Muslims: Going after terror

Muslim leaders and the government try working together

LAST November Britain's minister for Europe, Denis MacShane, unleashed his notoriously sharp tongue on the nation's 1.6m Muslims: they must choose between the “British...way” or the “way of the terrorist”. Muslim leaders hit back furiously, calling the minister “ill-informed” and tartly urging him to address the “causes behind terrorism” such as the woes of Iraq and the Palestinians. Mr MacShane's apology for “any misunderstanding” was brushed aside.

This week, as warnings of a possible attack on Britain by Islamists reached a crescendo, there were signs that things had changed. The government and Muslim leaders have apparently decided to put aside their differences and work together against the danger of terrorist attacks while there is still a chance.

On March 30th, London's Metropolitan Police announced that a huge anti-terrorist operation, involving more than 700 officers from five regions of southern England as well as their spookier colleagues, had just taken place. Eight British citizens, aged between 17 and 32, had been arrested on suspicion of involvement with terrorism, and half a tonne of ammonium nitrate fertiliser - which can be used to make bombs, though it has benign uses too - had been found in a west London warehouse.

The statement did not mention the detainees' ethnicity or religion, though it delicately observed that neither were the arrests related to Irish republican terrorism, nor were those held suspects in the Madrid bombings. It thus implied that they were British-born Muslims planning big operations against soft targets - anything from airports to pubs. But to pre-empt allegations of Islam-bashing, it was carefully recalled that “the overwhelming majority of the Muslim community are law-abiding and completely reject all forms of violence.” The announcement was designed to demonstrate that the police are neither fatalistic nor bigoted in the face of murderous extremism.

Similarly eye-catching was the initiative, a day later, by the Muslim Council of Britain, a broad umbrella group which can make a fair claim to speak for the whole community. Instead of complaining about heavy-handed police tactics, the council published an urgent appeal to Islamic clergy, scholars and community leaders: as well as correcting anti-Islamic prejudice, they should “liaise with the local police and give them the fullest co-operation in dealing with any criminal activity including terrorist threat.”

Although its release was accelerated because of the anti-terror swoop, the Muslim statement had been in the works since the previous Friday. Some of Britain's top clerics and community leaders held an emergency gathering at the Regent's Park Mosque in London prompted by the Madrid bombings, and by much depressing talk, including a forecast by Sir John Stevens, London's police chief, that an attack on Britain was “inevitable”.

Seen in the light of the council's previous grumpiness towards the police and the government, this statement marks a big change. According to insiders, several people at the mosque discussion argued “passionately” that Muslims must overcome any qualms about working with the police; and nobody disagreed. The council is now drafting a longer booklet that will urge Muslims to appreciate the freedoms they enjoy in Britain, and to act as responsible citizens; and Imam Abduljalil Sajid, a Brighton-based cleric, will be sending an “anti-terrorist” sermon to be read out in mosques all over the country.

But if the clerics are to rid British Islam of sympathy for terrorism, they have a long way to go. An ICM opinion poll for the Guardian in early March found that 13% of Muslims would regard further attacks on America by al-Qaeda, or similar groups, as “justified”, compared with 73% who thought the contrary. Some 64% thought that Britain's anti-terrorist laws were being enforced unfairly. Taken at face value, that would imply up to 200,000 potential sympathisers with anti-western mega-terror - and five times that number who mistrust British justice.

It will be difficult for the police to guard against terrorism properly, while avoiding swelling the number of disaffected Muslims. Already young Muslims complain that they are picked on for stop-and-search operations. And if their hostility to the police grows, it will become ever harder for the old men who call themselves community leaders to bridge the gap between Muslim youth and the British state.

Muslim leaders in the UK and the UK Government are trying to work together to prevent any terrorist threat.

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