Crusade for Fairness
According to a poll for a conservative think-tank, the growing number of young Muslims is embracing radical Islam. Young Muslims hold aggressively more extreme views than their parents. The think-tank blames multiculturalism for producing a generation of young Muslims who champion their right to be different. Multiculturalism is nothing to do with community cohesion and at the same time it does not divide people. British society is already divided because of institutional racism and extremism by all political parties. British society can tolerate foreigners as economic slaves but is unwilling to accept them as human beings. Muslims are human beings with social, emotional and spiritual needs and demands. They are not just economics. It is not 9/11 or 7/7; Islam was always portrayed as a threat to Western societies. Fear and the emotions that accompany it, has become a part of the public mindset. Headlines about waves of immigrants and fears of being swamped by foreigners are not much different now and they were in the past, and it is enough to make you wonder if we really were welcome in this country. Britain seems to be more in the grip of Muslim – Mania – an obsession with all things Islamic. Not a single Muslim group, Masajid, Imams, Muslim schools are promoting separation. Muslim girls are doing well at schools and universities. It is a myth to say that they are being held back by their fathers. Muslim community would like to see more and more state funded Muslim schools, where Muslim boys and girls could be educated separately by Muslim teachers.

In the past Muslim community was victim of Paki-bashing in all walks of life by the British society and the British establishment did nothing to tackle their suffering. Now the Muslim community is victim of terrorism by the British establishment, despite the fact that majority of Muslim youths were British born and educated. They speak English in local accents. They pick up English from play grounds and from the streets. British schooling never tried to teach them Standard English to follow the National Curriculum. State schools were and still are reluctant to teach Arabic and Urdu to Muslim pupils, making them cut off from the cultural roots. They are even mis-fit for their own communities and at the same time British society never accept them as British. Brutishness is often equated with Englishness, ‘whiteness’ and also with Christianity. A Pakistani does not, by being born in England become an Englishman. In law he becomes British citizen by birth; infact he is a Pakistani still.

Britain was puzzling over how a few young Muslim men, British born and educated, could feel so alienated that they wanted to blow up their fellow British citizens. I blame the British education system which is the home of institutional racism and native teachers, who are in no way role models for Muslim children. The teaching of citizenship called for greater focus on ‘core British values’. Britishness is an artificial concept and it cannot fix the fundamental flaws in the education system. Screaming abuse, the use of aggressive, two-fingered, four-lettered words and self-righteous hatred of foreigners have become typical Britishness. A liberal society prides itself on tolerance, upholding of civil rights, and celebration of diversity and individual space. These attributes are a lot easier to preach and are not always easy to practice.
Iftikhar Ahmad
www.londonschoolofislamics.org.uk