A bombshell for British Muslims
| Jul 15, 05
LONDON - Shakawan arrived in London from Iraq only three years ago, but he already had an English girlfriend here. He is 19 and never studied English before he came to London, but now he speaks with a heavy British accent. This is thanks to his girlfriend he says, and then corrects himself: former girlfriend. He has no problem with marrying a Christian woman in the future, and he has also never worshipped in a mosque. “I don’t even know how to do it,” he says. “My mother prays, and my father, but it doesn’t speak to me at all.”
He is now drinking sweet, hot tea with mint at a small cafe in the Finsbury Park neighborhood of North London. This neighborhood is considered really leprous, mainly because of Abu Hamza, the imam of the Central Mosque of North London, which is located only 200 meters away from the cafe. Abu Hamza was suspected by the authorities of abetting terror and was placed under arrest several months ago. He and others like him who preach radical Islam and hatred of the West, have earned the British capital the nickname “Londonistan,” because it is a comfortable hothouse for Islamic radicalism and fundamentalism.
Since Abu Hamza’s arrest, the leadership of the mosque has been replaced and the Somali guard at the door explained that “events like those that occurred on July 7 (the series of terror attacks in London in which at least 52 people were killed - A.S.) are unacceptable.” About an hour before the evening prayers there is only one person in the prayer hall - lying on the floor, sleeping, trying perhaps to escape the heat outside. On the bulletin board, beneath the list of prayer times, appears the picture of a young boy of 19, his face alert and observing, as if surprised by the camera. “If anyone has seen Slimane Ihab since the morning of July 7, please contact Emma.”
Slimane is not the only Muslim who has been missing since the terror attacks last week in London. Two of the attacks - the one at Edgware Road and the one at Aldgate - occurred in areas where many Muslims live. Shahera Islam is also missing. And so is Nazie Mozakka.
Fish and chips
Motorway sign near London, 7th July 2005 (photo: David Wulff)
On Wednesday morning Britain woke up to the shocking fact that the terrorists who carried out the attacks were born and raised in Britain. The father of one of them, who came here many years ago from Pakistan, sells fish and chips. “That these men (the suicide bombers) wanted to kill and die is bad enough,” wrote Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian. “That they were, it seems, born and raised in this country is even worse. If they had been a foreign cell - we could have comforted ourselves that this was an external phenomenon, an alien intrusion - but there can be no such comfort if these killers were British citizens.”
In its editorial, The Daily Telegraph wrote that it is untenable that four young men became so radical and no one in their environment noticed, and that someone at home or at the mosques should have become suspicious of this.
This fact has thrust British Muslims - 1.8 million in number, of whom 50 percent live in London - into a particularly difficult situation. On the one hand, they have been hurt like the rest of the inhabitants of the capital. On the other, they are now under suspicion as potential terrorists. A cartoon yesterday in Al Hayat, an Arabic newspaper published in London, expressed this feeling well: It shows British hands pointing an accusing finger at an Arab family, while in the background a terrorist with explosives flees the scene.
“The Muslims in Britain are the ones who have been hurt hardest by these terror attacks,” says Massoud Shadjareh, the chairman of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, in a telephone conversation. “We prayed so much that this would not happen. There are Muslim dead. Muslim wounded. Muslim doctors and rescue workers tended the wounded.” Nevertheless, he says, now the Muslims will pay the price.
Events of recent days show that he indeed has cause for concern. In the worst incident, a 48-year-old Pakistani tourist was beaten to death by six youths in the city of Nottingham after they shouted at him “Taliban, Taliban.” A number of mosques have been set on fire. Thousands of insulting e-mail messages have been received at mosques and Muslim institutions. Lord Ahmed, a member of the House of Lords, was greeted with jeers as he left his home. As of Wednesday, a total of 300 anti-Muslim incidents have been noted, while according to Shadjareh during all of last year there was only one such occurence.
Nearly all of the official Muslim spokesmen have condemned the terror attacks and have said that this is a crime, especially if it was committed in the name of Islam. But in the same breath nearly all of them reject the term “Islamic terror.” Most of them see no connection between the attacks and Islam. “We shouldn’t differ between British Muslims and non-Muslims. These attacks were upon all the factions of society. The people who did it are not people of thinking and it has nothing to do with any religion. Most of the people who lived there are Muslims,” says Sheikh Anwar Mady, deputy director general of the Islamic Cultural Centre in an interview in his office in the London Central Mosque in Regents Park.
“There is no significance to race, religion or nationality. They (the suicide bombers) are all British citizens, and there are criminals in every society. Did they say of the IRA that it was a Christian or Catholic underground? No. These are criminals, and it makes no difference whether they are Muslims, Christians or Jews,” says Shadjareh.
