism is at least partly responsible for radicalizing Britain's young Mulsims, that Britain should ban the public sale of alcohol and adopt stoning for adulterers.
Demographic numbers and polls provide the context for Dr. Bari's remarks. Britain’s Muslims comprise about 1,650,000 of Britain’s population of 61,000,000. Britain, with their exceptionally lax immigration policies over the past twenty years, allowed radical Islamists and imams trained in Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi / Salafi Islam to flock into the country as part of that number.
Assuming that a poll taken in the wake of the 7/7 terrorist bombing by homegrown Islamists was accurate, approximately 100,000 UK Muslims feel the slaughter of 7/7 was justified, and over 200,000 UK Muslims sympathize with the perpetrators. Less then half of UK's Muslims indicate feeling very loyal to Britain, over 500,000 feel that the Western culture of Britain should be overturned and Islamic rule put in its place, and about 16,000 British Muslims are willing to take part in overt violence against their fellow Brits in the service of Islam.
According to MI5, there are 2,000 “people,” actively involved in terrorist activity in Britain today and “children as young as 15" are being "groomed to be suicide bombers.” Besides 7/7, Britain has broken up several notable terrorist plots, with the most prominent being the plot of last year to blow up several airlines in flight from Heathrow. To top it off, Britain is having significant trouble reconciling its legal approach to terrorism, with the very liberal EU laws on immigration and extradition.
And into this mix comes the Muslim Council of Britain and Dr. Bari who, in the Telegraph, takes exception to the totality of Britain’s response to terrorism.Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, the leader of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), thinks the Government is stoking the tension.
"There is a disproportionate amount of discussion surrounding us," he says. "The air is thick with suspicion and unease. It is not good for the Muslim community, it is not good for society.". . . Britain must,[Dr. Bari] warns, beware of becoming like Nazi Germany.
There is, in [Dr. Bari’s] view, no such thing as Islamic terrorism.
"Terrorists are terrorists, they may use religion but we shouldn't say Muslim terrorists, it stigmatises the whole community. We never called the IRA Catholic terrorists." Dr Bari thinks Jonathan Evans, the head of MI5, made the extremists' job easier by giving a bleak picture of the threat on the eve of the Queen's Speech.
As to the Irish Catholics in Northern Ireland. Dr. Bari's analogy does not survive even a cursory examination. While IRA violence was identified with their religious group, it was isolated to that band of Catholics in that geographical location. That is obviously not the case with Islam, where acts of terror have been both constant and world wide.[Referring to associating the terrorist acts committed by Muslims as Islamic terrorism, Dr. Bari said]"I think it is creating a scare in the community and wider society. It probably helps some people who try to recruit the young to terrorism. Muslim young people are as vulnerable as any others. Under this climate of fear they will begin to feel victimised."
The Prime Minister's plan to increase the length of time terrorist suspects can be detained without trial is also, [Dr. Bari] believes, misguided.
"Even the police haven't asked for more than 28 days. As far as we know there is no clear evidence of the need for more time."
Control orders and stop and search powers are further increasing the sense of alienation among Muslims, Dr Bari says, and the Metropolitan Police are not helping matters either.
"There was institutional racism and institutions as massive as the Met find it hard to change. They need more Muslim police officers. I'm not going to use the term trigger happy - sometimes the police can make mistakes - but they need to do their job in a better way."
It might seem on the surface that Dr. Bari is confused. Islam is a religion, not a race and thus, by definition, cannot engender racism. Apparently though, to follow Dr. Bari's logic, taking actions to detain terrorist suspects and address the threat of terrorism is “racism.” But by his definition, terrorists are not even Islamic. Are you as confused as I am?
One of her Majesty’s more beautiful subjects told me a few weeks ago that charging “racism” in the UK, under the presiding doctrine of multiculturalism, is to charge one with a sin “worse then paedophilia.” It seems that Dr. Bari is concerned less with intellectual honest than he is pushing those multicultural buttons.
Sir Salman Rushdie should never have been knighted, [Dr. Bari] says. "He caused a huge amount of distress and discordance with his book, it should have been pulped."
Is Dr. Bari saying that challenging religious dogma should not be tolerated in Britain? Hmmmm, seems to me that the West moved beyond that during the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods several centuries ago. Obviously, the same cannot be said for Islam. Well, prepare for a return to the good old days. If we adopt Sharia, we may end up with far fewer books, but perhaps our science will improve. Oh, and if we follow Wahhabi / Salafi Islam of Saudi Arabia, at least we get to revive the Medieval pasttimes of witch trials and executions for sorcery. And then there are the public floggings for such offenses as being the victim of a gang rape - always a crowd pleaser.
Critics say the MCB - an umbrella organisation with 500 affiliates - has itself contributed to the growing sense of unease in Britain. The Government has cut funding to the council following claims that it had links with extremists. A Tory report this year accused it of promoting segregation.
Dr Bari insists he is simply trying to unite disparate communities. "On the one hand we are accused of not engaging, being insular, and on the other hand of being too political. We can't win."
Dr. Bari’s point is well taken. The MCB certainly has shown no desire to split the community and isolate the Muslims from British society by demanding unique and differential treatment, such as special rules for Muslim school students.
According to a recent report by the Policy Exchange think-tank, the bookshop at the east London Mosque, which Dr Bari chairs, stocks extremist literature.
"The bookshops are independent businesses," he says. "We can't just go in and tell them what to sell … I will see what books they keep, if they have one book which looks like it is inciting hatred, do they have counter books on the same shelf?"
