Young, British and ready to fight

New laws and the war have pushed our Islamist radicals underground

Fuad Nahdi, Tuesday April 1, 2003

The fallacy of One Britain has been exposed. Today the nation is acutely divided in its perception over what is taking place in the Gulf.

It all started so agreeably. On February 15 Britain came together like at no other time in contemporary history. Pakistani women shared pakoras and cucumber sandwiches with women from the shires in the biggest anti-war march ever - a postcard image of race relations that no Home Office initiative could even dream of achieving.

But a few weeks later that social cohesiveness seems to be dissipating. The war is reshaping our society, and particularly British Islam. For most Muslims it has dramatically exposed how partisan the western media is - and, for many, how crass western politicians are and how gullible the western public is.

However, it is the despair, the frustration and the anger that should be noted. Today, Britain's 1.6 million Muslims are living on a diet of death, hypocrisy and neglect that is traumatising and radicalising an entire generation.

Forget the polls: there is no shift in British Muslim public opinion over the war. The vast majority are deeply opposed. Mosques up and down the country are for peace, but also for the defeat of the invading coalition forces. And - having watched on satellite TV the images of Iraqi civilian casualties - nobody is horrified by the suicide attack by an Iraqi. While the outcome of the war in Iraq remains uncertain, there is little hope in the fight for the hearts, minds and loyalty of British Muslims.

While the anti-war Ken Livingstone is invited to mosques, senior government ministers now struggle to get picture opportunities with credible grassroots Muslim groups.

Muslims believe that the war against Iraq is a war against Islam. For the few remaining Muslims who doubted the crusading nature of the coalition forces, the final blow came last week. According to Franklin Graham, son of the Rev Billy Graham, missionaries disguised as relief workers are "poised and ready" to roll into Iraq to provide for post-war "spiritual needs".

Graham, who has publicly called Islam a "wicked" religion, is a confidant of George Bush and led prayers at his inauguration. And he has been joined in his holy war for the souls of the Iraqi Muslims by the Southern Baptist onvention, a key supporter of the Bush presidency.

Events following 9/11 - the Afghan war, the introduction of the Anti-terrorism Act and now the conflict in Iraq - are acting as the midwife for the emergence of a new form of Islam in Britain. The politics of despair, anger and violence fuel it; and draconian legislation pushes it underground.

Until recently, Islam in Britain was an above-board thing: our "radicals" and "extremists" - besides making good copy for the media - were also useful in enabling a bruised community to let off steam. Both Omar Bakri, head of the Shari'a Council, and Abu Hamza, the ex-Imam of Finsbury Park Mosque, are considered an embarrassment by the majority in the community but have been useful in flushing out extremist elements. No more. According to the "Jihadis" ("those ready to fight"), Bakri and Hamza are "just talkers": armchair lassi Islamists. The emphasis is now on action - confronting the enemy physically.

It used to be possible until only two years ago to go and "do jihad". Lured by romanticism and goaded on by real issues - the massacre of Chechens, the assasination of Palestinians - a substantial number of people went out to fight. Some were "martyred", others returned hooked by their experience. But the situation has now changed.

The world post-9/11 is monitored, making such travel difficult, and British prisoners at Guantanamo Bay burst the illusion that British citizens are protected overseas.

Psychologically, this restriction has been made worse by the new anti-terrorism laws. "Jihadis" now have not only to suppress their ambition to die but also to hold their tongue. At least one preacher, Abdullah El-Faisal, and more than 20 people have been detained without trial.

Pressure from the authorities, combined with the sentiments of most congregations, have pushed many of these extremists out of the mosques. They have had to find new venues to socialise. These have been out of the scrutiny of the community. Nobody has a clue about what kind of theology these young Muslims are developing. But informed more by rage than the message of peace within traditional Islam, the results are likely to be dangerous.

This does not augur well for either community relations or for the development of Islam in Britain. In their dark underground world, these young angry people have, like our government, lost their sense of what is legal, moral or humane.

When two million anti-war demonstrators cannot stop the war, the message to these young people is clear. We need to be scared, very scared. The end of the war in Iraq might usher in the beginning of our own intifada.

· Fuad Nahdi is the publisher of the Muslim magazine, Q-News

Source: The Guardian