RELIGION-BRITAIN: Islamic Awareness Week Triggers Divisions

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Samanta Sen

LONDON, Nov 15 2001 (IPS) - A drive to raise a positive awareness of Islam across Britain could well have brought more divisions than understanding of Islam.

Conservative Party leader Ian Duncan Smith declined to sign a pledge to mark the Islamic Awareness Week last week. Several Church and Jewish leaders also declined to sign the pledge.

Duncan Smith, while refusing to sign the pledge, said: “British Muslims, along with those of other faiths, contribute greatly to the cultural, social and economic life of our country, so I am particularly pleased to have the chance to state my full support for the aims of Islamic Awareness Week. Protecting people’s freedom to worship is an essential part of a free society. We will always be intolerant of those who are intolerant of others.”

But black Conservative peer Lord Taylor said the Conservatives were being “pigheaded” in not signing the pledge. The Conservative Party leader declared he would support the ideas of understanding of Islam, but in his own words.

His refusal to sign after Prime Minister Tony Blair and Liberal Democrats leader Charles Kennedy had both signed it, only created fresh controversy over the role of Muslims in British society.

An Islamic Awareness Week has been held in Britain every year since 1994.

But this year it took on a new urgency. The event was launched by the Islamic Society of Britain in an attempt to check the continuing attacks on Muslims following the Sep 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

Munir Ahmed, president of the society, said at the launch at the House of Commons on Nov 5: “The overwhelming majority of British Muslims reacted with horror to the events of September 11. Yet we find our faith attributed to those acts of violence and our communities blamed for terrorism.”

The pledge would hold the signatory to:

– work towards preserving and enhancing relations between Britain’s faithand non-faith communities;

– work for greater understanding of each other’s faiths and ways of life;

– condemn all attacks perpetrated against people of faith and all places of worship;

– celebrate the strength of Britain’s community relations and build respect and tolerance for people of religion and no religion;

– avoid using language of an inflammatory or discriminatory nature.

Subsequent events brought up differences that the Islamic Society had not anticipated. The move was undermined by calls from some Islamic leaders to British Muslim youth to support a Jihad (holy Islamic war) against U.S. backed forces in Afghanistan. Several Muslim leaders said that they would rather fight for the Taliban than for the British in Afghanistan.

A survey showed that the majority of Muslims polled sympathise with the Taliban rather than with British forces helping to crush the Taliban.

The Islamic Awareness Week was marked also by new violence around the northern town of Bradford where youths of Pakistani origin attacked white British people in protest against British support to the bombing in Afghanistan.

Leaders from the Church of England refused to sign the pledge after a vicar said youths of Pakistani origin had gone on a rampage in Bradford to protest the air raids on Afghanistan.

“The intentions were good but the table was turned partly because of the stand taken by the Conservative Party leadership,” Ghiyasuddin Siddiqui, leader of the Muslim Parliament in Britain told IPS.

“The Conservative Party said it supports the message, but in refusing to sign it they were consolidating the right-wing constituency rather than looking for the Muslim or the ethnic minority vote,” he said.

The Conservative Party had only “reinforced the agenda of the British National Party (an extremist right-wing group which wants all immigrants to go back),” Siddiqui said. “The polarisation between Muslims and the mainstream is already there, and they only helped consolidate it.”

Despite the stand by the Conservative Party, several political leaders, faith leaders and newspaper editors did sign the pledge. And for the first time the Queen stepped into the debate with a call intended to stop the attacks on Muslims.

At a Windsor Castle banquet in honour of King Abdullah and Queen Rania of Jordan, she thanked the king for his “steadfast”, reaction during the international crisis.

She said: “Your majesty’s help in persuading others that this is not a conflict between Islam and the West, but rather between decent people of all faiths and terrorism, has been greatly appreciated here.”

She added: “My country cherishes its tradition of tolerance and mutual respect, which permits people of different faiths and cultures to live and work together. I would like to take this opportunity of your majesty’s visit to underline my appreciation of the contribution made by the Islamic community in Britain to the life of this country.”

Prince Charles joined Queen Elizabeth in praising the contribution of Muslims. But speaking on a visit to the charity Islamic Relief, he also added: “It remains more than ever the task of moderate people, the vast majority of us, of all faiths and creeds, to speak out against the extremists.”

That remark came after a controversial claim by former prime minister Margaret Thatcher that Muslims in Britain had not protested strongly enough against the Sep 11 attacks.

But there were signs of unease beneath the speeches. A vicar reported that masked Asian youths hurled bricks at him at St Philip’s parish church in Girlington near Bradford. Several windowpanes were smashed. The youths chased him as he fled in his car. Such attacks continued elsewhere.

In Leeds, central Britain, a man was injured after a brick was hurled into a car in which he was travelling. In another incident, a group of Asian youths pelted a disabled man’s car with bricks and fireworks.

At the same time, attacks on Muslims have continued across Britain. Muslim community leaders say that several of these attacks are not being reported to the police.

Yusuf Bhailok from the Muslim Council of Britain, told IPS that the rising violence against Muslims has been “very worrying”. He said “people must recognise that Muslims condemned those acts of terror and that we are a peace-loving people tolerant of other religions.”

On the other hand, Muslim leaders are being asked to restrain their own youths and to show support for Britain in the war on terrorism.

The Islamic Society of Britain put record resources into the campaign this year in an attempt to stall attacks on Muslims.

A public relations firm Hobsbawm Macaulay, half owned by Sarah, wife of Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister) Gordon Brown, was engaged to publicise the event across Britain. But the move aimed to calm down controversies, created some of its own.