Any bets on how soon Dr. Bari would have the bookstore closed if they decided to stock “The Satanic Verses” rather then “Women Who Deserve To Go To Hell” or “Four Essays On The Obligation of Veiling,” among many others? You can find the Policy Exchange report on Islamic hate literature in British mosques here and an article from the Telegraph on it here.
“He is more careful about who is allowed to preach in the mosque. "If I hear of a specific preacher who is inciting hatred I will ban him from preaching but I cannot disallow him from praying."
The interviewer should have asked Dr. Bari some follow up questions on BBC4’s exceptional documentary, Undercover Mosque. It seems there were more then a few preachers teaching hate and triumphalism at the Dr.'s London mosque.
In Dr. Bari's view, suicide bombers are victims as well as aggressors. "I deal with emotionally damaged children," he explains. "Children come to hate when they don't get enough care and love. They are probably bullied, it makes a young person angry and vulnerable.
"The extreme case could be suicide bombers, it is all they have … The people who become suicide bombers are really vulnerable."
As to what goes into the making of a suicide bomber, it is not Western society that is in any way victimizing the child suicide bomber or adult jihadist. Muslims accomplish that all on their own between home and the Mosque. The eminent psychologist Pat Santy has examined this issue in some detail, particularly as regards to children and suicide bombers, and what she writes is more then a little troubling. See here and here. And do not overlook Hamas’s children’s programming.
Although he stresses there is no justification for suicide bombing - "killing innocent people is completely forbidden, Islam is very emphatic on that."
Bari’s statement of the Koranic prohibition is not simply disingenuous, it is deceitful. One must be very careful to parse anything said by Wahhabi / Salafi public figures, since there is a well established history of dissimulation. One clear example of this is the use of a very flexible definition of the word “innocent” to justify the wanton slaughter of non-Muslim civilians as on 7/7. For example, you are not an innocent in the eye’s of radical Muslims if you are a member of a country that has somehow wronged Islam. There is no need for it to have been within the last half millenium - engaging in the Crusades during the 13th century will provide the religous justification. And bin Laden held in his writings that the American’s targeted on 9-11, and indeed, the entire population of America, were not innocents as contemplated by that verse in the Koran for a litany of reasons, not the least of which was because they paid taxes to the American government. And as to Israeli’s, they are all, of course, fair game, as shown in this BBC4 transcript:
Quinn: One senior theologian whose Fatwas have been used to provide justification for suicide bombings directed at Israeli civilians is Dr Yusuf Qaradawi - the man who the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, welcomed to City Hall last year and described as "moderate".
Ware: Well, although Dr Qaradawi has condemned the London suicide bombings unequivocally here when it comes to Israel he says - and I'm quoting here an interview he gave: "We must all realise that the Israeli society is a military society - men and women. We cannot describe the society as civilian...they are not civilians or innocent". He's also supported the use of child suicide bombers. During a TV debate in the Gulf - according to BBC monitoring - he said: "The Israelis might have nuclear bombs but we have the children bomb and these human bombs must continue until liberation".
Quinn: What's the Muslim Council of Britain had to say about Dr Qaradawi?
Ware: Like the Hamas leader Sheikh Yassin, the Muslim Council of Britain has also described Dr Qaradawi in fairly flattering terms. They've said he's " a distinguished Muslim scholar...a voice of reason and understanding."
Read the entire transcript here. I doubt if you will ever find the Wahhabist's definition of "innocent" in Websters.
. . . - [Bari] says British foreign policy has driven Muslims into the arms of the extremists.
"Criminal people have used that as a weapon to encourage young people, those who don't have any anchor in themselves, [to become suicide bombers]. Iraq has been a disaster, the country has been destroyed for no reason, that had an impact on the Muslim psyche."
To Bari, Muslims are perpetual victims. Thus all of their actions, no matter how barbaric, are always portrayed as justified or at least reasonably explainable by some cause other then Islam itself. That is a total canard. The most effective response to Bari comes from a British former jihadi:
When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network, a series of semi-autonomous British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology, I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy.
By blaming the government for our actions, those who pushed the 'Blair's bombs' line did our propaganda work for us. More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.
. . . And as with previous terror attacks, people are again articulating the line that violence carried out by Muslims is all to do with foreign policy. For example, yesterday on Radio 4's Today programme, the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, said: 'What all our intelligence shows about the opinions of disaffected young Muslims is the main driving force is not Afghanistan, it is mainly Iraq.'
He then refused to acknowledge the role of Islamist ideology in terrorism and said that the Muslim Brotherhood and those who give a religious mandate to suicide bombings in Palestine were genuinely representative of Islam.
And see also see this exceptional essay from Tawfiq Hamid, a former jihadist and disciple of Ayman al-Zawahiri, wherein he states a very similar message.
[Bari's] passion is to integrate Muslim and British cultures - he says integration must go both ways.
You have to love that statement in light of what follows after - which is in essence a demand that the British accept Sharia law. Indeed, Bari does not explain how British Muslims can better integrate into British society. Instead, Bari asks that Britain:
And the list continues. You can read the entire article here.
My purpose in responding to Dr. Bari at some length is not to denigrate Islam in any way. But people like Dr. Bari and others who embrace the triumphalism and brutality of Wahhabi / Salafi / Deobandi Islam are incredibly dangerous to Western Society in their role as apologists for terrorism and to minimize Muslim integration into Western society, all the while chipping away at the laws and culture of the West from within.
As I have written previously and at some length, Islam desperately needs to go through a period of Enlightenment, and I believe the tools are there for it to happen. Set against that possibility are the contrarian forces of Wahhabi Islam largely funded and exported by Saudi Arabia, and the dominant Western culture that acquiesces to Wahabbi Islam under the philosophy of multiculturalism.
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