Three Years On

In the run up to the third anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings, attention is once again being focused upon the position of Muslims in today's Britain.

Writing in the Independent, Peter Oborne points out that "suspicion of the Muslim community has found its way into mainstream society – and nobody seems to care":

Islamophobia – defined in 1997 by the landmark report from the Runnymede Trust as "an outlook or world-view involving an unfounded dread and dislike of Muslims, which results in practices of exclusion and discrimination" – can be encountered in the best circles: among our most famous novelists, among newspaper columnists, and in the Church of England.

Its appeal is wide-ranging. "I am an Islamophobe", the Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee wrote in The Independent nearly 10 years ago. "Islamophobia?" the Sunday Times columnist Rod Liddle asks rhetorically in the title of a recent speech, "Count me in". Imagine Liddle declaring: "Anti-Semitism? Count me in", or Toynbee claiming she was "an anti-Semite and proud of it".

Anti-Semitism is recognised as an evil, noxious creed, and its adherents are barred from mainstream society and respectable organs of opinion. Not so Islamophobia.

"There is a definite urge; don't you have it?", the author Martin Amis told Ginny Dougary of The Times: "The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order. Not letting them travel. Deportation; further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or Pakistan. Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children." Here, Amis is doing much more than insulting Muslims. He is using the foul and barbarous language of fascism. Yet his books continue to sell, and his work continues to be celebrated.

We should all feel ashamed about the way we treat Muslims, in the media, in our politics, and on our streets. We do not treat Muslims with the tolerance, decency and fairness that we often like to boast is the British way. We urgently need to change our public culture.

Echoing Oborne's comparison of the plight of British Muslims with the Jews of yesteryear, Dewsbury MP Shahid Malik, whose constituency in West Yorkshire was home to 7/7 suicide bomber Mohammad Siddique Khan, suggested that many Muslims feel "under siege". Speaking in an interview for a C4 Dispatches program to be broadcast this coming Monday, Malik said:

I don't mean to equate that with the Holocaust but in the way that it was legitimate almost - and still is in some parts - to target Jews, many Muslims would say that we feel the exact same way.

Somehow there's a message out there that it's OK to target people as long as it's Muslims.

And you don't have to worry about the facts, and people will turn a blind eye.

Malik, who also told how his car was firebombed, a car drove at him in a petrol station and said he receives regular hate mail, called for action to be taken to help Muslims feel accepted in society.

It is critical we ensure that Britain's near two million Muslims have a sense of belonging and feel accepted, first and foremost because it is their right as British citizens, but secondly because it is vital in the fight against violent extremism in the name of Islam.

With some 2,000 people under surveillance because of the possibility that they might engage in terrorism the threat of an attack is a very real one and Muslims in communities up and down the country become indispensable in the fight against terrorism.

Yet there is no doubt that many Muslims feel under siege in the media and in society and this siege mentality feeds into a wider victim narrative.

Malik added that the apparent persecution made it more difficult for people in positions of responsibility to persuade people to challenge the "small minority of extremists who call themselves Muslims".

Mothers and sons, friends and lovers, good and bad -- Muslims are individual human beings just like the rest of us. As ever in the history of our planet, it is those who seek to control our thoughts and actions who find it most convenient to whip up fear of 'the other'.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy activist who has been either in prison or under house arrest since 1989 when her party won elections in Burma and the military junta responded by detaining her, once memorably said: "Fear is not the natural state of civilized man." As our thoughts naturally return to those dreadful events in London three years ago, let us hope that the voices of civilised men -- Muslim, Christian, of other faiths and none -- are those that we hear and act upon.