Shadjareh believes what characterizes Osama bin Laden and his supporters is the thought that the end justifies the means, “that it is possible to break laws in order to achieve the end.” In this respect he sees no great difference between bin Laden and United States President George W. Bush, or even Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. “Bush went to war (in Iraq) without the agreement of the United Nations, he is violating the Geneva Convention and he is imprisoning people in the camp at Guantanamo. He thinks that his aim is just. Bin Laden thinks so too. Sharon also thinks so - in the matter of the assassinations, for example. But I think there are things that are forbidden to do.”
He makes it clear in his remarks that there is nothing to justify the attacks: “I am very far from that thought. Anyone who thinks that by means of a bomb he will achieve his aim is mistaken. And it makes no difference whether he is called Muhammad, George or Ariel.”
In the meantime, conspiracy theories have gained ground. Abdul is a waiter at the Spicy Bombay Restaurant in Brick Lane, not far from Aldgate tube station. This area is now inhabited mainly by people from “greater India” - Pakistan, Bangladesh and India - and is dotted with hallal butcher shops, shops for Muslim chador for women and stands selling Indian music cassettes. “How can I be certain that they [the bombers] were Muslims?” he asks. “After all, they don’t have any proof. They also claimed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and there weren’t. As far as I’m concerned it could also have been British intelligence.” To the question of whether he really believes that, he replies: “I don’t know. How am I supposed to know?”
A waiter in a Lebanese restaurant not far from the Edgware Road station says he is certain it was an action by George W. Bush and the CIA. To the question of why they would do such a thing he replies: “Because of the economic problems in the United States. Bush is afraid of economic competition with Britain, the economy there isn’t working and he wants to destroy London. I condemn the terror attacks - my children could have died there. But if everything is bin Laden, how come they haven’t caught him yet?”
‘So what if I have a beard?’
Central London Mosque (photo: Nadine Spizzirri Phillips)
One issue that keeps coming up is the feeling of alienation from British society among many Muslims and manifestations of islamophobia that many experience. The fact that London is above all a multicultural city is evidenced by any random tour of the city, but it emerges that many Muslims here experience humiliation, discrimination and scorn. Shadjareh notes that according to a survey conducted by his organization, 80 percent of the Muslims in Britain have experienced some manifestation of islamophobia.
“What is happening to Muslims in Europe as a whole and in Britain in particular resembles what happened to the Jews in the early 1920s and the 1930s. The use of stereotypes and caricatures in the newspapers. You just need to exchange the rabbi for a Muslim.” According to him, it is not so much a matter of tension in a socio-economic context, but rather the anger of many Muslims at the society around them.
Two young Muslim women who work at the Muslim Youth Help Line, Rukaiya Jerha and Layli Uddin, can testify to this feeling of alienation. The organization was founded four years ago, because young Muslims feel it is difficult to get help from the government welfare and aid agencies. Therefore they are contacted by many young Muslims, who come from similar backgrounds to Shehzad Tanweer, one of the terrorists who carried out the attacks in the capital.
Rukaiya, 25, whose parents came from East Africa, runs the organization’s Internet site. The forum, she says, is very active. “Most of these young people are now asking themselves what will happen to them, and are interested in showing that not all Muslims identify with terrorist acts. They are afraid of how they will be viewed now. But mostly the issues that concern them are the same issues that concern everyone. The day before the attacks there was great joy at [London] winning the hosting of the Olympic Games.”
Some of the participants in the forum related to what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan. “The terrible attacks were a horrible thing,” some of them wrote, “but there are also bombs in Baghdad all the time. That the attacks happened in Britain does not mean the people in Iraq are less important.” According to her, many Muslim young people in Britain feel solidarity with Muslims throughout the world - in Chechnya and Bosnia, for example - almost “a strong unity with Muslim brothers and sisters.”
Layli emphasizes that young Muslims usually go through the same crises as others - depression, problems in the family, sexual identity, unemployment. Most of these young people want to have the same kinds of jobs as non-Muslims and integrate into society. But both women acknowledge that the anger exists. “Talk like `the enemy within’ and `fifth column’ only makes the situation worse,” says Layli. “People need to be aware of the implications statements like those have. This creates a negative image of Islam, and anyone who is not familiar with this religion is likely to link it to terror.”
They believe acts of terror stem from disappointment in parts of the community. “People have been here their whole lives,” says Layli, “and they are still not part of the population. They are humiliated and discriminated against. And then someone comes along and says to them, `Those are the people who are killing your brothers in Iraq.’ But it must be remembered - you can’t persuade someone who is content with his life. When someone feels angered and alienated, a seed is sown that can be nurtured - in a positive way but also in a negative way.”
Shakawan from the cafe in Finsbury Park offers his own experience. Last Friday, a day after the terror attacks, he left his home to go to work after he had not shaved for several days. “A policeman looked at me in a way they never look at English people. Why? Because of the beard? I asked him; `Why are you looking at me that way? If I’ve done something wrong, tell me, but don’t look at me that way. Stop looking at me that way.’ I don’t like it when they connect me to the terrorists.”
